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Turkey's President Gul: Challenges for him
Barrister Harun ur Rashid
On 28 August, Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister and one of the founders of the ruling Islamic moderate Justice and Development Party (AK), was elected as President by the third round of voting by Parliament by simple majority. He could not secure two-thirds of total votes of the parliament members in the first and second round because the secularists in the parliament had opposed his election. He is the 11th President of the country.
For more than 85 years, Turkish Presidents have ranged from the flamboyant to the stolid. All shared a feeling of antagonism towards any overt displays of Islamic devotion. This newly elected President breaks the mould.
The secularists have opposed his election because they claim he has an Islamic agenda. That means all the key posts in the government and state institutions would go to Islamists. Furthermore his wife, Hayrusina wears a headscarf and the headscarf is the divisive issue in the country. It is banned in state functions and universities by law.
The AK party leaders claim that their party is equivalent to Europe's Christian Democratic Party. President Gul reportedly told that Turkish people could be compared with overwhelming American people who believe in religious values in their lives.
In fact it was the religious Right who put President Bush in the White House. It is reported that President Bush starts his cabinet meeting with a prayer from the Bible. If the US is considered a secular state, it is argued why Turkey cannot be regarded as a secular country with AK party ruling it?
However, for President Gul it will not be an easy job because being the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he has to deal with an overtly secular Turkish army which ensures that Turkey follows strictly secular policies, set by the founder of modern Turkey Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923.
Ataturk kicked away the religious pillars of the Ottoman Empire. He regarded the Ottomans' fusion of religious and tribal influence as the gravest threat to his project to establish Turkey as a modern European state.
Secularism means that religion is separate from state governance. Secularism does not mean abandonment of religion. But they should not mix. Religion is a private matter and should not be brought into politics.
Turkey goes further than that. The laws ban any outside manifestation of Islamic dress such as headscarf for women in state functions and universities. The wife of the President took the issue of banning of headscarf to the European Human Rights Court but she lost the case. The secularists cannot forget this incident.
The displeasure of the Turkish armed forces was manifest when the chief of the General Staff General Yasar Buyukanit reportedly signed a statement vowing to resist "centres of evil" working to destroy the stare's secular principles. The meaning of the statement is not lost to the President.
The top brass of the armed forces did not attend the oath-taking ceremony of the President. On 30th August when the President attended the army's Victory Day, it is reported that the chiefs of armed forces did not salute the President when they met him. His wife with headscarf was reportedly not invited to the ceremony. President Gul appears to get a clear message from the armed forces.
The President has been known as a "great compromiser" with his adversaries. He has promised to avoid divisive confrontations with the powerful army. As proof, he approved a list of moderate Islamists and pro-EU persons as cabinet ministers, selected by the Prime Minister Erdogan, his earlier boss.
Secularists will watch very closely what the President does in the coming months. The moment of truth will come when the government publishes a new constitution that is intended to scrap the headscarf ban at universities. Second what stance the President would take if and when the government revives the vetoed laws. Third, whether the President approves the military budget and promotions to the higher ranks in military posts recommended by the top brass of armed forces.
In office President Gul faces a choice between pursuing an agenda that expands the space of Islamic activities and acting as the figurehead of the nation. While his party won about 47 per cent of the vote in last July election, secularists will remain vigilant against the imposition of an Islamist regime.
Brief Profile
President Gul will be 57 in October this year. His father Ahmed Hamdi was a mechanic and he was raised in a very conservative family environment. He earned his Ph-D degree in economics in 1983 from Istanbul University. During his Ph-D programme he attended academic courses for two years in London and Exeter. He worked in the Islamic Development Bank from 1983-91.
In 1991 he became an academic on international management in the university. During the same year he was elected MP from the Welfare Party. He was re-elected in 1995 and in 1999 from Virtue Party. When Virtue (Islamic) Party was banned, he together with the Prime Minister founded the Justice and Development Party in 2001.
The writer is a former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva.
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Plight of Mosul's Christian community
Sahar al-Haideri in Mosul
They have been threatened because of their Christian faith, their distinctive clothing and their success in business. They have been killed because of a controversy over a cartoon. They have fled to wherever they can find a minimal amount of safety - to Iraqi Kurdistan, abroad to Syria, or just to the countryside outside their city.
