Local residents walk past the recent bomb blast site in Jimbaran, on Bali island, Oct. 6. (AFP File Photo)

Writing against the current of popular opinion these days is an unceasing struggle against the current of stale clichŽs and platitudes. Immediately after the recent bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali the familiar refrains were heard: ’destruction of the paradise island’, ’loss of a tourist haven’, etc, etc. While it is true that Bali has indeed been seen (and sold) as a tourists’ paradise, we forget that the island has a darker side to its history.
Bali, like the rest of Southeast Asia, inherits at best a troubled past. The 1950s and 1960s witnessed some of the bloodiest conflict ever seen in Southeast Asia. The Vietnam war led to the deaths of millions, and contributed to the destabilisation of the region as a whole. The capitals of Southeast Asian countries like Bangkok and Manila became known as flesh pots where brothels and bars flourished to keep America’s soldiers entertained while they were on leave. The support of Western governments also meant that pro-Western dictators including Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and General Soeharto of Indonesia were allowed to rule the roost with impunity.
Indonesia was one country where the battle for the hearts and minds of the people was fought in earnest. Following a failed coup by the Indonesian communists in 1965, the right-wing nationalists of the country, with the active support of the Indonesian army, began a nation-wide purge that led to the massacre of hundreds of thousands. Bali, ’the island paradise’ visited by millions of tourists every year, was not spared. Across the island right-wing mobs, with the support of the army and local officials, went hunting for leftists to maim and murder.
Bali was later sold as a tourist paradise; an idyllic retreat that was a sanctuary from the troubles of the world, like some modern-day consumerist Shangri-La of infinite promise. But the myth of Bali rings hollow when contrasted to the realities of Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia.
For a nation brought low by the East Asian economic crisis of 1997, the Bali bombing of 2002, the Jakarta bombings of 2003 and 2004, and the tsunami of last year, there are other bread-and-butter issues to consider.
The violence we see in Indonesia today is the culmination of a grand experiment that has gone disastrously wrong. For nearly three decades the dictators of Southeast Asia were supported by their Western allies as long as they remained on the right side: the Western bloc.
Tarted up as she was, Bali was and remained a painted mask for many. The blasts in Bali have torn off that mask and laid bare the realities of this country of two hundred and forty million souls. Can we, living in the turbulent world we live in today, still entertain the myth of a tropical paradise that is removed from the rest of the world? If we have grown wise enough to know that ’free trade’ is never free; that ’holy causes’ have been used to justify the unholiest of crimes; and that fantasies are just a form of escapism; then perhaps we should all grow up and see through the mask of Bali, to realise that behind the smile of the Balinese waiter is the simple desire to live a dignified life, without remaining forever on his knees to serve the whims of rich tourists with too much money on their hands.
Farish A Noor
DAILYTIMES.COM.PK

Israeli soldiers shoot at stone-throwing Palestinian teenagers in Khan Yunes in the Gaza Strip. (AFP File Photo)

