The Three Theatres of the Arab World
Saeed Naqvi
Arab spring was always a media short hand. After spending some time in the region, I have in my focus three distinct dramas being played out.
From North Africa – Tunis, Egypt – to Jordan and Syria is one theatre. This is the arena of positive evolution.
Then there is the GCC theatre. Saudi Arabia is the spider in this web, its tentacles deep in Bahrain and Yemen, two countries it shares border with.
The third is something of a solo number with Muammar Qaddafi dancing between minefields being inexpertly laid by an Anglo-French pair of plotters. The Americans, having had their fingers burnt in Iraq, are clearly keen not to be seen conferring martyrdom on another Arab despot.
In an excellent interview with a journalist who specializes in Africa, Fareed Zakaria conclusively established Qaddafi’s immense popularity with sub Saharan Africa where people are collecting donations to help Qaddafi. Surely slaughterers of their citizens are made of harsher stuff.
Little wonder African leaders have been jointly pleading with the international community not to apply UNSC resolution 1973, as a means to advance Western interests.
The Anglo-French desire to dress up their designs with altruism, is just not selling. The Arab public is taking the Anglo-French propaganda with large doses of salt. “Foreigners have entered my house in Mesrata”, says Rafiq Hamadi in Baghdad, “and When I shoot them, they run to the media with the story that I am ‘slaughtering’ my people!”
In the short term, it appears Libya will be divided between East and West. The world, including the Arab public and 20 million Muslims in Europe will see the partitioning of the country for what it is: not to stop the “slaughter” of the innocents but for Libya’s light crude for which European refineries are specially geared.
Bahrain, meanwhile, has been an avoidable tragedy. Avoidable, because the Americans very nearly navigated an agreement between the Crown Prince and the opposition. But hardliners in Riyadh and Manama scuttled it.
Events in Bahrain deserve to be understood because they will resonate for a while. A 37 km causeway links Dammam headquarters of Saudi Arabia’s exclusive oil bearing eastern province which also happens to be a Shia majority region. In fact, in one of the districts, Qatif, the Shia population is over 90 percent.
Ever since the Ayatullahs came to power in Teheran in 1979, the Saudi state has been firm in handling Shia restiveness in the province, real or imagined. Since King Abdullah’s benign rule, Moharram processions and other Shia practices have been tolerated. But vigilance is as total as can be in a police state.
Across the causeway, Bahrain is, by comparison, a haven of openness except that political freedoms are cleverly circumscribed. A large segment of Bahrain’s 1.5 million population are expatriate.
Nearly seventy percent of the 8,00,000 Bahrainis happen to be Shias. The rulers, however, follow a strict Sunni school. For over 200 years the Khalifa family have been Emirs of Bahrain.
A decade ago Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa declared himself King. An Emir, he thought, had colonial connotations. Kingship would lend itself to the possibility of a “constitutional monarchy”. Along with Kingship, almost in sequence, comes a Crown Prince – in this case Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.
King Hamad, ever since he ascended the throne has had his uncle, Khalifa Ibn Salman al Khalifa as Prime Minister under whom, by popular consent, corruption has flourished as it has elsewhere in the Arab world. He was one of the targets of recent demonstrations.
Infection of popular protest from Tunisia and Egypt arrived in Bahrain and youngsters, Shias and Sunnis, began to collect at Pearl Square for peaceful demonstrations. They even mounted Mahatma Gandhi posters.
The, police largely Pakistani, cracked down hard. In the ranks of the protesters there was some confusion. Did they want freedoms? A free press? Participatory democracy? Constitutional monarchy? or that the Kahlifas must flee?
American special envoy, Jeffery Feltman, the Crown Prince and moderate Shia leader Shaikh Ali Salman secretly met hand hammered out a compromise agreement.
The Prime Minister, seeing his power recede, agreed to Saudi Interior Security chief Prince Naif’s hard line. No quarter should be given to the Shias who will be the staging post for Iran. Brutality on the Shias was unleashed. And now the Crown Prince and the Prime Minister are probably in rival camps. Obviously the story is not yet over.
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Monday, April 25, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Henry Higgins And Lucknow’s Clear Speech
Henry Higgins And Lucknow’s Clear Speech
Saeed Naqvi
“Language most reveals a man; speak that I may see thee”. Says Ben Johnson. Can you spot a man from Lucknow on this basis? You could in the 60s.
Professor of Phonetics, Henry Higgins, takes up a unique challenge. Higgins believes impeccable speech determines class. With his phonetic skills he will be able to coach a bedraggled Eliza Doolittle to pass off as a duchess. He will transform her slanted “raain in Spaain” into “rain in Spain”. With Higgins’s persistence, Eliza develops the speech which superficially elevates her class. But only superficially.
You can take Eliza out of her squalor but the culture which that squalor breeds cannot be expelled from Eliza. At a critical moment, the “real” Eliza reveals her true self; she reverts to her cockney accent.
But why am I talking about Henry Higgins? The subject came up during a discussion on Urdu diction, a discussion which generally leads to the late, lamented Lucknow!
It is clear as daylight that Urdu varies in intonations, region to region. This is so because it picks up words and accents in the region where it is spoken.
Urdu’s first poet with his own collection of verse, Quli Qutub Shah, builder of Charminar, has a clear Telugu lilt in his diction. On many occasions “Q” becomes “kh” and so on.
The occasional Avadhi or Lucknowi tone one hears in Hyderabad is largely an importation. The senior bureaucracy around the Nizam’s court was imported from among the Saiyyids of Avadh – Bilgramis and Jungs, for instance.
In Punjab too, where the synthesis of various dialects with Persian and Arabic predates the Deccan, the spoken Urdu has an unmistakable Punjabi stamp.
Two of the greatest poets of Urdu in the 20th century, Iqbal and Faiz, happen to be Punjabis. But their eminence as poets does not by any means place them on the highest pedestal of Urdu diction. Mastery of diction, the intricate filigree of sound, arrangement of words, their cadence, in brief, the craft of Urdu, remained a close preserve of Lucknow and its Avadh environs.
It is generally not recognized that Urdu speech, its phonetic magic, was at its urbane best with Kashmiri Pandits, followed by a limited number of Kayasthas. The adjective “Urbane” has been used advisedly in this context: Kashmiri Pandits had no rural colloquialisms in their speech.
