India's Supreme Court ordered a retrial of the accused in the Gujarat riots after chief witness Zahira Sheikh said she was intimidated into giving false evidence during the first trial in 2003. (AFP File Photo)

Reports of a retraction by Zahira Sheikh, among the victims of the anti-Muslim pogrom organised in Gujarat in the couple of weeks after February 27, 2002, have shocked the intelligentsia. The media too, quite justifiably, reported the development in terms of the impact Ms Sheikh's decision would have on the Best Bakery case.
Ms Sheikh had raised hopes in June 2003 for those committed to secular and democratic values when she disclosed that she had turned 'hostile' in the trial court earlier under duress and that a BJP functionary from Vadodara had threatened her into doing that. From then on events seemed to convey that not everything was lost. The Supreme Court's intervention in the case--ordering reopening of the trial and instructing that the trial in all riot cases be conducted outside Gujarat--was a judicial landmark in the short history of independent India.
It was felt, at that stage, that the perpetrators of the pogrom would be punished. Given the long and shoddy record of the law enforcement agencies and their political masters in this regard, the retrial in the Best Bakery case and the courage that Zahira Sheikh displayed (particularly after Teesta Setalwad and many others took up the challenge) came as a whiff of fresh air. Here was someone who witnessed the massacre and was prepared to identify the killers. An eyewitness account is considered substantial in the Indian courts, particularly in a murder trial.
All this seems to have taken a beating. And Narendra Modi and the others in the fascist fold have reason to celebrate. Ms Sheikh, from whatever has happened, appears to have agreed to do in the special trial court in Mumbai what she did in the Vadodara court earlier--turn hostile. It does not call for a genius in law to presume the outcome of the trial. The accused will, in all probability, go scot-free, once again. This will happen for want of evidence! With this goes the hope that law will take its course and those guilty in one of the many massacres carried out to turn India into an undemocratic nation.
The point, however, is the rot in the executive. Zahira Sheikh refused to stand up and speak the truth because there was hardly any assurance that the case will stand even after she did. This is so because the rest of the case will still depend on those who constitute the rotten establishment that includes the police. There is no way one can expect those in the establishment--the civil administration and the police--to defy the political leaders. That happened only in commercial cinema and even popular cinema has moved away from the angry-young-man story.
This indeed is why one apprehends that the democratic edifice is getting corroded. The ease with which powerful people manage to distort the principles of rule-of-law and the sense of helplessness that the Zahira Sheikhs are pushed into is a challenge that goes beyond the idea of secularism.
DAILYTIMES.COM.PK

Iraqis inspect the damage after an insurgent attack on an Iraqi Police station in Haditha, Iraq, Nov. 7. (AP Photo)

So Iraqis are now to be subject to possible searches, arrest, detention and curfews under a state of emergency that Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and his interim government have imposed for the next 60 days. What else, one might ask, is new? How do these security measures differ from those increasingly imposed in the past year, except that they have the backing of a "national safety law", passed last July and now invoked by an increasingly desperate Iraqi government and US administration?
In fact, there is a big difference. While the state of emergency, akin to martial law, is designed to shock ordinary Iraqis into steering clear of the rebels, it is also a stark admission that Iraq is sinking into anarchy. This was obvious before last week's US election, but clearly could not be admitted publicly lest it jeopardise President George W. Bush's re-election.
Given the desperate state of Iraq today, it is not easy to second-guess the decision that Mr Allawi and the US have taken. But one can think of more appropriate instances--to curb, for example, the widespread looting in Baghdad that followed the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime--for martial law measures that would have alienated fewer ordinary Iraqis. Even if the situation improves in the next two months, the big question will be what happens in early January when the state of emergency has to cease to allow the elections due later that month.
The scale of the state of emergency, applying everywhere except the Kurdish north, reflects the spread of the insurgency. This was dramatically underlined over the weekend. Just as US and Iraqi forces were massing for their planned assault on the rebel hold-outs in Falluja, Samarra, a city retaken earlier, exploded into violence again. It seems Iraqi cities, at least in the Sunni centre of the country, cannot be relied on to stay "pacified".
One crucial factor in the coming days will be the performance and morale of Iraq's own security forces. They have been persistently bombed and sniped at--23 more Iraqi police were killed Sunday--and must wonder how their participation in a Falluja attack will be seen by their fellow countrymen. The second crucial factor therefore is how the state of emergency will be greeted by ordinary Iraqis. In Samarra, there was bitter resentment at the round-the-clock curfew imposed after Saturday's attacks.
As for Mr Allawi, he needs to do two things immediately. The first is to remove any doubt that his martial law is designed to pave the way for elections, not obstruct them in the way that Arab governments have often used similar emergency powers. The second is to send the message to Iraq's Sunnis that he wants to maximise their participation in the elections. Only if Sunnis feel the electoral process will treat them as fairly as the Kurds and the Shias is support for the rebels in the Sunni heartland likely to wane.
FT.COM

