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THINGS are becoming topsy-turvy, the abnormal and bizarre becoming everyday reality. Our nuke capability was supposed to be the ultimate deterrent. It is turning into our biggest liability, we being put to the necessity, at every turn, of assuring both ourselves and the world that it is ‘in safe hands.’
   Who is the most threatened person in Pakistan today, who should be feeling the safest but is not? Why, the chief of army staff, also doubling as the president, who has more layers of security around him than any Third World ‘strongman’ coming readily to mind.
   The army operation in the two Waziristans is becoming a joke. Army units there dare not move out of their fixed positions for fear of being kidnapped by tribal militants. One day we hear of 10 captured, the next day 19, a few days later a mind-boggling 150 (the militants say 300).
   I suppose every military convoy rash enough to move in Waziristan will need an additional convoy to guard its flanks and a fleet of Cobra helicopters to provide it with air cover. Baitullah Mehsud is one of the leading commanders of the Waziristan militants. He must be laughing up his sleeve. His major problem these days seems not to be about how best to resist the army but how to arrange adequate prison space.
   How to guard the guardians? That seems to be our foremost problem at present. Not since the fall of Dhaka – and this is not said lightly – when our Eastern Command led by the heroic General Niazi set a new world record in meek surrender, has the army faced such embarrassment.
   But the army command has different priorities, the foremost being how to get its chief ‘elected’ president for another five years. Commander Baitullah Mehsud can run as many circles as he wants around our troops in Waziristan. Mortar and rocket attacks can take place almost every day in different parts of Balochistan. Terror bombings can occur in the very heart of Rawalpindi Cantonment. But top of the national agenda is the president’s ‘re-election’.
   I am putting quotation marks around ‘re-elected’ because when was he ever elected? Unless the referendum and the Seventeenth Amendment are to pass for a legit election.
   Because of these pressing political preoccupations small wonder that the ISI chief, Lieutenant General Kayani, instead of being distracted by Waziristan and sundry acts of sabotage, is busy negotiating a deal with Benazir Bhutto.
   There was a report in an English newspaper a few days ago that Kayani was among the hopefuls aspiring to become the next army chief. At least he will bring negotiating skills to the job, the post of army chief now more a political than a military position in our country.
   The eastern front – with India, that is – has been pacified with Kashmir now the subject for the odd seminar (although even on the seminar circuit it is disappearing as a serious subject of discussion) rather an anguished point of dispute between our two countries. Posturing and muscle-flexing will not disappear and tall, moustachioed, and well-turned-out Rangers at Wagah will continue to stomp their feet in an impressive manner. But we shouldn’t be misled by appearances.
   Thanks to American tutelage, and American largesse whose lure our so-called establishment has always found hard to resist, the axis of the army now runs westwards, towards the treacherous hills and valleys of our tribal areas.
   Besides Kayani, the other army chief-hopeful figuring in press reports is the 10 Corps Commander, Lieutenant General Majeed, said to be close to General Musharraf, which I suppose should clinch the matter.
   Anyhow, 2007 is proving to be a seminal year for Pakistan, with new vistas opening up and new winds blowing across the horizon. Regardless of Musharraf’s political fortunes, whether he manages to get ‘re-elected’ or is dealt cruelly by the fates which monitor earthly happenings, a few things have already changed.
   The Supreme Court has come into its own, now assuming the constitutional and guardianship role (relating to the rights of the people) it was always meant to play. The lawyers’ community has turned into a potent force for the rule of law. Just as it led the struggle after March 9, it is in the forefront of the effort to block the farce of Musharraf’s ‘re-election’ at the hands of the present assemblies. The media also has become a force to be reckoned with. The March 9 struggle would have turned out differently but for the (strategic) support provided by the media.
   There is disorder across the land but this is a good thing because in our given conditions only from the womb of turmoil and disorder can anything good arise. The anguish of the Q League as Musharraf seeks an understanding with the PPP, the PPP’s opportunism as Benazir Bhutto seeks what crumbs of comfort she can get from Musharraf’s table, and the presidency’s increasingly chaotic and directionless attempts to master the present political crisis are all symptoms of the pains Pakistan is undergoing as it moves from the old to the new.
   Musharraf is trying to save himself, little realising that the tidal waves buffeting him represent something greater than his person. The people of Pakistan have received an important education. They no longer have any patience for military democracy, the variety we have known all these years, or for palace intrigues, conducted here or in exotic climes, aimed at perpetuating the present order, now in the last throes of its existence.
   A consensus is building up around several interwoven themes. There is a palpable yearning for the rule of law, the supremacy of the constitution and the independence of the judiciary. And there is a popular groundswell against Pakistan’s American alliance which has succeeded only in lining the pockets of the rich and in opening up a gulf between the army and the people of Pakistan.
   There is nothing negative about this discontent. It is not tinged with despair. The hopelessness and cynicism which used to be features of the Pakistani political scene have been replaced by hope and expectation, all because of the movement for the rule of law sparked by the events of March 9.
   Looking to what the Supreme Court has done and is doing, people now expect a change for the better in their collective lives. These expectations are unrealistic and in the nature of things cannot be met. The Supreme Court by itself cannot perform all the labours of Hercules. But it is showing the way and it has put dictatorship on the retreat. These are not mean achievements.
   When the curtains finally come down on the Musharraf order, as soon they must (this being a play whose time has run out), anyone coming to power will have to contend with this new optimism running across Pakistan. Benazir is firmly in the American orbit. Her ambition is to be Pakistan’s Nuri Al-Maliki or Hamid Karzai, her desperation to be rid of the corruption cases she faces leaving her with few other options.
   But even Nawaz Sharif will have to be more fully in accord with the nation’s new mood, and he will have to leave some of his past behind, if he is to play a meaningful and enduring role in the trying times that lie ahead.
   Excoriating Musharraf is not enough. It is also not enough to mouth the standard clichés all too familiar in our discourse about the evils of military authoritarianism. The people of Pakistan want substance not rhetoric of which they have had enough. And they want concrete models of action on the lines of the example set by Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and, subsequently, the rest of the Supreme Court. Empty sloganeering just won’t do.
   Tailpiece: On Wednesday in the Express an absolutely brilliant piece by Zahida Hina on the immortal Quratulain Hyder. Moving and beautifully done. Unfamiliar with Hyder myself, I felt small after reading Hina’s account. In the schools we went to, Urdu literature passed us by, or we were ignorant of its riches, part of our national problem being the impoverishment of what we know as Pakistani culture.

