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Patriotism, despite the sometimes cynical view taken of it in modern times, remains for nations the pivot around which life moves. It is a sense of national purpose that guides people as they strive to make their contributions, in their various ways, to the country they are part of. For us in this part of the world, patriotic feelings have been a great driving force behind all the political and cultural movements we have waged in the last fifty years. Those feelings have paid off, though we realise too that as a nation we cannot rest on past laurels. There is always that serious duty, that of keeping vigilance, that must come of having attained liberty. But just as it is important for a people to watch out for troubles making their way into a country from outside, it is equally important that internal enemies or saboteurs be identified and neutralised constantly if the state is to keep itself steady. It is fundamentally owing to these principles of living that we often draw attention to the sinister presence amongst us of people who vehemently opposed our freedom once and yet today happen to be enjoying the fruits of that freedom. The question is: have these people accepted their mistakes or are they positioning themselves for an assault on the aspirations of this nation once again?
   We raise such questions because of the dangers that have lately come our way. The secular democratic state established through a tortuous struggle for national liberation is now at risk of being damaged by the forces of religious medievalism uncomfortable with the notion of Bangladesh being home to all manner of people and all religious communities. The audacity with which such outfits as the terrorist Jama’atul Mujahideen have been going around warning Bengalis to stay away from doing anything that looks like upholding the spirit of 1971 is a disturbing sign of how far the old collaborators, together with their young adherents, may have developed thoughts that run absolutely counter to the genesis of this country. It therefore becomes the collective responsibility of the nation — and that includes the ruling circles as well as the opposition — to crack down on anything that even remotely gives off the whiff of an absence of patriotism. It is not merely organisations like the JMB that need to be chastened. The story of the police sub-inspector in Barisal refusing to demonstrate respect to the national anthem on Victory Day reflects perhaps a deeper malaise and that too within the establishment. We as a people have not quite forgotten how a failure on the part of the authorities in the early 1970s to subject returnees from Pakistan to a process of necessary screening may have contributed in a major way to the crises that we were to face in subsequent times. Indeed, many were the influential people whose bitterness (despite their being Bengalis) at the emergence of Bangladesh was manifested as they waited in camps in Pakistan before being repatriated to their country. And yet a good number of those very people went on to climb the heights of political and administrative power in Bangladesh. Today, so many years after that original oversight, there are yet people, like the sub-inspector, who have wormed their way into government, only to undercut it and the state from within. The real worry here is that this police officer, like many others whom we have not yet unearthed, could be one of the many links in a long chain geared to an undermining of this people’s republic.
   No government which presumes to speak for the people who elected it to office can run away from its duty to track down the nation’s enemies. That is why we ask the authorities to call this particular police officer to task and at the same time find out how many others like him are there in the administration. An individual may have his or her political views. But those views do not include the right to insult the state of which he or she is a citizen. The sub-inspector in question has embarrassed us all. It is time for him to be punished, severely.

Colin Powell has no excuse

Quite a few people these days seem to be willing to talk about Iraq. Well, everybody talks about that unfortunate country. But what people like George W. Bush have been doing is to ruminate publicly over the faulty intelligence that led them to war against Iraq. The latest person to do a similar exercise is former secretary of state Colin Powell. He has told the BBC in an interview that despite the fact that there were doubts about pre-war intelligence on Iraq, those doubts never made their way to the top, meaning himself and all the other major political players involved. And so what followed was a relentless pounding of Iraq leading to its invasion and the fall of its government.
   It is quite tempting to go soft on General Powell. He is, after all, the dove who finally had to make his exit from an otherwise hawkish Bush administration when the heat rose in steady degrees. But there is also the fact that it was the former secretary of state who dramatically presented before the UN Security Council days before the strike on Baghdad the many graphs and reports about the ‘bad’ things President Saddam Hussein was doing to hide his ‘villainy’ from the rest of the world. And all the while the UN inspectors and the Iraqi regime went on telling him and his government that Baghdad was hiding nothing. Mr. Powell might now be assuming that people will look upon him as a decent man who simply could not persuade his colleagues in the administration to take a moderate view of things. He is a decent man all right, but do decent men have to go along with the lies that opportunists like President Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld peddle as a justification for the destruction of a sovereign state and its legitimately established government?
   Colin Powell may not have been pushing for war like the others. But he was complicit with them in that he went along with them, doing all the things (the UNSC show, for instance) they wanted him to do. Iraq is a ruined country because of the mistakes made by men like him.