They walk the walk. They talk the talk. But they don't think the think. In the wake of the huge support given to George Bush last week, it's time we realised how different America's majority culture is, and changed our policies accordingly.
What Americans share with Europeans are not values, but institutions. The distinction is crucial. Like us, they have a separation of powers between executive and legislature, an independent judiciary, and the rule of law. But the American majority's social and moral values differ enormously from those that guide most Europeans.
Its dangerous ignorance of the world, a mixture of intellectual isolationism and imperial intervention abroad, is equally alien. In the United States more people have guns than have passports. Is there one European nation of which the same is true?
Of course, millions of US citizens do share "European" values. But to believe that this minority amounts to 48% and that America is deeply polarised is incorrect. It encourages the illusion that things may improve when Bush is gone. In fact, most Kerry voters are as conservative as the Bush majority on the issues, which worry Europeans. Kerry never came out for US even-handedness on the Israel-Palestine conflict, or for a withdrawal from Iraq.
Many commentators now argue for Europe to distance itself. But vague pleas for greater European coherence or for Tony Blair to end his close links with the White House are not enough. The call should not be for "more" independence. We need full independence.
We must go all the way, up to the termination of NATO. An alliance, which should have wound up when the Soviet Union collapsed, now serves almost entirely as a device for giving the US an unfair and unreciprocated droit de regard over European foreign policy.
As long as we are officially embedded as America's allies, the default option is that we have to support America and respect its "leadership". This makes it harder for European governments to break ranks, for fear of being attacked as disloyal. The default option should be that we, like they, have our interests. Sometimes they will coincide. Sometimes they will differ. But that is normal.
There is a school of thought, which says that NATO is virtually defunct, so there is no need to worry about it. It is true that NATO is unlikely ever again to function with the unanimity it showed during the cold war. The lesson from Iraq is that the alliance has become no more than a "coalition of the reluctant", with key members like France and Germany opting out of joint action.
But it is wrong to be complacent about NATO's alleged impotence or irrelevance. NATO gives the US a significant instrument for moral and political pressure. Europe is automatically expected to tag along in going to war, or in the post-conflict phase, as in Afghanistan or Iraq. Who knows whether Iran and Syria will come next? Bush has four more years in power and there is little likelihood that his successors in the White House will be any less interventionist.
NATO, in short, has become a threat to Europe. Its existence also acts as a continual drag on Europe's efforts to build its own security institutions. Certain member countries, particularly Britain, constantly look over their shoulders for fear of upsetting big brother. This has an inhibiting effect on every initiative.
Jonathan Steele
GUARDIAN.CO.UK

