Thinking about "Re-imagining Pakistan": A worthwhile agenda for Pakistan in 2007

Re-Imagining Pakistan
Mr. Jinnah’s Pakistan Isn’t Working. What Can?
By Pervez Hoodbhoy

Commencement lecture by Pervez Hoodbhoy at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, December 9, 2006

It is indeed a pleasure to see the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture emerge as a thriving educational institution. I remember my first visit here around 1994 when it had barely come into existence. The Nusserwanjee Building in Kharadar had just been pulled apart and transported brick-by-brick to this site. Over the years it was patiently put together again, and this innovative experiment has now born fruit. To those who will graduate today from the School, I extend my congratulations. You are ready to set sail into the big, wide world as artists, designers and architects. Many of you will doubtless become rich and famous, and I hope all of you do.

But, as a general fact, the success of individuals does not always lead to the betterment of the larger milieu in which they live and breathe. Improving the state of society is a far more difficult and complex matter, and it involves much more than just increasing the consumption of material goods and services. Societies change when people change their ways of thinking. It is on this that we shall reflect upon today.

To help us along, let’s imagine a film like “Jinnah”. You die and fly off to the arrival gate in heaven where an angel of the immigration department screens newcomers from Pakistan. Admission these days is even tougher than getting a Green Card to America. You have to show proofs of good deeds, argue your case, and fill out an admission form. One section of the form asks you to specify three attitudinal traits that you want fellow Pakistanis, presently on earth, to have. As part of divine fairness, all previous entries are electronically stored and publicly available and so you learn that Mr. Jinnah, as the first Pakistani, had answered – as you might guess – “Faith, Unity, Discipline”. This slogan was in all the books you had studied in school, and was emblazoned even on monuments and hillsides across the country. Since copying won’t get you anywhere in heaven, you obviously cannot repeat this.

What would your three choices be? As you consider your answer, I’ll tell you mine.

First, I wish for minds that can deal with the complex nature of truth. Without minds engaged on this issue there cannot be a capacity for good judgment. And, without good judgment a nation will blunder from one mistake on to the next. Now, truth is a fundamental but very subtle concept. The problem is that things are usually not totally true or totally false. Still, some things are very true and others are very false. For example it is very true that I will be killed if I stand on the tracks in front of a speeding train. And it is very false that the earth rests on the horns of a bull. But these are quite easily established; separating true and false is often extremely difficult.

Take art, architecture, music, poetry, or sculpture. They are so absolutely necessary that we cannot conceive of a satisfying or civilized existence without them. But there is no true or false in any of them, just shades of gray. Harold Pinter, the British dramatist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, emphasizes this in his acceptance speech:

The real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

Pinter says it so well. Who wants to read a book or see a drama about absolute heroes and total villains? Or perfect beauty and total ugliness? These extremities do not engage our mind or sensitivities.

Truth in art is a subtle matter, and I am not a philosopher. At one level it appears to me that truth in art is really about preferences. Is it a truth that Ghalib was a better poet than Mir? Or that Mehdi Hasan is the greatest ghazal singer on the subcontinent? Is the renaissance neoclassical art of Raphael and others more true to life than the modern art forms that superseded it? Or that modern machine-driven architectural geometries are superior to buildings designed with columns, arches, and gargoyles of classical architecture? Surely, these are matters of taste.

At another level there is a question of honesty and truth that relates squarely to your profession: should someone, as a commercial artist, design a great advertisement for a bad product? Of course, some people will hold very strong opinions on these issues because, perhaps as a consequence of their education and socialization, they have accepted a certain point of view and acquired certain tastes. Fortunately, most will accept – even if grudgingly – that truth in art is unknowable. There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, or between what is true and what is false. In effect, a thing can be both true and false. And here I will go happily along with post-modernists even though on other matters there is much that I disagree with them about.

But what about truth in matters of religion? Religion occupies a far larger domain of our national existence than art, literature, and the rest. Here there are still stronger opinions and people shy away from discussions on this everywhere. This is because there is usually a total conviction of where the truth lies. Every religion is convinced of its correctness and of the incorrectness of others. My deeply religious Catholic friend at MIT – with whom I shared a room during my freshman year – would kneel by his bed every night to pray for my salvation because he felt that, as a Muslim, I was destined to hell. His truth was different from mine, but he was such a sweet person, and so genuinely disturbed by what he saw as my ultimate fate, that I simply did not have the heart to tell him that his prayers were quite unnecessary.

We could, of course, avoid talking about religion and I could stop just here. But it is a fact that religion determines what large numbers of Pakistanis live for, and what they will die for, and – all too often – what they will kill for. So we cannot afford to avoid the subject when the stakes are as high as they are today. The choice is between conversation and violence.

So let us be bold and examine religion at its three different levels.
At one level religion is inspirational and emotional. Marmaduke Pickthal, who first translated the Holy Qur’an into English, wrote that the melody of its verses could move men to tears. Abdus Salam, transfixed by the symmetry of Lahore’s Badshahi Mosque, said that it inspired him to think of the famous SU(2)xU(1) symmetry that revolutionized the world of particle physics.

At a second level lies the metaphysics of religion. This relates to the particular beliefs of a religion, including such issues as monotheism and polytheism, death and reincarnation, heaven and hell, prophets and holy men, sacrifices and rituals, etc. At both these levels, the absoluteness of a particular truth is obvious to the believer, but not necessarily to those outside the faith. Nevertheless, he or she is happy to achieve a sense of purpose in an otherwise purposeless universe. Of course, the particular beliefs held to be true – as in art and aesthetics – depend upon the individual’s family background, education, and socialization into the wider community.

There is a third level: religions are prescriptive. You must do this, but not do that. Some prescriptions are very sensible. But several are understood very differently by different groups belonging to the same overall faith. Some differences are relatively harmless, such as exactly when you may break your fast, when to celebrate Eid, and whether your hands are to be folded or held down while praying. But other differences are deeply divisive and the source of bitter conflict: How much of her face must a Muslim woman cover? None, all, or half-way in between? If a man declares three times to his wife “I divorce you” adequate grounds from an Islamic point of view for a divorce? Or, to take another example, against whom and in what manner is the Quranic injunction for jihad to be followed? This question has pitted Muslim against Muslim in bitter disputation. Is it okay to set off a car bomb in Baghdad and, if so, in which neighborhood? Are suicide bombings un-Islamic? Was the 911 attack on America a crime by standards of Islamic morality? Is Osama bin Laden a good Muslim, or perhaps not one at all?