Since Lucknow was in some instances a camp town for Avadh’s rural elite, there was an automatic accrual of a certain rural lyric in their speech.
As the name suggests, Josh Malihabadi was from Malihabad, a Qasbah about 20 kms from Lucknow. Josh epitomizes Lucknow but his diction does not remain untouched by the flavour of Malihabad countryside.
How would Henry Higgins evaluate Faiz and Josh as speakers of Urdu as she is spoke? His class characterization would not work. In their respective environments of Lahore and Lucknow, both represented elites.
In the eloquence and magic of Urdu sound, Josh would dominate because he embodied Lucknow speech. I am talking only of the spoken word, mind you.
The remarkable fact about Lucknow speech was that it operated on principles way beyond Henry Higgins’ class framework. Ofcourse Lucknow was class ridden; it was quintessentially feudal. But good speech cut across class barriers. Stories of the horse carriage or the tongawallah’s suble satire at the miserly passenger are not apocryphal.
“After a day in your scintillating service, what recompense?”
“One rupee”
“Softy, Sir, the horse understands.”
The spell that this speech cast on Bollywood was enormous. Actors like Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor and Ashok Kumar rooted in linguistic cultures as varied as Pushto and Bengali, had to speak the “Lucknow speech” to be accepted as romantic heroes. Crash course would not do as in the case of Eliza Doolittle. Assimilation of Ganga-Jamni or composite culture which Urdu represented ensured a permanent displacement of an earlier linguistic entity by a new one.
Bollywood is a burgeoning industry and yet no hero can break into it unless he follows that singular law of romance: speech from Lucknow or Avadh. This explains Amitabh Bachchan’s continued success – his diction.
Without offending my Hindi purists, it is a combination of Urdu and Bollywood which has welded the nation into the acceptable Hindustani, the very essence of our composite culture.
When BBC Hindi Service was launched in the 50s, do you know the man chosen to head the service?
Aale Hasan, a thoroughbred representative of the composite culture which is both Urdu and Hindi – and its epicenter is Lucknow.
Yes, it does feel nice when Urdu/Hindi speakers anywhere ask with barely disguised admiration: “are you from Lucknow?”
# # # # # #
Saeed Naqvi
“Language most reveals a man; speak that I may see thee”. Says Ben Johnson. Can you spot a man from Lucknow on this basis? You could in the 60s.
Professor of Phonetics, Henry Higgins, takes up a unique challenge. Higgins believes impeccable speech determines class. With his phonetic skills he will be able to coach a bedraggled Eliza Doolittle to pass off as a duchess. He will transform her slanted “raain in Spaain” into “rain in Spain”. With Higgins’s persistence, Eliza develops the speech which superficially elevates her class. But only superficially.
You can take Eliza out of her squalor but the culture which that squalor breeds cannot be expelled from Eliza. At a critical moment, the “real” Eliza reveals her true self; she reverts to her cockney accent.
But why am I talking about Henry Higgins? The subject came up during a discussion on Urdu diction, a discussion which generally leads to the late, lamented Lucknow!
It is clear as daylight that Urdu varies in intonations, region to region. This is so because it picks up words and accents in the region where it is spoken.
Urdu’s first poet with his own collection of verse, Quli Qutub Shah, builder of Charminar, has a clear Telugu lilt in his diction. On many occasions “Q” becomes “kh” and so on.
The occasional Avadhi or Lucknowi tone one hears in Hyderabad is largely an importation. The senior bureaucracy around the Nizam’s court was imported from among the Saiyyids of Avadh – Bilgramis and Jungs, for instance.
In Punjab too, where the synthesis of various dialects with Persian and Arabic predates the Deccan, the spoken Urdu has an unmistakable Punjabi stamp.
Two of the greatest poets of Urdu in the 20th century, Iqbal and Faiz, happen to be Punjabis. But their eminence as poets does not by any means place them on the highest pedestal of Urdu diction. Mastery of diction, the intricate filigree of sound, arrangement of words, their cadence, in brief, the craft of Urdu, remained a close preserve of Lucknow and its Avadh environs.
It is generally not recognized that Urdu speech, its phonetic magic, was at its urbane best with Kashmiri Pandits, followed by a limited number of Kayasthas. The adjective “Urbane” has been used advisedly in this context: Kashmiri Pandits had no rural colloquialisms in their speech.
Since Lucknow was in some instances a camp town for Avadh’s rural elite, there was an automatic accrual of a certain rural lyric in their speech.
As the name suggests, Josh Malihabadi was from Malihabad, a Qasbah about 20 kms from Lucknow. Josh epitomizes Lucknow but his diction does not remain untouched by the flavour of Malihabad countryside.
How would Henry Higgins evaluate Faiz and Josh as speakers of Urdu as she is spoke? His class characterization would not work. In their respective environments of Lahore and Lucknow, both represented elites.
In the eloquence and magic of Urdu sound, Josh would dominate because he embodied Lucknow speech. I am talking only of the spoken word, mind you.
The remarkable fact about Lucknow speech was that it operated on principles way beyond Henry Higgins’ class framework. Ofcourse Lucknow was class ridden; it was quintessentially feudal. But good speech cut across class barriers. Stories of the horse carriage or the tongawallah’s suble satire at the miserly passenger are not apocryphal.
“After a day in your scintillating service, what recompense?”
“One rupee”
“Softy, Sir, the horse understands.”
The spell that this speech cast on Bollywood was enormous. Actors like Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor and Ashok Kumar rooted in linguistic cultures as varied as Pushto and Bengali, had to speak the “Lucknow speech” to be accepted as romantic heroes. Crash course would not do as in the case of Eliza Doolittle. Assimilation of Ganga-Jamni or composite culture which Urdu represented ensured a permanent displacement of an earlier linguistic entity by a new one.
Bollywood is a burgeoning industry and yet no hero can break into it unless he follows that singular law of romance: speech from Lucknow or Avadh. This explains Amitabh Bachchan’s continued success – his diction.
Without offending my Hindi purists, it is a combination of Urdu and Bollywood which has welded the nation into the acceptable Hindustani, the very essence of our composite culture.
When BBC Hindi Service was launched in the 50s, do you know the man chosen to head the service?
Aale Hasan, a thoroughbred representative of the composite culture which is both Urdu and Hindi – and its epicenter is Lucknow.
Yes, it does feel nice when Urdu/Hindi speakers anywhere ask with barely disguised admiration: “are you from Lucknow?”
