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| India-Pakistan |
| The politics of fear |
| 2007-02-01 |
| By Dr Ijaz Ahsan Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri has given a statement to the effect that the United States is the world's superpower, and we have to admit this fact. If we do not side with it, our fate will be the same as that of Iraq. If we do not carry out an operation against the terrorists, it will do so itself. Commenting on the statement, Mr. Irfan Siddiqui has asked whether the United States is a superpower only for us? Has it crafted all its bombs and missiles for us alone? Is it not a superpower for North Korea, Iran and Venezuela? None of these is a nuclear power. None has as much population as us. None has an army, or armaments, like ours. None of them has a General in uniform as its president. Why is it then that each one of these countries is holding forth the banner of self-respect and independence, and is refusing to follow America's diktat, and why is America not threatening to push them back into the stone age? Mr. Siddiqui has said there is probably no example in history where a government has openly declared that they are pursuing such-and-such policy out of fear that if they did not do something, the superpower will itself do it. Mr. Siddiqui's columns should not only be read for their subject matter but also for his elegant use of the Urdu language; in fact they should be included in the Urdu curriculum for their literary content alone. He goes on to describe how we have obeyed each one of the Americans' commands. They said: side with us in this crusade, we submitted. They said: give us bases, we obliged. They said: accept the Northern Alliance in place of the Taliban, we capitulated. They said: what we call terrorism, you also call it the same; we acquiesced. They said: The Kashmir movement is terrorism, we consented. They said: close down all its support centers, we agreed. They said: curb the jehadi organizations, we concurred; they said: discourage jehad, we complied. They said: tighten up the deeni madaris, we went along. They said: re-write your curriculum, we gave in. They said: make friends with India, we undertook all kinds of CBMs. They said: stop recalling the Kashmir resolutions, we gave a dozen alternatives. They said: incarcerate Dr. Qadeer Khan, we did as we were told. They said: help Karzai, we helped. They said: send troops to the tribal areas, we sent them. They said: bombard the tribals, we bombed. The question, dear readers, is this: why is it that our government has capitulated to the extent that no country on earth has done? The answer is straightforward: if there had been a sovereign parliament, it would never have behaved like this. Remember, five phone calls to the prime minister from the US president failed, whereas one call by a subordinate to our president sufficed. Because they know General Musharraf does not need the consent of the parliament for any of his decisions, the Americans can coerce him. In contrast, no one can threat hundreds of members of the National Assembly, either privately or publicly. For obvious reasons, private threats to hundreds of legislators cannot even be conceived. Public threats would create a storm of protest. That is why we have to have a civilian at the place where the buck stops. Even if it was General Musharraf as a duly elected civilian president, he would be vastly more powerful than the uniformed president that he is. The question is: why should one man want to take on the grave responsibility of saying yes or no, in a case where a momentous decision involving the life and death of the community is to be taken? Why should the decision not be taken by hundreds of the people's representatives jointly? In the absence of such a mechanism for taking major decisions, every day more and more encroachments are being made into our country's sovereignty, until nothing has been left. Every day we have to answer even to Karzai, and we have become the laughing stock of the world: Us naqshe pa kay bosay nay yaan tak kia zaleel Main koochae raqeeb main bhi sar kay bal gaya. We must have a civilian at the top as president, even if it was Musharraf! We will simply not survive with a uniformed president. |
| Posted by:john |
| #1 Dr (of what?) Ijaz Ahsan is wrong, Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri is right. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-02-01 21:17 |