There are religious authorities on both sides of these divides. I do not wish to take sides on these issues here, but the very fact that there is serious disagreement even among believers of the same faith – not to speak of faiths hostile to each other – means that there cannot be only one single truth in religion. At best there is a plurality of truths, as in the case of art and literature. Some truths are more true, or less true, than others.

And what about science? Are its truths absolute? At the risk of appearing evasive, and of having to disappoint some friends, I have to tell you that my answer is both yes and no.

The good news is that, at the level of epistemology, truth in science is ultimately knowable. Post-modernists are up the creek if they think that all scientific knowledge is relative. A scientific fact has to pass rigorous tests before it is accepted. This means that different scientists in different laboratories at different times must be able to observe the same phenomenon. The nationality, sex, religion, or ethnic affiliation of the scientist is irrelevant. This is why scientists form an international community. Precisely because their differences can be resolved on the basis of experiment, observation, and mathematical argumentation, they don’t kill each other or condemn other scientists as heretics worthy of execution. I have yet to hear of a scientist equivalent of Salman Rushdie.

But there are questions that science will never be able to address. Nor is science a monolithic body of doctrine. The great scientist and visionary, Freeman Dyson, reminds us that:

Science is a culture, constantly growing and changing. The science of today has broken out of the molds of classical nineteenth century science, just as the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock broke out of the molds of nineteenth century art. Science has as many competing styles as painting or poetry.

Well, the objectivity of scientific knowledge was the good news. The bad news is that the world’s scientists are also responsible for some of the greatest crimes against humanity. They make nuclear bombs, germ weapons, polluting factories, and serve the narrow interests of their national, religious, or ethnic groups. As individuals they are no more enlightened than anybody else. Some brilliant scientists that I have known are mere morons when it comes to matters of society or of human relations. So, scientists will not save the world – or even Pakistan.

Who will? Only those capable of nuanced, balanced, critical thought can – and they don’t have to be scientists. We can put our hopes only on those who realize the provisional nature of truth, and who do not claim a monopoly on wisdom. The dogmatist, who thinks he has a divinely provided blueprint to reform society, will only get us into deeper trouble. So this is why my first wish was for Pakistanis who can think.

This is not a hopeless wish. Students here should think back into what they were like before they came to this School, and how they changed because their teachers encouraged them to ask questions. You learned that good questions lead to good answers that, in turn, generate more questions and ideas. Those ideas helped you move forward. So, be critical, be thoughtful, and don’t be satisfied until you are thoroughly convinced.

But I must move on because I still have two more wishes to make.

My second wish is for many more Pakistanis who accept diversity as a virtue. So I am not asking for unity, but acceptance of our differences. Let’s face it, we’re all different. The four provinces of Pakistan have different histories, class and societal structures, climates, and natural resources. Within the provinces there live Sunnis, Shias, Bohris, Ismailis, Ahmadis, Zikris, Hindus, Christians, and Parsis. Then there are tribal and caste divisions which are far too numerous to mention. Add to this all the different languages and customs as well as different modes of worship, rituals, and holy figures. Given this enormous diversity, liberals – who are rather good people in general – often talk of the need for tolerance. But I don’t like this at all. Tolerance merely says that you are nice enough to put up with a bad thing. Instead, let us accept and even celebrate the differences!

Nations are built when diversity is accepted, just as communities are built when individuals can be themselves and yet work for and with each other. If we want unity in the face of diversity, then the majority must stop trying to force itself upon the minorities. Most crucially, the state must stop acting on behalf of the majority. It is imperative that all Pakistanis be declared equal citizens in every way. The Constitution of Pakistan does not accept this. It must be changed to reflect this.

For sixty years we have feared diversity and insisted on unity. But Pakistan paid a very heavy price because our leaders could not understand that a heterogeneous population can live together only if differences are respected. The imposition of Urdu upon Bengal in 1948 was a tragic mistake, and the first of a sequence of missteps that led up to 1971. We have not learned the lesson even now, and the public anger today in Balochistan and Sindh against Punjab stands as unfortunate proof. After the 80-year old Nawab Akbar Bugti was murdered by the Pakistan military, no Punjabi – even if he strongly disagrees with the actions of the military – feels safe in Balochistan. To my mind this is a terrible thing and undermines the very concept of Pakistanis being one nation.

Accepting diversity is something that we all learn, to a greater or lesser extent. I ask students to look at their classmates who come from different backgrounds. Here, as elsewhere you have different economic, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. But probably most of you have learned to work together. You acquired a set of values that allows you to work together, appreciate merit and honesty, and see the individual for his or her merit. Surely education is really about acquiring these values – not just learning technical skills.
And now for my final wish.

My third, and last, wish is that Pakistanis learn to value and nurture creativity. Creativity is a difficult concept to define but roughly I mean originality, unusualness, or ingenuity in something. If nurtured from an early age in children, it leads to great writers, poets, musicians, engineers, scientists, and builders of modern industries and institutions. No one can dispute that creativity is a good thing. But how come Pakistanis – with some important exceptions – have done so poorly on the world stage? Why are there only a dozen or two internationally known Pakistani inventors, scientists, writers, etc for a nation of 165 million people?

The poor performance comes because our society is not willing to pay the price for having creativity. Individuals are creative only when they are not subject to oppressive social control, when the intellectual space in which they can function is large enough, and when they have a sufficient degree of personal autonomy. It is therefore axiomatic that creativity runs counter to tradition and coercion. Authoritarian societies don’t want the lid to be taken off because who knows what can happen after that?

There cannot be creativity in a society where students learn like parrots, where the teacher is an unchallengeable authoritarian figure “jo aap kay baap ki tara hai”. Except at a few leading universities, the written word – even if it is in a physics textbook – is slavishly followed. The students in our public universities are just overgrown children, including the ones who are in their mid- or late twenties. In fact they prefer to be called girls and boys, not women and men. For recreation they do not read books but walk aimlessly in bazaars and waste time in pointless chatter. Most have never read a single classical novel, either in Urdu or English. In my department – the best physics department in the country – their only contribution to what you see around is the huge birthday or “mangni” greeting cards displayed on bulletin boards. Teachers insult them, throw them out of class, and encourage deference and servility.

Wrongly, the cornerstone of our education is itaat (obedience), which is the very negation of creativity. It is to challenge itaat that Faiz Ahmad Faiz wrote:

ab sadeeon kay iqrar-e-itaat ko badalnay
lazim hai keh inkar ka firman koi utarey

I am done with my three wishes. May that inkar ka firman come sooner rather than later.

At this point I don’t know whether I will get past the Pearly Gates or not. The first Pakistani to get through was, we are told, the originator of the call for Faith, Unity, Discipline. What I’ve put down on my form is quite the opposite, as you will have surely noted. But Pakistan is no longer what it was in 1947. Different situations in different historical epochs call for different solutions. So I’m still hopeful about my application for admission.

