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It is typical of the present stalemate in Iraq that while the new government in Baghdad goes through the motions of proceeding with the US-ordained timetable, America’s future strategy hangs in the air. The US cannot simply cut and run for reasons of face and the treasure and lives it has sacrificed. On the other hand, its essential goals of maintaining a permanent military presence and securing control of Iraqi oil will come into increasing conflict with Iraqi and Arab nationalism, short of the break-up of the country.
   That the United States is not having things all its own way after its invasion and occupation of Iraq was the Iranian reminder, shortly after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit, that, thanks to the rise of the Shias in a country ruled by Sunnis for more than 500 years, it is a new major player. The Iranian foreign minister made a point of driving through Iraq to make his first official visit.
   The beginning of the constitution-making exercise will largely be a Shia and Kurd enterprise under the watchful eyes of Washington. The basis is the law put in place by the American interim authority, but the crucial issues of how Islamic the constitution should be and the Kurdish insistence on safeguarding their virtual freedom are bones of contention. Besides, the Sunnis will have only a token representation in constitution-making tasks.
   The resistance to the American occupation, albeit with an Iraqi face, shows no sign of abating. And the American tactic of remaining in the background while Iraqi security forces bear the brunt of fighting what is termed the insurgency does not work because every new set of bombs brings out the GIs and American helicopters clutter overhead. Ultimately, the US hopes to pull its forces into regional bases.
   The United States faces two sets of problems: how to reorder Iraq to Washington’s advantage and how to cope with the regional fall-out. It is rigorously policing the time schedule it has imposed on the Iraqi political players and seems to be in some confusion in working through its second genre of problems. Overall, Washington still seems to prefer maintaining Iraq’s unity because a formal declaration of Kurdish independence in the North would roil several countries, particularly Turkey and Iran by serving as a magnet for their substantial Kurdish minorities. Turkey is America’s Nato ally.
   America is continuing to mount pressure on Iraq’s neighbour Syria to bend to its interests. It helped push Syrian troops and agents out of Lebanon in a rare entente with France and routinely accuses Damascus of aiding foreign fighters in Iraq. But beyond naming it in the “axis of evil”, mounting an offensive on its border and imposing sanctions on it, there is not much that Washington can do. Regime change is not such an attractive option, given the dearth of an alternative dispensation.
   Iran is the natural ally of the newly empowered Shias in Iraq and has gained a new measure of influence. Apart from the northern Kurds, who are openly pro-American for obvious reasons, it is thanks to the majority Shias and their leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, that US occupiers are being tolerated to the extent they are. Any ostensibly democratic dispensation suits the Shias because it gives them the keys to power.
   Americans are aware of Turkish concerns over Iraq developments.
   Traditionally, Ankara draws the red line over Kirkuk, the oil-rich town the Kurds are claiming as their future capital on the strength of its old population complexion disturbed by Saddam Hussein. Although Saddam did arabise the town, it seems doubtful that it had a Kurdish majority because there is evidence to suggest that the Turkmen were the most numerous.
   Israel was, of course, one of the main instigators of the American invasion of Iraq because Saddam was a thorn in its side and proudly proclaimed his sympathy for the Palestinian cause by sending money to the families of suicide bombers. That Iran became an unintended beneficiary of the regime change in Baghdad is beside the point. Whether Israel desires the break-up of Iraq so that it could have privileged access to Kirkuk oil on the premise that an independent Kurdistan would secure it must remain in the realm of speculation.
   It is no secret that the promotion and safeguarding of Israel’s interests in West Asia is a primary American concern and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be dissociated from the Bush administration’s actions in Iraq. The US is confronting two of Israel’s adversaries, Iran on the nuclear issue and Syria otherwise. For the present, the Bush administration has decided to hold its hand on Iran, but the nuclearisation of Iran is even more vexing to a nuclear-capable Israel than it is to the United States.
   Together with the European Union, Washington prefers to sit out till after the Iranian presidential election before coping with Tehran.
   The troubled occupation of Iraq is a decided setback for President George W. Bush’s grand design for West Asia and the world. Being a crusader for democracy is one thing, but employing it as a lever for dominating the world has its pitfalls. The world is not a jigsaw puzzle that ultimately falls in place because military power has its limits in reordering the world and other actors on the stage do not always conform to American-ordained moves.
   No one likes to live under foreign occupation and America is only making more enemies the longer its troops remain in Iraq.
   Beyond Iraq lies the most elemental question for the Arab and Muslim world. Despite Israel’s planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and President Bush’s meeting with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in the White House, there is no indication that the US administration is willing or able to overrule Israel’s Ariel Sharon or his successor to give Palestinians justice.
   Palestinians are watching helplessly while the state of their dreams is being snatched from them under their eyes. An illegal wall is being built to devour more Palestinian land and work is in progress to divide the West Bank further by expanding a major settlement outside Jerusalem to foreclose the option of the holy city ever being the capital of a Palestinian state. All Israel gets from the Bush administration is a slap across its wrist. How much autonomy any US president has in making policy in West Asia affecting Israeli interests can only remain a matter of speculation, given Tel Aviv’s hammer-lock on the American establishment.

