Pakistani Muslims hold Qu'rans and chant anti-US slogans during a rally in Lahore, May 20. (Reuters File Photo)

The near thorough removal of all communications boundaries in our contemporary world is unprecedented. Incendiary Arabic language sermons quickly circulate among American conservatives, and insults to Islam are heard instantly in remote cities and villages from Peshawar to Kuala Lumpur. We do not yet have habits of mind that match this new reality. Debate, reactions, and analyses struggle to transcend traditional categories. As such they do not shed light. Wholesome responses and solutions elude us.
Last week two privately owned corporations, namely Newsweek Inc. (a Washington Post company), and the Washington Times sparked high intensity, international incidents. In one there was even loss of life. Newsweek ran a half sentence on desecrating the Koran causing a worldwide firestorm including riots and death, and the Washington Times ran an objectionable and embarrassing cartoon.
The Times peccadillo came and went somehow waning despite the paper’s odd non-apology about “man’s best friend“. Perhaps the more horrifying series of events surrounding the Newsweek half sentence knocked the legs out from under the Times’ troubles.
Analysis of these phenomena should concentrate on two most important aspects:
1. The immediate politicization of the problem and virtually all commentary that followed.
2. The clear evidence that cultural ignorance a) abounds, and b) has dire consequences in this age of instant communication.
David Brooks described the politicization well in his May 19 New York Times editorial. The Newsweek problem called for quick, genuine, and creative solutions. Instead we were buried under the hype and barrage of finger pointing and blame from all sides. Then, instead of searching for creative, urgently needed solutions, we are made cross-eyed by yet another round of media narcissism obsessing on itself in the tiring minutiae of journalism standards, use of sources and
other shop talk.
What the Newsweek blunder showed, more than confusion over the use of sources, was the simple fact that almost no non-Muslim Americans naturally know how the Koran truly functions in Muslim life and piety. The most frightful revelation shown by the “Newsweek horrors“ is that the cost of cultural and religious ignorance in a world of instant communication is at an all time high, and can no longer be ignored or left unattended.
The second major problem revealed in these events has to do with a near impossible effort to divide a “foreign“ cultural sphere into an enemy half and an allied half. To presume that one can simply divide into “good guys and bad guys,“ a 1-billion-person international community grounded in 1,400 years of complex and opaque processes and evolution is silly on the face of it.
Islamic history, theology, jurisprudence, political philosophy, and the profound and subtle evolution of its schools of interpretations, its political and theological development, its own debated issues of expansion, modernization, race and gender issues and more takes patience and understanding to intuit. To think that one can do this on the cheap, and further to think this is possible under the defining context of military alliances and national self-interest is in a word, impossible, and should be unthinkable.
Until the alliance between the United States and forward looking Muslim thinkers, countries, and leaders is one that transcends military purposes, and grows to become one of mutual embrace, and until the centuries long slide of modernity into the secularization that misses religion as a vital to the human experience is reversed, we are bound to continue suffering from the results of self-imposed ignorance.
Frank Kauffmann
METIMES.COM

The international scene is one of depressing chaos and runaway aggression. Foreign threats have multiplied, with terror streaming across borders, drugs trafficked by gangs that can be mightier than governments, and multi-nationals exerting pressure everywhere. Water is scarce, but not earthquakes and floods. The West has its own agendas, and so do ethnic groups. Trade agreements have so far paved the way to little aside from unequal competition. Debts are being used as means of political pressure. And the powers are deciding on behalf of all when and where weapons of mass destruction are really a bad thing.
The world has depleted nearly 60 per cent of its non-renewable resources. Two-thirds of the globe is now polluted. Biological diversity is diminishing. And humanity has used up more food and energy in the past few years than it did over the entire 18th and 19th centuries. The world, as it stands today, is an exercise in Malthusian doom. How long will this earth be able to sustain this kind of unrestrained growth? No one knows for certain.
Is there anything we can do in the face of such threats? Is there anything our military can do in the face of poverty, illiteracy and disease? And how do we address such a wide spectrum of civilian and military perils? I don’t claim to have the answers, but let me suggest some pointers.
First, terror, debts, ethnic and religious problems are all of global nature and call for global solutions. Second, the gap between the North and the South and the poor and rich only adds to the intensity of these problems. Third, so long as might is right and as international law is revamped to suit the preferences of the major powers, the worst is to be expected. Fourth, double standards that allow Israel, but not other countries, to have weapons of mass destruction and that call violence terror in a selective manner are of no help.
What we need is a constitution conforming to the aspirations of our country and citizens, and a charter delineating the manner of development we seek. Poverty and hunger are weapons of mass destruction, and must be defused before it is too late. We need to decide whether our policy is one of appeasing the North or having solidarity with the South, where our roots are.
We need strong armed forces, but we have to think twice before firing the first shot. Wars are harder to end than to start. We cannot allow our officials to stay in office forever. We need new blood. People in the streets, even the backstreets, have a stake in our affairs, and we have to listen to them. We cannot have political democracy without social justice, because we cannot give political power to those who already have economic power, for a simple reason: they may not be willing to share. National unity means that we must confine the clerics to their mosques and churches, and the servicemen to their barracks.
The devil is in the detail. We need to put the right person in the right place and stamp out corruption. We need good governance, for we cannot allow problems to keep festering forever. A state that is up to its neck in problems is one with a crippled will, one that fears rivals, one that hides behind thinly-veiled referendums, one that invites the public to scream: Enough is enough!
Amin Howeidi,
Egypt’s former
minister of defense
WEEKLY.AHRAM.
ORG.EG