What has been going on in Hong Kong is a crude display of power by the rich. And all that talk of globalisation? Forget it. If anyone really believes in globalisation, he will now have every cause to think that it means little to the poor of the earth. Worse, and that depends on how far the cynic is willing to go to let his fingers sink deep into reality, globalisation has meant a new form of discrimination against the underdeveloped parts of the globe. In case you have been an observer of this new world order that George Bush Senior once talked about, you will have every good reason to see that in the name of globalisation the affluent West has pushed its products into the poverty-stricken nations of the world. The refusal of the American authorities to let African farmers sell their cotton products abroad is one example of how grossly globalisation has turned into a new weapon of exploitation. It also reveals the absolute insensitivity with which the West has approached the issue of the poor. All those subsidies given out to farmers and industrial workers in America and Europe cannot be lifted, say these so-called defenders of democracy and freedom, because it will affect the economy of their societies. But talk to them about tariff-free trade and access to their markets for products from the Third World. They will waffle and come forth with all the sophistry that is really an excuse for them to push the poor into insignificance. The badly dismissive way in which countries like Bangladesh and Cambodia have been treated at the Hong Kong WTO ministerial meeting highlights once again the predatory instincts of the world’s richest states.
   Small wonder, therefore, that protesters have been clogging the streets in Hong Kong and battling it out with the police. You cannot blame people if they raise their voices, and their fists, against individuals and organisations they see as villains in the entire process by which international trade is reduced into a farce by the richer part of the international community. You would have thought that the lessons from Cancun would have been learnt by now. The troubles in Hong Kong, both inside and outside the conference hall, may actually have shaken you out of your complacence. But, all said and done, how do the poorer nations go about dealing with their future now? The answer to that is that the West stands ready to give them a few handouts. But then, a handout is precisely that, a handout. It is another way of saying that the conflict that has so badly come to define international trade will go on for a long time yet. Despite the brave efforts put up by EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson in favour of the poor, the fact remains that nothing can be done as long as America and some European nations do not lift or ease their trade barriers. And they will not do that because it pays them to ensure that the poor countries stay in a straitjacket because in that condition they cannot but be compelled to come to terms with the demands made by such bodies as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Notice the sheer effrontery with which these two institutions have been prodding nations into going for structural adjustments. That has meant that these poor nations can only have slid a little further down the precipice. Since when has a poor country climbed the heights of prosperity on the advice of the World Bank and IMF? If anything, these institutions have not only left the countries they have operated in in a feebler state than before but also made sure that their politicians will for a very long time, perhaps for good, remain dependent on them to conduct their administrations.
   Talleyrand is hardly ever surprised by anything. With Hong Kong, he feels, as he felt before the meeting opened, that the world is moving swiftly and darkly to a new critical phase, one that could serve as the perfect cause for catastrophe in the developing world. Not even men like Peter Mandelson seem relevant any more.
   
   Meles Zenawi’s rising intolerance
   There are some rather strange things going on in Ethiopia. The prime minister, Meles Zenawi, has suddenly developed a fondness for harshness. That is surprising, for Zenawi has for the past fourteen years been regarded as one of the faces of modern African politics. In the early 1990s, his rebel army was able to drive the autocratic Marxist ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam out of power and help usher in democracy in Addis Ababa. That was considered an achievement, especially since it was brought about with the help of the Eritrean Issaias Afewerki, his friend who led a separate band of rebels fighting for independence from Ethiopia. A time soon came when Ethiopia and Eritrea went for a parting of ways peacefully, with Afewerki finally emerging as the leader of a free Eritrean government in Asmara. It was thought by many at the time that the two nations would forge deep bonds of friendship, especially since Zenawi and Afewerki were such good friends. But then there was a falling out between the two and their countries went to a long, pointless war over a strip of territory that divided them. By the time a ceasefire came into effect, much death and little gain was the result. These days, extreme bitterness divides the two countries as well as their leaders.
   Earlier this year, in May, parliamentary elections in Ethiopia provoked outrage among its opposition, which accused Zenawi’s government of having rigged the results in its favour. The prime minister denied the charge and then did the unthinkable: he went on to deploy the security forces against the opposition every time it decided to protest on the streets. In the past many months, civil disorder has been a staple of politics in Addis Ababa and hundreds of people have been killed by the police. There are all the indications of increasing levels of intolerance on the part of the government, with nearly 40,000 people now in jail as a result of a government crackdown on dissent. Meles Zenawi has moved to suppress the media and has so far cancelled the declarations of five newspapers which he thinks were fomenting trouble against his regime. The editors of all five newspapers are now in prison, having been sentenced to serve various terms there. Overall, conditions in Ethiopia do not look good and the rising levels of autocracy in the prime minister has many of his friends abroad worried and deeply anxious about the future of a country which has gone through much pain in the last three decades. In 1974, a coup by military officers overthrew the monarchy led by Emperor Haile Selassie, who was later put to death by the army in circumstances that shamed an entire country. For the next seventeen years, a coterie led by Mariam and calling itself the Dergue imposed a harsh dictatorship over the country in the name of Marxism but, as noted, was in the end pushed out of office by Zenawi’s rebels.
   Another irony in the situation is that Meles Zenawi happens to be one of Africa’s leaders much liked by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In his efforts toward making poverty history in Africa, Mr. Blair has solicited the help and advice of the Ethiopian leader. It is now clear that the very reasons for which the British leader has been depending on Mr. Zenawi to share his goals for the continent, a commitment to democracy and modern government, are those that the Ethiopian leader has been turning his back on. There might soon be a time for the outside world to look with concern upon developments in Addis Ababa.
   
   News from Chile
   The Chileans, about whom we have all heard so much in the last three decades and more, look as if they are ready to elect a woman as their next president. Barring an upset, Michelle Bachelet, defence minister in the present government of President Ricardo Lagos, will be elected to lead the country for the next few years. It is interesting that Dr. Bachelet should have come this far. Her father was imprisoned and tortured to death by the military regime of General Augusto Pinochet soon after the bloody coup against President Salvador Allende in September 1973. She herself was taken into custody and tortured brutally for months.
   In the past many years, especially since Pinochet’s departure from power, Dr. Bachelet has proved her competence in government through serving at its various levels, so much so that the question of her someday rising to the presidency began to be discussed across the country. Now it seems she is close to attaining her goal. If she is elected in the next few weeks, she will be the second woman to rise to the highest political office in South America, the first one being Violetta Chamorro in Nicaragua. Of course, in the early 1970s, Argentina for a time had Isabel Peron, the second wife and widow of Juan Peron, as its president, but she took over after her husband’s death without the formality of an election. In 1976, Mrs. Peron was ousted by the army, which then inaugurated a long process of repression in the country, one that would take a long time to heal.
   Chile has been a fascinating place in terms of recent history. Try to remember Pablo Neruda, the poet and diplomat who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He died of ailments only days after his friend, President Allende, lost his life during the Pinochet take-over in 1973.