The Christians of Mosul can recite one horror story after another. Once a solid, middle-class community in this northern city, thousands of them have fled their homes under threat from militants. Their churches have been bombed, their clergy murdered, and community members regularly face threats and kidnappings.
The story of Mosul's Christians is not dissimilar to that of millions of other Iraqi citizens who live in a state of fear. But their religion makes them especially vulnerable, in a city where governance and the rule of law are non-existent, allowing criminal gangs and Islamic militant groups such as al-Qaeda to intimidate and kill with impunity.
"Life has become difficult in Mosul," said Ilham Sabah, a Christian attorney who wears the veil because she fears she would otherwise be killed. "The militants threaten Christian women. They set them on fire or kill them if they refuse to wear Islamic dress as Muslim women do.
"We only have one choice, and that is to flee Mosul and the hell created by the militants."
Mosul is the capital of Nineveh province, and has been home to Christians of the Assyrian, Chaldean, Armenian and Catholic churches for more than millennium. Now they are being driven out en masse.
Christians "are the weakest of the weak", said Joseph Kassab, originally from Mosul and now executive director of the Chaldean Federation of America.
"The extremists there are highly active... they want to empty Mosul of Iraqi Christians," he said.
There are no accurate demographic statistics for Iraq, but most estimates indicate there were between 800,000 and one million Iraqi Christians in Iraq in 2003. A 2005 report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, on non-Muslim religious minorities in Iraq said that most of the Christians were from Nineveh province, although substantial numbers lived and worked in Baghdad.
UNHCR reported last year that about 24 per cent of the Iraqi refugees in Syria, which borders Nineveh province, were Christians. In addition, about 1,720 Christian families have fled Mosul for the relative safety of the Nineveh Plains outside the city, according to a Christian human rights advocate in the province who requested anonymity out of concern for his security. Thousands of Christians from Baghdad and other parts of Iraq have also fled to the plains.
Christians, many of whom were successful entrepreneurs and professionals, were some of Iraq's first refugees.
Cartoons & Pope's speech
Community leaders in Nineveh province have faced increased threats in the wake of the furore created by a Danish newspaper's publication last year of caricatures making fun of the Prophet Mohammed and linking Islam with terrorism. A controversial speech by Pope Benedict XVI in September 2006, which many Muslims perceived as anti-Islamic, also made Christians a target.
By mid-October, a bomb had killed nine people in an Assyrian neighbourhood of Mosul, and Syriac priest Paulos Iskandar was beheaded after being kidnapped by a militant group. His abductors demanded at least 250,000 US dollars in ransom and also that he post signs on his church apologising for the Pope's remarks, according to the Assyrian International News Agency. They killed him two days after his abduction.
The murder sent shock-waves through Mosul's Christian community,
The violence has not abated since Iskandar's gruesome murder. Father Ragheed Ganni, a Chaldean Catholic priest at the Church of the Holy Spirit, and three of his deacons were gunned down in Mosul in June following a Sunday service. Ganni had been threatened and his church bombed prior to the attack.
The four were shot dead when their vehicle was pulled over by armed gunmen. The militants then rigged the car with explosives, and it took several hours before a bomb-disposal unit arrived to defuse the charges.
Less high-profile kidnappings, threats and killings of Christians rarely make the news, but they occur almost daily. The Assyria National Assembly tracks violence against Assyrian Christians in Iraq, and the daily online log of murders and other violent acts includes a plethora of kidnappings targeting Mosul's Christians.
Many Christians are kidnapped for ransom because they are successful businessmen, although most have fled or shut down their operations in Mosul since 2003.
In one case in July, the assembly reported that Dawood Qoryaqos Hermis Farfash, a father of five, was carjacked and abducted in Mosul's al-Tahreer district. Earlier this year, Dawood was kidnapped in the same area and released after his family paid a ransom of 3.5 million Iraqi dinars, or about 2,800 dollars.
The frequent attacks on churches and clergy have kept many away from services. Mosul used to have 23 churches, but many are no longer open and Christians often opt to practice their faith in secret, according to the human rights advocate.
