Grand Trunk Road

What was Khalid Hasan thinking when he wrote this column in today’s Daily Times:

WASHINGTON: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Co-chairman Asif Zardari’s accusation in a Sunday Times interview that President Pervez Musharraf diverted United States funds meant to aid the war on terror into some slush fund to aid rogue members of the military intelligence, has been greeted with disbelief on Monday by those who know how the system actually works.
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Every dollar paid out is carefully scrutinised and accounted for, leaving no room for any money being siphoned off, as has been alleged.
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Multi-tiered system: An intricate, 10-step multi-tiered system has been put in place by the two governments to process the transactions. The reimbursement claim entered under CSF is gone over by a special unit based in the US embassy in Islamabad known as Office of the Defence Representative in Pakistan (ODRP), currently headed by an admiral. The US ambassador validates the claim, which is then sent to CENTCOM headquarters in Florida, which passes it on after satisfying itself that all is in order.

Oh, really? Disbelief by all who know how the system actually works? Somebody should have sent a memo to everyone at the US Government Accountability Office who worked on their report, published on 24 June of this year, entitled U.S Oversight of Pakistan Reimbursement Claims for Coalition Support Funds (PDF)
From the summary:

While Defense generally conducted macro-level analytical reviews called for in its guidance, such as determining whether the cost is less than that which would be incurred by the United States for the same service, for a large number of reimbursement claims Defense did not obtain detailed documentation to verify that claimed costs were valid, actually incurred, or correctly calculated. GAO found that Defense did not consistently apply its existing CSF oversight guidance. For example, as of May 2008, Defense paid over $2 billion in Pakistani reimbursement claims for military activities covering January 2004 through June 2007 without obtaining sufficient information that would enable a third party to recalculate these costs. Furthermore, Defense may have reimbursed costs that (1) were not incremental, (2) were not based on actual activity, or (3) were potentially duplicative. GAO also found that additional oversight controls were needed. For example, there is no guidance for Defense to verify currency conversion rates used by Pakistan, which if performed would enhance Defense’s ability to monitor for potential overbillings. Defense’s guidance does not specifically task ODRP with attempting to verify Pakistani military support and expenses, despite recognition by Defense officials that such verification is best performed by U.S. officials in Pakistan, who have access to Pakistani officials and information. As such, ODRP did not try to verify Pakistan CSF claims from January 2004 through August 2006.

From the Washington Post article on the report:

The Bush administration has paid Pakistan more than $2 billion without adequate proof that the Pakistani government used the funds for their intended purpose of supporting U.S. counterterrorism efforts, congressional auditors reported yesterday. Their report concluded that more than a third of U.S. funds provided Pakistan since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were subject to accounting problems, including duplication and possible fraud.

A truly memorable example, from the actual report:

For example, the most recent Pakistani navy claim (June 2007) includes cost categories titled “vehicle damage” and “cost of vehicles repaired” but no details were provided to explain the differences between these two categories and there was insufficient detail to determine whether some or all of the claimed costs were unique or duplicative. Despite this lack of detail, we found that Defense paid the Pakistani navy an average of over $19,000 per vehicle, per month (more than $3.7 million per year) to operate, maintain, and repair a fleet of fewer than 20 passenger vehicles without sufficient information to determine that these costs were not duplicative.

A conclusion, from near the end of the report:

ODRP [Office of the Defense Representative to Pakistan] officials said they doubted that ODRP would ever be able to full verify actual costs in Pakistan. First, the Pakistani military reports costs to ORDP that are already aggregates of many smaller costs that ODRP cannot directly monitor. Furthermore, according to ODRP, electronic record keeping is rare in the Pakistani government, and collation may entail a certain amount of approximation and aggregating.

Dawn

PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar, who is a member of the committee which is drafting the charge-sheet, told Dawn that it had made “significant progress”.

“It will be an unimpeachable document supported by documentary evidence of all the acts of omission and commission committed by (President) Musharraf that make him liable to impeachment several times,” Mr Babar said.

47. Removal [22][or impeachment] of President.
[22A](1) Notwithstanding anything contained in the Constitution, the President may, in accordance with the provisions of this Article, be removed from office on the ground of physical or mental incapacity or impeached on a charge of violating the Constitution or gross misconduct.
(2) Not less than one-half of the total membership of either House may give to the Speaker of the National Assembly or, as the case may be, the Chairman written notice of its intention to move a resolution for the removal of, or, as the case may be, to impeach, the President; and such notice shall set out the particulars of his incapacity or of the charge against him.]
(3) If a notice under clause (2) is received by the Chairman, he shall transmit it forthwith to the Speaker.
(4) The Speaker shall, within three days of the receipt of a notice under clause (2) or clause (3), cause a copy of the notice to be transmitted to the President.
(5) The Speaker shall summon the two Houses to meet in a joint sitting not earlier than seven days and not later than fourteen days after the receipt of the notice by him.
(6) The joint sitting may investigate or cause to be investigated the ground or the charge upon which the notice is founded.
(7) The President shall have the right to appear and be represented during the investigation, if any, and before the joint sitting.
(8) If, after consideration of the result of the investigation, if any, a resolution is passed at the joint sitting by the votes of not less than two-thirds of the total membership of [23][Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament)] declaring that the President is unfit to hold the office due to incapacity or is guilty of violating the Constitution or of gross misconduct, the President shall cease to hold office immediately on the passing of the resolution.

Everybody knows that Richard Haass is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations who asked Prime Minister Gillani some tough questions about Pakistan last week:

“HAASS: [..]And one of the questions I would have is whether it’s possible to imagine a different relationship between the central government and the FATA, and essentially to end the unique status of the FATA and to integrate it more into Pakistan like other parts of the country.

Anyway, everyone knows how terrible Gillani’s answer was. But what’s also interesting is that Haass has, for a long time, propounded the theory that state sovereignty is increasingly irrelevant in times of globalisation and the rise of non-state forces.
Here’s an article by him, from 2006 in the Taipei Times:

Globalization thus implies that sovereignty is not only becoming weaker in reality, but that it needs to become weaker. States would be wise to weaken sovereignty in order to protect themselves, because they cannot insulate themselves from what goes on elsewhere. Sovereignty is no longer a sanctuary.

This was demonstrated by the American and world reaction to terrorism. Afghanistan’s Taliban government, which provided access and support to al-Qaeda, was removed from power. Similarly, the US’ preventive war against an Iraq that ignored the UN and was thought to possess weapons of mass destruction showed that sovereignty no longer provides absolute protection.
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Our notion of sovereignty must therefore be conditional, even contractual, rather than absolute. If a state fails to live up to its side of the bargain by sponsoring terrorism, either transferring or using weapons of mass destruction, or conducting genocide, then it forfeits the normal benefits of sovereignty and opens itself up to attack, removal or occupation.

Reading his column and then reading his questions to Mr. Gillani made me think of all those endless political debates on live with Talat where Talat invites one person each from three of the major parties. The PML-Q guys are always the ones most loudly confronting the PPP guys about doing nothing for the restoration of the judiciary despite the fact that everyone knows that the PML-Q doesn’t give a rat’s ass about restoring the judiciary. Mr. Haass couldn’t care less about the development and integration of FATA. He already believes, by dint of his political philosophy, that this is impossible and that Pakistan’s sovereignty in the tribal areas is a non-issue. But that doesn’t stop him from using it to score some points.

Summed in up four words: wrap up and leave. Maybe I’ve been watching too much Star Trek, but in this time of madness his column sounds like one of those broadcasts from an alien ship from the other side of a wormhole:

The first step in rethinking Afghan strategy is to think seriously about the lessons of a recent opinion survey of ordinary Taliban fighters commissioned by the Toronto Globe and Mail.* Two results are striking: the widespread lack of any strong expression of allegiance to Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership; and the reasons given by most for joining the Taliban – namely, the presence of western troops in Afghanistan. The deaths of relatives or neighbours at the hands of those forces was also stated by many as a motive. This raises the question of whether Afghanistan is not becoming a sort of surreal hunting estate, in which the US and Nato breed the very “terrorists” they then track down.

I looked up his 2004 book “America Right or Wrong:An Anatomy of American Nationalism” on Amazon, because it sounded interesting. He argues that there are two traditions in American nationalism: a high-minded civic nationalism and a xenophobic and aggressive Jacksonian tradition (sorry, that sounds pompous, but I’m just summarizing the reviews!) The Bush administration managed to draw from the worst aspects of each tradition while formulating its post 9/11 foreign policy.

Rather hilariously, I found a perfect example of this strange schizophrenic approach to foreign policy right there in one of the reviews of his book. So I colour coded the two different nationalisms. Red for bad Jacksonian, blue for good old fashioned love of freedom:

It’s happening again. Same pattern of behavior. Ironically, many of the same players (communists/socialists, anarchists and islamofascists). There is a difference, however, the major power in the world today is the US. And we are a hell of alot tougher to fool than our european friends. We simply will not allow this new form of nazism to rise to power…NO MATTER WHAT ANYONE SAYS. As anyone who has bothered to become educated on what actually happened in Iraq (as opposed to listening to communist propaganda), OUR behavior is one of extreme restraint, but overwhelming might when it is needed. Far from being “jingoistic ” or “militaristic”, the US focuses on the MINIMAL amount of force to get the job done, followed by extreme efforts to replace the twisted and evil regime of someone like Hussein with an enlightened democracy that serves its people….that gives THEM the ability to choose their own destiny. In short, we freed them, with minimal causalties and DAMN few civilian deaths. Our intervention in Iraq wiped out the funding for terrorist organizations (and Hussein WAS the PRIMARY funder of Al-Queda and very much behind the attacks on our country) and wiped a great many of these scum off the face the earth before they could harm any more people. More importantly, it freed millions of people from the yoke of tyranny and has given hope to millions more in the rest of the middle east. That is the truth of Iraq and the truth of the US. We are good people who do good things in the world. And we will NOT stand idle in the face of evil….especially if you are stupid enough to bring it to our shores.

This story about Aafia Siddiqui is profoundly depressing. Cicero said that the law is silent in times of war. Rather aptly for these times, I read this particular quote on a blog and the person who was quoting it was quoting it with approval. I would go further than Cicero and say that all that war does is expose what a fragile illusion the rule of law is, even in the world’s most powerful and prosperous country.

From Wikipedia:

“I don’t want any of them [persons of Japanese ancestry] here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty… It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still a Japanese. American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty… But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map”
General John L. DeWitt

“Executive Order 9066, signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, allowed authorized military commanders to designate “military areas” at their discretion, “from which any or all persons may be excluded.” These “exclusion zones”, unlike the “alien enemy” roundups, were applicable to anyone that an authorized military commander might choose, whether citizen or non-citizen. Eventually such zones would include parts of both the East and West Coasts totaling about 1/3 of the country by area. Unlike the subsequent detainment and internment programs that would come to be applied to large numbers of Japanese Americans, detentions and restrictions directly under this Individual Exclusion Program were placed primarily on individuals of German or Italian ancestry, including American citizens”

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It is important to note that the rulings of the US Supreme Court in the 1944 Korematsu and Hirabayashi cases, specifically, its expansive interpretation of government powers in wartime, were not overturned. They are still the law of the land because a lower court cannot overturn a ruling by the US Supreme Court. However, the coram nobis cases totally undermined the factual underpinnings of the 1944 cases, leaving the original decisions without the proverbial legal leg to stand on.[46] But in light of the fact that these 1944 decisions are still on the books, a number of legal scholars have expressed the opinion that the original Korematsu and Hirabayashi decisions have taken on an added relevance in the context of the War on terror.

When I read Ian Talbott’s “Pakistan: A Modern History” I came across this paragraph:

The publication of Samuel P. Huntingdon’s seminal study Political Order In Changing Societies coincided with the tenth anniversary of the coup d’etat that had brought Muhammad Ayub Khan to power. Huntingdon was fulsome in his praise of the Field-Marshall, declaring: “More than any other political leader in a modernising country after World War II, Ayub came close to filling the role of a Solon or a Lycurgus, or “Great Legislator” on the Platonic or Rousseauian model.”

Now, I haven’t read the ominously named Political Order in Changing Societies but I would love to read Huntingdon’s discussion of Ayub Khan.

The answer: not much. Not exactly breaking news, but a classic from Daniel Pipes when he was in his prime (September 2002). Emphasis mine:

Stephen Crittenden: Well, you’ve raised the issue of modernity and Westernisation. Islam has been on a collision course with the West for its entire history even before there was such a thing as modernisation; are you with someone like Samuel Huntingdon, who thinks that you can be modern without being Western, or are you with me? Do you think that modernity is a product of Westernisation?

Daniel Pipes: I’m with you completely. I note that the two really successful imposed efforts to modernise a country, namely Meiji Japan and Ataturk – Turkey – both did not stint on the Westernising. I recall, for example, reading about the 1880s how the Prime Minister of Japan at that point insisted that his Ministers and other big shots, engage in ballroom dancing.

Stephen Crittenden: Ataturk built a Conservatorium, because you had to have one.

Daniel Pipes: Music is a wonderful example of this. Music is utterly useless in its own right, but it is a symptom. If you’re willing to learn Beethoven and learn Western music and really get good at it, it means that you’re willing to do all that’s necessary to modernise. And where you’re not, where you say “no, I mean we’ll take the engineering, we’ll take the medical research, we’ll take the military aspects, but no thank you to the music”, it doesn’t work. Music is a very nice indication. People’s attitudes towards Western music are a good signal of how they’re going to fare in much more practical areas of life. And Japan, not surprisingly, has world-class symphony orchestras playing. And it’s not just the quality of the music, but they have, for example, adopted Beethoven’s Ninth into a Christmas-New Year kind of oration. It’s not something that the West does, it’s something that the Japanese, on their own, developed and made into a tradition of their own. I see that as very significant.

Remember back in class six when you had to spend hours writing précis of boring English passages that should never have been written in the first place? I felt like writing a précis of this op-ed by famous Israeli historian Benny Morris, in the NYT simply because the full impact of the craziness of his argument is best evident in 300 words or less.

1. The primary assumption defining Morris’ argument is hidden deep within page 2 of the article. He considers the regime in Iran to be so crazy, so devoid of the collective sense of self-preservation, that compared to it, the Kremlin of the Cold War was “moderate”. Thus, the concept of deterrence, which even my cat with a brain the size of a walnut can understand through my judicious threats of using a spray bottle on him, is useless when it comes to Iran¹

2. As a result of this premise, Morris states that there is a universal consensus in Israel that a conventional attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is necessary within 4-7 months.

3. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that Israel, which does not possess the weapons or intelligence capability of the US (which, Morris reproachfully states, is being too “ambivalent” about Iran), will actually be able to successfully wipe out Iran’s arsenal.

4. Therefore, the world should just hope that Israel is successful because otherwise, there is almost certainly going to be a nuclear conflict in the Middle East.

Conclusion: Israel is like a really, really bad chess player. You know the kind that gets checkmated while planning a really stupid attack based on the premise that his opponent is mentally retarded or seriously unhinged. But somehow you know it’s still going to be ok for the US and Israel, because they, the Pakistan army, and your annoying little cousin, are the only players who get to whine and “take back” all their moves and still win in the end.

¹This is a really interesting topic by itself and is related to the belief that modern Islamic societies are just a collective version of a suicide bomber.