Now, of course, there must be many applications pending in heaven and it will be a while before I know how mine went. But meanwhile, there are lots of urgent things that you and I must seriously work upon.

First, we need to bring economic justice to Pakistan. This requires that it possess the working machinery of a welfare state. Economic justice is not the same as flinging coins at beggars. Rather, it requires organizational infrastructure that, at the very least, provides employment but also rewards according to ability and hard work. Incomes should be neither exorbitantly high nor miserably low. To be sure, “high” and “low” are not easily quantifiable, but an inner moral sense informs us that something is desperately wrong when rich Pakistanis fly off to vacation in Dubai while a mother commits suicide because she cannot feed her children.

Second, we must fight to give Pakistan’s women the freedom which is their birthright. In much of rural Pakistan a woman is likely to be spat upon, beaten, or killed for being friendly to a man or even showing to him her face. Newspaper readers expect – and get – a steady daily diet of stories about women raped, mutilated, or strangled to death by their fathers, husbands, and brothers. Energetic proselytizers like Farhat Hashmi have made deep inroads even into the urban middle and upper classes. Their emphasis is on covering women’s faces, putting women back into the home and kitchen, and destroying ideas of women’s equality with men. The culture of suppressing women and excluding them from public life is spreading like wildfire. As our collective piety increases, the horrific daily crimes against women become still less worthy of comment or discussion.

Third, and last, we have to wake people up and get them politically engaged again. Young people have tuned into mindless FM entertainment and tuned out of participation in social causes. University campuses are empty of discussion and debate, and movements against manifest social and political injustice bring forth only handfuls of committed individuals. Millions demonstrated in the streets of London, Rome, Washington, and New York against the criminal American invasion of Iraq. But in Pakistan – where the anger was still deeper – the response was invisible. We have become cynical and think that nothing can be done. Today the military rules an apathetic nation.

This apathy must go, and can go. Last year’s earthquake galvanized people across the country. It broke the myth that we have stopped caring for each other. I have never seen Pakistanis give so whole-heartedly of their money, time, effort, and energy. Ordinary people, students, shop-keepers, businessmen…just about everybody pitched into the huge relief effort.

So we can change for the better. We can be like other nations on this planet. We can make responsible choices for who should govern us. We can bring justice to our people. We can be a decent civilized, peaceful, well-informed, educated people. It’s only a question of trying and getting our act together. That is the task before all of us, young and old.

State Brutality in the era of "Enlightened Moderation"

Rawalpindi: Police beat Mohammad Bin Masood who was protesting against the disappearance of his father
From Dawn, December 29, 2006

Central Command of the Muslim World?

THE OTHER MALAYSIA: A Muslim central command HQ? — Farish A Noor
Daily Times, December 31, 2006

The question of authority in Islam is as old as the religion itself, and the historian will be the first to tell you that since time immemorial, countless Muslim scholars from Al Ghazali to Ibn Taimiyya to Ibn Khaldun have been grappling with the question of power and discursive authority among Muslims to address the fundamental question: “Who speaks for Islam?” So important has this concern grown over the past few years that this writer alone can claim to have attended no less than a dozen conferences since September 11, 2001 that were convened around the same — admittedly tiring and outdated — question.

Now the question has been raised again in Malaysia with the Director of the Malaysian Islamic Research Institute (IKIM) Dr Syed Tawfik Al-Attas’s proposal that the Malaysian government pave the way for the creation of the office of Grand Mufti of Malaysia, ostensibly to bring an end to the indecorous debates and polemics that have been flying across the country. Citing Egypt, Jordan and Australia as examples of countries whose governments have appointed scholars to such a post, Dr Al-Attas added that “with a Grand Mufti (in Malaysia) religious issues will no longer be debated openly in the media because it can then be discussed behind closed doors among qualified mufti”.

Dr Al-Attas’s concerns are, it has to be noted, legitimate to some degree: This year alone has witnessed a number of loud and angry demonstrations by Muslims across the country over the highly sensitive issue of freedom of faith and the right of Malaysians to choose the religion they wish to practise. The Director of IKIM correctly pointed out that some of the more ‘populist’ ulema of Malaysia have gone out of their way to incite and inflame public opinion with a host of rumours, including the bogus claim that around 200,000 Muslims had secretly converted to Christianity.

But the real question that has to be addressed is this: Would the centralisation of power and discursive authority put an end to such rumour-mongering and hate speeches? Or would it not merely add to the increased power of the state and result in the further co-optation of Islam and Islamic discourse in the country? Is there not the very real problem that once religious discursive authority is bolstered by power and institutionalised it merely ends up being yet another appendage to state power?

Here it has to be pointed out that this is not a concern unique to Islam or Muslims. Since the 19th century orthodox conservative Hindu reformists in India have likewise attempted to control the meaning and circulation of Hindu discourse, firstly to ‘purify’ it of non-Hindu elements and secondly to ensure that it does not degenerate into a form of popular Hinduism that breaks away from the Vedantic tradition. This preoccupation with purity and control contributed to the emergence of reformist movements like the Arya Samaj and later the BJP, and we all know the result by now.

Likewise, between the 17th to 18th centuries Europe was a hotbed of religious pluralism with sometimes grave and bloody consequences. The emergence of different schools of thought and the growing schisms within the Church led to the fears of philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, whose political treatise The Leviathan was as much concerned about ending the disputes between the different streams of the Church as it was to ensure the centralisation of state power.

Hobbes’s main worry in the Leviathan was how to prevent religious disputations leading to civil war, and his remedy was a simple one: The king, and the government, would bring an end to religious discourse by monopolising the discourse of religion and imposing bans on even the use of public language if and when it was necessary. This was the politics of divine containment at its maximalist, and Hobbes did not hesitate to recommend that religious dissenters be put to the sword if need be.

But dissent is precisely the stuff of religion and it has to be noted that the Abrahamic faiths all emerged from dissent. Islam began as a reaction against the corruption of the Bedouin tribes and their feudal customs, and it is the egalitarian ethos of Islam that rebelled against such feudal power that today fuels the differences of thought, belief and praxis among Muslims the world over. How can Muslim states ever contain, police and monopolise the discourse of Islam without striking at its very ethical and philosophical heart?

For many a Muslim government today, a reality check is in order. Rapid development since the postcolonial era, accompanied by mass migration to the cities and urbanisation, accelerated by globalisation and exposure to global media and trends of thought means that plurality of opinion and belief is greater now than ever before. Muslim elites have to realise that this pluralism can and should be turned into an asset, and not seen as a threat per se.