Life was better
"Life was better under Saddam," said a 35-year-old Christian businessman in Mosul who asked not to be named because he feared retaliation by militant groups. "I used to go out socially and was well-respected, but not any more. In the past, there was law and order, but now nothing stops the extremists or criminals."
This man, a lifelong Mosul resident, lives in a neighbourhood where Christians are in a minority, and says most of his friends are Muslims. His brother left Mosul after his child was kidnapped and he himself was threatened earlier this year.
Mosul's long history of religious and ethnic coexistence has not, however, disappeared because of the violence.
"I and many of my friends and colleagues hurt just as much when a Christian is murdered as when a Muslim is killed," said Salim Abdul-Wahad, a Muslim teacher in Mosul.
Kassab and the Christian rights advocate both said the security problems stem from a lack of government control over the province as a whole and Mosul in particular. Kassab said the province is so chaotic that it is often unclear who is attacking whom, or why. Christians may be specifically targeted by Islamic extremists, he said, but the perpetrators could also be criminal gangs or militias affiliated with political parties.
"Everyone is subject to violence," said Kassab. " [The security forces] can't function, they can't provide safety and security very well in general. So how are they going to safeguard a minority in the community?"
He said the security forces were "busy protecting themselves, protecting their establishments. It's hard to protect everyone in that area, and they don't have the resources, either".
Michael Youash, project director for the Washington-based Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project, which advocates on behalf of Iraqi religious minorities, says the United States has not done enough to defend minority rights in Iraq even though many of the smaller religious groups supported the US-led overthrow of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
"America has shown with abundant clarity that it's not willing to lift a finger on this issue," he said.
Christians from Mosul and other parts of Iraq such as Baghdad have fled in droves to the Nineveh Plains, which many Assyrians consider their homeland. There are other minority groups - Turkoman, Yazidis and Shabaks - living in this area, which consists of the Tel Kaif, al-Hamdaniya and al-Shikhan districts to the southeast, east and north of Mosul. The area borders on the Dohuk and Erbil provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The largely agrarian plains have remained fairly safe for Christians and other minorities. They are partially controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, KDP, which is dominant in Erbil and Dohuk.
Assyrians claim the Kurdish government and the KDP have discriminated against them, including confiscating land and disenfranchising Christian voters in the 2005 elections. The Kurdish government would like to incorporate much of the Nineveh Plain into its area of rule, but many residents want to create a special administrative area of their own there.
"There isn't necessarily a special solution for Christians, because any solution needs to address all political, security and economic concerns through Iraq," said the human rights activist. "But Christians want their own autonomous region with the Shabak and the Yazidis in the Nineveh Plains."
Youash agreed, saying,"This is what's needed to save these people."
Advocates for a special territory run by minorities on the Nineveh Plains cite the Iraqi constitution, which guarantees administrative rights for minorities such as Turkoman, Chaldeans and Assyrians.
IWPR correspondent Sahar al-Haideri was murdered in Mosul, her home city, in June. IWPR Middle East editor Tiare Rath and an IWPR correspondent who did not want to be identified contributed additional material to this report.
Institute of Peace and War Reporting
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Spectre of Vietnam haunts Iraq
Ira Chernus
There used to be one word in the White House speechwriting shop that was absolutely taboo: Vietnam. The president was not even allowed to say it in a whisper.
Now, in a daring reversal, the White House wordsmiths have written a presidential speech that puts Vietnam in front and centre. A gamble that big is a sure sign of desperation.
At first glance, it's a gamble the administration seems certain to lose. Peace activists started saying "Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam" back when they were just a lunatic fringe. Now that it's respectable to oppose the Iraq war, Democratic politicians constantly repeat the refrain: Vietnam taught us the folly of persisting in a war we can't win. We can't be foolish enough to make the same mistake again. With that view so widespread, it seems strange that Bush's speechwriters would want anyone to think, much less talk, about Vietnam.
But if you are betting that the administration is bound to lose this gamble, don't put down more than you can afford to part with. The Republicans are showing an uncanny ability to control the public debate. Remember just a couple of months ago, when it was Democratic Party gospel that this was indeed a war we couldn't win? Somehow the gospel is being rewritten. As the Washington Post reports, the Democratic party line now says that we are indeed "making progress" on the military front. Our troops are doing a superb job. It's just those incompetent Iraqi politicians - looking for "power, revenge, and personal advantage," Hillary Clinton says - who are blocking the path to a glorious victory.
