Issue 66 Vol III, June 30, 2008

F E A T U R E S

Time to pause
Ishtiaq Ahmed

FOR quite some time now, I had been contemplating a long pause in writing weekly columns, but lacked the determination to take a firm decision because of the constant inflow of emails encouraging one to go on and take up some particular issue or topic. Now, all the promises made have been converted into published columns, so it is time to take a break. Initially it will be for three months, and I will either not write at all during this period or only occasionally, when some extraordinary event takes place and I feel I need to speak out my mind.

It is also an appropriate moment to make the break because a democratically-elected civilian government is in power and the transition to democracy has begun. Will it last and the democratic process stabilise? Nothing can be said for sure but it is now or never. If the Pakistani politicians and power elite do not act responsibly now they would have lent credibility to the thesis that Pakistan is a failed state.

Another very weighty reason for a long pause now is that I need roughly three months to complete the manuscript of my book on the Punjab partition. It should be published as early as possible because many of those whose first-person accounts have helped me put together a chronological account of that cataclysmal event may not be with us for very long. Therefore, it is imperative that the book is brought out as early and quickly as possible.

My encounters with column writing started as of May 26, 2002, when I wrote my first essay for Daily Times. From Dec 2, 2006, onwards I started writing for this newspaper. In these six years there has hardly been a week when I did not write. I have spent my weekends and evenings writing essays while simultaneously discharging my professional obligations as a teacher and researcher at Stockholm University, and now as a researcher at the Institute of South Asian Studies in Singapore. Accomplishing this week after week has not been easy, but on the whole I have enjoyed this opportunity.

It is very exciting to see your column in print and then receive emails with feedback from readers. It wins you friends who respect you and you respect them, and they become a part of your life. I and my family have had the privilege of enjoying the hospitality of many such friends when we visited the United States in the summer of 2002. Nothing is more genuine and pure than sharing of ideas and ideals. Therefore, the cessation of weekly columns will deprive me of many new friends that I would make if I continued but priorities have to be fixed, and now is the time.

Choosing a topic every week is not an easy matter at all. In fact, it can be a very painful act and one that can induce a sense of guilt. Contemporaneous society with its global and instantaneous news inflows and TV channels have caused such interconnectivity that one cannot escape being informed about what is happening around us. The daily news and information barrage brings joy and pain simultaneously. Should one write on the hurricane that devastated Myanmar or the earthquake that wreaked havoc in China – in both cases causing the deaths of thousands of human beings?

Or, the rich feast of cricket provided by the Indian Premier League (IPL) should be given attention, and if yes, how should one handle the terrorist attacks in Jaipur that killed 60 human beings. That was surely an act of dastardly frustration over the fact that Indians and Pakistanis were playing together and not against each other as our ultra-nationalist handbooks tell us?

During the same period, the political wrangling in Pakistan over the fate of the deposed judges and President Musharraf was going on. The PML-N withdrew from the coalition, which I had in a state of exuberance called  a potential national government?

I started writing newspaper columns when General Pervez Musharraf was in power and that long haul ends now when we all expect him to stand down. In these six years hardly have any of my articles been refused by the editors because of its contents, notwithstanding the fact that I have always written from a dissenting point of view and consider it my duty to call into question all orthodoxies and dogmas – nationalistic, religious and cultural.

Therefore, as far as the Pakistani English-language press is concerned, it is one of the freest in the world. Some credit must be given to the government during whose tenure all this became possible. I believe Pakistani columnists who write in English, on the whole, tend to be more critical of government activities and policies than their counterparts elsewhere. This is quite natural because societies where some sort of formal democracy is in place it is easier to tow nationalist agendas than one in which nitty-gritty of a modern polity is still not in place.

The times ahead for South Asia in general and for Pakistan in particular hold out many promises as well as limitations and challenges. India's economic growth has now entered a phase where the experts tell us that the preconditions for a take-off have been achieved. The general experience is that when one country in a region enters an upward economic spiral it drags along other countries as well. If we can benefit from this situation then we should. It is time for economic rationalism to inform us and ideological dogmatism to be discarded.

The limitations and challenges include uncertain energy sources to power the transformation from an agrarian economy comprising vast millions of poor people to an industrial economy that raises the standards of living. We need a strong and active state to establish the rule of law and also to act as the overall manager of equitable social development. Environmental degradation compounded by constant population growth, depleting water supplies, and the proliferation of patently self-destructive ideas and ideologies in the name of nation and religion pose huge problems that can wreck economic growth and transformation. I am sure my colleagues who contribute weekly columns will pay attention to these matters. Courtesy News Pakistan.

[http://thenews.jang.com.pk/print1.asp?id=118347
The writer is a professor of political science and a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore. Email: isasia@nus.edu.sg]

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The love stories are gone
Ali al-Fadhily

AS statistics go, at least 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the occupation, now in its fifth year. Every one of them has left behind once loved ones to mourn the loss and to think of what might have been.

This is the land of the Arabian Nights, and of love stories that became fables far and wide. In these stories, in the traditions of which they were born, the lover thought nothing of giving up his life for a beloved. But no one thought death would come to this land under the present circumstances.

All who have died had their own love stories, if not all romantic ones. And that must be a million of them. The figure of 655,000 – of Iraqis who died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation -- came from the British medical journal Lancet based on a study in July last year. The number would have risen significantly after one of the bloodiest years of the occupation.

The deaths are not the only tragedies to have fallen upon Iraq's love stories.

"We were engaged to be married after the end of the war," Hussam Abdulla, a 28-year-old engineer from Baghdad told IPS. "We thought the war would not last more than a month, and so we planned our marriage for May 2003. But everything went wrong. I was detained for two years, and my fiancée's family had to flee to Egypt because her father was a senior army officer whose life was threatened first by occupation forces and later by death squads."

