Main Page «
Front Page «
Metro «
Business «
International «
Sports «
National «
Editorial «
Home «
Timeout «
Letters «

Archive «
Launch Supplement «
Special Supplements «

THERE are several reasons why what happened in Iraq over the last three years should matter for Pakistan. The reason — or reasons — why the administration of President George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq is a matter of concern for countries such as Pakistan that are frontline states in the American led war against terrorism.
   Pakistan also belongs to the area the American president describes as the Greater Middle East. It is his administration’s belief that the introduction of democratic forms of political structure among the countries of the region will help to contain what the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington not too long ago described as the clash of civilizations. It is useful, therefore, to ask number of questions at this stage about the conflict in Iraq.
   Has the Iraq war and the occupation of the country by America produced the envisaged result? Have the war’s likely benefits outweighed its costs? What is likely to be the consequence of the war for political development in the Muslim world? Will the war and its aftermath affect Pakistan in some way?
   As discussed in this space last week, nothing turned out in Iraq as anticipated by the war planners other than the swift march of American troops through the Iraqi desert and the collapse of the regime in Baghdad. The Pentagon did not expect an insurgency of the type that has engaged its troops for almost three years, well beyond President George W. Bush’s “mission accomplished” proclamation on May 1, 2003, aboard an aircraft carrier anchored in the Pacific Ocean. The insurgents have taken a heavy toll on American lives, on the lives of Iraqi citizens, on the country’s fledging security apparatus, and on the economy.
   By the middle of January 2006, more than 2,200 American soldiers had died along with some 32,000 Iraqis. In an oft-quoted prediction by Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy secretary of defence and now president of the World Bank, revenues from the export of oil would pay for the American mission in Iraq and the country’s reconstruction. It was also expected to finance new infrastructure that would be needed by an expanding oil economy.
   This, of course, did not happen. Export of oil has not reached pre-war levels; consequently the burden of the United States’ presence in Iraq is being shouldered by its taxpayers. Washington has spent more than $250 billion since its troops crossed into Iraq in March 2003. This is the direct cost. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winning economist has calculated the long-term cost at between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. This will have significant long term consequences for the country’s economy.
   What persuaded Washington to invade Iraq? This question will be asked for years to come no matter what happens on the ground in that country. This is the only large war America has fought in which the motives of those who sent in the country’s troops are still not clear. There is a growing body of literature that attempts to answer the question. Depending upon the author’s background and ideological predisposition, the answers range over a wide territory. Going over them is helpful since in light of America’s new emphasis on pre-emptive action it is important to understand would could provoke action by Washington once again.
   The simplest and the weirdest explanation for the Iraq war may be President George W. Bush’s desire to settle an old score. In 1991, the senior Bush ordered his troops to halt at the Iraqi border and saved Saddam Hussein in office. The Americans halted their advance while Iraq’s Republican Guard, Saddam Hussein’s much touted fighting force, was hastily withdrawing from Kuwait. In spite of this, the Iraq dictator showed no gratitude.
   Instead, his agents attempted to assassinate the American president. There was, therefore, the need to finish the project left incomplete a dozen years earlier. This explanation has some credence since two of the junior Bush’s closest advisers — Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — had worked in senior positions in the senior Bush’s administration and regretted his decision.
   A more subtle explanation for the Iraq war is an attempt by America’s energy planners to secure a reliable source of oil supply in place of Saudi Arabia, which, Washington believes, may be headed towards an uncertain future. Once again Vice-President Cheney is a central player who, as the head of a large oil-services company before returning to public life in 2001, had gained first-hand knowledge of the global energy market.
   Iraq, with reserves of oil and gas only second to those of the Saudi kingdom, could become a reliable source of supply if Saddam Hussein were to be removed from power. Once he was gone, his place would be taken by one of the several Iraqis who had left the country and had gained influence in the corridors of power in Washington. The most notable among them was Ahmad Chelabi, an American educated Iraqi who had excellent links with important people in his country. A Shia, Chelabi would have the added advantage of belonging to the religious community which, although in majority, had been denied political power, often by ruthless means.