The turnaround isn't really so mysterious. The administration and the Pentagon PR machines have been working overtime to flood us with good news from Anbar province and other such good news places. If they can rewrite reality in today's Iraq, why not in yesterday's Vietnam and Cambodia? And if they can rewrite the military reality in Iraq so successfully, who's to say they won't have the same luck rewriting the political reality by the time Congress votes on funding the war?
But this still leaves the question: Why do so many people believe their good news? Why do Democrats at the highest level feel compelled to parrot the administration's line? Part of the answer lies in a parallel between Vietnam and Iraq that doesn't get much attention, though it's among the most important of all.
Long ago, historians of the Vietnam War noted that the intense debate about the war that gripped America rarely made much reference to the suffering of the Vietnamese people. Only "peaceniks" on the far left paid much attention to the two million or more Vietnamese who died, to the corpses and torched villages and napalmed children that were the living - and dying - reality of the war. In the mainstream, where the "serious" discussion unfolded, the only question that mattered was: What is this war doing to the USA? Is it to our benefit to keep on fighting, or are we better off withdrawing?
For most Americans, Vietnam was merely a backdrop to the great dramatic conflict that gripped the United States. The heroes and villains, and the victims, in the drama were the Americans who supported and opposed the war. The Vietnamese, if they were seen at all, were merely extras with brief walk-on roles. They never got to speak, never got to tell their stories or say what they thought about the war. (This was also the case in most American movies about Vietnam.)
Now we are seeing much the same scenario played out again. Only this time it's Iraq that forms the backdrop to the great American drama, much like those old Wild West shows, where a curtain painted to look like a dusty main street, formed the backdrop for the big showdown.
Is it Bush and Cheney or their antiwar critics who are wearing the white hats? That's for you to decide. In either case, political leaders and the mainstream media make it clear that you are deciding for a particular vision of what America is all about, what makes America great, and what direction America should take in the future. What happens to the people of Iraq is mentioned only in passing, if at all.
Sad to say, this is probably a fairly accurate reflection of the US public opinion. Most people here don't care too much what happened to the people of Vietnam or what is happening to the people of Iraq. A recent poll showed that the average American thinks under 10,000 Iraqi civilians have died in this war - a vast underestimate. More importantly, the number of Iraqi dead scarcely figures into the public debate. As with the Vietnam War, it's all about what is happening to us.
That is why Bush's speechwriters could take the gamble of raising the specter of Vietnam, and why they may very well win. Since the war was turned into a fictional drama, few people know, or care, what really happened in Vietnam. Therefore, it's easy to change the story around. Few can refute Bush's absurd version, in which the forecast "bloodbath" supposedly actually happened, and the U.S. withdrawal triggered the Khmer Rouge outrages in Cambodia.
So it all boils down to who can tell a better story about Vietnam and Iraq. A story isn't better because it's closer to the empirical facts. A story is better because it is yields a bigger emotional payoff: more gripping, more inspiring, more comforting, more flattering to our side, more confirming of what we believe.
On all those counts, the yarn Bush is spinning could easily prove a winner. It says that we were close to winning in Vietnam. But then the antiwar "cut and run" crowd snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. That let loose a bloody tide of chaos that engulfed Southeast Asia, humiliated the US, and emboldened the terrorists, who now want to make Iraq a home base from which to launch their next attack upon us. But we have a chance to right all those wrongs - to stem the tide of chaos, regain our pride, crush the terrorists, keep our children safe, and show what America is really made of - if only we have the courage to fight for God's truth.
Do the Democrats and antiwar forces have a story to tell that's any better, or even nearly as good? I wonder. It's a tall order. Already it looks like Bush's story about good military news from Iraq is gaining converts rapidly. That's why the Democrats are scampering to join the "me too" chorus. But the antiwar side cannot win this showdown by trying to outdo the pro-war side in praising the glories of the US military occupiers. That's only playing the game the Republicans have chosen, because they are confident no one can beat them at it.
