DAWN - Karachi, Pakistan
9 November 2001
"Brute force bereft of reason falls by its own weight. Power with counsel tempered even the gods make greater; but might which in its soul is bent on all impiety, they hate."--Horace.
If this was a war on terror then it should have begun from Israel, the dagger of terror planted in the heart of the Arab world and held in place by help from the United States.
But since it is nothing of the kind and from New York's Twin Towers, or rather their rubble, has leapfrogged straight to Afghanistan - on a body of circumstantial evidence that would fail to convince even a drinking judge of a county court - it becomes valid to question America's strident, and increasingly tiresome, rhetoric and the half-truths it is expecting the rest of the world to swallow.
If this was a war on terror what about the US' own record in this field?
What a shining list of scumbags the US has supported in Asia, Africa and Latin America, all in the name of freedom and the fight against communism. The Trujillos, Somozas and Batistas signified the kind of ruler the US was happiest with. No matter how corrupt and tyrannical, they were kosher, and high in American esteem, so long as they played lackey to US interests. The word banana republic comes from the Caribbean and denotes the kind of dependent and compliant state the US favoured.
What was Fidel Castro's great crime? Cuba was no threat to the US. The very idea is laughable. The US just could not tolerate a regime 90 miles off its coastline that had the temerity to stand up to it. Havana was a playland and a brothel for America's rich. Castro put an end to that and took Cuba out of the American orbit, an act of audacity for which the US has never forgiven him. He wasn't even a communist to begin with, but became one as a response to American hostility.
What was the Bay of Pigs except an exercise in naked terror? It was an invasion of Cuba by an army of Cuban exiles armed and funded by the CIA. The Reagan administration broke American laws to provide funds and arms to the Contra rebels (or terrorists) it helped put up against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
This list can go on and on. The overthrow of Mosssadegh in Iran, Lumumba's killing in the Congo, the brutalization and naked terror practised by the US in Vietnam, the totally pointless war foisted on Cambodia (from which that country has yet to recover), and training and funding the same Arabs and Muslim fundamentalists in Afghanistan during the eighties whom the US is now attempting to destroy.
Those idealists who consider the US as the land of hope and liberty should consider the US record in Latin America and the Third World before getting wet-eyed on this score. Now we are witnessing another exercise in muscle-flexing in the name of freedom - this time Enduring Freedom. The irony surrounding this venture is thicker than the bombs falling on Afghanistan.
Democracy and the rule of law at home should not be confused with unprincipled conduct abroad. European colonialists abided by rules at home which they discarded as soon as they left their shores. So it has been always: one law for Rome, another for the barbarians vanquished by Rome. So it is with the new imperium: a different light shining from the Statue of Liberty, a different morality beamed at the outside world.
After 50 years of supporting the politics of terrorism in the Middle East, and of exporting CIA-led terror elsewhere across the globe, the US is alight with uncontrolled indignation because the unimaginable has occurred and it too has been struck by terrorism.
Like the Cyclops Polyphemus whose eye was taken out by Odysseus, the US is going about like a wounded giant and will not be appeased unless it has had its revenge. But revenge on whom? The trail leading from the Twin Towers to bin Laden is unclear but has been seized upon by the US because it is the only one available. And because bin Laden and the Taliban are easy targets to demonise.
One does not have to be a Taliban supporter to point out the iniquity of what the US is doing. At issue is not what the Taliban stand for or what their attitude to women is but the death and destruction raining down on the hapless people of Afghanistan. Nothing in the world can justify this and those bleeding hearts who underscore the retrogressive nature of the Taliban's policies are only confusing the issue.
No such confusion exists in the minds of ordinary Pakistanis. They may have no truck with the Taliban but they do not like the brutal bombing of Afghanistan. They also do not like Pakistan's soil being used as a launching pad for what is increasingly perceived as an unholy war.
Is it not plain to see what is happening in Afghanistan? A humanitarian catastrophe is looming on the horizon but the 'civilised world' whose way of life came under threat on September 11 views different objects through different spectacles. Afghanistan is not part of the civilised world, or at least of none that a US president who looks smaller than the cosmic role he is trying to play would readily recognise. So it is all right to apply different standards there.
The UN has been a US mistress since the Gulf War. So it is foolish expecting comfort from that quarter. But even the UNHCR and its visible chief, Luubers of the Netherlands, are playing politics with the plight of the Afghans.
If the suffering is in Afghanistan, then the relief aid should go there. But Luubers and his entourage think that that would somehow work in the Taliban's favour. So instead of taking aid to the refugees, they are asking Pakistan to open its borders, so that the problem caused by American bombing adds to the refugee burden of Pakistan. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Even so, Pakistan's role is the strangest in this dance of death over the skies of Afghanistan. Even if the doubtful proposition is accepted that we had no choice except to bow to American wishes, what necessity of circumstance or loss of shame drives us to be more loyal than the king?
While standing by Donald Rumsfeld's side (at the press conference both addressed in Islamabad), Pakistan's foreign minister Abdul Sattar was not content to observe diplomatic niceties. He had to outreach himself and say that never in human history was so much care taken to avoid human casualties as the Americans were taking in Afghanistan. The cadence of Churchillian rhetoric - 'never in the field of human conflict...', etc., - employed to what dubious purpose.
Remember also the haste with which Pakistan said that the evidence provided by the US was enough to indict Osama bin Laden in a court of law. The American bombing came after this bit of judicial activism from Pakistan. Whom were we trying to satisfy? The world or our own scruples?
In a similar category falls General Musharraf's assertion that the Taliban's days were numbered. Granted that we have no freedom of action. Or, rather, that we have seen to it that we are divested of all freedom of action. Still, why must our behaviour exceed the limits of necessity?
But, surely, an image that will linger long in the mind is that of Pakistan's proud military chiefs standing in line with beaming faces to greet Rumsfeld, while General Musharraf is seen laughing a step or two behind. Necessity or weakness may be behind the position we have taken in this crisis. But with the people of Afghanistan being subjected to brutal aggression, what need, in public at least, for such bonhomie? For form's sake, if nothing else, we could be more guarded in our displays of affection when American warlords come calling.
Now General Musharraf is on his way to New York to be feted by President Bush on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session. We can only keep our fingers crossed. It doesn't take much for a Pakistani leader to be swept off his feet. A bit of extra cosseting and someone who in his native setting looks every inch a stern defender of the national interest is changed instantly into a plate of pudding. It is the nation which ends up paying the bill for this transformation.