There are different opinions, among Palestinians as well as others, as to what has been the nature of the intifada--now just over five years old--and as to its duration and objectives.
This second intifada took its name from the famous nonviolent popular Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation that started at the end of 1987. That uprising was characterized by civil disobedience and “disengagement“ from the occupation by avoiding paying taxes, registering cars and applying for permits, as well as general strikes and the massive popular and peaceful demonstrations that attracted the attention and admiration of the outside world.
When the current intifada started, Palestinians had in mind a repetition of the first, i.e., a popular, nonviolent means of protesting against the occupation. Two factors contributed to changing it, in time, into an armed confrontation.
The first and most important was the excessively violent Israeli response. The iconic incident was the killing of the boy Mohammed Al Dura as he was cowering behind his father, but notable examples include the killing of 13 Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the tens of Palestinian civilians killed in and around Al Aqsa Mosque. In the first 10 days of this intifada, an average of 10 Palestinian civilians were killed daily, with no casualties on the other side.
The second reason why popular nonviolent protests were abandoned was the availability of weapons on the Palestinian side as a result of the existence of the Palestinian Authority and its security forces. The combination of the continued and unforgiving Israeli killings of civilians and the existence of arms on the Palestinian side, led, roughly after the first half of the first year of the intifada, to it becoming a semi-militarized struggle against the Israeli occupation.
Added to the violent confrontations were a wide range of Israeli measures of collective punishment that included stopping Palestinian workers from reaching their work places in Israel and restricting movement inside the Palestinian territories. This led to a halving of the value of the Palestinian economy and national income, and an increase in unemployment by half of the labor force and in poverty by half of the population.
Thus were created the internal dynamics whereby the violent confrontations and collective punishments reinforced each other and the Palestinian side was caught in a vicious cycle of violence.
In addition, two later factors led to the deterioration of the image of the Palestinian struggle against occupation. The first was the tendency, within first Hamas and later other factions, to also target Israeli civilians inside Israel. The other was 9/11, which Israel exploited successfully to frame the armed Palestinian uprising in the context of the international war on terror.
If we interpret the intifada as ongoing violent confrontations between Israelis and Palestinians, then it would seem to have gradually ground to a halt. But if we mean an insistence and willingness on behalf of Palestinians to reject the occupation, struggle against it and for their liberation and independence according to the borders of 1967, then the intifada is a way of life for the Palestinian people.
There are many lessons to be learned from this intifada. No matter who achieves what in which round of confrontations, the conflict and the struggle will continue for as long as the occupation exists. There is only one way to bring peace, security and economic prosperity. That is to allow Palestinians to live normal lives in an independent state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank with its capital in East Beit-ul-Moqaddas.
Ghassan Khatib
METIMES.COM

Democratisation is an ugly word, bearing about as much relationship to real democracy as does a forced marriage to romantic love. The idea was the brainchild of political scientists and lawyers, who used it to describe the successive waves of countries that emerged from authoritarianism to liberal democracy during the postwar period and the constitutional alternatives available to help them on their way.
In the last couple of years, however, it has been press-ganged into service by the American government. The argument of the neo-conservatives who surround the Republican administration--and one that occasionally puts in an appearance in the speeches of George Bush--is that planting the seeds of democracy in the Middle East might make the place more resistant to virulent strains of Islamist extremism.
That theory is now under attack. Writing in the latest issue of the prestigious American journal Foreign Affairs, F Gregory Gause III, a professor of political science at the University of Vermont, argues that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that democracy snuffs out terrorism.
Far from it, he argues. Gause produces statistics to show that between 1976 and 2004 there were 400 terrorist incidents in democratic India and only 18 in non-democratic China. There is, Gause concludes in his survey, “no solid empirical evidence for a strong link between democracy, or any other regime type, and terrorism, in either a positive or a negative direction“. The problem is that democracy is inherently destabilising--if it were a technology, it might be called disruptive--which is why ruling elites have traditionally tried to keep it under control. The most democratic decade in Britain of the previous half-century was probably the 1970s, but few of us want to return there anytime soon.
The situation is doubly fraught in Iraq, where there are fledgling democratic institutions but little evidence of any real enthusiasm for popular sovereignty. The transitions to democracy that we are used to--from Spain in the mid-70s to South Africa in the early 90s--were, at least in part, responses to the will of the people. Unlike previous “waves of democratisation“, however, this new one has been conceived from without and in strictly instrumental terms--not as a good in itself, but because it might open up a more benign kind of politics in the Middle East and help marginalise Islamist extremism.
The Bush administration is now in a bind. If it backtracks on its democratising mission in Iraq and throws in its lot with a local Iraqi strongman--and there are plenty to choose from--it will be accused of toppling Saddam in favour of a kind of Saddam-lite. But if it presses ahead with its attempts at democratisation, it seems likely to end up with a bastard democracy whose very shapelessness becomes an invitation to sectarian rivalries and a red rag to the terrorists who want to provoke it into revealing its authoritarian colours. Whichever direction its takes, America’s wave of democratisation has already slowed into a trickle, and may yet go into reverse.
James Harkin
GUARDIAN.CO.UK

