War Against Terrorism

Terrorism is beyond reason. While terror can have no reasoned justification, evil always seeks to be plausible. It seeks to clothe itself in the mantle of righteous indignation and presents itself as an evil parody of an apocalyptic 'divine' vengeance. It purports to act on behalf of some oppressed group, to seek redress for some injustice. It appropriates the language for heaven for the works of hell.

If history is a precursor to the future, we will suffer more terrorist attacks in the months and years ahead. The apparent goal of the terrorists is to achieve larger effect in the future. The terrorist target: unwarned, unprotected persons and facilities. When the fanatic sees himself as an actor in a staged performance, death becomes an act of make believe and a theatrical gesture.

9/11 appears to be a major turning point into the future—the end of the brief post-Cold War era, and the beginning of a new Age of Terrorism, perhaps a World War III, albeit a different kind of war than that which we have known. The horrible attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and whatever follows as a result, will change many lives, many organizations, many industries, and many nations. It has changed everything, for everyone.

There are three goals to terrorism. Goal one: to demonstrate that government cannot protect you. Put differently, it is to make people fearful, if not most fearful, of those things which they found in the past to be both safe and ordinary: going to work, going out for recreation, shopping. Goal two: to take terrorist actions, which evoke an extreme response, and the more extreme of that response, the better. Goal three: to use the extreme response as a mechanism for recruitment.

There must be a target, ideally one with tremendous symbolic significance to underscore goal one above. In the case of international terrorism, something highly symbolic like the Twin Towers is important because it will be a national symbol and it will be well understood globally. A small action in an isolated community or in a community that does not receive national press and has no eye-catching appeal to an international audience has little attraction for terrorists. An urban, rather than rural, setting for the terrorist act is likely to be more attractive in meeting the goal.

Because of progress in materials engineering and miniaturization of electronics, explosives and the like, weapons are becoming cheaper, lighter, more rugged, more accurate, easier to use, and more powerful. Meanwhile new communication technologies — from satellite phones to the Internet — allow terrorists and criminal syndicates to marshal their resources and coordinate their actions around the planet. As these trends continue, it's easier for smaller and smaller numbers of people to hurt larger and larger numbers. Despite all the utopian hype, the new gadgets entering our lives are distinctly double-edged swords: We've unleashed technological forces that we don't remotely understand and almost certainly can't control.

Terrorism is unconventional warfare. There are no fronts, no armies, and no battlefields. The solutions therefore should not come from militaries, which are largely designed for fighting other armed forces. The solutions should come from new approaches that address the whole person, not just the political and economic components. This is about individual people, their values and aspirations – and cultures, some of which have not changed much over centuries. Different people and groups require different approaches – one size will not fit all. The new solutions seem complex, sophisticated and necessarily not look like the past. But if we are going to safely make it through this extraordinary, historical transition, we must not do the old things – we must invent new ones.

Why can’t we learn from South Africa, which invoked their truth and reconciliation project so the previously warring factions could get on with living together in harmony through forgiveness and honoring their shared humanity?

The war against terrorism can only be truly won when we also declare war on the roots, which cause such acts of barbarity: injustice, freedom, and discrimination. Terrorism does not arise in a vacuum but has it roots in historical, political, social and cultural dysfunctions so deep, so cruel, so systemic that they create and sustain discontent until it spills over into a desperation that sees no recourse other than wanton destruction against those perceived as responsible for the plight of the terrorists. Unless there is an equally dedicated attack on the causes of terrorism, there will never be victory in the war against terrorism.

Addressing the causes of terrorism is the most difficult issue. At one end it starts with the need for us to be confident in our definition of terrorism — one persons terrorist is another person's freedom fighter; at the other end, it needs to attempt to address all the injustices that exist around the world that lead people to undertake hateful and destructive acts and this includes the even more problematic need to address perceptions of these injustices as well. The atrocities being committed on Kashmiris or Palistinians are causing suicidal bombings. The perpetrators are heroes for their nation but terrorists to the oppressors. At its core the atrocities are proliferating terrorism.

We are faced with dilemmas that, together, form a distinct and clear danger to individual liberty and to most systems of government. This alone should be motivation enough to act to stop terrorists in their tracks whenever and wherever we can. We must somehow focus on and achieve an acceptable system of protection, prevention, preclusion and reaction to the scourge of terrorism…without losing the ideals and precepts by which we navigate the difficult pathway into our future. This cannot be done by committee or by independent activity by many agencies and organizations acting parochially. Instead, some form of centralized and evenly applied approach must be devised and undertaken by appropriate leaders. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

Some Stray Thoughts on Pakistan

Each dawn comes but once: It announces another opportunity to right the wrongs and build on the success of yesterday.