Abdulla's engagement never led to marriage.

And it was the lucky ones who fled the country early. Others stayed on to face death, detention, or a living hell at home. Army officers, doctors, journalists and artists came particularly to be targeted by death squads.

"I thought the man I loved simply dumped me," a 25-year-old woman, who asked to be called Arwa, told IPS. "He told me he will call me as soon as he finds a job in Jordan, but he just disappeared. His family told me they did not know where he is."

Much later, she was told he had been detained by U.S. forces near the Jordanian border. "The U.S. authorities said his name did not exist on their files. But I will wait for him, even if I have to wait all my life."

Tens of thousands of detained Iraqis have never been found on any U.S. military records. Their families still do not know whether they are dead or alive.

"I told my fiancée to find herself someone else for a husband," 32-year-old Khalik Obeidy, who was visiting Baghdad from Fallujah, told IPS. "I lost my job as an army officer, and my family house was blasted during the U.S. siege of Fallujah, so our marriage seems to be next to impossible.

"But also, getting married in such a situation will only mean more agony. And bringing up children is more than difficult. My fiancée still says things will improve, she says she will wait. She's crazy."

Stories of broken engagements and marriages are everywhere in Baghdad.

"In 2006, I sent my wife and two daughters to Jordan for work, and I was supposed to follow them after selling the car and the furniture," 40-year-old teacher Tariq Khalaf from Baghdad told IPS. "But my father died, and I had to stay here to look after the rest of the family. Now I don't know whether to bring them back to this Iraqi hell, or just stay separated."

Jassim Alwan, who recently made the dangerous trip to Baghdad from Samarra, 90km north of the capital city, tells the story of 23-year-old Abdullah that everyone in Samarra seems to know.

"He has a scruffy beard, and he keeps wandering the streets," Alwan told IPS. "Abdullah is now better known than the mayor of the city. He was a wonderful guy. And then his bride was shot by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers at a checkpoint. The poor guy could not stand the shock."

This is the kind of love story Iraqis tell nowadays. "The country of the Arabian Nights and of wonderful poetry is no longer good for love," Maki al-Nazzal, political analyst and poet, told IPS. "All Iraqi poetry under occupation is now about death and separation."

[Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region.] [IPS]

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Pandering to big oil

President Bush, "reversing a longstanding position," has called  for an end to the federal ban on offshore oil drilling and reaffirmed his call to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Bush's flip-flop followed an even more egregious policy shift by Sen. John McCain, who pushed for offshore drilling in a speech before oil executives in Houston last fortnight, though he had campaigned against it as recently as three weeks ago.

According to American Progress.org ,  Bush and McCain's lead, a number of conservatives reversed their former opposition to offshore drilling, including Florida's Gov. Charlie Crist (R), Sen. Mel Martinez (R) and Rep. Connie Mack (R). Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been leading the charge to expand domestic drilling, with his "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" campaign. Yet the election-year gimmick of expanding offshore drilling does nothing to solve America's energy crisis, nor will it have an ameliorating effect on soaring gas prices. Under McCain's assumption of 21 billion barrels of oil in the banned areas -- higher than the Department of Energy's estimation of 18 billion barrels -- there is still only enough to support America's total consumption, at 7.5 billion barrels per year, for three years. The bottom line is that America consumes 25 percent of the world's oil but has just 3 percent of the world's reserves, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) pointed out. "We cannot drill our way out of this problem," he said. David Sandalow, a Brookings Institution energy expert, said of offshore drilling, "It's like walking an extra 20 feet a day to lose weight. It's just not enough to make a difference."

Over two years ago, Bush declared, "America is addicted to oil." But the latest Bush-McCain proposal will do nothing to solve that problem. "Feeding that addiction by tapping another vein just drills us into a deeper hole," said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). Bush declared that expanded drilling would "bring enormous benefits to the American people." In his Tuesday speech, McCain explained his flip-flop by saying he wanted to "address the concerns of Americans, who are struggling right now to pay for gasoline." Yet as the New York Times wrote  expanding offshore drilling, "This is worse than a dumb idea. It is cruelly misleading." The Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicted that "access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030." Even McCain's own top economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said offshore drilling would have "no immediate effect" on gas prices. Just yesterday, McCain seemed to reverse his long-standing opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- something Bush continued to push for in his speech -- even as he declared Tuesday that the "next president must be willing to break with the energy policies...of the current Administration." Bush's own Department of Energy estimated that drilling in the Arctic refuge would cut oil prices by only about 75 cents a barrel. What's more, even if the refuge were opened this year, its extracted oil would not reach the market for 10 years.

BOON FOR BIG OIL:  "The only real beneficiaries will be the oil companies that are trying to lock up every last acre of public land before their friends in power -- Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- exit the political stage," the New York Times writes today. It is not surprising that oil executives praised the idea when McCain presented it to them on Tuesday. Houston-based Anadarko Petroleum Corp. CEO Jim Hackett called McCain's drilling plan "a positive development for American consumers," adding, "We need to get serious about producing our own resources for the benefit of Americans." Larry Nichols, CEO of Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy, called McCain's proposals a "truly honest assessment of what our energy policies have been and need to be." Big Oil has also vigorously backed McCain's campaign. McCain ranks second in the Senate for donations from the energy industry and has raised over $700,000 from oil and gas this election season alone.

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power. These are all NO BID Deals.

It took eight years (twelve, if you count George senior's tenure), but the Bush family has finally accomplished its grand goal, reinstating American (or at least, Texan) control of the oil business (exploration, extraction, refinement and distribution) in the Middle East. This is the Bush legacy's coup de grâce, its final act, its swan song, its reason to be, the fat lady has finally sung, and its time to saddle up and ride into the sunset."

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