As this millennium dawns, New York City is the most important city in the world, the unofficial capital of planet Earth. But before we New Yorkers become too full of ourselves, it might be worthwhile to glance at dilapidated Kaifeng in central China.
Kaifeng, an ancient city along the mud-clogged Yellow River, was by far the most important place in the world in 1000. And if you’ve never heard of it, that’s a useful warning for Americans--as the Chinese headline above puts it, in a language of the future that many more Americans should start learning, “glory is as ephemeral as smoke and clouds.“
As the world’s only superpower, America may look today as if global domination is an entitlement. But if you look back at the sweep of history, it’s striking how fleeting supremacy is, particularly for individual cities.
My vote for most important city in the world in the period leading up to 2000 B.C. would be Ur, Iraq. In 1500 B.C., perhaps Thebes, Egypt. There was no dominant player in 1000 B.C., though one could make a case for Sidon, Lebanon. In 500 B.C., it would be Persepolis, Persia; in the year 1, Rome; around A.D. 500, maybe Changan, China; in 1000, Kaifeng, China; in 1500, probably Florence, Italy; in 2000, New York City; and in 2500, probably none of the above.
Today Kaifeng is grimy and poor, not even the provincial capital and so minor it lacks even an airport. Its sad state only underscores how fortunes change. In the 11th century, when it was the capital of Sung Dynasty China, its population was more than one million. In contrast, London’s population then was about 15,000.
As I roamed the Kaifeng area, asking local people why such an international center had sunk so low, I encountered plenty of envy of New York. One man said he was arranging to be smuggled into the U.S. illegally, by paying a gang $25,000, but many local people insisted that China is on course to bounce back and recover its historic role as world leader.
“China is booming now,“ said Wang Ruina, a young peasant woman on the outskirts of town. “Give us a few decades and we’ll catch up with the U.S., even pass it.“
She’s right. The U.S. has had the biggest economy in the world for more than a century, but most projections show that China will surpass us in about 15 years, as measured by purchasing power parity.
So what can New York learn from a city like Kaifeng?
One lesson is the importance of sustaining a technological edge and sound economic policies. Ancient China flourished partly because of pro-growth, pro-trade policies and technological innovations like curved iron plows, printing and paper money. But then China came to scorn trade and commerce, and per capita income stagnated for 600 years.
A second lesson is the danger of hubris, for China concluded it had nothing to learn from the rest of the world--and that was the beginning of the end.
I worry about the U.S. in both regards. Our economic management is so lax that we can’t confront farm subsidies or long-term budget deficits. Our technology is strong, but American public schools are second-rate in math and science. And Americans’ lack of interest in the world contrasts with the restlessness, drive and determination that are again pushing China to the forefront.
Nicholas D. Kristof
NYTIMES.COM