Saving a Palestinian partner, whom they have rejected until Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in mid-June, has become the most important mission preoccupying the US administration and the Israeli government, a mission which nonetheless the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is taking seriously, against all the odds, pursuing a ‘hope’ that their preoccupation could yet be a window of opportunity to revive serious Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations and break through the siege imposed on him and his people by the both deadlocked inter-Palestinian and the peace process crises.
   While all media attention is focused on Hamas in the tightly sealed off Gaza Strip, the real battle of the inter-Palestinian political strife is being fought in the West Bank, where Israeli and American efforts are trying to secure the survival of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority and pre-empt the repetition of the scenario that left Hamas in control of the besieged Mediterranean coastal strip.
   Betting the survival of the PA as well as his own presidency on a faint hope that the US administration might deliver on their promises to revive the peace process with Israel, Abbas is risking a Palestinian infighting in his power base in the Israeli occupied West Bank in the hope that the continued outbreak with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and outlawing their military wings could help international friends to convince Israel to translate the ‘diplomatic process’ he is conducting with the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, into an honest and serious negotiations over the final status issues, the only diversion to the prevailing status quo that could spare the West Bank a flare up of violence.
   In spite of all his reservations on US President George W Bush’s vague proposal for an international conference in the fall to revive the peace talks, to which neither he nor other potential participants have yet received any invitation, Abbas seems desperately determined to pursue his faint hope that the world community might yet intervene to make something out of the November event. His Fatah-led PA is similarly optimistic on betting all on the outcome of the coming gathering, which nothing concrete has leaked so far to support its success prospects to vindicate their optimism or to dispel the pessimistic expectations of the overwhelming majority of Palestinian, Israeli and Western observers.
   