   Chelabi had done a commendable job not only of ingratiating himself with a section of the American ruling elite. He had also assiduously cultivated the liberal press; especially the New York Times. Judith Miller, of that newspaper, wrote a number of stories, often carried on the front page, that sold the idea that Saddam Hussein, if not already in possession of weapons of mass destruction, was in a good position to acquire them. Several influential members of the liberal press, although not ideologically well disposed towards the Bush administration, were inclined to support the Iraq war for their own reasons.
   They had convinced themselves that the overthrow of such an obnoxious regime as the one headed by Saddam Hussein and to build a working democracy in the heart of the Arab world were noble causes worth pursuing. They had acquired in the 1990s a strong belief in the virtues of occasionally using force to make the world a better place, modelled on the United States.
   A precedent for military intervention had been set in places such as Bosnia and Kosovo; the guilt for not having done something similar in Rwanda continued to haunt the liberal community. There was no telling what a despot with a vicious record such as the one assembled by Saddam Hussein would do to his own people and neighbours if he acquired weapons of mass destruction.
   Or, perhaps, it was the strong Israeli lobby in Washington that was behind the decision to invade Iraq. The once powerful neo-conservatives included people such as Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Scooter Libby, who held senior positions in the first administration of George W. Bush. A number of “neo-cons” operated from the outside. The group was very nervous about the potential Iraq had to challenge Israel. It was the only Arab country that had the resources and human development to pose a challenge to the Jewish state.
   If the Iraqi threat could be removed, this group believed that Israel would be able to show greater flexibility in reaching an accommodation with the Palestinians. Saddam Hussein, by giving generous financial awards to the family members of suicide bombers, had created such a security threat for Israel that it had lost the rationality to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians.
   Whatever the reason for the decision to invade Iraq, there is now a near-consensus among policy analysts in Washington and London that it is the utter incompetence of the Bush administration in handling the challenge posed by the occupation of Iraq that has produced such a monumental mess. This line of argument begins with the administration’s cavalier assumption that Iraq could be occupied and transformed without any extraordinary effort. For starters, Washington had to commit more troops to the task than it was prepared to do. According to one estimate, it takes an occupation force equal to two per cent of the size of the population being occupied to bring it under control. This implies a force of 550,000 rather than 135,000 the Pentagon was prepared to commit.
   Adding to the problem created by the small size of the army ordered into Iraq was inadequate training in both doctrine and skills that would have helped US soldiers to make the transition from combat to peace-keeping. There are many stories of culturally insensitive behaviour displayed by the Americans as they sought to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis. Soldiers are known to have used binoculars to look into family courtyards from the heights they had occupied. This was a serious affront for a society that puts great value on modesty and privacy.
   The planners in Pentagon also seem to have ignored the prospects and the consequences of the looting and disarray that was bound to follow the removal of the heavy hand of the regime that had used intimidation to govern an increasingly sullen population. A lot of the weaponry used by the insurgents was looted from government stores that were no longer guarded by Iraqi soldiers once American troops moved into Baghdad.
   Perhaps the most unfortunate decisions taken by Paul Bremer, who succeeded the hapless General Jay Garner as the chief American administrator of Iraq, were the disbanding of Saddam Hussein’s army and declaring members of his Baath party ineligible for government jobs. With the army disbanded, the insurgency could readily find recruits for its operations who were motivated not only by the defeat they had suffered but saw no future for themselves in the new Iraq in whose birth the Americans were playing midwife. The same was true for the members of the Baath party.
   Finally, the treatment of the Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison that defied all conventions for treating prisoners of war hurt Washington’s standing in the world, particularly in Muslim countries. In light of what happened in that prison and the way prisoners were being treated at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and at the US base in Bagram near Kabul, the American claim that their value system should be imbibed by the developing world began to sound hollow.
   The longer the conflict lasts in Iraq, the greater the negative consequences for the Muslim world. There is an earnest debate in the United States at this time on what kind of exit strategy Washington should pursue. There are those who have begun to advocate setting the timetable for the withdrawal of American troops. President Bush has said that that is not an option for his administration and should not be one for his country. He still looks forward to what he describes as victory over the insurgency coupled with the political transformation of the Greater Middle East.