While it is true that the likes of Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakar Bashir exist out there to antagonise and provoke the masses, there are also countless Muslim intellectuals and scholars of note whose ideas are path-breaking, revolutionary and modern. The way to prevent the slippage towards a more communitarian and violent register is not to close the doors of free speech but to create the framework for a civil society where ideas can be discussed maturely and in the open.

This will surely take time, and perhaps the Muslim world does not have much time at its disposal. But nobody ever said that creating a society of mature responsible citizens was an immediate process that can be fast-tracked. What is required, however, are constitutional and institutional guarantees that such a civil society will not come under the domination of a small self-interested elite. That is why the remedy to the hyperbolic rhetoric of the likes of Osama lies not in more security laws, but in a free media, an open university system, the flourishing of texts and discourses and the rule of law that will guarantee that all citizens abide by the same rules.

No, the Muslim world does not need a ‘Muslim Central Command Headquarters’ that despatches government-approved fatwas by the minute. But it does need the space to think aloud and to dissent. In time, the angry voices of the likes of Osama will be drowned out not be government propaganda, but by ordinary Muslims who will simply say “enough is enough” and claim their faith back for themselves. I pray that my optimism is justified.

Dr Farish A Noor is a Malaysian political scientist and historian based at the Zentrum Moderner Orient; and one of the founders of the www.othermalaysia.org research site

House of Saud's School of Thought!

Saudi cleric labels Shias ‘infidels’Reuters: December 30, 2006
DUBAI: An influential cleric of Saudi Arabia’s hardline Sunni school of Islam has denounced Shia Muslims as “infidels” in a new religious edict that comes amid rising sectarian tension in the region. “The rejectionists (Shias) in their entirety are the worst of the Islamic nation’s sects. They bear all the characteristics of infidels,” Sheikh Abdel-Rahman al-Barrak said in the fatwa, or ruling, distributed on Islamist websites. “They are in truth polytheist infidels, though they hide this,” the fatwa said, citing theological differences 14 centuries after the death of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), such as reverence of shrines which followers of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi school consider abhorrent. Concern is growing in Saudi Arabia over Shia-Sunni violence in Iraq which has taken the northern neighbour to the brink of civil war. Sunni-Shia tensions are also high in Lebanon, where Shias are leading efforts to bring down a Sunni-led cabinet. “The Sunni and Shias schools of Islam are opposites that can never agree, there can be no coming together,” the fatwa said. Barrak, an independent scholar, has come to be regarded by many as the highest authority for Wahhabi Muslims. Clerics of the austere Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam have long dismissed Shias as virtual heretics and Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority complains of second-class treatment. But Barrak’s fatwa was the strongest in recent years. The fatwa, which was published on Barrak’s website in response to a follower’s question, also appeared to criticise efforts by some government-backed Saudi preachers at reconciliation between Sunnis and Shias. reuters

Muslim World in the face of Sectarianism and Terrorism

Zahoor's cartoon From Daily Times, December 29, 2006

"I Don't Think We Westerners Care About Muslims"

"I Don't Think We Westerners Care About Muslims" - Robert Fisk Delivers Keynote Address at MPAC Convention

Democracy Now: Wednesday, December 20th, 2006

ROBERT FISK: Ladies and gentlemen, when I first went to the Middle East -- on holiday from Belfast, of all places -- 1972, I went to Egypt, and anxious to try and pick up a few first words of Arabic, I had the misfortune of purchasing a very old book produced by the British army in Egypt in the 19th century. I still recall the three principal clauses which you were advised to learn if you were an Englishman: "We shall board the steamship, for there is talk of war," "Help," and "Where is the British embassy?" And I can tell you, I never believed I would actually watch people say these things, as I had to in Lebanon this last summer. There were all the refugees, all the foreigners, boarding the steamships because there was a real war, all wanting help and all demanding to know the way to their national embassies. “So it has come to this,” I thought to myself.

You know, in the last 30 years that I have been in the Middle East, there has been one -- no, two major changes. The first is that Muslims are no longer afraid. When I first went to Lebanon, if the Israelis crossed the border, for example, many, many, many Palestinians who were in the south would be rushing to Beirut. People would flee the south, run away. Whether it was the siege of Beirut in 1982 or not, I don’t know. But now, they do not run away. Muslims do not run away when they’re attacked, when they’re under air attack.

One of the most extraordinary events was the siege of ’82, when over and over again leaflets would fall from the sky. “If you value your loved ones, run away and take them with you.” An attempt to depopulate West Beirut. And I always remember my landlord -- I live on the seafront -- I met him at front door one day, and he was holding a little net full of fish. He had been fishing on the sea. He said, “We don't have to do as we’re told and leave our homes. We can live, you see, Mr. Robert. We can stay here.”

The other big change that has happened in the past 30 years is that when I first went to the Middle East, all the forces which were in conflict with the West were nationalist or socialist or pro-Soviet. Today, without exception, in Afghanistan, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Iraq, in South Lebanon, all the forces which are in conflict with the West or with Israel are Islamist. That is a change that I don’t think we westerners really understand.

Do we in fact really understand the extent of injustice in the Middle East? When I finished writing my new book, I realized how amazed I was that after the past 90 years of injustice, betrayal, slaughter, terror, torture, secret policemen and dictators, how restrained Muslims had been, I realized, towards the West, because I don't think we Westerners care about Muslims. I don’t think we care about Muslim Arabs. You only have to look at the reporting of Iraq. Every time an American or British soldier is killed, we know his name, his age, whether he was married, the names of his children. But 500,000-600,000 Iraqis, how many of their names have found their way onto our television programs, our radio shows, our newspapers? They are just numbers, and we don't even know the statistic.

Do you remember the time when George Bush was pushed and pushed: what were the figures of the Iraqi dead? At that stage, it was less, and he said, “Oh, 30,000. More or less.” Can you imagine if he had been asked how many Americans had died, and he said "3,000, more or less"? Those words, “more or less,” somehow said it all.

I said earlier on today -- and I’m going to give you the example this time -- that actually, I don't think the Iraq report is going to have any effect, but I think what is meant to have an effect in the United States is the gradual drip-drip idea that the Iraqis are unworthy of us Westerners. This is why and this is how we’re going to get out.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. Here is Ralph Peters, former American Army officer, writing in USA Today. I’m not advising you to read USA Today, but I sometimes get trapped into airplanes for hours and hours and hours coming to talk to people like you. So, here is Ralph Peters writing -- remember this is quoting a mainstream newspaper. He was originally for the invasion. Obviously he needs a get-out clause now. "Our extensive investment in Iraqi law enforcement only produced death squads. Government ministers loot the country to strengthen their own factions. In reality, only a military coup could hold this artificial country together." You see? We’re already planning.