   Reviving a partner
   On July 16, Bush set off a flurry of diplomatic motion when he proposed to hold a conference this fall to help resume the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, deadlocked since the collapse of the trilateral Camp David summit meeting late in 2000, but so far this diplomatic flurry has been much ado about nothing. The aim of this diplomatic flurry is to lay the ground for a successful conclusion of the proposed international gathering. However, the Bush administration’s refusal over several years to bring serious attention to the Israel-Palestine conflict has ranked high; Bush’s proposed conference is promising to change nothing.
   The US and Israeli officials have been repeatedly on record to precondition the convening of the proposed conference and their support to Abbas on sustaining his outbreak with Hamas. A hint by the Italian premier, Romano Prodi, about having a dialogue with Hamas and an outright call for such a dialogue by the British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee in August drew sharp criticism from Livni as a ‘huge mistake’ that ‘will only cripple the process of reconciliation and will halt the current positive momentum,’ according to foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev.
   Israel has ruled out Abbas as a peace partner since his election in January 2005; the US has done nothing essential to make the Israelis reconsider. It was left to Hamas to convince both sides to come to their political senses. The Islamic movement’s landslide electoral victory in January 2006 and control of the Gaza Strip in mid-June this year have only prodded them to reconsider tactically how to keep Abbas in place lest a similar scenario carries Hamas close to Israeli doorsteps in the West Bank.
   The PA is overreacting in their anti-Hamas measures to assure that the new diplomatic momentum continues; the majority leader in the Democratic-led US House of Representatives Steny Hoyer emerged from a meeting with the Palestinian premier, Salam Fayyad, in Ramallah on August 14 to tell reporters: ‘Mr Fayyad made very clear that Hamas could not and would not be a partner in moving forward.’ Abbas and Fayyad are resisting huge Palestinian, Arab and Muslim pressure to sustain their rejection of dialogue with Hamas, which is also demanded by Russia, Norway, India and the Non-Aligned Movement; they have so far aborted at least eight mediation efforts to restore Palestinian unity, which was also recommended by the International Crisis Group early in August.
   The US sponsors of the upcoming conference are not leaving prospects to good faith and hopeful wishes; the success for the US administration is judged by convening the conference and not by any results it may yield because the White House and the state department planned it as a public relations event on the one hand and as a ‘banana’ to bring in Arab heavyweights like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to meet face to face with Israel, in a public show of Arab normalisation with Israeli officials, allegedly to boost Olmert’s fragile political standing at home to encourage him to take the next step towards peace.
   Bush is urging Olmert to make ‘concessions’ to Abbas to avert a Hamas takeover in the West Bank. Reportedly, Olmert is now forthcoming to cooperate with Abbas in writing something like a ‘framework agreement’ that will lay down the principles of an agreement that may be achieved later on, but without details or a timetable or guarantees, which is a non-starter for a breakthrough. Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak’s expectation of a possible early election next year and his recent assertion that Israel would not be ready to make a large-scale pullback from the West Bank for at least 2 1/2 years raise more doubts than assurances.
   After meeting Olmert in the West Bank town of Jericho in August, the two men met again in Jerusalem later in the month, met for a third time also in Jerusalem on Tuesday and said they will be meeting again this September before another encounter during a Palestinian-Israeli business conference in Tel Aviv in October, where they will meet also with the special envoy of the quartet of the US, UN, EU and Russia, Tony Blair. Between September 16–19 both men will receive the visiting US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice; her assistant for near-eastern affairs, David Welch, paid both men a visit ahead of Rice’s planned visit. Later in September Abbas will head for New York.
   
   Two-pronged effort
   The Americans are now leading a two-pronged effort to strengthen Abbas – the Washington conference is planned to present the ‘political horizon,’ while Blair, who arrived in the region last week for a ten-day visit but hardly a word was heard from him, and the US security coordinator, Keith Dayton, are working to rehabilitate and bolster the PA’s security and civilian institutions in the West Bank. Visits by Japanese foreign minister Taro Aso, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Italian top diplomat Massimo D’Alema, Austrian chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer and French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner were perceived as contributing to Blair’s and Dayton’s mission. The European Union’s foreign ministers meeting last week for two days in Portugal, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, discussed measures to make their mission a success.
   Israeli daily Haaretz on September 12 reported the US will host the conference in Washington, DC, in November, the week before Thanksgiving. Rice will chair the meeting, which ‘will seek to win support for arrangements being drafted’ by Olmert and Abbas ‘but will not have any negotiating role,’ the daily said, adding that Rice and her Israeli counterpart, Tzipi Livni, initiated the ‘political horizon’ or ‘shelf agreement’ whose implementation will be put off until the PA is strong enough to carry it out. Olmert agreed to the plan.
   US and Israeli officials seem faithful to a sixty-year old strategy of managing the conflict. Recently, they seem to have taken the advice of an old hand in this strategy like the veteran US peace negotiator Dennis Ross, who wrote in The New Republic on July 16: ‘There does need to be a sense of possibility about peace with Israel. A process, negotiations, dialogue, and the promise of changes on the ground will count for a lot. Ironically, I did not find the Palestinians I spoke with – and the number is now over 40 in my two visits here in the last six weeks – wanting to raise false expectations. No one expects an immediate breakthrough and resolution of the permanent status issues.’
   ‘Over the years, the Palestinians have learned that for Israelis, nothing is more permanent than the temporary,’ Akiva Eldar wrote in Haaretz on August 24. In their effort to find a formula for bridging the temporary and the permanent, Olmert and vice-premier Haim Ramon have adopted the method of ‘constructive ambiguity,’ which allows each side to have its own interpretation. In the case of temporary borders, the compromise formula is expected to stipulate temporary borders in the first stage, but with no declaration of statehood until there is an agreement on final borders.
   The UN and the Vatican voiced optimistic hope that the fall conference could yet deliver a long-awaited revival of the peace process. The conference raised new hopes and created a ‘particularly favourable context’ for progress in the ‘crisis that has lasted 60 years and that continues to spread grief and destruction,’ a Vatican statement said on September 6. The UN’s top Middle East envoy, Michael Williams, added a warning against failure to hopeful prospects: ‘There is a hope now which has been absent for almost seven years. A setback at this stage could have serious consequences,’ Williams told the Security Council recently; he cited among the ‘signs of hope’ the proposed conference, the revival of a pan-Arab peace initiative, ‘and, perhaps above all,’ the dialogue between Abbas and Olmert.
   