# # # # # #
Monday, April 11, 2011
After Libya, Give me BBC Radio Anyday
After Libya, Give me BBC Radio Anyday
Saeed Naqvi
A book on war correspondents by my friend Philip Knightley has a pithy title: First Casualty. When wars break out, the First Casualty is truth. The war correspondent becomes the myth maker, an integral part of the war effort.
Fair enough. If the US, Britain and France are at war, say, in Libya, who am I to object to their journalists becoming drumbeaters. The problem arises when that customized coverage becomes the only source of information for the intellectually colonized world.
I myself learnt the hard way that scooping against the national purpose in a war is sacrilege. Sasthi Brata, author of My God Died Young and Confessions of an Indian Woman Eater, walked into my cubicle at The Statesman in New Delhi, and tossed in my direction two type written documents, about 2,000 (two thousand) words each, looking as sinister as only he can look. “Publish these if you have the b….ls.” I was editor of the paper’s Sunday Magazine. Bangladesh was being liberated. Sasthi had sneaked into what was then East Pakistan and given graphic accounts of Indian participation in the war. I published it.
Next morning the Hoogli, Chowringhee Square, Statesman House were in a manner of speaking, all ablaze. What should be done about the more explosive second part due for publication next week? What better way to stop the leak than sink the ship? Sunday Magazine was instantly discontinued. When it resumed after a few months, I was not its editor.
After Sasthi Brata’s alleged recklessness had been tamed, the “war effort” the Indian media joined remained a local affair. It did not inform or shape opinion beyond India. The Nixon-Kissinger duet continued to hate Indira Gandhi till the very end, quite oblivious of the Indian media’s extended patriotic slants.
The situation now is totally different because all perceptions of an event like Libya are dominated by the global media inaugurated by CNN’s Peter Arnett from the terrace of Al Rashied hotel in Baghdad during operation Desert Storm. This one event altered the global media hierarchy.
Until Desert Storm, BBC radio was by far the most credible and influential news source anywhere in the world. I remember Nelson Mandela’s first day out of prison in Archbishop Tutu’s house in Cape Town. Religiously, every hour, he would bend to pick up a transistor he kept by the wall, listening to BBC World Service.
There was always a lull in the continuous, sputtering sound of small arms fire during the Sierra Leone war, at specific hours when BBC Africa Calling was broadcast.
During an election campaign in Mahmudabad, UP, Mark Tully and Waqar Ahmad were startled by an elderly man, relaxing on a cot under a mango tree, when he refused to divulge his voting intentions. “I will first listen the BBC” he said “then make up my mind”.
That was the credibility of BBC radio which its TV avatar has willfully surrendered by constantly dissembling in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now in Libya.
Suddenly, a battery of the BBC’s TV stars, led by Liz Ducet, materialize along the stretch from the Egyptian border to Benghazi and beyond. You see men in jeans making V signs from a ramshackle station wagon. The reporter describes these as “advancing” rebels.
The clever Miss Ducet scoots from the implausible visuals, to keep her credibility for another invasion, armed intervention.
Meanwhile, John Simpson appears in what he says is Tripoli. No-fly-zone, regime change, arm the rebels, but supposing they are Al Qaeda, NATO air strikes killing civilians and so on, are parallel stories.
But an undeterred Mister Simpson, his neck at a perpetual tilt, dons a plausible manner: “Well, to be honest, the picture here, I doubt if anyone can, the rebels too…”, he continues, even as focus shifts to Ivory Coast until the props in Libya are ready to make fireworks more telegenic. Only last Monday a CIA operative with a satellite phone and chests full of money is rumoured to have reached Benghazi. CNN will now certainly revert to Libya and BBC will follow.
That’s the BBC for you in a war no one is clear about. Oh! Give me BBC radio any day.
# # # # # #
Saeed Naqvi
A book on war correspondents by my friend Philip Knightley has a pithy title: First Casualty. When wars break out, the First Casualty is truth. The war correspondent becomes the myth maker, an integral part of the war effort.
Fair enough. If the US, Britain and France are at war, say, in Libya, who am I to object to their journalists becoming drumbeaters. The problem arises when that customized coverage becomes the only source of information for the intellectually colonized world.
I myself learnt the hard way that scooping against the national purpose in a war is sacrilege. Sasthi Brata, author of My God Died Young and Confessions of an Indian Woman Eater, walked into my cubicle at The Statesman in New Delhi, and tossed in my direction two type written documents, about 2,000 (two thousand) words each, looking as sinister as only he can look. “Publish these if you have the b….ls.” I was editor of the paper’s Sunday Magazine. Bangladesh was being liberated. Sasthi had sneaked into what was then East Pakistan and given graphic accounts of Indian participation in the war. I published it.
Next morning the Hoogli, Chowringhee Square, Statesman House were in a manner of speaking, all ablaze. What should be done about the more explosive second part due for publication next week? What better way to stop the leak than sink the ship? Sunday Magazine was instantly discontinued. When it resumed after a few months, I was not its editor.
After Sasthi Brata’s alleged recklessness had been tamed, the “war effort” the Indian media joined remained a local affair. It did not inform or shape opinion beyond India. The Nixon-Kissinger duet continued to hate Indira Gandhi till the very end, quite oblivious of the Indian media’s extended patriotic slants.
The situation now is totally different because all perceptions of an event like Libya are dominated by the global media inaugurated by CNN’s Peter Arnett from the terrace of Al Rashied hotel in Baghdad during operation Desert Storm. This one event altered the global media hierarchy.
Until Desert Storm, BBC radio was by far the most credible and influential news source anywhere in the world. I remember Nelson Mandela’s first day out of prison in Archbishop Tutu’s house in Cape Town. Religiously, every hour, he would bend to pick up a transistor he kept by the wall, listening to BBC World Service.
There was always a lull in the continuous, sputtering sound of small arms fire during the Sierra Leone war, at specific hours when BBC Africa Calling was broadcast.
During an election campaign in Mahmudabad, UP, Mark Tully and Waqar Ahmad were startled by an elderly man, relaxing on a cot under a mango tree, when he refused to divulge his voting intentions. “I will first listen the BBC” he said “then make up my mind”.
That was the credibility of BBC radio which its TV avatar has willfully surrendered by constantly dissembling in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now in Libya.