In March, UN Secretary General Kofi Anan announced the enlargement of UN Security Council (UNSC) by including six members from various continents. The General Secretary named Japan as one of the potential members of the UNSC. Since then Japan has been launching a campaign world over in 191 UN-member countries to muster their support for its membership.
   Japan believes that its anti-nuclear campaign and its contribution to the United Nations fund, which is around 20 percent, including its economic role in the world, justifies it to become a new member on the UNSC. Japan has joined the so-called Group of Four comprising itself, Germany, India, and Brazil, which is actively making endeavors to introduce reforms in the United Nations.
   Recently, the G-4 has issued a draft resolution on enlarging the UNSC. The resolution states that UNSC should include ten more non-permanent members and six more permanent members that should come from Asia (two), Africa (two), Latin America (one), and Western Europe or other countries (one). By two Asia, G-4 means Japan and India, by two from Africa means South Africa and three contenders, i.e., Egypt, Algeria, and Nigeria, whereas one from Latin America means Brazil, and one from Western Europe means Germany and ‘other countries’ means Switzerland or some other country of Western Europe.
   It this plan was accepted, the formation of UNSC would be as follows: UNSC Permanent Members as Proposed by G-4:Original Members: USA, UK, France, Russia and China.
   Proposed Members: Japan, India, Germany, Brazil, South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria.
   The G-4 is working hard on these lines and plans to see reforms implemented when the UN General Assembly holds its 60th Anniversary Session in September this year. If 128 countries agreed, G-4 could achieve its plan and these six proposed countries would become permanent members of UNSC if the ratification was done by all the five Veto powers.
   As far implications are concerned, G-4 proposal would further increase the number of Christian countries from the existing level of four to seven by including Germany, Brazil, and South Africa. The proposal would also add two more religions i.e., Buddhism (Japan) and Hinduism (India). This would put an additional pressure on other religions particularly the Islamic faith.
   There is no concrete proposal aiming at representing Islam at the UNSC permanent membership comprising over one billion people. Even the G-4 proposal of including Egypt, Algeria, or Nigeria are not based on Islamic faith rather this proposed inclusion is based on geography.
   Therefore, the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) should seriously consider this issue of G-4 proposal and discuss with its members.
   For the OIC, gaining support is not a difficult task. For instance, out of 57 Islamic countries, 43 countries should simply muster support from only one non-OIC member country and the remaining 14 member countries of OIC should get support from 2 non-OIC member countries. OIC should also develop consensus among its members and try to gain support for its proposed member country on UNSC on population basis. Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are cases in point. Some other considerations may also be discussed. In this context, G-4 proposal is naturally unacceptable to Pakistan.
   Further there is also a critique surrounding the fact that UNSC is already an Euro-Christian faith centered organisation mainly based on Christian values and traditions developed in Europe and the United States.
   Inclusion of any Islamic country, on the basis of Islam, would essentially curtail the over-growing emphasis of Christianity and make the UNSC more balanced and global in nature and functions which would, in return, ensure greater peace and stability in the world.
   Japanese Foreign Ministry claims that the country has achieved support from
   88 countries so far that are willing to accept Japan as member on the UNSC.
   However, the country still needs to obtain support from at least 40 more countries that seems to be a Herculean task particularly when the Consensus Group (consisting of South Korea, Italy, and Argentina, and others) are pursuing strong diplomatic strategies to prevent their neighbours becoming permanent members on the UNSC. Moreover, the revision of the UN Charter would require ratification by all five present permanent members.
   As far as Japan support of Pakistan for UNSC is concerned, Pakistan naturally falls in the category of Consensus Group of countries, which is not mainly directed against Japan but India. Japan faces fierce opposition from China and South Korea who are making massive efforts to prevent Japan becoming a permanent member on the UNSC and representing Asia. In this context China, already a veto power on the UNSC, and South Korea are the biggest opponents of Japan’s bid for UNSC permanent membership.
   In an effort to consolidate Japan’s foothold in Asia with regard to its proposed UNSC membership’s bid, the matter was discussed with Pakistani leaders when Japanese Prime Minter Junichiro Koizumi visited Pakistan on 30 April – 1 May. Though Pakistan agreed that greater participation for all member states and share of Asian countries on UN decision-making process should be enhanced, Pakistan did not support Japan’s bid to become a permanent member on the UNSC.
   Rather Pakistan reiterated ‘its view that the reform of the Security Council can be achieved through an appropriate expansion in the non-permanent category’. Japan expressed ‘its view that the Security Council should be made more effective, credible, and representative through the expansion of its membership in both permanent and non-permanent categories’.
   Pakistan does not want to create more centres of power that would adversely affect the functioning of the organisation.