The alternative is to refuse to take the administration's new bait. The antiwar movement could refuse to use Iraq as a backdrop and Iraqis as extras in a drama about the trials and tribulations of America. Instead, we could insist that the issue is not about how well our soldiers are doing or what is happening here at home. It's about what is happening in Iraq, where ordinary people like us have been dying and suffering in horrifying numbers ever since we occupied their country. We have no magic button that we can push to end the tragedy now. But we can do our best to refocus the debate on the real terror: the terror endured by the Iraqi people who live under military occupation every day.
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War On Terror And Sin.
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200million more workers by 2015
New challenges from growing
Asia-Pacific labour force
Kanaga Raja
Asia's vast labour force - already estimated at some 1.8 billion workers - is expected to grow by more than 200 million between now and the year 2015, posing new policy challenges to the region's rapidly growing economies, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said.
In its report "Visions for Asia's Decent Work Decade: Sustainable Growth and Jobs to 2015", the ILO said that expanding output would not be enough to create the jobs needed to reduce poverty and the massive informal economy.
There remains "a great deal of serious work to be done" to improve the quality of the jobs that are created and to ensure that the benefits of Asia's future economic growth are more equitably distributed, the report stressed.
"One thing is clear: doing business as usual is not sustainable over the long term," said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia.
"Asia is experiencing unprecedented growth and development. At the same time, vulnerabilities arising from environmental pressures, economic insecurity, shortcomings in governance and unequal income distribution pose a threat to the region's future development."
The report highlights the implications of key drivers of change for policy choices in Asia that could help realize decent work and promote sustainable development, including Asia and the Pacific's growing share of global GDP, favourable demographic trends, growing consumption and increased worker productivity.
The report said that the service sector will be the main source of job creation and by 2015 will become the largest sector, representing about 40.7 per cent of the region's total employment.
The share of industrial employment is expected to increase from 23.1per cent in 2006 to 29.4per cent in 2015, while the share of agricultural employment is projected to decline from 42.6 per cent to 29.4 per cent between 2006 and 2015.
Between 2006 and 2015, total employment in agriculture is projected to contract by nearly 160 million, with employment in industry and services sectors expanding by 172 million and 198 million, respectively.
The report also identified some major challenges requiring significant attention in the coming years to ensure social and environmental sustainability.
Despite a decline by some 123 million since 1996 in the number of working poor living on less than $2 per person per day, over 1 billion, or 61.9 per cent of the region's workforce, were still working in the informal economy, with little or no social protection and often in low-productivity jobs.
While this share has dropped from 67.2 per cent a decade earlier, it is not likely that there will be a major reduction in the relative size of the informal economy by 2015, said the report.
The report noted that between 2000 and 2006, real GDP growth in the Asia-Pacific region surged at an average annual rate of 6.3%, compared with growth of 3.1% in the rest of the world.
In terms of employment generation, economic growth in recent years has been generally less "employment-intensive" in many Asian countries as compared to the situation that existed in the 1990s.
For instance, in Asia-Pacific as a whole, employment grew at an average annual rate of less than 1.6 per cent between 2001 and 2006, compared with slightly more than 1.7 per cent between 1991 and 1996. This occurred despite more rapid GDP growth in the latter period (6.8per cent versus 6.4 per cent).
Yet, much of this change is due to declining population and labour force growth, together with a shift away from labour-intensive agriculture to services and more export-oriented, capital-intensive manufacturing.
The report paints a very sombre picture with regards to the question of whether the jobs being created in Asia are of sufficient quality and whether decent work is being realised in the region.
It said that an estimated 61.9 per cent of the region's workforce still works in the informal economy, with little or no social protection, and often in low-productivity jobs which do not guarantee a decent income. While this share has dropped from 67.2 per cent a decade earlier, more than a billion of the region's workers are still engaged in the informal economy.
In terms of poverty, approximately 908 million of the region's workers - 51.9 per cent of the region's total workforce - live on less than $2 per day, with 308 million of these living in extreme poverty on less than $1 per day. But poverty has declined since 1996, with the number of working poor living on $2 per day falling by 123 million and the $1 per day number shrinking by 148 million.
Despite this progress, said the report, the still large number of working poor indicates that millions of workers have clearly been unable to obtain tangible benefits from the region's favourable economic performance.