Like any other country, the sun rises in the morning in Pakistan. Nevertheless, this sun rises behind the dark thick clouds and its rays do not reach the mother earth where innocent people live, suffer—committing suicides, dumping their lived children or becoming the victims of terrorism, bad governance. It is painfully observed that the national dailies are publishing voluminous editions on non-issues but no column depicts public debate on real problems.

More than two thousand years ago, Diogenes walked down a dusty road in ancient Greece. According to the legend, as he walked, he carried a lighted lantern in his hand. He carried the lantern because even in broad daylight it wasn’t easy to find what he was looking for: an honest man.

Today, after all the passing centuries, in Pakistan one reads the morning newspapers or watches the TV news and wonders if Diogenes would find the search any easier. With so many signs of unethical behavior in the society at large, one may question if ethics have any place.

The absolute increase in population in Pakistan, coupled with such trends as urbanization and greater mobility clearly presents serious threats. If the current population growth rate of Pakistan continued for the next 130 years, its population would be equal to that of the whole world today. Needless to say, this will not happen. Either its birth rate will drop or its death rate will rise. Somehow the growth rate has to stop.

Some foreign industries are growing more competitive than their Pakistani counterparts. For the Pakistan as a nation to be competitive, however, it is not required that all Pakistani companies remain competitive in all areas. It however does mean that Pakistan’s business and entrepreneurs must be able to take advantage of opportunities offered by economic developments in other countries to move into other product lines.

Good infrastructure services are essential to achieve economic growth and improve the quality of life. But for Pakistan, despite improvements in access the quantity and quality of services are well below what is demanded.

The state of education in Pakistan is depressing. Today it simply cannot compete with even third-rate countries in standard indicators of academic achievement. Weak curricula and discipline have guaranteed educational failure for tens of millions of our children. In its most extreme manifestations learning literally has come to a halt. This is not to criticize present or past governments. All the same, the nation should look at itself and conclude that something must be done. It is not, however, that the government should reform education fundamentally. Real reforms come from the people.

The health sector requires offensive for offering an inadequate remedy for the serious problems of an outdated and basically unsound system. People must be offered a vision of a revitalized healthcare system that provides incentives for increased quality and technological innovation. While at the same time, reducing costs and uncertainty. Pakistanis today need a system that gives them control over healthcare decisions, while encouraging them to set aside the resources they need to purchase this care.

The poverty rate in Pakistan is increasing fast. Economic expansion can only nullify this trend. Any welfare policy cannot conquer poverty, nor can government alone. To rid Pakistan of poverty, there must be continued economic growth, deregulation, devolution of power, smaller government, elimination of policies that discourage self-improvement, and a stronger focus on education. The importance of the family in keeping poverty at bay may now be widely accepted, but programs are also needed to strengthen the family.

It is hard for Pakistan to win a successful war on poverty when it is so hard to identify the “enemy.” Even leaving aside such complicated notions as “relative” versus “absolute” poverty, the measurement of poverty is a crude process. The root cause of this defect is that the baseline official poverty rate is badly flawed measurement of what is generally understood to be poverty. It is based on reported cash income. Thus, unreported income is not measured. There has to be consumption standard in place of the income standard, quantity and quality of the food, housing, clothing, and other essential items needed to keep a family just cost of obtaining these items locally would then be the benchmark for determining whether the family’s income was below the poverty level.

Any system of laws that is too complex or expensive for people to understand and use, does not deliver justice. This increasingly has become the case with Pakistan’s legal system. It lacks increased use of mediation, conciliation, mini-trials, and where appropriate, arbitration. Decision makers in Pakistan should think about the dilemma to ensure that access to justice is available to all. Efforts to seek alternatives to litigation throughout the legal system need to be forged.

Terrorists, attacking non-combatant targets in Pakistan, threaten the society today. Their fundamental threat is to innocent citizens, social stability and ultimately, to the legitimacy of the elected regime. The threat from terrorism is growing. Terrorists are being organized, better equipped, and more professional than they were some years ago. Modernity should be used in countering terrorism. Multilateral treaties should also be worked out for effective handling of the threat.

By defining these main items designed to spur Pakistan’s progress, prosperity and competitiveness, the Pakistani intelligentsia can suggest solutions, alternatives, innovative ideas and utilitarian actions to help achieve prosperity. It can recommend means for increasing nation’s ability to sell more overseas through increased productivity. It can imply more efficient production techniques in business through new technology, better methods of industrial organization, cheaper sources of capital goods, or more efficient labor. Through increased productivity standards of living will rise, consumer choice will increase, and more opportunities for well-paying jobs will become available. Similarly, solutions can be recommended to miscellaneous problems that are degenerating the vitals of our national life.