   This article first appeared in The Nation, Pakistan

I’ve seen the future, my friends, and I need my sunglasses. The Chatterjee Group, lead partners of Haldia Petrochemical (HPL) of West Bengal, India, has just bought for US$ 5.7 billion – Basell a JV between Royal Dutch Shell and BASF – a company 9 times HPL’s size.
   Lakshmi Mittal, an NRI based out of London, has been slowly buying up enough steel mills around the world to give him effective sway over the world industry.
   Reliance Industries, despite feuding brothers, have put in money in countries from the US to Africa, from Central Africa to China in projects as diverse as telecom, infrastructure and gas exploration.
   Tata Sons have invested in truck plants in South Korea, in the world famous Tetley brand in UK, in Taj Hotel properties Maldives, and are even talking of a major project in Bangladesh.
   Vijay Mallya’s UB Group has become the second largest liquor marketer in the world and has just paid about GBP 2 million to get Tipu Sultan’s legacy back from the British.
   And I’ve not even touched on Wipro that has 40,000 people working in BPO operations around the globe. Or of Infosys who have become the blue-eyed boy of NASDAQ. Or of Jet Airways who have taken to the sky towards London and Singapore. Nor of the hundreds of other Indian companies that are looking beyond their borders. They are looking at the world as their playing fields and staring down the future, eyeball to eyeball!
   “India is Shining”. Well, true that this slogan failed to win the BJP the last elections. But there was much more to the defeat than identification with the brand India. Indeed no one can deny the common man in Indian cities believing in the statement and breathing fire into the prophecy, ensuring that the country is indeed shining!
   I have had the opportunity to study and live in India during the watershed years of “liberalisation” of the Indian economy in the early part of the 1990s. And then have worked and interacted with many Indians over the last decade and more. And I have seen a marked change in the attitude pulsating throughout society. My earlier years in India were in basically an American “International” school in South India. This was a school where the children of NRIs and rich Indians from Mumbai went. And my latter years were in one of India’s finest bastions of learning – St. Stephen’s College, a breeding ground for future leaders of the country. A college that at one time produced, I am told, 40% of all the top-level bureaucrats. Why, it even gave Pakistan a President! Now these last few sentences are not to boast that I am actually educated (a lot of my professors are shaking their heads in disbelief) but to highlight the valuable learning that I have had. An “insight” as we say in advertising, an inner glimpse of the psyche of the Indian mind.
   Believe it or not, India is not one country! It is an amalgamation of many kingdoms, tribes, dynasties, people and languages. They actually owe it to the British for uniting them. Till the “Engrez” came and conquered them (and even after) they were basically warring states with ever changing borders. And, mind you, the Raj is not so far in the past. Without giving out her age (sorry Ma) my mother was actually born during the Raj. In an evolutionary clock that is less than a fraction of a nano second! This difference is still engrained in a multiplicity of beliefs, religion and roots. A Mumbaiwalla is so different from a Boro from Assam. A Mallyu from Triviandram is poles away from a Pandit from Kashmir. A Bengali babu from Kolkatta is different from a cyber sassy youth from Bangalore. And, mind you, it is not only the language (come on, English is the great unifier) and physical structure that I am talking about, but ethos of one’s ego. I used to half jokingly tell my Indian friends that the only thing that united them was their love for cricket and their hatred of Pakistan!
   Now that joke is no longer true. They have another shared platform. And that is their belief they are going places and that they are going to conquer the world! Trust me, this is a very powerful belief. I see it in the body language of everyone I meet now. I see it in the conversations of friends. I see it in the attitude of their media. I feel it throbbing in every city I visit. Indians are dreaming a marvel bigger than any of the Bollywood story spinners can conjure up. They have been bitten by the bug of a bigger vision and they are sprinting toward their “tryst with destiny”.
   Well, my rambling over the last 800 or so words was not to actually tell you what Indians are doing. But to tell you what we should be doing! Senator Clinton is right. We live in a village. If we do not understand that, we will never move to the tree-lined boulevard of Planet Earth. (No! I am not talking of a “city beautification program”)
   We are too insular in our vision. If you can call an annually changing Five Year Program that! I understand the pain of the Honourable Finance Minister and am not preaching for blindly taking the pills prescribed by Mr. Wolfowitz at World Bank. But we need to compete in the world, need to believe in our abilities, and we need tool ourselves to the tasks of the modern demanding cyber world. (Let’s face the facts if you aren’t connected you are going no where fast!)
   It is not any one policy I am preaching (well, at least, not in this article) but rather pleading to everyone – especially the powers that be, or not currently be, to unite the country to a shared goal, a rallying vision. Let us take the challenge on with zeal to succeed. Let us smell our own self-confidence. Let us be enchanted by the music of our victory that will be. Let us rush towards victory with the conviction of madmen. Let us believe. Let us try. Let us shine.
   Anyway, whichever way, I need my sunglasses. Either the future is blindingly bright or it is a blind politician’s shenanigans.