The report also noted that there has in recent years been a clear recognition that achieving the goal of increased economic growth rates and higher per-capita GDP will not ensure sustainable development.
Equally, future prospects for successful and sustainable development are likely to be compromised if growth is achieved at the expense of environmental degradation, unsustainable energy use, increased inequalities and social instability, and poverty reduction efforts.
Setting aside, for the moment, the broader issue of social and environmental sustainability, the report said that Asia's potential for robust economic growth in the coming decade remains great.
As a whole, if Asia continues to grow at its historical rate of 4.5 per cent to 4.7 per cent, it is expected to account for a growing share of global GDP, up from 24.7 per cent to around 30 per cent to 31per cent in 2020.
The report however highlighted several challenges facing the region including an ageing labour force, increasing migration and rising income inequalities between extreme poor and other workers, as well as between rural and urban workers.
It said that Asia's immense population, which reached 3.74 billion in 2006 and accounts for approximately 57 per cent of the world's total, is projected to slow down from an average annual rate of 1.4 per cent registered between 1990 and 2006 to 1per cent annually between 2006 and 2015. Yet, this will still result in an increase of 365 million people in the region between 2006 and 2015.
At the end of the decade, there will be a marked increase in the share of the population ages 65 and above in every region, with the largest increases taking place in the developed economies (from 20.4per cent to 26.4 per cent), and East Asia where more than 1 in 10 people will be over 65 years old in 2015, up from 1 in 12.
Asia's labour force growth is projected to slow down from the average annual rate of 1.6 per cent experienced between 1996 and 2006 to 1.3 per cent annually between 2006 and 2015.
This rate of growth will add an estimated 221 million, or 12.1 per cent, to the region's current labour force between 2006 and 2015. This projection implies that about 55 per cent of the world's labour force growth during this period will come from the Asia-Pacific region.
The most rapid increases in the labour force will be in those countries with the highest numbers of working poor and the largest informal economies, for example, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Pakistan, Timor Leste, Laos, the Philippines and some Pacific Island countries.
These countries will face enormous labour supply pressure, and their greatest challenge will be to create sufficient numbers of decent and productive jobs.
- Third World Network Features
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ISLAMABAD DIARY
Jonaid Iqbal
There is a widespread rumour here. Written in a mass-circulated newspaper by a senior journalist, it says that top advisers of President Musharraf have asked the President to apply the Minus -2 formula in Pakistan and take Benazir Bhutto (BB) and Nawaz Sharif out of the electoral contest quite like as it has been done by the army-backed Caretaker Government in Bangladesh.
Don't know, how true that is. Why should President's Advisers and BB have met at Dubai, if every thing they discussed was going to be over soon?
The London meeting between the President's team and BB was scuttled to be resumed in Dubai on Tuesday; and that threw most people in quandary, including Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the ruling party (PML-Q) President.
Chaudhry Sahib has now been saying that only 1 (one) per cent progress had been made after the London meeting. At the same time he has been feeling left out from the exasperated statement that he would not like to be made a cat paw in the spiralling game of politics, now going on between President Musharraf and the PPP.
However, the President has assured Chaudhry not to fear. The arrangement reached (?) with PPP would have no adverse effect on PML-Q.
Nawaz's popularity
This has introduced another element in the political game. If the PML-Q and PPP harangue together at the stands who would they pick on? Nawaz Sharif! But right now, Sharif enjoys the highest popularity over all other political personalities in Pakistan, including Pervez Musharraf or BB.
Nawaz Sharif is still keen on landing at Islamabad on Sept 10 - and the target date has not been changed, according to Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan of PML-N.
Here, we have another dramatic intervention in the form of a report circulated from Riyadh by the SPA news agency that "Nawaz ought to keep word on exile," causing an embarrassment for the leader, who after receiving Supreme Court ruling that he enjoys an inalienable right to come home. But the SPA report is perhaps saying in so many words that the Saudis understand the situation, but do not appreciate breach of trust.
There is a shade of political opinion here that the drama of the negotiations - between President and BB - had been prolonged to deny homecoming to Nawaz Sharif, the man out to yank President Musharraf out of power. All this was going on while the government was trying to wring some kind of statement from Saudi Arabia to poke a spoke on Sharif's homecoming plan, and to deny him a large public reception when he arrives.