I remember back even in 2003, Daniel Pipes had a long article in which he said that what Iraq needed -- and please do not laugh at this -- what Iraq needed was a democratically minded strongman. Think about that for a moment.

But let me carry on with Ralph Peters. “For all our errors, we did give the Iraqis a unique chance to build a rule-of-law democracy. They preferred to indulge in old hatreds, confessional violence, ethnic bigotry and a culture of corruption.” You see what we’re doing. We’re denigrating and bestializing the people we came allegedly to save. It's their tragedy, not ours, he writes. Iraq -- listen to this, “Iraq was the Arab world’s last chance to board the train to modernity, to give the region a future, not just a bitter past. But now, the violence staining Baghdad’s streets with gore isn’t only a symptom of the Iraqi government’s incompetence,” he says. “It is symbolic of the comprehensive inability of the Arab world to progress in any sphere of organized human endeavor.” Yes, that's what I thought when I read it. No letters to the editor about this. “If they continue to revel” -- revel, get that word -- “to revel in fratricidal slaughter, we must leave.” You see, the ground is being prepared.

Take David Brooks, now, this is the New York Times. This is really mainstream. He’s been reading some history books, remembering how the British occupation of Iraq came to grief in 1920. Pity he didn’t read the history books before he supported the invasion of Iraq. But anyway, he’s getting ’round to reading history now. “Today,” he says, “Iraq is in much worse shape than when the British were there. The most perceptive reports,” he says, “talk not of a civil war, but of complete social disintegration.” We’re already rubbing Iraq like this and turning it to dust, so there’s nothing left to leave. “This latest descent,” he says, “was initiated by American blunders but is exacerbated by” -- wait for it -- “the same old Iraqi demons: greed, bloodlust and a mind-boggling unwillingness to compromise for the common good, even in the face of self-immolation.” This is similar to the Thomas Friedman line of the child-sacrificing Palestinians. “Iraq,” says Brooks, “is teetering on the edge of futility.” What does that mean? “It will be time to effectively end Iraq. It will be time soon,” he says, “to radically diffuse authority down to the only communities that are viable in Iraq: the clan, the tribe or sect.”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the way in which we are being prepared for what is to happen. This is the grit, which will be laid on the desert floor to help our tanks move. Don't say there were never predictions about the future in the Middle East.

I’m going to make a quick request here. These lights are dazzling me. Is it possibly to have all the lights up like they were before, so you’re all human beings, like I’m trying to be? Can we have all the lights up?

So, but don't say there were no predictions of the future in the Middle East. The record of that 1920 insurgency against the British occupation is a fingerprint-perfect copy of the insurgency against the Americans and the British today. But on the other hand, don't say that no one warned many, many years before here now, before even the Second World War, of what was to happen in Palestine.

I’m going to read you a very brief paragraph by Winston Churchill, not about the Battle of Britain. It is Churchill prophesying the future from 1937, eleven years before the Nakba. This is Winston Churchill writing in a totally forgotten essay. He reflected upon the future and wrote of the impossibility of a partitioned Palestine. And he talked of how, I quote -- this is Winston Churchill in 1937 -- “The wealthy, crowded, progressive Jewish state” -- see, it doesn’t exist yet, but he’s already getting it right -- “lies in the plains and on the sea coast of Palestine. Around it, in the hills and the uplands, stretching far and wide into the illimitable deserts, the warlike Arabs of Syria of Transjordania, of Arabia, backed by the armed forces of Iraq, offer the ceaseless menace of war. To maintain itself,” -- 1937, remember, -- “To maintain itself, the Jewish state will have to be armed to the teeth and must bring in every able-bodied man to strengthen its army. But how long will this process be allowed to continue by the great Arab populations in Iraq and Palestine? Can it be expected that the Arabs would stand by impassively and watch the building up, with Jewish world capital and resources, of a Jewish army, equipped with the most deadly weapons of war until it was strong enough not to be afraid of them? And if ever the Jewish army reached that point, who can be sure,” Churchill asked, “that, cramped within their narrow limits, they would not plunge out into the new undeveloped lands that lay around them?”

“Ouch,” I said when I read that. 1937.

Today, you know, we journalists are complicit with governments in creating what I call the ministry of fear. This is not just a question of phone taps, racial profiling, secret tortures, it's also a way of making you and me constantly frightened. I happened to be in Toronto when the famous terror plot was uncovered, the 11 Canadian Muslims, or Muslim Canadians, who were arrested and allegedly were plotting to take over the Parliament Building in Ottawa, hold all the members of parliament hostage, and then to chop off the head of Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada. Harper himself wisely made a little bit of a joke about this, because he saw that this was getting a little bit too much.

But what struck me was the next morning, the Toronto Globe and Mail, mainstream press in Canada, had an eyewitness report -- and I use the quotation -- of the arrest of the “brown-skinned Muslims.” I kid thee not. That’s what it said. The next morning on the CTV, which owned and owns the Toronto Globe and Mail, I was on a live radio program. Live is good. You can't be edited. So I said, “Can you tell me why the Toronto Globe and Mail referred to these Muslims as ‘brown-skinned’? I mean, why didn't it refer to the white-skinned police chief of Toronto, for I am sure he is white, is he not?” He is, of course. You see, I was told, by the way, by the interviewer that it was a generic matter. Indeed, I’m sure it was. But this, remember, is mainstream journalism.

What is going on in our society? You know, after 9/11, I was flying around the world, and I wasn't allowed to have a knife to eat my food with. Now I can have a knife, but I can't have toothpaste. This is the ministry of fear in action. The reality behind this nonsense?

You know, whenever I hear British policemen announcing they foiled another terror plot in the -- it’s now red, gold, standard, green, yellow warning signs, you know, the famous colors; we have colors, like they do in the United States, to warn us of the horrors to come -- I think of the real horrors in Iraq. If only there were a few policemen to go there. But they don’t have the spittle for it. They’re going to frighten you. I’m thinking of some real terror in Baghdad, the terror that comes through the letterbox or is stuck onto walls. Now, here are real terror plots for the ministry of fear, plots to cleanse and massacre whole communities from their homes and cities on the grounds of their religious sect.

So let’s take a look at some really ferocious terror, collected on the streets of Baghdad and from the front doors of those who are indeed facing a generation of threats, many of them scrupulously collected, these documents, by local UN officials, given to some of my Italian colleagues, who handed them to me. And this is the first time they’ve been detailed in this country. They are printed, not hand-written, and they are poisonous.