   Ruling out Syria, Hamas non-starter
   Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and international critical analysts question Bush’s proposal as a public relations ploy that aims at luring moderate Arab governments into a US-led political, diplomatic and, probably later, a military Arab-Israeli camp of moderates to serve the US strategy against what he had earlier termed as an Iranian-Syrian ‘axis of evil’ and to help save whatever could be saved for Americans in Iraq should the anti-war escalating campaign inside the US force him to consider an exit strategy. Critics highlight the fact that Bush’s proposed gathering is increasingly sowing divisive discord both among Arabs and Palestinians.
   On the official level, during a regular Arab League meeting held recently in Cairo, Arabs said the US initiative must be dealt with cautiously. The league secretary general, Amr Moussa, said the conference, if fails, would pose a threat to Arab interests and regional stability. The Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, warned that if the conference fails to produce a breakthrough, the negative repercussions would affect the whole region, increase feelings of frustration and strengthen extremism. The Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Abul Gheit, on September 12 said it was imperative to set an agenda for the conference to clarify the goals and participants, the foreign ministry said in a statement. Jordan’s King Abdullah II, who early this month toured France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE in efforts to energise the peace process, said after meeting Blair in Amman on September 9 the conference should lay out a working plan with a ‘specific timetable.’ Arabs and Abbas are demanding that Syria be invited to secure the success of the conference, but not Hamas.
   All those involved in the current diplomatic flurry recognise Abbas as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and rule out dealing with the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip. How then will any agreement signed with Abbas be accepted by Hamas as well? For example how can they, and Abbas, begin handling the rocket and mortar shell fire directed at Israeli targets from Gaza, like the one that hit the southern Israeli military base of Zikim on Tuesday and wounded at least fifty soldiers? Or with whom they are to negotiate the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit from his Palestinian captivity in Gaza?
   Ruling Syria or Hamas out is a non-starter; ruling both out only casts doubts on the sponsors’ real goals; do they intend to prove later that Abbas could not deliver and consequently is not qualified as a partner as an excuse to absolve themselves of commitments they might take upon themselves during the upcoming conference?
   
   Abbas, Olmert don’t see eye to eye
   Judging by Abbas-Olmert meetings, despite the reports that the two sides had agreed to set up negotiating teams to advance their talks, neither side issued a statement, announced any breakthroughs, had anything in writing or reported a tangible progress, but both sides confirmed they did not address any details of the final status issues. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat denied any exchange of memos of understanding. Ynet quoted a senior political source in Olmert’s office as saying ‘at this point no agreement has been reached’ and made it clear that ‘it is too soon to tell if such an agreement would find its way to the proposed conference,’ probably in Washington.
   However, Abbas and Olmert still do not see eye to eye to what their dialogue should deliver to secure the success of the proposed conference. Abbas demands they should reach a ‘framework agreement’ for a ‘declaration of principles’ with a timeline and mechanisms for implementation on the final status issue, including the core issues of borders, Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees, ahead of the conference. ‘A genuine project for peace should be presented to this conference so it can serve as a basis for negotiations and reach towards a final settlement,’ Abbas told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah last week. ‘We are concerned that November 15 will come – if this will indeed be the date for this international conference – without arriving at a specific agreement on all the issues,’ then ‘this meeting will be described as a failure. We do not want a meeting that results in merely a statement. We do not want a meeting that will end up a failure for everybody.’
   But Olmert seeks agreement on a broad-brush ‘declaration of principles’ that would be a general statement of intent rather than a concrete diplomatic commitment. On August 3 Olmert said even he was not sure he would be able to reach a deal with Abbas on statehood principles ahead of the November international meeting. ‘I have been holding meetings with Abu Mazen (Abbas) and I hope that in the near future this will lead to a ... joint declaration. If we can achieve a draft by November, we will achieve it, but I am not sure we will be able to do that,’ he told reporters. His government’s spokesperson, Mir Eisen, said: ‘We think that the Palestinian Authority needs to build itself, its government, its security forces, before we define this state.’
   Earlier, Abbas said the proposed conference would be a ‘waste of time’ if it focused solely on a ‘declaration of principles.’ He even hinted indirectly to boycotting the event: ‘If there is a clear framework including final status issues, we will welcome this and go to the [November] conference.’ Reportedly, Olmert is now forthcoming to cooperate with Abbas in writing something like a one-page ‘framework agreement’ that will lay down the principles of an agreement that may be achieved later on, but without details or a timetable or guarantees for implementation, which is a non-starter for a breakthrough.
   ‘I am really terrified that these meetings and the meeting in November ... will create the illusion with a certain part of our publics, on both sides, that peace is possible and both leaders are capable,’ Nazmi Al-Jubeh, a Bir Zeit University professor and one of the Palestinian negotiators on the Geneva Accord, told The Globe and Mail on August 29, warning the collapse of such an illusion ‘will lead us into another kind of intifada.’
   In an interview with the ‘Palestine-Israel Journal’, former PA security adviser Jibril al-Rajoub responded to Bush’s call for an international peace conference: ‘The Palestinian people are fed up with good will statements we have been hearing them for years now. We are looking to see something moving on the ground. We are looking for practical mechanisms to start implementing the Road Map and the Bush vision, and international legitimacy.’ On the appointment of Blair as the quartet envoy, he said: ‘as far as I know, his mandate has nothing to do with politics.’
   Many Israelis are sceptical as well. ‘The Bush initiative is a basic strategic pitfall, premised on driving a wedge between Mahmoud Abbas’ “moderates” and Hamas’ “extremists,” former Israeli foreign minister, Shlomo Ben Ami, wrote in ynetnews.com on August 17. In an article titled, ‘Saving President Abbas,’ Israeli leader of Gush Shalom wrote on June 23: ‘At present, all Olmert’s actions are endangering Abbas. His embrace is a bear’s embrace, and his kiss is the kiss of death… If I might offer some advice to Abbas, I would call out to him: Run! Run for your precious life! One touch of Olmert’s hand will seal your fate!’ But Abbas has been embracing Olmert on a biweekly basis for almost six months now!?
   Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait, Jordan, UAE and Palestine; he is based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied territories

Well done Tigers!

Congratulations to the Bangladeshi cricket team! We are all proud of you! Hope you can make us prouder by winning more matches in the coming days.
   Tonmoy Islam
   On e-mail
   

Nawaz Sharif’s deportation shows how the rulers of Pakistan are abusing powers and how much they believe in the dictum ‘might is right’
   Rahnuma Khalil
   Karachi, Pakistan
   

Is the US surge in Iraq working? Of course, it is working! America says it is, so it must be right. And Saddam must have also been involved in 9/11 and Iraq must have had the WMD. And Iraq is a heavenly place right now if you read the comments all the previous generals have said about the progress in Iraq, and the Iraqis have seen
   ‘astonishing signs of normalcy’ in June (more
   than 300 unidentifiable mutilated bodies in Baghdad alone). And we all know the Americans never lie, not even in front of the UN about the WMDs.
   Rabiul Hasan
   USA
   

Indoor politics sounds like a kind of sports! Sports are generally divided into two categories, namely indoor and outdoor. Games vary in their nature and styles but we hardly see an outdoor game, say cricket, being played indoor. No matter where a sport takes place, basic rules of the play is fair play. With the commencement of indoor politics by the government what can we see? Is that a fair play on the part of an established political party like BNP? If indoor politics is a test for politicians then they must take it very seriously and act sensibly with tolerance.
   Shakil Monzur
   On e-mail

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