India recently successfully placed its 11th remote-sensing satellite Cartosat-1 into orbit--blasted into space by a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV)--stretching further its record to 12 launches, including broadcast satellites, without any failure, though there have been glitches.
The stage is now set for the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), run by the government, to carry out a fully fledged commercial launch, with a little help from the US, by the removal of sanctions on dual-use technologies. India considers its missile, space and nuclear programs as closely inter-linked, with nuclear deterrence against Pakistan and China and benefits to the people through satellite technology and nuclear energy being critical factors.
But first, the significance of the satellite launch. The latest launch, carried out from a newly built second launch pad with an estimated cost of US$100 million, will provide the flexibility that exists with the Space Shuttle of the US and Europe’s Ariane rockets.
The launch “reaffirms the emergence of India as a major space power“, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told parliament in New Delhi. India has committed to sending a probe to the moon in two or three years, but its space program has been mainly aimed at harnessing high technology for the masses.
While India’s space program, largely developed by indigenous scientists with help from European partners and the US earlier, deserves kudos, similar technology is being used to build synergies into another arena--India has also announced that it will test-fire its longest range (3,000 kilometers) surface-to-surface missile, Agni III, capable of delivering nuclear payloads, by the end of the year. This range effectively covers China and Pakistan, unlike the earlier two versions.
The development of India’s missile program is a contravention of missile control and test-ban treaties, which India opposes as being biased toward major powers.
ISRO is developing two categories of rocket--the PSLVs are designed for earth observation and scientific missions, such as Cartosat-1, and the forthcoming Chandrayaan moon mission. The larger Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) carry communications satellites into geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometers above the earth, at which height they can “hover“ over the same place. The GSLV motors form the critical stages of operations of the long-range Agni.
Keeping India’s interest in overcoming hurdles in procuring dual-use technologies, by getting US export control procedures simplified, the Indian parliament recently passed the Weapons of Mass Destruction and their Delivery Systems bill, which the government has emphasized does not “in any manner constrict“ India’s nuclear program, either strategic or civilian.
The nuclear bill is important in light of India’s emergence as a “nuclear state“, and meets the country’s commitments under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 passed in April 2004.
“For us, nuclear energy is an important means to address this challenge [energy security]. As such, we intend to maintain and expand our indigenous nuclear power program. This would also ease the strain on conventional energy supplies globally. Since India’s record in non-proliferation is impeccable and acknowledged to be so internationally, the current restrictions on cooperation in nuclear power production with India have become anachronistic and counter-productive,“ Manmohan said in parliament recently.
Indeed, in the arena of space, too, many feel that the time is ripe for India to embark on a government-led campaign to win launch orders from other countries by putting in competitive bids, especially to developing countries. As in several other fields, India can follow the lead taken by China, which has joined hands with Brazil and which won an order last year to build and launch a communications satellite for Nigeria.
ATIMES.COM

Out of sight, out of mind. That’s largely been the world’s approach toward the former Balkans ethnic war zone of Kosovo.
Thankfully, that’s about to end.
This summer, the international community is set to review the highly charged issue of Kosovo’s political status. Since a 1999 NATO air campaign drove Serb forces from Kosovo, this poor, tense corner of the former Yugoslavia has been in legal limbo.
Officially, it’s a province of the country now known as Serbia and Montenegro. It has a Serb minority, but Kosovo’s 90 percent ethnic Albanian population demands independence. The compromise since the war has been to have Kosovo administered by the United Nations, and secured by 18,000 NATO troops.
This “between“ state is no longer sustainable. Uncertainty has helped drive Kosovo’s economy into the ground. Unemployment runs at about 60 percent. Because of Kosovo’s undetermined future, neither the World Bank nor the International Monetary Fund can offer assistance.
At the same time, ethnic conflicts have flared. Last spring, Kosovo’s mainly Muslim Albanians went on a rampage, injuring hundreds of Serbs and attacking their Orthodox churches, which are part of Serb identity. Nineteen people died. Without a settling of the status question, it’s feared violence could flare again.
This week, the Bush administration gave a welcome, if belated, push toward resolving this thorny problem by putting forward a road map toward resolution. If all goes well, final-status negotiations--involving Europe, the US, and both sides in the conflict--would begin in the fall.
To maintain credibility as a facilitator, the US isn’t taking a position on Kosovo’s final status. But the Western community is rightly gravitating toward independence.
Such a decision would involve some difficult issues, but considering the alternatives, independence makes the most sense.
Serbia’s notion of “more than autonomy, but less than independence“ is vague, and simply won’t be accepted by Kosovo’s majority Albanians. Autonomy was the official status under which “ethnic cleansing“ of the Albanians by Serbs occurred, and it was that ethnic violence that led to the war in the first place. Serbia is now a fledgling democracy, but that doesn’t erase the Albanians’ historic fears.
Partition is also being talked about. But while Kosovo’s north is largely Serb, many Serbs are scattered in the south, and it’s hard to imagine them accepting such a deal.
That leaves independence, with all its risks and complications. Risks, because the Albanians so far have a poor record in their treatment of Serb and other minorities. And complications, because of the issues independence raises not only for Serbia--loath to give up more territory of the former Yugoslavia--but also for Kosovo’s neighbors, which have large ethnic Albanian populations.
Saving Kosovo was a necessary step in 1999. So is setting it free today.
CSMONITOR.COM