Hope for Lebanon’s return to d emocratic life has come with the lifting of the counry from 29 years of occupation. Such a reemerging democracy in Lebanon, however, has been stumbling through a minefield of turbulence on the security front.
Several assassinations and assassination attempts have targeted mainly Christian politicians and media personalities, and there have been explosions in Christian areas aimed at causing physical damage, psychological terror and perhaps a revival of sectarian strife. Meanwhile, the country holds its breath awaiting the final report of the UN team investigating the killing last February of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
In order for Lebanon to undergo a successful transition during this perilous period--from the smothering of political freedoms to the rebirth of true democracy--Lebanese of all political and religious stripes have to accept a set of principles and undertake related concrete measures that would help make the democratic dream more of a reality.
To begin with, all must cooperate on the vital issue of communal security. A win-win attitude with respect to security must replace the familiar zero-sum tendency that says that setbacks to other groups help advance my sect, or my party, or my personal fortunes. Security is a seamless domain and everyone without exception ultimately suffers from its breakdown.
Next there comes the question of electoral reform. Everyone knows the June parliamentary elections, while a tangible improvement over their farcical predecessor exercises throughout the 1990s, remained deeply flawed because of an electoral law retained from the previous era and combined with other irregularities.
Parliament should quickly pass a new electoral law that is more suitable for a mixed society like Lebanon’s and that rests on the small- or medium-sized electoral district so as to reflect more fairly and accurately the political and communal layout of the Lebanese mosaic.
Despite the unmistakable and healthy resumption of pluralist politics, Lebanon currently displays an odd alliance between Saad Hariri’s Future Movement and maverick Druze leader Walid Jumblatt.
General Michel Aoun, who is the uncontested most popular Christian leader today in Lebanon, represents a far more influential constituency on the ground than Jumblatt. Since last May when Aoun returned to Lebanon after 15 years of forced exile, he has reemerged on the political scene as a force for stability and reform.
For the sake of a coherent, robust and democratic fresh start, Hariri ought to extend a sincere hand of cooperation to Aoun, and together with moderate Shias and Druze they can constitute the face of a powerful political consensus for a new Lebanon. Benevolent friends of Lebanon around the world should encourage such a coalition between moderate Muslims and free Christians, because it is no longer democracy if anyone is permitted to reduce Lebanon to his own fiefdom, even if it be Hariristan.
Equally important, Lebanon’s democracy cannot function in the present climate of corruption, which is the legacy of decades of entrenched cronyism that has transformed whole sectors of government and the economy into private rackets at the disposal of leading figures in Lebanon’s kleptocracy. The disastrous result has been a runaway government debt of some $40 billion and counting.
For any of this to begin to be reversed, a credible and all-encompassing anti-corruption campaign needs to be launched in Lebanon, with the cooperation of international bodies and renowned financial establishments, in order to root out and hold accountable the principal culprits. Only those with clean hands can bring this about.
BITTERLEMONS-
INTERNATIONAL.ORG

America’s sliding reputation as the upholder of democracy and human rights across the world took another nosedive the other day when a television channel broadcast remarks by an ex-soldier implicating army high-ups in prisoner abuse at the notorious Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. Lynndie England, commonly described as the public face of the Abu Ghraib scandal after pictures showing her humiliating prisoners were released in 2004, was convicted and sentenced last week to three years in prison on six counts of prisoner abuse. Her charge, corroborated by others, is not expected to draw the attention of the US military high command that had earlier cleared its top brass of any wrongdoing. But the Bush administration’s insistence that the scandal was the result of the actions of a “few bad apples“ has a false ring to it. Is it at all possible that the high command of a tightly-knit military structure was not in the know of the grave human rights violations taking place under its very nose in Iraq?
Judging by similar atrocities taking place at the Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba--where prisoners are currently on an extended hunger strike--it is far more likely that the Abu Ghraib barbarities had the sanction of the top hierarchy of generals. Quite conceivably--and America’s abjuration of the Geneva Conventions underscores this point--it was part of deliberate state policy, one that has resulted in America’s defeat in the battle for the “hearts and minds“ of the Iraqis. The doors of accountability should not be shut after England’s conviction. In fact, independent investigations should be conducted to tighten the noose around high-ups in the civilian and defence establishments, forcing them to face accountability for their conduct.
DAWN.COM