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TARIQUE Rahman, senior joint secretary general of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and son of former prime minister Khaleda Zia, was released on bail Wednesday following days of intense speculation about the timing and manner of his eventual release. We are pleased that Tarique was released through what appears to have been a proper judicial process in that the High Court granted him bail in all the cases that have been lodged against him. Moreover, from the point of view that the release of Tarique on bail will enable him to seek necessary treatment for his ailments, we feel that the release was warranted. We have repeatedly argued over the course of the last year and a half that those arrested in normally bailable cases ought to be allowed to seek bail from the courts and that the courts should be allowed to give independent judgement on the bail applications. Denying detainees the right to apply for bail, which this military-controlled government has attempted to do through the promulgation of the Emergency Powers Rules, is not only unnecessary in our view but a direct affront to the separation of powers and the rule of law.
   What we feel was unwarranted, however, were the scenes of jubilation and euphoria among a section of political leaders and activists at the release of the BNP leader, mirroring the euphoric celebrations that followed the release of the Awami League president, Sheikh Hasina, some months ago. While we understand that party leaders and workers of both the BNP and the Awami League have valid grievances against this regime, particularly with regard to the treatment of their senior leaders, many of whom have allegedly been harassed and even tortured in custody, they must remember that the leaders at whose release they now celebrate have been indicted and are awaiting trial in serious cases of corruption and abuse of power. Therefore, it is only right that these political leaders be tried for their alleged crimes by competent courts of law in a transparent manner. Any attempt by the parties to use their political muscle to have these leaders unconditionally released after being indicted is neither desirable nor endorsable. Whatever the grievances and however justified, the major political parties will do a great disservice to this country and its people if they use their political power in such a way as to spare their leaders from being tried by competent courts, which is exactly what they appear to be trying to do.
   At the same time, this regime must understand that the right to seek, and thereby be granted, bail in normally bailable cases should be afforded to all yet-to-be-convicted detainees equally and not just to the top leaders and their family members. This is all the more so for detainees who are suffering from different ailments and require better treatment than that they are afforded by the jail authorities. Hence, we urge this regime to allow all prisoners indicted in normally bailable cases to seek and be granted bail without the regime putting arbitrary obstacles in their way.

More reasons than one to disband
truth commission

THE Truth and Accountability Commission, installed by the military-controlled interim government for a few months to allow some people to admit to their corruption thereafter absolve themselves of their wrongdoings, is, as expected, proving to be by and large ineffective. First, there is already a writ petition with the High Court challenging the legality of the commission which has cast a shadow over its activities. Second, only 18 parties have thus far availed the services of the commission, admitting to irregularities of about Tk 5.7 crore and promising to deposit the sum with the exchequer in return for pardon. These 18 are mostly government officials whose ill-gotten wealth was accumulated through bribery. However, it must be remembered that one of the main reasons for the establishment of this commission was to allow businessmen to avail the opportunity to admit to their wrongdoings, pay fines and thereby avoid prosecution. This would, it was hoped, provide a signal to the market that the incumbents are willing to facilitate business activity which in turn would infuse more dynamism and vibrancy into the stagnating economy. This has obviously not happened as the business community has altogether shied away from availing this facility. According to reports, even the chairman of the commission did not sound upbeat as far as that objective was concerned since most of the people taking this opportunity were bureaucrats and not businessmen.
   Also, politicians accused of similar wrongdoings are not allowed to avail the same facility as businessmen and bureaucrats. This is arbitrary, duplicitous and unlawful. There cannot be two sets of laws or rules for two different groups of people for the same crimes, and as such, the actions of this commission are contrary to the spirit of the rule of law and justice. Moreover, there cannot be any forum or body to deal with criminal offence other than the judiciary according to the constitution. It is the incumbents’ contention that the commission would reduce the burden of the court system and expedite some cases. However, that stance is not acceptable since the constitution quite unambiguously stipulates that the judiciary is the only competent body to dispose of criminal cases. As such, this commission is at best a vigilante initiative.
   Considering that the Truth and Accountability Commission has not only failed to attain its desired objective but is also contrary to the constitutional provisions and the spirit of the rule of law, we see no reason for it to continue to exist. The incumbents would do well to dismantle it and allow the law to take its own course in cases of financial corruption as with any other criminal offence.