Suddenly, a battery of the BBC’s TV stars, led by Liz Ducet, materialize along the stretch from the Egyptian border to Benghazi and beyond. You see men in jeans making V signs from a ramshackle station wagon. The reporter describes these as “advancing” rebels.
The clever Miss Ducet scoots from the implausible visuals, to keep her credibility for another invasion, armed intervention.
Meanwhile, John Simpson appears in what he says is Tripoli. No-fly-zone, regime change, arm the rebels, but supposing they are Al Qaeda, NATO air strikes killing civilians and so on, are parallel stories.
But an undeterred Mister Simpson, his neck at a perpetual tilt, dons a plausible manner: “Well, to be honest, the picture here, I doubt if anyone can, the rebels too…”, he continues, even as focus shifts to Ivory Coast until the props in Libya are ready to make fireworks more telegenic. Only last Monday a CIA operative with a satellite phone and chests full of money is rumoured to have reached Benghazi. CNN will now certainly revert to Libya and BBC will follow.
That’s the BBC for you in a war no one is clear about. Oh! Give me BBC radio any day.
# # # # # #
Monday, April 4, 2011
Remembering Vajpayee at Manmohan’s Moment in Mohali
Remembering Vajpayee at Manmohan’s Moment in Mohali
Saeed Naqvi
It is easy to overanalyze Mohali, Thimpu, UN General Assembly, Agra and arrive exactly where we had started. When it comes to Indo-Pak relations the devil, sometimes, is not in the detail. It is in the mind – on both sides.
The dossiers on Mumbai, the FBI’s role or non role, reference to Balochistan, Qasab, Aseemanand, etcetera etcetera can, all of them, singly or together, be tossed as the monkey wrench in the wheel. But these are not the reasons for relations being in disrepair.
These niggling details are the stuff that politics feeds on. To amplify the politics of pettiness is the function of the contemporary media in frenetic pursuit of ratings.
Statesmanship consists in rising above the petty politician and the panting, puffing media, to seize upon the moment, something Manmohan Singh is perfectly positioned for. I can see jaws drop: how can the Prime Minister be in a position for anything positive after the continuous mauling at the hands of the opposition through two sessions of Parliament? But we must not forget the Prime Minister too has seen the bruised and the wounded on the other side of the aisle. Who knows, Mohali may turn out to be his moment, provided he can plug his ears for insulation from that section of the media which aims to influence foreign policy by going ballistic, at deafening decibel levels.
Manmohan Singh must take a leaf from the Atal Behari Vajpayee book. Remember how he was stung at Kargil by Pervez Musharraf after his bus journey to Lahore. But he persisted. He was willing to go some distance even at Agra in July 2001; the hardliners in his own party pulled him back.
Remember Agra? Prevez Musharraf at the head of a large rectangular seating arrangement? Seated on three sides are God’s gift to Indian media, including the noisy one mentioned above. One by one they stand up to sing paeans of Musharraf in full throated melody. But, once the summit fails, they press “rewind” and over a period, “unsing” their songs, note by note.
But Agra or no Agra, knowing Vajpayee’s tenacity, I am sure he would soon have picked up the thread and resumed his peace commitment. But, alas, within two months 9/11 happened, providing grist to the hardline mill.
Then, in sequence, came the December 13 attack on Parliament, setting the scene for the February 2002 Gujarat pogrom. The hardliners were on top.
But did that stop Vajpayee from searching for the right opening?
Americans, by now deep in Iraq, began to lobby for Indian troops to administer northern Iraq, the Kurdish area. The armed forces salivated as did those of the BJP who liked the analogy of their looking after a “sector” of Iraq exactly as the “big powers” administered “sectors” of Berlin after the war. Yes, the establishment had all but bitten the bait.
Then on April 9, 2003, Vajpayee watched on TV Saddam Hussain’s statue being pulled down from the square at Palestine hotel. He kept his counsel.
On April 18, on a visit to Srinagar, Vajpayee the statesman, startled the world, most of all, his own party. Eyeball to eyeball confrontation between Indo-Pak armies notwithstanding, he offered his hand of peace to Pakistan. An awesome power has arisen, making regional quarrels a self defeating waste, he said. This led to the January 6, 2004 statement in Islamabad where Pakistan agreed that its territory would not be used against India. Manmohan Singh followed up and went further for peace than any Prime Minister. Then 26/11 happened.
The Vajpayee moment presents itself again. Manmohan can see an incoherent, inconsistent west groping for strategy in Libya. There never was and never will be any altruism in their moves. It is in our self interest to have the best of relations with each and every member of the currently quarrelling west.
But it is in our paramount interest to compose our regional differences, to be able to cope with an unstable, unpredictable and a frightfully self seeking world. Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, by their very presence, provide him with support he needs. The two Home Secretaries have cleared some thicket. There will be road blocks, terror attacks. But a variation on the Biblical dictum says: he who is willing to lose, shall win!
# # # # # #
Saeed Naqvi
It is easy to overanalyze Mohali, Thimpu, UN General Assembly, Agra and arrive exactly where we had started. When it comes to Indo-Pak relations the devil, sometimes, is not in the detail. It is in the mind – on both sides.
The dossiers on Mumbai, the FBI’s role or non role, reference to Balochistan, Qasab, Aseemanand, etcetera etcetera can, all of them, singly or together, be tossed as the monkey wrench in the wheel. But these are not the reasons for relations being in disrepair.
These niggling details are the stuff that politics feeds on. To amplify the politics of pettiness is the function of the contemporary media in frenetic pursuit of ratings.
Statesmanship consists in rising above the petty politician and the panting, puffing media, to seize upon the moment, something Manmohan Singh is perfectly positioned for. I can see jaws drop: how can the Prime Minister be in a position for anything positive after the continuous mauling at the hands of the opposition through two sessions of Parliament? But we must not forget the Prime Minister too has seen the bruised and the wounded on the other side of the aisle. Who knows, Mohali may turn out to be his moment, provided he can plug his ears for insulation from that section of the media which aims to influence foreign policy by going ballistic, at deafening decibel levels.
Manmohan Singh must take a leaf from the Atal Behari Vajpayee book. Remember how he was stung at Kargil by Pervez Musharraf after his bus journey to Lahore. But he persisted. He was willing to go some distance even at Agra in July 2001; the hardliners in his own party pulled him back.