“To the ignoble rejectionists who sold their religion and community for worldly rewards,” begins one note from a Sunni group about their Shiite Muslim countrymen, “it is clear that you must be classified among those who have betrayed the covenant of Allah and his prophet and are intellectually and actively involved in fighting against the Mujahideen. Therefore, we grant you 24 hours to vacate this righteous district. Otherwise, punishment and retribution shall be your fate. Allah is greater. Praise and grace be to Allah.”

There are dozens and dozens of these documents, and they’re not put there by people who are joking. Some of them, I suspect, may not be put there by groups at all, because I have a suspicion that there are people who want a civil war in Iraq, and they are not necessarily Iraqi. There are many of these documents which I suspect were not written by Iraqis. They’re very neatly printed, some of them.

Here’s a literary work of the Allahu Akbar Brigades, who are probably Sunnis and which specifically target schoolgirls. "Death, crucifixion, amputation of hands and feet will be the retribution against those who defy Allah, to all women, who due to their mode of dress encourage titillation, because this will lead to worldly damnation. Bullets and the cudgel will be the punishment for those who have no morals. We are fully aware” -- listen to this -- “We are fully aware of what takes place after noontime in the school hall on Museum Road. We are present among you and know all there is to know." Ouch. This is real terror, not the kind that our governments are trying to push us into believing is there waiting for us.

And I’ll show you another kind of terror, and it is a kind that journalism permits. I’m going back to January this year, on a military trial. It’s an Associated Press report. See if you can spot what’s wrong with it. “A military jury on Monday ordered a reprimand but no jail time for an army interrogator convicted of killing an Iraqi general by stuffing him headfirst into a sleeping bag and sitting on his chest. His wife” -- this is the wife of Lewis Welshofer, Jr., the American officer -- “testified that she was worried about providing for their three children if her American husband was sentenced to prison, but she said she was proud of him for contesting the case. ‘I love him more for fighting this,’ she said, tears welling up in her eyes. ‘He has always said that you need to do the right thing, and sometimes the right thing is hardest thing to do.’”

Torture is tough, ladies and gentlemen. Torturing people is very hard. But, by the way, it’s only halfway through this story that we’re told that the major general is called Abed Hamed Mowhoush. His identity, as usual, is not as important as that of the American who murdered him, killed him, sat on top of his sleeping bag, into which he had been stuffed upside-down. Incredible! And we’re not told whether General Mowhoush has a wife and children. That is absent from this report. The defense, by the way, had argued that Mowhoush’s death was caused by a heart condition. Well, it would have been, wouldn’t it, if he was stuffed upside-down inside a sleeping bag and had someone sitting on top of him.

“Officials believe” -- there’s always officials being quoted. “Officials believe that Mowhoush had information that would break the back of the whole insurgency.” One man, he knows about 20,000 others. So they sit on him upside-down in a sleeping bag. Incredible!

Later on, we actually have the case of the soldier himself, who was reprimanded, being close to tears. Everyone’s close to tears in this court case. And then he says, now listen to this, “I deeply apologize if my actions caused suffering in Iraq.” Sacrifice for the family of the general? No. He said, “I deeply apologize if my actions tarnished the soldiers serving in Iraq.” Not quite the same thing. AP didn’t quite spot there was a problem there.

Now, take this one. This is the Associated Press doing its job. It uses the Freedom of Information Act to get official documents out of Guantanamo Bay and managed in a long story, but buried deep within it, not at the top, to uncover the following. It’s the official account of a court case inside Guantanamo of Feroz Ali Abbasi. He’s actually a British citizen. He has since been released and is now at home.

He’s on trial, and he pleads and pleads to the American colonel, Air Force colonel, in charge of the trial, “Give me the evidence against me.” He’s not allowed to have the evidence. And the AP has this official document -- and this is the official American document I’m quoting, but I have to add it is paragraphs, paragraphs, into the story, not at the top. “An Air Force colonel would have none of it. ‘Mr. Abbasi, your conduct is unacceptable. And this is your absolute final warning’ the colonel said. ‘I do not care about international law. I do not want to hear the words “international law” again. We are not concerned about international law.’” Pretty much the George W. Bush policy, isn’t it, in the world?

And this, however, was not the headline. The headline was that the American papers, the documents, tell the Guantanamo stories. It’s way down here that we have the actual evidence. How about a headline that says, “American courts say they don't care about international law”?

So let us be frank, in Abu Ghraib, in Bagram, in Afghanistan, in US military bases across Iraq, prisoners, almost all Muslims, have been tortured by American men and women, who in some cases appear to be sadists.

How do I account in my work for the illiterate old man who tells me how American forces pushed a broomstick up his anus in Bagram and watched other prisoners endure the same treatment? How do I account for the murder under torture of prisoners in Bagram, in Afghanistan, something already admitted to by the US authorities? How do we account for the activities of US Unit 626, which has cruelly beaten its prisoners on the face, torso and sexual parts? How are we to react to those two incidents, both now officially investigated, in which US forces, under attack by Iraqi insurgents, apparently took their revenge by lining up local Iraqi civilian villagers, including women and children and shooting them?

At the Baghdad Airport detention camp, we now know highly trained US Special Forces officers -- there were 1,000 present at any one time -- have for years been beating prisoners before and during interrogation. Lieutenant General William Boykin -- this is the same weird general who disparaged the Muslim faith without being disciplined -- later claimed, totally wrongly, that there was no pattern of misconduct in the camp. There was, in many parts of Iraq and Afghanistan. It does continue to this day. My colleagues are still tracking these events.

Robert Fisk, chief Middle East correspondent for the London Independent. He is the author of several books, his latest is "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East."

Pakistan: The National-Security State Dilemma

Special Report: The national-security state
Aitzaz Ahsan, former Interior Minister, the Pakistan People’s Party
HIMAL South Asian,Vol. 19, No. 9: December 2006
The pain of the Partition has left a legacy. There also persists in some quarters a fairly widespread fragility syndrome – as if Pakistan would revert one day to India, and that it is a fragile state. It was something that was attributed to Jawaharlal Nehru. This held the minds of Pakistani intellectuals, because there was a crisis or a certain inability to properly identify and realise one’s own identity. The only way we could identify ourselves was that we were Muslims. But the presence of a large number of Muslims in India, the creation of Bangladesh, among other things, weakened this proposition. The fragility syndrome helped suppress these uncomfortable questions – you don’t ask questions, you cannot seek answers because Pakistan is fragile, India is hostile.