THE notion of total national security has never been a reality – neither during the heydays of Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic empires, nor now for any nation, big or small. All nation-states, therefore, crave for national security through a combination of economic, political and military power plus an effective diplomacy. Simple bullying has never been a guarantor of national security.
   In his seventh annual State of the Union Address to Congress on December 2, 1823, President James Monroe stipulated America’s national security principles, which came to be known as the Monroe Doctrine. It said European powers were no longer to colonise or interfere with the affairs of the newly independent nations of the Americas. The United States planned to stay neutral in wars between European powers and their colonies. However, if later on, these types of wars were to occur in the Americas, the United States would view such action as hostile. The doctrine was a proclamation of America’s moral opposition to colonialism.
   Unfortunately, the doctrine was reinterpreted later, which came to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary, to establish America’s exclusive hegemony over other smaller nations in the western hemisphere. The corollary allowed America to colonise (as it happened to Puerto Rico and Cuba) or intervene in small Caribbean and Central American states like Cuba (1906-1910), Nicaragua (1909-1911, 1912-1925 and 1926-1933), Haiti (1915-1934), and the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), in the name of stabilising the economy of those nations. In 1928 the Clark Memorandum concluded that the United States had a self-evident right of self-defence and need not invoke the Monroe Doctrine as a defence of its interventions in Latin America.
   The Cold War (from mid-1940s to mid-1990s) was a period marked by costly defence spending, arms race – conventional and nuclear, and proxy wars in which the US competed with the Soviet Union to expand her zone of influence in the world. America sought ‘containment’ strategy to stop the domino effect of nations politically moving towards the Soviet Union and socialism/communism as against the United States and capitalism and used military force to ‘rollback’ communism in countries where it had taken root. To this end, America forged numerous alliances, particularly in Western Europe and the Middle East.
   In 1954 the then US secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, cited the Monroe Doctrine to justify America’s intervention in Guatemala that overthrew Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, the democratically-elected president of Guatemala, through a CIA-sponsored coup d’état. A year earlier, the CIA had also toppled Dr Mossaddeqh’s nationalist government in Iran, perceived to be pro-Soviet. Such a rollback policy, however, pushed Eastern Europe (e.g. Poland and Hungary) further toward the Soviets.
   During the Kennedy administration the policy of containment reached its most expansive and consensually accepted stage to oppose Soviet influence, or what was dubbed as ‘the Communist menace’ in Cuba. During the Nixon administration, America relied on friendly regimes to police their regions.
   As the Vietnam War ended, the Clark Amendment of 1976 was adopted prohibiting aid to anti-Marxist fighters in Angola. Congress, therefore, refused to support war against indigenous Communist dictatorships, no matter how heavily supported by the Soviet Union or its proxies. However, even after the Clark Amendment became law, clandestine aid to Angola would continue under the then CIA director, George HW Bush. Israel stepped in as a proxy arms supplier for the US.
   In the final year of the Carter administration, Dr Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski, Carter’s national security advisor, adopted the ‘containment’ strategy, to be continued overtly and aggressively later by President Reagan, to aid the Mujahideen in their fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. That stopped not only the Soviets from reaching the warm waters of the Persian Gulf but also helped to bring about the collapse of the regime.
   President Reagan’s programme of CIA support for the Nicaraguan contras, which did not fight foreign occupation, broke post-Vietnam precedent of ‘containment’ strategy and instead, adopted the ‘rollback’ strategy. Like the Nixon Doctrine, the Reagan Doctrine turned to proxies. Unlike the Nixon Doctrine, however, it supported not the status quo but revolution. Subsequently, during the 1980s Reagan would justify America’s intervention in El Salvador, Guatemala and Grenada. He would also support the rebels in Angola, Cambodia and Eritrea. To pledge his adherence to international law, Reagan declared: ‘Support for freedom fighters is self-defence and totally consistent with the OAS and UN charters.’
   As can be seen in the post-WW II Cold War era, American national security strategy increasingly became intertwined with a strategy for global hegemony. As argued by the libertarian think-tank Cato Institute, quite a few of America’s engagements in the third world countries had little to do with legitimate American security needs. Instead of draining Soviet military and financial resources America was ending up dissipating her own.
   9/11 and the road to Afghanistan
   In this age of modern technology and globalisation, total national security is simply unattainable. It is only a myth. Modern technology is diminishing the effect of geographic distance and is punctuating traditional protective umbrella for any nation – strong or weak. It is capable of importing and exporting violence long distance through a variety of means. So, national security will continue to be an increasingly difficult task for any government in our very fast paced world.
   Prior to 9/11, American national security concern was heavily focused on the possibility that unfriendly states might launch or threaten to launch a missile attack with nuclear warheads on the US. Missile defence system was thus a rational choice and workable strategy that gained some popularity, especially among the Reaganite Republicans. (This idea has not quite died down as is apparent from Senator McCain’s recent remarks in the wake of Iran’s firing of long and medium range missiles on July 9, 2008.)
   9/11 was like a cluster bomb that shattered all such perceptions about national security. It showed that to puncture national security of the most powerful nation on earth, the foe does not need much – no nuclear bomb, no missile, not even enough money. It just has to be extra-smart, thinking outside the box, to improvise and be resolute to its cause. Truly, those 19 terrorists that attacked America had only box-cutters and a willingness to forfeit their own lives. They weren’t cowards. So how can America secure itself against an enemy that is physically weak but endowed with an unfathomed passion?
   In the wake of 9/11, the rising inclination in America to seek enhanced national security is quite understandable. But Americans must ask: what is the guarantee that those surveillance cameras, metal detectors and long checkups in airports, terminals and stations can stop the next 9/11 from happening? The hard truth is: none, zero! In its effort to stop global terrorism, how many people can the government spy on, how many bank accounts can it freeze, how many conversations can it eavesdrop on, how many emails can it intercept, how many letters can it open, how many phones can it tap? Doesn’t too much data actually hinder intelligence and decision making? As Arundhati Roy has argued, rather prophetically, back in October 21, 2001, ‘The sheer scale of the surveillance will become a logistical, ethical and civil rights nightmare. It will drive everybody clean crazy. And freedom – that precious, precious thing – will be the first casualty. It’s already hurt and haemorrhaging dangerously.’
   Just nine days after 9/11, on September 20, 2001, President Bush issued an ultimatum to the Taliban government of Afghanistan that had sheltered al-Qaeda demanding handover of Osama bin Laden to the US. The next day, September 21, 2001, at a news conference in Islamabad, the Taliban ambassador said he was sorry that people had died in the suicide attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, but appealed to the United States not to endanger innocent people in a military retaliation. He said, ‘Our position on this is that if America has proof, we are ready for the trial of Osama bin Laden in light of the evidence.’ On October 4, 2001, the Taliban offered to turn Bin Laden over to Pakistan for trial in an international tribunal that operated according to Islamic shariah law. Under pressure from the US, the then Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf rejected the offer saying he could not guarantee his safety.
   On October 7, 2001, before the onset of Anglo-American military operations, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan offered to ‘detain bin Laden and try him under Islamic law’ if the United States made a formal request and presented the Taliban with evidence. This counter offer was immediately rejected by the US as insufficient. [America had maintained that the ‘evidence’, which would not stand up in a court of law, against the terrorists was shared amongst friends in the ‘coalition’.]
   Within hours of the Taliban offer, President Bush declared war against Afghanistan. The UN wasn’t even asked to mandate the air strikes. Thus, in an instant, centuries of jurisprudence were carelessly trashed. With massive bombing campaigns from the air for two months and cooperation on the ground from the Northern Alliance (made up of non-Pushtoon speaking minorities from the Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek communities), the NATO forces were able to overthrow the Taliban government (made up of majority Pushtoons). Afghanistan, a country that had already been reduced to rubble since the Soviet invasion days (thanks to 45 billion dollars worth of arms and ammunition that were poured by Soviet Union and the US), was now pounded into finer dust.
   
   Bush doctrine of lies and deceptions
   The Bush doctrine echoes many of the ideas of the neoconservative think-tank Project for the New American Century, which was founded in 1997. PNAC, in its founding ‘Statement of Principles’, stated the ‘need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad’. The following year, it called for deposing Saddam Hussein. Among the signers of PNAC’s original Statement of Principles were a number of people who later gained high positions in the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle.
   Therefore, it was no surprise that, as with Afghanistan, Bush did not want to give diplomacy a chance before invading Iraq. On March 2003, just 13 days before the invasion, Dr Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, reported, ‘No evidence of proscribed activities has so far been found’ in Iraq. He said further inspections would continue. But the US government, unhappy about the Blix report, announced that ‘diplomacy has failed’ and that it would proceed with a coalition of allied countries, named the ‘coalition of the willing’, to rid Iraq of its alleged weapons of mass destruction. The US government abruptly advised UN weapons inspectors to immediately pull out of Baghdad.
   Under the declared pretext of disarming Iraq of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and as part of overall strategy towards minimising threat to the US from unfriendly nations, President Bush invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003 and subsequently toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein. The invasion was condemned by the then UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, as ‘not in conformity with the UN charter’ and ‘illegal’.
   After some two years of frenzied search, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Bush conveniently described the Iraq war as a ‘central front in the war on terror’. In that process of invasion and subsequent occupation, in the past five years more than a million (and counting) Iraqi civilians have been killed (most of these in the first three months of the war) by the coalition forces. Iraq’s economy and infrastructure, once the envy of the entire Middle East, have been vastly destroyed by massive aerial bombing campaigns, and missile, tank and mortar attacks.
   In recent months, with a surge in deployment of American armed forces, violence seems to have become manageable. However, such a reduction in violence may be too superficial and short-lived. Unemployment runs too high and grievances against America’s orgy of slaughter, rape and destruction are too deep to be either ignored or forgotten in an area where people have long memory. These are sure recipes for disaster and, unless redressed properly, would continue to challenge the goal of bringing about stability, safety and security in Iraq, plus phased withdrawal of American forces. These may haunt American vital interests both inside and outside Iraq.
   It is important to remember that there were many concerned human beings that objected to America’s invasion of Afghanistan and (more so for) Iraq. According to Dominique Reynie, a political scientist from the University of Paris, between January 3 and April 12, 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against war in Iraq, the demonstrations on February 15, 2003 being the largest and most prolific. Even NATO members like Canada, France and Germany opposed the invasion suggesting disarmament through diplomacy. Russia also cautioned against invasion. However, all such voices of reason and restraint were snubbed by the war party and their paid agents in the corporate media.
   What is also so horrible and evil about the entire Iraqi episode is that President Bush committed an impeachable offence by ordering the CIA to manufacture a false pretence for the war in the form of a backdated, handwritten document linking al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. This charge is made in a recently published book, ‘The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism’, by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind. The author says Bush was informed unequivocally in January 2003, three months before the invasion, that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
   Can the end justify the means – no matter how criminal these may be? But that is what President Bush and his trusted lieutenants were set to do towards the regime change in Iraq. In an earlier book, The Price of Loyalty, Suskind wrote that the planning envisioned peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals, and even dividing up Iraq’s oil wealth. Six months before 9/11, a Pentagon document, dated March 5, 2001, entitled ‘Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts’ surfaced, which included a map of potential areas for exploration of oil in Iraq. Suskind said, ‘It talks about contractors around the world from, you know, 30-40 countries. And which ones have what intentions.’
   Bush wanted so much to convince American people of the need to invade Iraq that the White House set up a secret team in the Pentagon to implant evidence. The Office of Special Plans routinely rewrote the CIA’s intelligence estimates on Iraq’s weapons programmes, removing phrases like ‘probably’, ‘likely’ and ‘may’ as a way of portraying the country as an imminent threat. They also used unreliable sources to create reports that ultimately proved to be false. In this regard, one may recall that Bush said, ‘The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,’ in his State of the Union address. The documents supporting that statement were forged.
   Bush, Cheney, Rice and Powell also claimed that some aluminium tubes Iraq had attempted to buy were intended for use in a uranium centrifuge to produce nuclear weapons. These were the only physical evidence that Bush had against Iraq. But, as the CNN and the New York Times have shown, this evidence had been rejected by the Department of Energy and other intelligence agencies long before Bush used them in his speeches. According to Ron Suskind, Bush’s action is ‘one of the greatest lies in modern American political history’ and is a crime of greater impact than Nixon’s Watergate.
   As is quite evident, President Bush and his entourage of advisers chose war over diplomacy, carnage over common sense, unilateralism over multilateral cooperation, revenge over reconciliation, and deception over truth. Unapologetic and stupidly stubborn, the Bush administration and its neocon advisers still continue to preach the wisdom of regime change and staying the present course in its global war on terror. Thus, to many of them war against Iran is the only option to settle the dispute concerning her nuclear enrichment program.