Remember Agra? Prevez Musharraf at the head of a large rectangular seating arrangement? Seated on three sides are God’s gift to Indian media, including the noisy one mentioned above. One by one they stand up to sing paeans of Musharraf in full throated melody. But, once the summit fails, they press “rewind” and over a period, “unsing” their songs, note by note.
But Agra or no Agra, knowing Vajpayee’s tenacity, I am sure he would soon have picked up the thread and resumed his peace commitment. But, alas, within two months 9/11 happened, providing grist to the hardline mill.
Then, in sequence, came the December 13 attack on Parliament, setting the scene for the February 2002 Gujarat pogrom. The hardliners were on top.
But did that stop Vajpayee from searching for the right opening?
Americans, by now deep in Iraq, began to lobby for Indian troops to administer northern Iraq, the Kurdish area. The armed forces salivated as did those of the BJP who liked the analogy of their looking after a “sector” of Iraq exactly as the “big powers” administered “sectors” of Berlin after the war. Yes, the establishment had all but bitten the bait.
Then on April 9, 2003, Vajpayee watched on TV Saddam Hussain’s statue being pulled down from the square at Palestine hotel. He kept his counsel.
On April 18, on a visit to Srinagar, Vajpayee the statesman, startled the world, most of all, his own party. Eyeball to eyeball confrontation between Indo-Pak armies notwithstanding, he offered his hand of peace to Pakistan. An awesome power has arisen, making regional quarrels a self defeating waste, he said. This led to the January 6, 2004 statement in Islamabad where Pakistan agreed that its territory would not be used against India. Manmohan Singh followed up and went further for peace than any Prime Minister. Then 26/11 happened.
The Vajpayee moment presents itself again. Manmohan can see an incoherent, inconsistent west groping for strategy in Libya. There never was and never will be any altruism in their moves. It is in our self interest to have the best of relations with each and every member of the currently quarrelling west.
But it is in our paramount interest to compose our regional differences, to be able to cope with an unstable, unpredictable and a frightfully self seeking world. Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, by their very presence, provide him with support he needs. The two Home Secretaries have cleared some thicket. There will be road blocks, terror attacks. But a variation on the Biblical dictum says: he who is willing to lose, shall win!
# # # # # #
Monday, March 28, 2011
Europe Helps Create ‘Jihad’ Next Door
Europe Helps Create ‘Jihad’ Next Door
Saeed Naqvi
Have Prime Minister David Cameron and President Nicolas Sarkozy ever paused to consider how the 20 million Muslims in Europe might react to their military action in Libya? I doubt if the rest of their countrymen will ever place them with Churchill or de Gaulle.
Arabs, like people anywhere, do not like dictators. But Western military intervention amplified on global media, stokes nationalism, localism. A dictator then becomes “our son-of-a-bitch” against an even more despised Western “outsider”, particularly when this “outsider’s” successive interventions over decades have been devoid of any altruism.
Where there has been any demonstrable sympathy (by Americans not Europeans) for the people of Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Muslims have worn their “thank you” on their sleeves. The image is so etched on my mind that I never tire of repeating it: avenues and squares in the name of Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright in Kosovo! A pity there will never be a street in Benghazi named after Hillary Clinton or Cameron and Sarkozy.
Not only has the West halted the Arab spring, it may have done something much more dangerous. Countries with a majority of their populations in the 20s, the youth bulge, who had come out on the streets waving their flags of freedom, where will they turn now?
Cavernous staircases from the Arab street lead to the basements where extremist recruitment centers are looking for custom.
Since, on current showing, Western leaders have eased to see things beyond their nose, it may be useful to din it into their senses that Muslims, like the rest of the world, have on 247 watched Operation Desert Storm, occupation of Iraq, the two Intefadas, a four year long brutalization of Bosnia, occupation of the West Bank, invasion of Afghanistan, civilian deaths in drone attacks in Pakistan – and now, just when the mood in the Arab street was softening towards the West and Israel, come these images of Western action in Libya and rank hypocrisy in Bahrain and Yemen.
A straightforward lesson should have been learnt from Afghanistan where Islamic Madrasas to train Mujahideen against Soviet occupation in 1980 continues to plague the region to this day. How helpless can the Americans be? They have allowed a quarrelling Europe to drag them into their third war with a Muslim country in eight years.
Incidentally, Yemen’s direct link with the Afghan project is generally not understood. Prince Naif bin Abdel Aziz, Saudi Interior Minister, while helping set up training centers for Islamic militancy in Afghanistan, thought of manufacturing thoroughbred Arab Jehadis next door in Yemen. President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s half brother, Ali Mohsin Al Ahmar was given charge of the training camps. Just as the Afghan Jehadis were motivated to evict the Soviets from Afghanistan, so were the Yemenis trained to fight the then pro Soviet regime in the South, with Aden as the capital. Unification of Yemen took place only in the 90s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Afghan Jehadis (Taleban leavened with Al Qaeda) are plaguing the US in Af-Pak; the Arab Jehadis in Yemen are a thorn in the US-Saudi flesh. Hence, drone attacks on Al Qaeda positions in parts of Yemen, every attack breeding more Al Qaeda.
For the Saudis the matters are a trifle more complicated with Yemen’s Zaidi Shias in Saada, abutting Saudi Arabia, making common cause with the Socialists in the South against the House of Saud.
It obviously suits President Saleh to play the Saudi card to protect himself from the mounting unrest which has taken a toll in lives. How long can the Saudis ward off multiple pressures – from Bahrain, Yemen, Shia dominated Iraq contiguous with its own the oil bearing Shia dominated Eastern Province?
As if all this was not enough, Messrs Sarkozy and Cameron have committed themselves to Benghazi which was rocked by the Danish cartoon controversy and from where Jehadis have participated in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Libyan revolt was led by a group called the National Conference of the Libyan opposition, founded in London in 2005. Can overseas Libyans make a revolution? If Qaddafi survives, will not opposition to his soft Islam be the harder version of the faith? Remember the Danish cartoon protests in Benghazi in 2006 eventually turned upon Qaddafi.
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Saeed Naqvi
Have Prime Minister David Cameron and President Nicolas Sarkozy ever paused to consider how the 20 million Muslims in Europe might react to their military action in Libya? I doubt if the rest of their countrymen will ever place them with Churchill or de Gaulle.