One of the strong pillars of the highway tilted a number of inches displacing the balance, causing the flyover to come crashing down, killing eight people, crushing cars on which it fell. Quite a few people see the crash of the flyover as symbolic of the crash of President's eight stint years in office, although he has said that he won't let his eight year's work go down hill, hardly remembering the old adage, what goes must come down, some time at least.
Then on Tuesday we were stunned with two suicide bomb attacks, killing 31 and injuring 62, in Rawalpindi, sister city adjoining the federal capital.
The suicide bomb attacks happened near the vicinity of the army headquarters. One paper says the attack was targeted on the Inter Services Intelligence. It might be mentioned that the ISI chief was on the President's team that talked to Benazir in London. However, an Interior Ministry spokesman, Brig. (Retd.) Javed Iqbal Cheema has dubbed the report as nuisance.
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Rajapaksa says peace is not far away
Jehan Perera in Colombo
Recently President Rajapaksa emphatically said, "I think peace is possible in the near future. Of course, with this dispute dragging with more than two decades of violent conflict, there can be a question of what is meant by the near future. But I think peace is not far away. My government is consciously working towards peace. I think it can be achieved sooner than many think it may be possible.
The Sri Lankan government has justified its military operations in the Silavathurai area of the north as being in the nature of a humanitarian operation. This is similar to the language used by the government a year ago when it sent in the army to open the irrigation sluice gates at Mavil Aru that had been shut by the LTTE. On that occasion the government had reason to be concerned about the fate of around 15,000 people whose livelihoods were affected by the LTTE blockade. In the case of Silavathurai the government's stated rationale is the need to rescue about 6000 people from LTTE rule. The LTTE's behaviour gives a measure of credibility to the government's justification for expanding the theatre of war.
Reports emanating from the LTTE-controlled areas of the north, and corroborated by international human rights organizations, speak of forced conscription by the LTTE. All families are required to provide one family member to the LTTE. Not even the traditional deference paid by Tamil society to education is holding back the LTTE at this time. High school children are being denied the right to pursue their university studies, but instead have to join the LTTE if the family has no one else to send. Human rights violations of this nature that keep the LTTE on the banned list of international terrorist organizations are useful to the government when it seeks to justify its military operations.
Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has stated that the government will continue to prosecute the war against the LTTE in the north in the same manner as it did with success in the east. One of the salient features of the eastern military operations that is being repeated in the northern campaign would be the utilization of the air force to bomb LTTE targets and destroy them. Such a bombing campaign would, at the same time, induce the civilian population to flee those areas to escape the collateral damage which makes it easier for the army to move in and occupy those areas. Another salient feature would be relatively small scale precision ground strikes against LTTE targets, rather than the large scale movement of men and material.
There are several advantages that accrue to the government by following a strategy of low intensity warfare. The first is that it minimizes the loss of military personnel unlike in the case of large scale offensives that have often seen a large number of casualties going up to several hundred, in a single day's fighting. Such heavy losses on the military battlefield can hasten discontent in the Rajapaksa government's rural strongholds from where the bulk of the military and its electoral support is drawn. On the other hand, a low intensity war, with few casualties, as in the case of the eastern campaign, could continue to sustain support for the government in the rural areas.
A second advantage to the government is that a low intensity war promises to be longer rather than shorter in duration. Being embroiled in a patriotic war can be a life support system to a government that is proving unable to deliver economic benefits to the people due to its corruption and inefficiency. An electorate that might wish to throw out a government that is failing so badly to resolve their economic problems could be induced to be more patient in the context of war. The prevalence of war and the possibility of terrorist attack also give more legitimacy to strong arm tactics of the government that are intended to suppress democratic freedoms for the sake of security.
No escalation
This analysis suggests that, at least in the current context, the government will not wish to escalate the current military offensives in the north to any significant degree. The military offensives are likely to be restricted to specific areas of the north, such as Silavathurai, and not widen or intensify into full scale war. The government has learnt from the past that large scale military offensives are politically difficult to sustain due to the high cost factor, both in terms of military casualties and economic cost. This may explain the government's oft repeated position that the current phase of war is likely to continue for two to three years.