   
   The choice for national security
   The architects of war within and outside the White House and the Pentagon forget that once violence is accepted as a legitimate political instrument, then the difference between right and wrong often gets blurred; morality and political tolerability of terrorism (insurgency or liberation movement) become rather touchy, bumpy, ticklish terrain. One country’s terrorist is too often another’s freedom fighter. The US government itself has funded, armed and sheltered plenty of rebels and insurgents around the world – e.g. while it supported the Contras in Nicaragua it violently opposed the rebels in El Salvador. Violence only breeds more violence and is no recipe for guaranteeing national security. Today’s witness to massacre can become tomorrow’s avenger or terrorist. As is well known people rarely win wars, and governments rarely lose them; people get killed. So, why this preference to kill people, especially when the president likes to portray the US as a ‘peaceful’ nation?
   Speaking at the FBI headquarters a few days after attacking Afghanistan, President Bush said: ‘This is our calling. This is the calling of the United States of America. The most free nation in the world. A nation built on fundamental values that reject hate, reject violence, rejects murderers and rejects evil. We will not tire.’ Once again through his murderous campaigns in both Afghanistan and Iraq, targeting civilian population, Bush proved that his actions belie those lofty ideals on which America was founded. While he is not alone to dump those lofty ideas, only the worst, many of his predecessors similarly have dragged America – the ‘most free nation in the world’ – into denying the same freedom to others – all in the name of national security. Even before the current crisis, stemming from 9/11, America in the post-WW II period has bombed China (1945-46, 1950-53), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), the Belgian Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-99), Bosnia (1995), Sudan (1998), and Yugoslavia (1999). Hardly a decade passed uninterrupted without America’s declaration of war against some country! This shows that far from being a ‘peaceful’ nation that is ‘not tired of rejecting violence’ America has opted for violence frequently to settle international disputes. As Arundhati Roy so aptly pointed out, ‘Infinite Justice’ for some may mean ‘Infinite Injustice’ for others, and ‘Enduring Freedom’ for some means ‘Enduring Subjugation’ for others.
   In retrospect who would disagree today that if the early findings of Dr El-Baradei’s IAEA and Dr Blix’s UN weapon inspection team on Iraq were believed by the Bush administration and the team given more time for inspection, we could have avoided the carnage in Iraq today?
   As Americans search for viable strategy for national security, they must also ask about the cost of the war so as to be able to do a cost-benefit analysis on competing options. Credible estimates of Iraq’s war to the US economy are believed to range anywhere from $1.2 to 3 trillion. (It is worth mentioning here that America’s GDP is less than $13 trillion.) That’s a huge burden for America!
   In the aftermath of 9/11 Americans must come to the grips that America’s criminal actions outside – the ‘freedom’ to dominate, humiliate and subjugate others – can seriously impair their own freedom at home.
   If America is earnest about national security in this fast-paced technology-driven age of globalization, she must approach this new task with introspection and a modicum of honesty and humility. She must acknowledge her past mistakes in judgement and approach the task rationally and objectively without any bias and influence from any particular lobby. She must analyse how things might have been if America had not opted for violence in its recent engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. Would those options jeopardise or compromise American national security adversely?
   The real issue in relation to America’s national security ought to be how much insecurity can she live with while promoting her interests in an increasingly interactive and interdependent world? Given her status as the only true superpower of the 21st century, how much of America’s security is dependent on multilateral cooperation and how much of it can be or should be sought unilaterally? These simple questions offer rather highly complex and very difficult national security choices, with sweeping domestic implications. Ultimately, given the fast changing and dynamic nature of both modern technology and the international setting, any answer will have to be contingent and temporary.
   In his book, ‘The Choice’, Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski argues that power and force alone are not sufficient to preserve American national security. It needs cooperation and not coercion at the global level.
   As I have argued elsewhere legitimate political grievances require political solutions that are just and equitable, and not bombs and missiles. When such issues are ignored, they simmer and produce natural backdrops for breeding new recruits that are willing to die much like Udham Singh of yesteryears and Mohamed Atta of our time. Can American afford another attack from the likes of Atta?
   saeva@aol.com