Indian hostility was manifested quite early. The first issue was that water was held back after the monsoons in 1947. Secondly, the division of assets became a sore issue. Now in the context of this fragility syndrome, and the initial hostility, a third feature emerged very early in Pakistan’s life. Pakistan adhered to a protectionist regime for its industrialisation. Imports were regulated very strictly. So we historically sealed out borders in a way regarding the exchange of goods and business with India.

The Pakistan Army took over in 1958. Gradually, but very perceptively and very surely, the very nature of the state changed, from what was initially to be a social-welfare state to a national-security state. In a welfare state, the first priority of the state is the citizen; in a national-security state, the first priority of the state is the soldier, and the intelligence agencies and the state establishment. To justify a military government, you also need to have palpable threats to national security. So you also tend to convert your neighbours to being your enemies.

Now, India’s contribution itself to this national-security paradigm in Pakistan has been profound and continuous. If India blasts the Pokhran sands with a ‘smiling Buddha’ in 1974, Pakistan has no option but to say ‘We’ll eat grass, but we’ll have the bomb’. If India blasts the Pokhran sands on 11 May 1998, we have no option but to shake the Chagai mountains on 28 May 1998. And India continues to raise its defence budget, which elicits a response from Pakistan.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was democratically elected, but was a continuum of the national-security state. He also sought to appease the mullahs with some gestures but it was during Zia’s time that money, weapons, weapon trainers came into jihad and empowered fundamentalist units. This period also saw the Islamisation of the textbooks. Hate literature came into it. Our history began in 712 AD, when Mohammed bin Qasim came to Pakistan. It was not the history of the land we were teaching; it was the history of the religion.

When you start creating a national-security state and paradigm, then you are bound to get into adventures like we did in the so-called Afghan jihad, against the Soviet Union, where we were used as tools. In that process of the jihad against the Soviet Union, Pakistan became populist, weaponised and jihadised, intolerant and militarised. All these jihadis were unemployed after the withdrawal of the Soviets and the failure of the operation in Jalalabad in 1989. And the whole swath actually moved into the Kashmir front, so that became live. All these events reinforced what was a marginal faction in Pakistani politics – the faction that believed that Pakistan was an ideological state, just like Israel.

The cold war between India and Pakistan has continued through this period and created vested interests – for instance, the weapons suppliers who sit and lobby in the Defence Ministry, sit and lobby in the prime minister’s house. The other problem is that our foreign offices are locked in reciprocity. Neither state has the imagination or the guts or the initiative to say, ‘We don’t care about reciprocity, we are going to open visas. We’re going to open imports.’

At present, Pervez Musharraf is incapable of breaking away from the hold of the national-security structures of the state and the national-security establishment. In fact, at least three close calls on his life in December 2004 have made him even more a prisoner. He owes his continued uniform and the holding of two offices to them, as they voted for him in the 17th Amendment.

Having said that, I think India is wasting an opportunity. The solutions that a Pakistan Army chief can undertake with India are not those that political parties will be able to do even after full democracy is restored. We should look at a gamut of measures in different fields that can improve ties – from the defence-security options to the economic security, and look for avenues and work on that. Pakistan will not cut its defence budget if India is increasing its defence budget. Secondly, nobody is stopping people from issuing visas, people-to-people contact. There has been a certain amount of movement in that. I think the visa regime should be relaxed enormously because it really brings people together.

Pakistan must realise the immense potential out of trade with India – it gets a market seven times its size. India gets a huge market as well. And despite such an opportunity, our commerce minister goes around begging for an increase of 0.01 percent in textile quota in category 622 in Europe and the US. On the import side, why is it the fault of my 160 million consumers, that he should have to buy a cycle for 4000 rupees when can buy it for 2200 rupees coming across on trucks from Wagah?

17 Banned Militant Groups Cannot Collect Hides: BUT Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Sunni Tehreek are Just on the Watch List (read: they can collect hides)!

17 banned groups warned against collecting hides
By Shahzad Malik
Daily Times, December 28, 2006

ISLAMABAD: The government has told the provinces to make sure that 17 banned religious and militant organisations are not able to collect the hides of sacrificial animals on Eidul Azha.

“The Interior Ministry has issued this directive to the four provinces and the Islamabad district administration while asking them to step up security around places where Eidul Azha prayers will be offered,” sources said.

Seventeen organisations have been banned under the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997. These are Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Sipah-e-Muhammad Pakistan, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Muhammadi, Tehrik-e-Jafria Pakistan, Khudamul Islam, Islami Tehrik Pakistan, Millat-e-Islamia Pakistan, Jamiatul Furqan, Jamiatul Ansar, Hizbul Tahreer, Khairunnas International Trust, Islamic Students Movement and Balochistan Liberation Army. Jamaatud Dawa Pakistan and Sunni Tehrik are on a watch list.

The sources said that intelligence reports submitted to the Interior Ministry warned that members of banned militant and religious outfits would try to collect hides of sacrificial animals under fake names. The militants would ask the khateebs (prayer leaders) of their sects to appeal to people in their areas to collect hides for the welfare of poor students getting religious education there, the sources said. However, the fear is that money from the hides would be used to finance terrorist activities.

The provinces have also been asked to issue directives to district authorities to keep an eye on 570 prayer leaders who, under Section 11EE of the Anti-Terrorism Act, are not allowed to leave their areas during Eidul Azha, the sources said.

The Interior Ministry has also directed the authorities concerned of the four provinces and the district administration of Islamabad to mobilise officials of the Special Branch of the police to keep an eye on members of banned militant organisations, the sources said.

Fair Retrial of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: A Chance for Judiciary to Redeem Itself

Retrying Bhutto
The News, Editorial: December 27, 2006

A former Supreme Court judge's contentious remarks while speaking at a lecture organised by the PPP, revolving around the possibility of a reopening of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's case, will surely spark-off a heated debate across the country. The controversy, as is clearly evident by the continued debate on the topic, remains as potent today as it was nearly 30 years ago. The enigmatic Bhutto was unceremoniously dismissed in 1977, and subsequently hanged, by the incoming Martial Law of Ziaul Haq after being controversially found guilty by the Lahore High Court for conspiracy to murder. However, one cannot help but feel that the matter is long passed and the nation today faces many more important issues which deserve immediate attention. A reopening of this case would just tie up Pakistan's already thin judicial resources, which would, in turn, further exacerbate the backlog problem in the courts. In addition, the violent political backlash, which is always a distinct possibility when dealing with the reopening of sensitive old wounds, will do more harm than good, especially considering the already volatile socio-political milieu present in the country today.