   There is, therefore, reason to worry about Iraq and its future. Pakistan would be deeply affected by America’s worsening reputation in the Muslim world for poor planning, incompetence, and lack of respect for the people whose land it had occupied.
   This article has been published by arrangement with Dawn

Now that Eid ul Azha has come and gone, I am quite relieved. That kind of sentiment might surprise you. Those with a sense of religion and its power to do good may even be a little scandalised. The qurbani, after all, is a reassertion of faith in one’s religion, isn’t it? So why am I complaining? But I am not complaining. I may not be perfect in the way I follow the calling of my religion. I know that in the course of the day I am committing innumerable sins because I am only a human being. But I know that somewhere out there lives a God who watches above us. The God I speak of is a God who loves his creation. I am not one of those who believe in the idea that we should fear God. Why the fear? There is perfection about God. We, his creatures, are all imperfect. If we sin, if we stray beyond morality, it is He who will reprimand us, remind us of the higher nobility that is hidden in all of us before He can forgive us.
   So you can see I love my God in the same way He loves me. Where the matter is one of Eid ul Azha and my sense of relief, I only mean to point to the great exhibition of wealth and opulence which goes on every time the qurbani season arrives. The arrogance with which the affluent, who are generally people who have made a lot of money in recent years through means that no one can really explain, make their way to the cattle market is something that belittles the Islamic faith. I grew up on the teaching that qurbani is actually an act of kindness by which we give ourselves a chance to help the less fortunate ones in society. In our village, when we were children, the sacrifice of animals on Eid ul Azha was always a day for the poor. My father, not a very rich man himself (he was a schoolmaster), made it clear to us that two thirds of the meat coming from the sacrificed animal must go to poor relatives and other poor people. And that is exactly how it happened, not only in our case but also in that of other families in our village. Now, if I ask you to place your hand on your heart and honestly tell me that such piety is there in these present times, can you really give me a true answer? I have my grave doubts. When you look around you, at all the gory scenes of the sacrificed cows and goats in the alleys and streets of the city, together with the frenzy with which the families behind the sacrifices are carting the meat off to the inner sanctum of their homes, what sense of religion do you get there? Nothing, honestly speaking. By the early afternoon, all we can see is a pitiful scene of poor old women, poor little boys and girls and aged men with begging bowls running from the gate of one residence to another in the nearly forlorn hope that some meat will be given to them by those who have performed sacrifice. The results of those sad peregrinations for these helpless people are almost always negligible. As if that were not enough, some of the people who take part in qurbani sometimes explain away their reluctance to give the meat to the poor by suggesting that this meat is then sold by to the neighbourhood restaurants, usually at very paltry prices.
   Well, if these poor people collect meat from houses and then decide to sell them, who can blame them? We should do our job as enjoined upon us by religion. What happens after that is really something we can have little control over. When you seriously think of why the poor sell the meat they get from those who can afford to give it to them, you only have to understand their situation. They do not have the kind of cooking facilities we have. They do not have the economic means to buy the ingredients that go into a cooking of the meat. They cannot cook pulao for their families. So where is the harm if by selling the meat to the restaurants they get some money which will bring them some food for a few days? Think of the whole thing in such light. Perhaps you will understand.
   There is one final point I think I should make about qurbani. With all the blood and animal entrails littering the streets on Eid day and afterward, there are clear health hazards for all of us. At the same time, the callousness with which we destroy the environment with such a public demonstration of the spirit of sacrifice only reflects an absence of the standard civilising aspects in our behaviour. So should we not now be thinking of bringing about a change in our qurbani system? Instead of the animals being killed on the streets, let the whole process be taken care of in local abattoirs. In that way, we not only perform our religious duties but also uphold the idea of cleanliness in our social environment.
   By the way, my family plans to observe Eid ul Azha in my in-laws’ village the next time around. That should be a chance for it to recapture some of the old spirit of qurbani, don’t you think?