It's another four years--this time with a legitimate win behind him--and the prospects for George W. Bush's second term are grim. He is stronger politically; the Democratic opposition is weaker, especially in the Senate, where the Republicans gained several seats and closed in on a filibuster-proof super-majority. Bush and the GOP demonstrated that they could locate and mobilize their voters. The Democrats--even with big-money efforts (America Coming Together and its ad-buying sister outfit raised and spent more than $200 million)--could not match them. Bush now has more power than he did before the election. He will use it. And he is likely to adopt the game plan that served him well at the start of his first term: Move fast and move hard.
To what ends? Bush signaled his intentions before the election: partial privatization of Social Security, tax "reform" and tort "reform." And there is no reason not to take him at his word. On election night, Bush adviser Karen Hughes was talking about Social Security before the counting was done. "Ronald Reagan used his second term to justify nothing and to lay out an agenda for nothing," says Grover Norquist, a leading GOP activist/strategist. "Bush has already started laying out a vision of what he calls 'the ownership society.' It's a coherent worldview."
The trend lines seem obvious. Bush can be expected to continue his undeclared war on environmental safeguards, to propose expanding the Patriot Act and to maintain his effective ban on stem-cell research.
"On foreign policy, the big question mark," says Norquist, "is, What has the President and the Republican Party learned from Iraq? Did he learn it was a bridge too far and doesn't want to do three more of these? Or will he think, 'We got elected, let's do Egypt'?" Bush, Norquist adds, could end up at odds with conservatives on the "empire front." He observes, "If this is perpetual war to achieve perpetual peace, then it's out of sync with conservative members of Congress and his own base. They don't want a permanent garrison state with high taxes, a draft and a big government." But Bush has committed himself to "staying the course" (whatever it is) in Iraq and also to remaking the Middle East. He has fully embraced the hubris and arrogance of the neocons. Why should Bush change his fundamental national security views when he has escaped punishment for hyping a threat, misleading the country into an unnecessary war and alienating much of the globe?
The next four years could be dark ones. It is true that in recent decades second terms have been burdened by scandal (Watergate, Iran/contra, Monicagate). And the pattern could hold. Obstruction of justice in the Joe Wilson leak case? A Bush crony or relative caught profiting improperly in Iraq (Iraqgate)? And second-term administrations have often lost steam, as senior officials depart for high-paying private-sector jobs (while their White House connections are fresh) and are replaced by the B team. But Bush has often defied history: winning (sort of) in 2000 during a time of seeming prosperity and peace, protecting his party's position in Congress in mid-term elections and achieving re-election when the economy was down. History provides little comfort. And certainly the politics will be ugly. The Bush camp has been rewarded for its tactics of distortion and derision. Bush and Dick Cheney appealed to people's fears. And the lesson for them and the Republicans is clear: This worked, let's do more.
THENATION.COM

Of late there has been vociferous debate on minority issues in Turkey. The controversy stems from a six-and-a-half page report written on behalf of the Human Rights Consultative Council of the Prime Ministry by the Minority and Cultural Rights Task Group. The report was drawn up eighteen months ago but it was constantly delayed by the task groups's conservative and nationalist members until last month. When the more courageous and modern-minded members dared to release it, the nationalists tore it to pieces--literally--and condemned the report in public, with the government disowning it.
What was in the report that offended and threatened the conservatives and the nationalists so much? Firstly, it points out that most of the difficulties Turkey has undergone concerning restrictions on the cultural rights of minorities arises from the stark fact that Turkish administrations have systematically evaded obeying certain principles of the Lausanne Treaty of 1923.
Although Turkish officialdom expresses its adamant loyalty to this treaty in issues related to minorities and resists any other interpretation of minority or adopt different approaches to minority related matters, the report says that it is Turkey itself who has violated the treaty.
Indeed, Article 39/4 of the Lausanne Treaty stipulates that there would be no restrictions for any citizen of the Republic of Turkey to use language of his/her choice in open meetings, the press or any kind of mass media, in commercial and religious affairs. Although there is an official language of the state, citizens who speak languages other than Turkish should be aided in the best way in the courts so that they can defend themselves verbally.
The report stipulates that if this article was properly observed and the principle therein applied, Turkey would not have been accused of violating basic human rights and tension would not have built up between the government and non-Turkish speaking cultural groups of the republic.
In spite of this fact, the European Union's request of the Turkish government to be more responsive to the basic rights of cultural groups is met with disdain and suspicion by the nationalists and the conservatives. Such a request is accused of creating new minorities in Turkey.
The second source of controversy is the proposal to change the name of the nation from a blood-based definition to a territorial one. Indeed, the majority of the population of Turkey is ethnically of Turkish origin, however, there are others living in this country who are quite willing to be loyal citizens of the republic but do not call themselves Turkish, and nor do they want to be labeled as Turkish. These ethnically non-Turkish citizens, together with non-Sunni Muslims, feel discriminated against because Turkishness has come to be associated with Sunnism and they would feel more comfortable and secure in a new and more inclusive definition of nationhood. The report dares to propose that rather than saying, "I am Turkish," one should be able to say, "I am a citizen of Turkey but I am Greek, Armenian, Albanian or Kurdish." Such a change would encompass all citizens but would not force them to abandon their cultural or sub-identities. Their supra or official identity would be defined by the name of the state of which they are all citizens of.
Having been reared in the cultural environment of the nation-state where nationalism is both the constitutive ideology and current psychological glue of the nation, it is very hard to dissociate this ideology from individual psyches. However, by definition, a nation is a plural entity. This is a call to transform what may be called the "nation of the state" to the "state of the nation." Indeed, for the first time in republican history the omnipotent and omnipresent state is giving way to the primacy of the nation and the nation is reclaiming its characteristics that were either denied or trivialized due to national security and national unity concerns
TURKISHDAILYNEWS.
COM