Furthermore, with the presence of an army general at the helm, who himself dismissed a prime minister and had him tried in a controversial manner, indicates that there is little difference in the political structure compared to 1977. There is still the continued influence of the army in government institutions and the imbalance of power between the executive and judicial organs of the state. Even if the case is reopened, and Bhutto subsequently found to be wrongly accused, the verdict would still be susceptible to the same sort of criticism that was flung at the initial trial under Zia. In short, the act would be inherently self-defeating. Yet, one cannot simply dismiss such a proposal as futile and unimportant. The fact remains that whether or not Bhutto was guilty is inconsequential. Instead, the fact that he was dismissed by an army general, under whom he was tried in a subservient court system, forms the crux of the issue.

There could be some constructive prospects in embarking on such an act if one is willing to leave aside the subjective and personal matter of the case's outcome and concentrate on the larger picture. There is little, if any doubt, that Bhutto was tried under what were less-than-ideal circumstances, to say the least. The subservience of the then CJ to the military dictator was open knowledge as was the pressure on other judges to comply with the decision to hang Bhutto. That was, and is, a central problem in Pakistan. Aside from the historical significance, the case could potentially serve as a platform to formally condemn the intervention of the military in civilian affairs and, of course, the subservience of the courts to the executive. That, however, would have to mean that the efforts are concentrated on criticising the nature of the trail and not defending Bhutto himself. The defendant here would not be Bhutto, but democracy and judicial autonomy.

Will the U.S. Attack Iran?

WASHINGTON DIARY: Iran-the new front — Dr Manzur Ejaz
Daily Times, December 27, 2006

Contrary to prevailing expectations, the Bush Administration is going ahead with its old plans to invade Iran. Since Israeli interests define the US agenda in the Middle East, the only chance that the US will abandon its decision of invading Iran is if the Zionist state changes course. So argues Scott Ritter in his new book, Target Iran: The Truth about White House’s Plan for Regime Change. But for now, it does not seem likely.

In the aftermath of debacle in Iraq and the electoral backlash of the November 2006 Congressional election, one would expect the Bush Administration not to take on another disastrous adventure in the Middle East. However, the newly initiated mammoth naval build-up in the Persian Gulf confirms fears that the Bush Administration has not learned its lesson and is going ahead with its old plans to invade Iran. Stretched to the limit, the US army may be resisting such a venture, but if the invasion is limited to using Air Force and the Navy, the Bush Administration may get its way.

The hawks in Bush Administration argue that the US public is against losing the war in Iraq and not against the invasion itself. Therefore, if the US humbles Iran through aerial bombardment, the Bush Administration can declare a victory and keep her hegemonic and interventionist doctrine alive. The US public will greatly approve of such an outcome and President Bush can lift up his sinking approval rating and improve the chances for Republican victory in the presidential and other elections of 2008.

The Democrat-controlled Congress may try to create hurdles for an Iran invasion but, eventually, it will give in. Constitutional experts argue that President Bush does not need fresh Congressional approval for his Iran invasion: He will use the umbrella approval that he obtained for the Iraq invasion, which allows him to attack any country which is accused of abetting terrorism.

Furthermore, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—the main lobby for the Zionist state — is equally influential with Democrats. AIPAC has successfully established the notion among the US public and legislators that Israel’s interests are identical to the US’s. They have created such an environment that even ex-President Jimmy Carter cannot get away with criticising Israel. Nowadays, the bulk of the media is attacking him for his scathing criticism of Israel in his new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

Scott Ritter, an ex-UN weapon inspector, provides substantial proofs in his above-mentioned book that the Israeli lobby has successfully confused the Israeli with US interests. In his view, the US has no real conflict with Iraq, Iran, Syria, Hammas or Hezbollah. It is Israel that considers these countries and outfits detrimental to its own interests and the AIPAC deftly turns them into US interests.

“One of the big problems is — and here goes the grenade — Israel. The second you mention the word ‘Israel,’ the nation Israel, the concept Israel, many in the American press become very defensive. And the other thing we’re not allowed to do is discuss the notion that Israel and the notion of Israeli interests may in fact be dictating what America is doing, that what we’re doing in the Middle East may not be to the benefit of America’s national security, but to Israel’s national security,” writes Mr. Ritter.

Mr. Ritter goes further in saying that the Israeli intelligence has become very ideologically oriented and has lost its flair for fact-finding. He claims that he has a long experience of working with Israeli intelligence, which used to be excellent in uncovering facts. However, with the rise of the extreme right in Israel, the intelligence agencies have become ideological. They don’t go for facts but for what they believe is or should be true. It has marred their ability to foresee and act. Consequently, the US is also led by those make-belief intelligence reports compiled by Israel and filtered to the US by various means.

Given the present Israeli mindset, not only Iran’s nuclear weapon program is unacceptable, but even its civilian use of nuclear technology. Israel does not want Iran to have any nuclear technology at all, Mr. Ritter asserts. According to his account, Israel and the US have conducted investigations many times over to find traces of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, without any success. Other investigators also concur that Iran is too far away from enriching weapon grade Uranium: Iran may be enriching the Uranium at the level of less than 5%, while it needs to get to above 90% to be able to make nuclear weapons.

However, the US and Israel are campaigning as if Iran is making nuclear weapons. They are using Iran’s dissident group Mujahdeen-e-Khalaq (MEK) for disinformation. MEK is playing the same role that Ahmad Chalabi played in spreading disinformation about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. US declared MEK as a terrorist organisation, but such categorisation has not stopped the Israeli-US intelligence agencies from using their services.

Saudi Arabia has also told Vice President Dick Cheney that US should not resume diplomatic dialogue with Iran. This indicates that the Saudis are also encouraging the US to confront Iran. Saudi Arabia and Jordan, the US’s closest allies in the Middle East, are afraid of Iran’s increasing influence in the area. The Saudis, like the Israelis, do not want Iran to have any nuclear technology at all. Somehow, their interests coincide with Israelis in this regard. Therefore, almost all major US allies are keen to see the US destroying not only Iran’s nuclear facilities but also its economic infrastructure, to push it many decades behind. Israelis ran the trailers of such destruction in Lebanon.

Only a changed Israeli strategy can derail the US invasion plans, argues Mr. Ritter. He hopes that Israel may have learned its lesson in Lebanon that war does not pay and change its outlook about Iran and its other perceived enemies. A Democratic Congress’s resolve not to fund the new war might also tie the Bush Administration’s hands. However, the chances for such an Israeli about-face and Congressional resolve are quite dim. The US naval build-up in the Persian Gulf is for real. It is hard to say when and how the Iran invasion may be triggered but preparations are underway.

The writer can be reached at manzurejaz@yahoo.com