On the other hand, the war strategy of the government has taken its greatest toll on the very people whom the government claims to wish to liberate and rescue from the LTTE. The aftermath of the eastern military operations shows that the eviction of the LTTE has not brought normalcy back to the lives of the people of the east. During the government's military offensives, large numbers of them had to flee their homes and end up in refugee camps for displaced persons. Tens of thousands have yet to be resettled, and tens of thousands find that their homes are either destroyed or damaged beyond their capacity to repair. In addition, with the threat of LTTE infiltration back into those areas still high, the east continues to be highly militarized and life is insecure for the people.
Unfortunately, the current military operations in the north that are aimed at rescuing the people from the LTTE are unlikely to yield anything more positive than they have in the east. The likely scenario is the displacement of thousands of people from their homes, the destruction of many homes, and limited government efforts at reconstruction. The Silavathurai campaign in the north has already displaced over a thousand people. In addition, keeping the newly recaptured territories secure from LTTE infiltration will pose enormous logistical difficulties, and will require a heavy military presence that will continue to make life insecure for the people.
But tragically, so long as the majority of people accept the logic that the LTTE has no genuine interest in a negotiated peace settlement within the framework of one country, those who can show military success against it will be at an advantage over those who advocate anything different. The only way in which this logic can be changed is for the LTTE to demonstrate that they are serious about being prepared to negotiate a peaceful settlement that will ensure the rights of the Tamil people within a united Sri Lanka.
Marga study
A recent study by Dr Godfrey Gunatilleke and Ms Myrtle Perera of the Marga Institute in collaboration with the National Peace Council has brought out the contradictions, inconsistencies and ambivalent attitudes towards the LTTE, the ethnic conflict and its solution, and yet also the potential for generating popular support for a political solution. The deliberative poll seeks to ascertain how the public would respond if they were better informed and had a better understanding of the issues that are the subject of the survey. Such deliberative polls have been carried out in Northern Ireland to help with the peace process. The majority of respondents from this deliberative poll, which was carried out in 18 of the country's 25 administrative districts (excluding the north and including only Ampara from the east) would be reflective of Sinhalese and Muslim opinion.
According to the Marga study, 77 percent of the respondents think that the government needs to act on the basis that the LTTE will not give up their aim of an independent state of Tamil Eelam, and will not enter the democratic process. This leads as many as 84 percent of the respondents to agree that the government should concentrate on militarily defeating the LTTE and recapturing all the territory controlled by the LTTE. But an even greater proportion amounting to 89 percent believe that the LTTE will continue as a guerilla force and be a threat to peace and security even after suffering a comprehensive military defeat. But the respondents did not want the war to continue, with 99 percent of them agreeing that the prevailing state of war should be ended as early as possible and security restored in all parts of the country.
The bleak assessment of the vast majority of people in the efficacy of a military solution leads most of them amounting to 72 percent to conclude that the best guarantee of lasting peace is a political solution that all communities can accept and that includes the LTTE in a negotiated settlement in which they give up their demand for Tamil Eelam and enter into a multi-party democratic system. This would be the ideal solution, and implies that the people expect the government to put forward a political package to resolve the fundamentals of the ethnic conflict. Only a small proportion, less than 10 percent, rejected any form of devolution, including the existing provincial council system. The vast majority were in support of some form of devolution of power. As many as 95 percent agreed that the political solution should be just and fair to all communities and it should guarantee equal rights to all citizens in all parts of the country regardless of ethnicity or religion.
In summary, the Marga study showed that there is a large measure of agreement amongst the people on what has to be done to lead to sustainable peace. They may not believe that the LTTE can be brought into a political solution, but they wish they could. This desire of the people imposes an obligation on the LTTE to stop being ambivalent and prevaricating on the issue of a political solution within the framework of a united country. Phrases such as being prepared to consider a "viable alternative" to Tamil Eelam and being prepared to "explore" a federal solution to the ethnic conflict have to give way to more concrete solutions that the LTTE shows that they are amenable to. The readiness of 72 percent of the Sinhalese and Muslim respondents to envisage a future in which the LTTE is part and parcel of a restructured Sri Lankan polity reveals the space that is available for arriving at a political settlement that has public backing.
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