Arabs, like people anywhere, do not like dictators. But Western military intervention amplified on global media, stokes nationalism, localism. A dictator then becomes “our son-of-a-bitch” against an even more despised Western “outsider”, particularly when this “outsider’s” successive interventions over decades have been devoid of any altruism.
Where there has been any demonstrable sympathy (by Americans not Europeans) for the people of Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Muslims have worn their “thank you” on their sleeves. The image is so etched on my mind that I never tire of repeating it: avenues and squares in the name of Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright in Kosovo! A pity there will never be a street in Benghazi named after Hillary Clinton or Cameron and Sarkozy.
Not only has the West halted the Arab spring, it may have done something much more dangerous. Countries with a majority of their populations in the 20s, the youth bulge, who had come out on the streets waving their flags of freedom, where will they turn now?
Cavernous staircases from the Arab street lead to the basements where extremist recruitment centers are looking for custom.
Since, on current showing, Western leaders have eased to see things beyond their nose, it may be useful to din it into their senses that Muslims, like the rest of the world, have on 247 watched Operation Desert Storm, occupation of Iraq, the two Intefadas, a four year long brutalization of Bosnia, occupation of the West Bank, invasion of Afghanistan, civilian deaths in drone attacks in Pakistan – and now, just when the mood in the Arab street was softening towards the West and Israel, come these images of Western action in Libya and rank hypocrisy in Bahrain and Yemen.
A straightforward lesson should have been learnt from Afghanistan where Islamic Madrasas to train Mujahideen against Soviet occupation in 1980 continues to plague the region to this day. How helpless can the Americans be? They have allowed a quarrelling Europe to drag them into their third war with a Muslim country in eight years.
Incidentally, Yemen’s direct link with the Afghan project is generally not understood. Prince Naif bin Abdel Aziz, Saudi Interior Minister, while helping set up training centers for Islamic militancy in Afghanistan, thought of manufacturing thoroughbred Arab Jehadis next door in Yemen. President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s half brother, Ali Mohsin Al Ahmar was given charge of the training camps. Just as the Afghan Jehadis were motivated to evict the Soviets from Afghanistan, so were the Yemenis trained to fight the then pro Soviet regime in the South, with Aden as the capital. Unification of Yemen took place only in the 90s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Afghan Jehadis (Taleban leavened with Al Qaeda) are plaguing the US in Af-Pak; the Arab Jehadis in Yemen are a thorn in the US-Saudi flesh. Hence, drone attacks on Al Qaeda positions in parts of Yemen, every attack breeding more Al Qaeda.
For the Saudis the matters are a trifle more complicated with Yemen’s Zaidi Shias in Saada, abutting Saudi Arabia, making common cause with the Socialists in the South against the House of Saud.
It obviously suits President Saleh to play the Saudi card to protect himself from the mounting unrest which has taken a toll in lives. How long can the Saudis ward off multiple pressures – from Bahrain, Yemen, Shia dominated Iraq contiguous with its own the oil bearing Shia dominated Eastern Province?
As if all this was not enough, Messrs Sarkozy and Cameron have committed themselves to Benghazi which was rocked by the Danish cartoon controversy and from where Jehadis have participated in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Libyan revolt was led by a group called the National Conference of the Libyan opposition, founded in London in 2005. Can overseas Libyans make a revolution? If Qaddafi survives, will not opposition to his soft Islam be the harder version of the faith? Remember the Danish cartoon protests in Benghazi in 2006 eventually turned upon Qaddafi.
# # # # # # # #
Monday, March 21, 2011
Outline of New World Order?
Outline of New World Order?
Saeed Naqvi
Numbing spectacle of Christchurch’s Catholic Cathedral, like the rest of the exquisite city, reduced to a heap by the 6.3 magnitude quake that struck New Zealand last month; Hamid Karzai’s Populzai tribe in mourning over the killing of his cousin in Kandahar by US soldiers; agonizing tussle over Raymond Davis, part of covert CIA team in Pakistan who shot dead two Pakistani operators. All images of varying degrees of helplessness.
Just as these stunning pictures begin to register, comes an avalanche of images ever more catastrophic. A quake of an unprecedented 8.9 magnitude hits Japan, stirring memories of World War devastation – Hiroshima, Nagasaki et al.
And, just look at the coincidental configuration of the stars! In 1986, just when Chernobyl erupted, Col. Muammar Qaddafi was finding his way through bombs and falling rubble in his Tripoli palace, trying to help his wife strapped to a bed because of a slipped disc.
This time too a coalition of the willing has been, well, almost drummed up either to scare Qaddafi or to pound him and, the frightening nuclear disaster emanates from Japan – echoes of 1986.
Another coincidence? Foreign Minister Bali Ram Bhagat turned up in Tripoli to commiserate but Regan rapped Rajiv Gandhi on the knuckles and Bhagat was sacked. Well, this time New Delhi has withstood pressures and abstained.
President Obama has clearly stated: “no boots on the ground” and that the resolution has the limited purpose of protecting human lives.
American reluctance to enter this North African theatre has been transparent. Trust an American cartoonist to capture the essence of the transatlantic confusion. Some Europeans are sipping Campari and Soda under a sun umbrella. Uncle Sam, standing somewhat like a butler, reports: “There is a fire raging next door.” Europeans answer: “Go, put it out. Don’t just stand there!”
Every itinerant journalist who crossed over from Egypt into Benghazi found an interviewee who demanded a no-fly-zone. Whether the two score British Special Forces and diplomats arrested by the protesters in the vicinity of Benghazi preceded the interviewees or followed them, only time will tell.
Unlike President Mitterand, who had to be coaxed into the coalition for Operation Desert Storm in 1991, President Nicolas Sarkozy has been something of a pioneer demanding the international community’s recognition for the Benghazi rebels. Clearly Sarkozy has in his possession all the East Libyan oil maps.
Even as British Prime Minister David Cameron faced an angry House of commons for his men being caught with their pants down in Benghazi, prompt moral support arrived from Sarkozy. Germany said no. Bertie Wooster would have gulped: “Axis and Allies, what!”
But no help arrived until Qaddafi had retaken the hub of Ajdabiah from where roads fork to Tripoli and to Tobruk near the Egyptian border.
Lebanon backed by Britain and France introduced the UN resolution supported by the US. What next? Not quite clear except that a huge question mark has been placed on the future of east Libyan oil reserves, rather like the one on Kirkuk in Iraq’s Kurdish north.
The US Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates was quite clear. European’s cannot be packing up their bags in Afghanistan, where so much “blood and treasurer” has been spent, and expect the US to be in lock-step with them in Libya.
A senior Kremlin insider, places recent events against a larger backdrop. “In a totally interconnected world, the post imperial hierarchy is taking shape – US, China, India and Russia. US inability to shape events in West Asia boosts China’s relative image. Japan’s tragic collapse removes another counterveiling force. Hence the delayed UN resolution.
Another country that has gained in stature in recent years, despite the US, is Iran. Shia power in Iraq, uprising in Bahrain and Yemen with a restless minority agitating in Dammam, adds upto a Saudi nightmare. Hence, Saudi armoured carriers driving into Bahrain, designed to check perceived Iranian influence.
There is considerable significance in Lebanon having taken the lead in sponsoring the UN resolution. Hezbullah supported by Iran, is the leading partner in the Lebanese government. Likewise, Saad Hariri has Saudi support. Does this Iranian-Saudi coordination by proxy have a larger potential?
# # # # # #
Saeed Naqvi
Numbing spectacle of Christchurch’s Catholic Cathedral, like the rest of the exquisite city, reduced to a heap by the 6.3 magnitude quake that struck New Zealand last month; Hamid Karzai’s Populzai tribe in mourning over the killing of his cousin in Kandahar by US soldiers; agonizing tussle over Raymond Davis, part of covert CIA team in Pakistan who shot dead two Pakistani operators. All images of varying degrees of helplessness.
Just as these stunning pictures begin to register, comes an avalanche of images ever more catastrophic. A quake of an unprecedented 8.9 magnitude hits Japan, stirring memories of World War devastation – Hiroshima, Nagasaki et al.
And, just look at the coincidental configuration of the stars! In 1986, just when Chernobyl erupted, Col. Muammar Qaddafi was finding his way through bombs and falling rubble in his Tripoli palace, trying to help his wife strapped to a bed because of a slipped disc.
This time too a coalition of the willing has been, well, almost drummed up either to scare Qaddafi or to pound him and, the frightening nuclear disaster emanates from Japan – echoes of 1986.
Another coincidence? Foreign Minister Bali Ram Bhagat turned up in Tripoli to commiserate but Regan rapped Rajiv Gandhi on the knuckles and Bhagat was sacked. Well, this time New Delhi has withstood pressures and abstained.
President Obama has clearly stated: “no boots on the ground” and that the resolution has the limited purpose of protecting human lives.
American reluctance to enter this North African theatre has been transparent. Trust an American cartoonist to capture the essence of the transatlantic confusion. Some Europeans are sipping Campari and Soda under a sun umbrella. Uncle Sam, standing somewhat like a butler, reports: “There is a fire raging next door.” Europeans answer: “Go, put it out. Don’t just stand there!”
Every itinerant journalist who crossed over from Egypt into Benghazi found an interviewee who demanded a no-fly-zone. Whether the two score British Special Forces and diplomats arrested by the protesters in the vicinity of Benghazi preceded the interviewees or followed them, only time will tell.
Unlike President Mitterand, who had to be coaxed into the coalition for Operation Desert Storm in 1991, President Nicolas Sarkozy has been something of a pioneer demanding the international community’s recognition for the Benghazi rebels. Clearly Sarkozy has in his possession all the East Libyan oil maps.
Even as British Prime Minister David Cameron faced an angry House of commons for his men being caught with their pants down in Benghazi, prompt moral support arrived from Sarkozy. Germany said no. Bertie Wooster would have gulped: “Axis and Allies, what!”
But no help arrived until Qaddafi had retaken the hub of Ajdabiah from where roads fork to Tripoli and to Tobruk near the Egyptian border.
Lebanon backed by Britain and France introduced the UN resolution supported by the US. What next? Not quite clear except that a huge question mark has been placed on the future of east Libyan oil reserves, rather like the one on Kirkuk in Iraq’s Kurdish north.
The US Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates was quite clear. European’s cannot be packing up their bags in Afghanistan, where so much “blood and treasurer” has been spent, and expect the US to be in lock-step with them in Libya.
A senior Kremlin insider, places recent events against a larger backdrop. “In a totally interconnected world, the post imperial hierarchy is taking shape – US, China, India and Russia. US inability to shape events in West Asia boosts China’s relative image. Japan’s tragic collapse removes another counterveiling force. Hence the delayed UN resolution.
Another country that has gained in stature in recent years, despite the US, is Iran. Shia power in Iraq, uprising in Bahrain and Yemen with a restless minority agitating in Dammam, adds upto a Saudi nightmare. Hence, Saudi armoured carriers driving into Bahrain, designed to check perceived Iranian influence.
There is considerable significance in Lebanon having taken the lead in sponsoring the UN resolution. Hezbullah supported by Iran, is the leading partner in the Lebanese government. Likewise, Saad Hariri has Saudi support. Does this Iranian-Saudi coordination by proxy have a larger potential?
# # # # # #
Monday, March 14, 2011
Can US Lead While Europe Scrambles for Oil
Can US Lead While Europe Scrambles for Oil
Saeed Naqvi
Peoples’ power in Tunisia and Egypt not only swept away symbols of dictatorial tyranny but also mobilized Arab masses behind a liberal agenda. Not once in Tunis or Tahrir Square was an anti Israeli slogan raised. Nor was anti Americanism in evidence. How little it takes for people to soften, once the weight of injustice is lifted from their shoulders.
Against this backdrop consider Libya. Is “people’s power” being allowed to prevail in that country or is foreign intervention the dominant image? Yes, I did see the BBC’s principal foreign correspondent ask a rather forlorn lady in the vicinity of Benghazi whether she thought the “protestors” would win?
The lady kept pointing a finger at the sky, circling it rather like children flying toy helicopters. “Impose no-fly-zone” she chanted, “impose no-fly-zone”. She asked for guns, tanks so that the “mad man does not finish us”. She was well attired and clearly not from the trenches.
Who was she? Did she live in Benghazi? Or had she walked over the nearby border with Egypt? In a dictatorship, people can revolt but will they invite foreign intervention on live foreign TV? Has anyone studied the mosaic of Libyan tribes?
Precursors to foreign intervention, a dozen or so British Special Forces with two diplomats cross over from Egypt. They are promptly detained by the protestors, causing a convulsion in the House of Commons.
With egg on his face, Prime Minister David Cameron, persists before TV cameras. “The world can’t stand by if Qaddafi brutalizes his people”.
Coincidentally, in Ivory Coast a determined Laurent Gbagbo, refusing to accept electoral defeat against Allassane Ouattara has been for weeks “brutalizing” the “victors” in and out of Abidjan, the capital.
Cameron’s compassion for the Libya people coincides with his principal ally in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai, beating his breast in his Kabul palace. “O’ they have killed my cousin; O’ they have killed my cousin”. Apparently NATO forces stormed 65 year old Mohammad Karzai’s home in Kandahar.
Imagine, how the Al Qaeda, Taleban, ordinary Afghans and across the border, the murderers of Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti in Pakistan are watching the situation in Libya.
There is utter lack of clarity on what the Western game plan in Afghanistan is. The date of withdrawal of US troops is, well, shall we say, “sometime” in 2014? In 2012 President Obama must seek re election.
A spectacular war would be an election winning devise! The sheer spectacle of it would obscure indecisiveness on Af-Pak. But isn’t the US Gulliver pinned down by its own disapproval of unilateralism? And by China, Russia, deep divisions in Europe between those who had sweet oil deals with Qaddafi and those who didn’t.
Europe allowed the Bosnia war to continue for five years without intervening because Germany and Vatican’s premature recognition of Croatia had caused Britain and France to gear up on the opposite side. To prevent another intra European war, all sides held back their horses.
So what if the Muslim Bosniacs were “brutalized” (Cameron’s term) for four years, with Gen. Sir Charles Rose toting up figures of the Bosniac dead at his daily briefings. European nations avoided falling over each other in a war. But for Europe the collateral damage was enormous. TV images helped bring the Islamic party to power in Turkey.
It was then, even as Europe prevaricated, that the US came to the help of Muslims. Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic was removed. A Muslim dominated state of Kosovo was formed. Millions of Muslims in Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and even Bosnia are the only ones of that faith who are positive about the United States. There are avenues in Kosovo named after Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright.
Good sense prevented Europe from starting another war. That is what would have happened if they had taken sides on Bosnian Muslims.
But greed for oil in days of economic despair is causing Europe to fall over each other.
Can good sense prevail in Washington once again? Military action in Libya will generate anti Americanism, which will swell the ranks of Al Qaeda and cause the “Arab Youth” bulge to find a frightening outlet. Asking Saudis or Britain to arm rebels will boomerang unless focus is also kept on Palestinian-Israeli peace.
# # # # # #
Saeed Naqvi
Peoples’ power in Tunisia and Egypt not only swept away symbols of dictatorial tyranny but also mobilized Arab masses behind a liberal agenda. Not once in Tunis or Tahrir Square was an anti Israeli slogan raised. Nor was anti Americanism in evidence. How little it takes for people to soften, once the weight of injustice is lifted from their shoulders.
Against this backdrop consider Libya. Is “people’s power” being allowed to prevail in that country or is foreign intervention the dominant image? Yes, I did see the BBC’s principal foreign correspondent ask a rather forlorn lady in the vicinity of Benghazi whether she thought the “protestors” would win?
The lady kept pointing a finger at the sky, circling it rather like children flying toy helicopters. “Impose no-fly-zone” she chanted, “impose no-fly-zone”. She asked for guns, tanks so that the “mad man does not finish us”. She was well attired and clearly not from the trenches.
Who was she? Did she live in Benghazi? Or had she walked over the nearby border with Egypt? In a dictatorship, people can revolt but will they invite foreign intervention on live foreign TV? Has anyone studied the mosaic of Libyan tribes?
Precursors to foreign intervention, a dozen or so British Special Forces with two diplomats cross over from Egypt. They are promptly detained by the protestors, causing a convulsion in the House of Commons.
With egg on his face, Prime Minister David Cameron, persists before TV cameras. “The world can’t stand by if Qaddafi brutalizes his people”.
Coincidentally, in Ivory Coast a determined Laurent Gbagbo, refusing to accept electoral defeat against Allassane Ouattara has been for weeks “brutalizing” the “victors” in and out of Abidjan, the capital.
Cameron’s compassion for the Libya people coincides with his principal ally in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai, beating his breast in his Kabul palace. “O’ they have killed my cousin; O’ they have killed my cousin”. Apparently NATO forces stormed 65 year old Mohammad Karzai’s home in Kandahar.
Imagine, how the Al Qaeda, Taleban, ordinary Afghans and across the border, the murderers of Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti in Pakistan are watching the situation in Libya.
There is utter lack of clarity on what the Western game plan in Afghanistan is. The date of withdrawal of US troops is, well, shall we say, “sometime” in 2014? In 2012 President Obama must seek re election.
A spectacular war would be an election winning devise! The sheer spectacle of it would obscure indecisiveness on Af-Pak. But isn’t the US Gulliver pinned down by its own disapproval of unilateralism? And by China, Russia, deep divisions in Europe between those who had sweet oil deals with Qaddafi and those who didn’t.
Europe allowed the Bosnia war to continue for five years without intervening because Germany and Vatican’s premature recognition of Croatia had caused Britain and France to gear up on the opposite side. To prevent another intra European war, all sides held back their horses.
So what if the Muslim Bosniacs were “brutalized” (Cameron’s term) for four years, with Gen. Sir Charles Rose toting up figures of the Bosniac dead at his daily briefings. European nations avoided falling over each other in a war. But for Europe the collateral damage was enormous. TV images helped bring the Islamic party to power in Turkey.
It was then, even as Europe prevaricated, that the US came to the help of Muslims. Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic was removed. A Muslim dominated state of Kosovo was formed. Millions of Muslims in Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and even Bosnia are the only ones of that faith who are positive about the United States. There are avenues in Kosovo named after Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright.
Good sense prevented Europe from starting another war. That is what would have happened if they had taken sides on Bosnian Muslims.
But greed for oil in days of economic despair is causing Europe to fall over each other.
Can good sense prevail in Washington once again? Military action in Libya will generate anti Americanism, which will swell the ranks of Al Qaeda and cause the “Arab Youth” bulge to find a frightening outlet. Asking Saudis or Britain to arm rebels will boomerang unless focus is also kept on Palestinian-Israeli peace.
# # # # # #
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