Going Deeper
Passage to democracy
MOST Muslims would hesitate to quote Daniel Pipes, an outspoken promoter of the "Islamo-fascism threat" theory who urges a broad war on terror by the US on regimes from Syria to Iran, and regards Muslim immigrants as "brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standard of hygiene."
He is criticised by scholars like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt for founding Campus Watch, which encourages students to report on professors who do not match the standard of the pro-Israeli policy of the Bush administration.
He is a friend of neo-con patriarch David Kagan and columnist Charles Krauthammer.
His vitriolic anti-Muslim campaign notwithstanding, he was not off the mark in an article where he wrote that the American dream of spreading democracy includes much more than ballots: "Elections are usually a long term process of change that includes an effective rule of law, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and much more … It requires 10, 20, 30 years of elections for full fledged democracy to come into existence."
Paradoxically, the Asian experiences of Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and now of China, do not support the thesis that democracy, as commonly understood, would necessarily bring about economic development.
On the contrary, emphasis is put more on stability and rule by law, unless it transcends the limit of tolerance of moral imperatives as has happened in Burma. There, the military authorities preferred to hold a referendum instead of opening up the country to international aid, which is sorely needed by the cyclone devastated people who are ill-fed, ill-clad, and living under the open sky.
One is not sure whether such callous treatment of one's own citizens merits action under the now internationally accepted (through the 2005 UN Summit) concept of the duty to protect and prevent, in disregard of the concepts of territorial integrity and Westphalian sovereignty that, in any case, has been transformed considerably.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner had suggested that the United Nations invoke the doctrine of the "responsibility to protect" civilians as the basis for a resolution to allow the delivery of international aid even without the permission of the Burmese military government.
But the French proposal faced opposition from Security Council members Russia, China, and South Africa. If the military government's stranglehold on the Burmese people since 1962 does not ignite a cry for democracy in the Western world, as it does to rectify "democracy deficit" in the Islamic world, then one may have to reluctantly accept Daniel Pipes' opinion that "WMD was never the basic reason for the war. Nor was it the horrid repression in Iraq. Or the danger Saddam posed to his neighbours … The campaign in Iraq is about keeping promises to the United States or paying the consequences … Keep your promises or you are gone."
If it were the policy the US intends to use, even in the short term, then despite its unquestionable military domination over the globe, the soft power that had made the US the guardian angel in the post-War period, or even before, would surely decline.
But since the US would remain the most powerful player on the global stage, even in an increasingly multi-polar world, the international community cannot afford to remain angry with the US simply because one president believed more in muscle than in diplomacy.
As Professor Leila Sadat (of Washington University in St. Louis) points out: "The real war against international terrorism is far from over, as recent events in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan have demonstrated. To win what is likely to be a long, slow, and difficult struggle the United States needs to be perceived as a credible, fair and a supporter of the rule of law."
Former CIA officer Bruce Riedel calls Pakistan the most dangerous country in the world today: "There the forces that threaten global peace and security all come together: proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, poverty, dictatorship, radical Islam and narcotics." Though the plot for the destruction wrought in 9/11 was hatched in Afghanistan, its tactical mastermind Khaled Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan.
In addition, Riedel says, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mollah Omar are believed to be hiding in the mountainous region of Pak-Afghan bordering badlands. If the cold war dynamics dictated presidents Eisenhower, Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to be friends of Generals Ayub Khan and Zia-ul-Huq, it is not easily explicable as to why, when Pakistan has taken a few faltering steps towards democracy through a free and fair election that resoundingly defeated President Musharraf's party PML (Q) and his popularity was at an all time low, the Bush administration would continue to call Musharraf as "the indispensable man" in Pakistan.
Perhaps the next US administration would accept Senator Joseph Biden's proposal of a "democracy bonus" that would increase the aid level every year. The US president would certify that Pakistan continued to remain a democracy, and also heed the call by Barack Obama and some congressmen that Bush administration should follow a Pakistan policy and not a Musharraf policy.
Debate over Pakistan policy apart, the Chinese argument that a successful democracy comes only after a considerable amount of economic development tallies with Francis Fukuyama's. One of the conditions that an uninterrupted transition to sustainable democracy requires, in addition to other factors, is a degree of economic development that produces a property owning middle class, which would have a stake in maintaining a stable democratic dispensation.
But the collective will for social coordination leading to democracy, however imperfect it may be, in most of the countries still under authoritarian rule ruling against the will of the people cannot ensure stability and would, in the ultimate analysis, promote conditions of threat and insecurity in both the prosperous and the underdeveloped parts of the world.
It is, therefore, not surprising that the Western powers' representatives in Bangladesh are insistent that democracy be reestablished in Bangladesh without further delay. Perhaps at the back of their minds these powers are convinced of linkage among the militants of Bangladesh and Pakistan.
According to Bruce Reidel, 80% of the suicide bombers attacking US and Nato forces in Afghanistan are trained in Pakistan by the Taliban or al-Qaida, and that the British trial of the abortive plane high-jacking has shown that the plot was linked directly to the al-Qaida leadership in Pakistan.
As it appears from the address of the chief advisor to the nation on May 12, the administration is indecisive on the question of the trial of war criminals, a demand voiced by almost the entire nation.
In the light of Afghanistan-returned "warriors" now embedded around the country who bared their teeth during their violent protest over the proposed Women's Development Policy, and of Jamaat's labeling the war of independence as a "civil war" and denying the existence of any "war criminals" in Bangladesh, it would serve us well to be on guard and not dismiss reports of Eliza Griswold, Bertil Lintner and of others as a "conspiracy" to degrade the image of Bangladesh abroad.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments