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Journalism of Courage
It8217;s just as well, now they tell us, that India and Pakistan did not send troops to Iraq. A report in the NEW YORK TIMES this week suggested it isn8217;t just Islamabad and New Delhi that are relieved 8212; Baghdad is relieved as well. Because Indian and Pakistani peacekeepers would only have been troublesome. Anonymous minders of Iraq8217;s elusive peace confided to the NYT the 8216;8216;delicate problem8217;8217; subcontinental troops might have posed there: 8216;8216;where to deploy them so they would not be at each other8217;s throats8230;8217;8217; Some Iraqis feared, said the NYT, that however much Iraqi territory separated them, the two armies might find a way to harass each other over some imaginary 8216;line of control8217;.
Troops from India and Pakistan would only have spawned worries about keeping peace among the peacekeepers, sighed the paper. Sour grapes, anyone?
Hold the thaw
Also this week, the peace process in the subcontinent was virtually killed off in influential sections of the US and British media. The 8216;8216;surging violence8217;8217; in Kashmir, said the NYT, has 8216;8216;knotted8217;8217; the peace effort. It claimed 8216;8216;rare interviews with two Kashmiri separatists leaders suggest that tensions will continue to grow8217;8217;. Britain8217;s OBSERVER announced that after the wordy Indo-Pak duelling at the UNGA meet, 8216;8216;analysts say that progress towards peace is now virtually impossible8217;8217;. The WASHINGTON POST relied on unnamed diplomats in New Delhi to predict that there won8217;t be much movement on India8217;s side until sometime next year, after general elections.
Who sexed it up?
Major American publications have again put that question in the headlines. Sample these: 8216;So, What Went Wrong?8217;, 8216;Mission Not Accomplished8217;, and 8216;Chasing a Mirage8217; in TIME. 8216;Is France Right?8217;, 8216;The Unbuilding of Iraq8217; in NEWSWEEK.
This week, David Kay, the former UN weapons inspector who has been leading the US team searching for WMDs in Iraq told Congressional intelligence committees that his inspectors 8216;8216;have not yet found stocks of weapons8217;8217; using chemical or biological agents, or evidence of 8216;8216;steps to actually build nuclear weapons8217;8217;. The preliminary report, analysed the NYT, forces the Bush administration to confront the reality: 8216;8216;that Saddam Hussein8217;s armoury appears to have been stuffed with precursors, potential weapons and bluffs, but that nothing found so far backs up administration claims that Mr Hussein posed an imminent threat to the world8217;8217;.
But Britain8217;s DAILY TELEGRAPH, for one, wasn8217;t even listening. An editorial earlier this week had already thought up an ingenious answer to the awkward questions raised by America8217;s Dr Kay. The absence of WMDs, it argued seriously, is no proof of a monstrous conspiracy by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair. It is not they who look stupid, but Saddam himself. Because, 8216;8216;it may one day emerge that the 8216;45-minute claim8217; was not a myth hatched in London but in Baghdad, by Iraqi generals eager to tell Saddam what he wanted to hear8230; that he was still capable of unleashing untold horrors upon the world at a flick of a switch8217;8217;. All the while, Saddam was 8216;8216;deliberately nurturing the West8217;s worst fears8217;8217;. In the end, concluded the TELEGRAPH, if anyone 8216;8216;sexed up8217;8217; the dossier, it was not Blair or Alastair Campbell. Saddam dunnit.
Eureka!
Words, words
This week, the NYT reviewed Benjamin R. Barber8217;s new book 8216;Fear8217;s Empire: war, Terrorism and Democracy8217;. Barber8217;s 1995 book, it recalled, was the bestselling 8216;Jihad vs McWorld8217; which presciently framed the post cold war world as a place racked by the fragmenting forces of religious and ethnic fundamentalism and the homogenising forces of global capitalism.
In his new book, Barber counters the Bush administration8217;s new strategy of preemption with a multilateral approach. But what caught the NYT8217;s eye was his 8216;8216;predilection for taxonomies that explain highly complex phenomena through no-frills dialectics and dynamics8217;8217;: Barber renames the hawks and doves as 8216;8216;eagles8217;8217; and 8216;8216;owls8217;8217;. He sets up 8216;8216;Pax Americana8217;8217; a 8216;8216;universal peace imposed by American arms8230; because it matters not if they hate us as long as they fear us8217;8217; against 8216;8216;lex humana8217;8217;, the 8216;8216;universal law rooted in human commonality8217;8217;. He contrasts the Bush administration8217;s policy of 8216;8216;preventive war8217;8217; with what he calls 8216;8216;preventive democracy8217;8217; which 8216;8216;assumes that the sole long-term defence for the United States8230; is democracy itself8217;8217;.
Speaking of words, in Lebanon8217;s THE DAILY STAR, executive editor Rami G. Khourie had a suggestion on 8216;8216;reform8217;8217;. He urged Arab regimes, leaders, offspring, cousins, employees and friends to declare a moratorium on using the word for the next year. And to use that time to do two things: 8216;8216;first take the reform debate to the grassroots and communities of the Arab world, and find out what the ordinary citizens fear and want8230; Second, let us achieve a consensus agreement in each Arab country on what we want to achieve and change.8217;8217; A good starting point, he said, is the recently published World Bank report on governance in the Middle East and North Africa.
Navi Gujarat?
Someone took note of Narendra Modi8217;s hardsell. His government hosted a global investors8217; meeting, bilboards have come up at Heathrow8217;s terminal three and at JFK airport emblazoned with his smile and a 8216;Vibrant Gujarat8217; logo, he has notched frequent flier miles as he travels abroad to work up investor enthusiasm, he recently took tough measures to cut Gujarat8217;s fiscal deficit.
So is Modi successfully rebranding Gujarat? According to Britain8217;s FINANCIAL TIMES, foreign investors were mostly conspicuous by their absence at last weekend8217;s meet. Like them, the FT refused to suspend disbelief: 8216;8216;In spite of its relatively good infrastructure and skilled workforce, Gujarat8217;s reputation continues to suffer from what is seen as a particularly menacing brand of Hindu nationalism8217;8217;.
Freeze frame
And in the WASHINGTON POST, the story of Jassi. Whose mother in Vancouver, Canada allegedly gave the final cell phone order to hired goons to kill her in India. More than three years after Jassi was kidnapped, beaten and stabbed on the night of June 8, 2000, the case is still locked in legal and procedural tangles that span the oceans.
The WASHINGTON POST painstakingly, tenderly retrieved the story of the young girl from a powerful Jat Sikh family settled in Canada and the forbidden love she found with Mithoo, a poor rickshaw driver from her mother8217;s village, Jagraon, in Punjab. The blush at first sight. The love letters they wrote in a language the other didn8217;t fully understand. The secret 45-minute marriage, the photograph taken in front of a fake Taj Mahal. Then, threats from the family, a false case, the crime.
Jassi8217;s throat was slit that night in the name of caste, class and tradition. And a notion of 8216;family honour8217;, whose grip became clammier, more deathly, after it settled abroad.