Beyond doubt, the resources of knowledge, experience and expertise if harnessed and suggested means for the revitalization of the dormant energies in all sectors of human endeavor, Pakistan can emerge as a land of opportunities and haven of peace. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

Issues Face-to-face South Asia

Music of Earth is never dead. Symbolically, the truth of this statement is verified in the folk songs of Asian peoples. The oriental queens of melody, like Abida Perveen, Lata Mangeshkar, continue to sing of the agonies of a heart that refuses to submerge its feelings in the complexities of modern age. In the domain of art, literature, paintings, culture, the music of love, of beauty, of life and nature, of horrors of war, of agonies, of racial discrimination and frantic cries of the oppressed continue to permeate the fibers of man's creative art. Art is stated to be a defense against fate. The fate is, however, being made miserable by the forces that have made world affairs difficult to handle. In South Asia the plague spots have emerged in the environment of those areas that do not augur well for survival of a peaceful world ---a world where peace could and should win over forces of war and destruction.

The scientific inventions in all fields of human endeavor have undoubtedly brought comforts to our world, but not without its side effects. Peoples in South Asia live miserable lives full of chaos and tension. They feel insecure. They are not confident about regional peace. The issues that can possibly lead to war still remain potential threat to peace. The terrorism has emerged as a new enemy of humanity. The unprecedented arms race continues in the mainstream of unprecedented population growth. All resources are being consumed in buying destructive arms. But the people want food, shelter and jobs. They require medicines for their sick. They need books for their children. They yearn to live in an environment that is free of problems, free from exploitation and free from tension.

World affairs have come to such a pass that no prospect for peace seems to be visible even at the farthest end of horizon. The events such as Mumbai attacks in South Asia tend to damage our hope for world peace. Mind agitates to ask: Who would stem this tide of emerging chaos, confusion, and moving tension? Should we wait for a certain Messiah to bless life in our sagging spirits, which have become dead under the burden of inertia of idle hours?

The symptoms of fanaticism—mother of terrorism in all forms, exploitation, racial discrimination and a growing fear of insecurity being felt by the down trodden of South Asia, must put us all on alert. We must take some such steps as could crush snakes in grass that threaten peace.

The recession in world economy is casting its shadows on the economic developments in South Asia. The yellow lights of sunset of dollar augur well for this raw material producing region. They should, however, exercise their sovereignty over their exclusive right to fix prices for their raw material to such a level as could cover the expenses incurred on the imported machinery and equipment.

The World Bank and IMF have given free hand to plunder the material resources of this region. The horrible rate of population explosion has, however, got to be controlled without which the economic growth cannot be accelerated.

South Asia is bursting, as it seems, for the birth of a new economic cooperation—cooperation for economic dispensation that suits both the region and the developed world.

South Asian nations should turn away from centralized management and government controls and toward the incentives and rewards of the free market. They should invite their citizens to develop their talents and abilities to the fullest and provide jobs, create wealth, build social stability and foster faith in the future of all. The economic summits of the industrial democracies have already paid tribute to these principles.

The leaders of the South Asia should welcome the call for reform leading to greater reliance on their private sectors for economic growth. Overcoming hunger and economic stagnation requires policies that encourage regions own productivity and initiatives. Such a policy framework will make it easier for the rest of the world to help. The laws of economic incentives should not, nevertheless, discriminate between developed and developing countries. They should apply to all equally.

Much of the recent recovery in the world economy can be directly attributed to the growth of economic freedom. And it is this trend that offers such hope for the future. And yet this new hope faces a grave threat: the menace of trade barriers.

The Charter of the United Nations is based not only on avoiding the scourge war but also on establishing the conditions for friendly relations among nations and on solving problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character, for the development and preservation of peace.

Notwithstanding the foreboding of the prophets of doom, the efforts for peace, at all levels, by all men who matter at national affairs of every country, should be made. It is high time that all countries of the region should hearken to the call of their conscious—the demand for peace.

Breakthroughs in resolving regional conflicts in South Asia have been accompanied by an explosion of national and ethnic clashes; many of them related to the collapse of old centers of power. It is not surprising that there is a talk of both a new world order and a new world disorder. They are like two sides of the same coin. One side represents mankind's ideals and aspirations, the other its fears and hatreds.

Forces of integration and disintegration are shaping the region of South Asia simultaneously. Terrorism has peeped out as high powered force of disruption—a destabilization factor. Viewed from one angle, modern communications, technology, trade, and the appeal of political and economic freedom have the potential to create a global democratic capitalist society where international cooperation will be more successful than in the past.

The issue of human rights, as it has emerged out of the ideas of the enlightenment, still remains alien to certain South Asian countries. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations is now more or less five decades old. Born out of the holocaust and the atrocities of World War II, the Declaration outlaws murder, torture, and political imprisonment. These steps reflect the lessons of the Second World War, which demonstrated that internal regimes were not just a domestic matter but could they become a menace to world peace. This Declaration was adopted in the final years of Stalinist rule, when mass repression was still institutionalized, seemed to many to be a hypocritical gesture. In many of the signatory countries this characterization remains true, but the human rights are being violated at alarmingly rate in this region. The law enforcing agencies, in this region, are committing rapes murders, torture and other atrocities. Kashmir is just one illustration.
A search for peaceful resolution to the Kashmir issue, however, should be the focus of international experts in the emerging discipline of interactive and diplomatic conflict resolution. Dialogues on conflict resolution, bridging theory and practice and striving for a plebiscite in dealing with this international conflict should receive top priority.

Water has become another great threat to peace. The Indus River Basin has been an area of conflict between India and Pakistan. Spanning 1,800 miles, the river and its tributaries together make up one of the largest irrigation canals in the world. The basin provides water to millions of people in northwestern India and Pakistan. Dams and canals built in order to provide hydropower and irrigation has dried up stretches of the Indus River. Water projects have further caused the displacement of people and have contributed to the destruction of the ecosystem in the Indus plain.

The enmity between India and Pakistan over water started early when India discontinued water supplies to Pakistan. Hard bargaining and the mediation of the World Bank led to the world acclaimed Indus Water Treaty in 1960. The treaty allocated the three Eastern Rivers — Ravi, Sutlej and Beas — to India, the three Western rivers — Indus, Jhelum and Chenab — to Pakistan.

A permanent commission known as the Indus Waters Commission was constituted to resolve the disputes between the parties. This treaty is globally respected that it has survived wars and periods of acute tension between the two hostile neighbors. However, the treaty has encountered hiccups wherein some contentious issues have cropped up.

If India and Pakistan take a political decision to restructure their relations, they will have to ensure that water serves as a flow to bring them together, rather than taking them further on the course of conflict.

Modern societies are moving away from the belief that there always will be conflict. There are now situations where we can marginalize conflict and where great changes can be made if parties can be led to perceive the causes of their disputes in new way.

In addition to regional disputes, the grave threat of terrorism also jeopardizes the hopes of peace. No cause, no grievance can justify it. Terrorism is heinous and intolerable. It is the crime of cowards who prey on the innocent, the defenseless and the helpless. The region should come up with modern approach to countering terrorism.

The maniacal arms race is dominating the economies of the poor South Asian countries. The bulk of their budgets go in buying or developing destructive arms and ignoring major issues. Days in and days out, voices are raised that arms control has become the dire need of the day.

In 455, the Eastern Roman Emperor, Marcian prohibited the export of all weapons and materials for making weapons, to the barbarians. The 1968 treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) bear more than a casual resemblance to Marcian' s policy enunciated fifteen hundred years earlier.

But then, as now, a mixture of politics and greed rendered control over the supply of weaponry an expedient of only temporary and partial value, at best. Lethal instruments are not important, but they acquire their significance from politics. The Huns and barbarians, no doubt, found the Roman supply blockade of weapons to be an inconvenience. Today the NPT and the MTCR similarly are inconveniences, but only inconvenient, to would-be acquirers of nuclear weapons and missiles.

But if politics subverts arms control, so does it facilitate arms control. Speaking in the House of Commons on July 13, 1934, Sir Winston Churchill claimed, "It is the greatest possible mistake to mix up disarmament with peace. When you have peace you will have disarmament.”

We can be hopeful about the world and the prospects for freedom We only need to look around to see the new technologies that may someday spare future generations from the nightmare of nuclear terror, or the growing ranks of democratic activists and freedom fighters, or the increasing movement toward free market economies, or the extent of worldwide concern about the rights of the individual in the face of brute state power.

Nonetheless, it is high time for the governments of South Asia to hate all tensions that create exploitation, war and bloodshed. They should promote peace, liberty, justice, democracy and human rights. However, when peace is denied, liberty is snatched, justice is taken away and democracy usurped, they should support all such efforts at all governmental and non-governmental levels that aim at restoring basic rights everywhere. They all should put in their best to ensure that the beautiful world of ours continues to pulsate with heartbeats of life, music and love.

The potential for a lasting peace is there. The potential for a destabilizing peace is there, too. If the leaders of the South Asia fail to face the problems head on, they have the ingenuity. They have the need. Only the question remains: Do they have the will? I think, they do. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation