It’s time for asymmetric warfare

In an article appearing in the May 21, 2007, issue of the Taipei Times, I take the discussion on Taiwan’s failed bid to become a full member of the World Health Organization (WHO) further and propose alternatives through which Taiwan could still tap into the global health resources and share its expertise with the rest of the world without having to rely on Geneva. Using a warfare analogy of a weak opponent facing a strong one, I argue that what Taipei must do is adopt guerrilla tactics, by attacking the stronger opponent — the UN-China nexus — where it is weaker by taking advantage of the possibilities offered by the 21st century in terms of connectivity and technology. In other words, what I propose for Taiwan is that it bypass the WHO altogether.

As I have proposed in my previous writings on the topic, by remaining fixed on sovereign states, the WHO is neglecting its duty to adapt to the changing realities of the world, a shortcoming that could prove disastrous at some point in the future. As a non-recognized state, Taiwan, with the help of non-state actors — NGOs, laboratories, donors, etc — could play a leading role in pushing the international community to join the 21st century on health and epidemiological matters by using non-state-fixed networks of communication.

Readers can access the full article by clicking here.

Behind the red veil in Beijing

As many readers will probably know by now, Taiwan’s application for membership at the World Health Organization (WHO) was dropped for the 11th strait time on Monday, mostly as a result of Beijing’s insistence that Taiwan is one of its provinces and that WHO membership can only be conferred on states recognized by the UN General Assembly.

In an article published today in the Taipei Times I argue that states must look beyond politics on international health issues and recognize that the fate of the planet’s 6.5 billion people should not rest in the hands of decision-makers in Beijing, who cannot even make the health of their own citizens a priority — except, as in 2003, when the SARS outbreak had reached such proportions as to threaten social stability and the economy. In other words, when it is too late. After dawdling for months, the central government shifted gear and mobilized its resources to contain the epidemic — and in all fairness it did so rather successfully, albeit using mass quarantine tactics that far exceeded (as only totalitarian state can) guidelines on the matter and may even have included dissidents. And while there were reasons for optimism during the months following the SARS outbreak that the lessons learned would have long-term repercussions on how China deals with its epidemics — including its very serious AIDS problem — recent analysis has shown that soon thereafter Beijing returned to normal business, as if SARS had not occurred.

This, above anything else, once again serves to prove that under normal circumstances, Beijing cannot be counted on to act as a responsible global citizen. And the fact of the matter is, epidemics and pandemics first emerge under normal circumstances. Absent a rigorous monitoring and reporting health system, and openness in the media — in other words, under the system China soon fell back into after SARS — the next epidemic will not immediately be detected, and by the time global resources are mobilized, it may be to late to prevent a pandemic.

If they stay the course, politicians in the rest of the world, I conclude, could wake up one day and realize that all their efforts to curry favor with Beijing and win the next big business deal were in vain, as they will have a major pandemic on their hands.

Enough said. Readers can access the full article by clicking here.

Thinking for an old world

In its rejection e-mail, a certain Canadian newspaper (hint: it is a pro-business, right-of-center publication) to which I had submitted a piece on Taiwan’s renewed bid to join the World Health Organization (WHO) was very revealing of how it sees things.

Taiwan’s application, the newspaper informed me, is a “stale issue,” nothing more than an indirect attempt by the “island” to obtain “some form of independence.” Debatable, but not impossible.

The really telling part in the editor’s answer, however, was that surely, in time of crisis, Taiwan could rely on the US and its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for assistance, ergo, no need for WHO membership.

Aside from the fact that this response indirectly makes a case for China not being able to represent Taiwan on health issues (which it claims it should), it is indicative of a flawed understanding of international health in the 21st century. Before instantaneous international travel, the International Health Regulations (IHR), the WHO’s guiding principles, focused on eradicating known diseases and were, for the most part, sufficient. But as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak of 2003 clearly showed, times have changed and fixing a problem once it has emerged is often far too late. The revised IHR — revised in the wake of the SARS outbreak — now emphasize monitoring and prevention so that outbreaks like SARS or H5N1 (avian flu) can be identified and kept endemic before they turn into a pandemic. By the time the CDC arrived in Taiwan to “give assistance,” it would probably be too late and the disease would likely have spread to other countries.

There is nothing stale about Taiwan’s application to become a full participant in the WHO. It seeks to participate because it realizes the world cannot afford to have blind spots. While I have yet to fully study the issue, it is very likely that Taiwan’s efforts at combating its SARS outbreak in 2003 (in which 73 people died) were mitigated by the fact that it could not immediately tap into WHO resources. (Taiwanese officials posit that Beijing used politics to delay the dispatch of WHO medical specialists to Taiwan during the outbreak.)

The only stale thing is the archaic belief that reacting to a problem after it has emerged is sufficient. Stale, and dangerous.

For the 11th consecutive year, Taiwan's bid to join the WHO was rejected at the World Health Assembly in Geneva today. The reason given for this decision, as always, was that the WHO, in agreement with China's position, will only grant membership to sovereign states.

A need to prioritize

Facing relentless pressure from Beijing, many Taiwanese pundits have made the claim that Taiwan is making a mistake by teaching Chinese Mandarin, as the language could serve as some kind of Trojan Horse for Beijing. Instead, they claim, Taiwanese should teach themselves and expatriates indigenous languages like Hoklo as a first line of defense.

In an article titled "Language is never a first line of defense" published on May 12 in the Taipei Times, I draw a parallel between this strategy and the belief in Quebec that only independence can protect the French language. Furthermore, I argue that in both cases the proponents of a language-driven strategy are looking at the wrong aspects of the problem and wasting energy that had better been used elsewhere. Ultimately, their error stems from the belief that language and culture are coterminous.

Readers can access the full article by clicking here.

How the US is sparking an arms race in North East Asia

In a time when countries all over the globe feel the need to genuflect at the Washington altar before committing to any policy — and those who don’t are quickly labeled rogues — it would perhaps be in our interest to analyze the content of the White House dictates.

Leaving aside the Orwellian farce that US policy on Iraq has become, Washington’s rhetoric as pertains to North East Asia, and Taiwan in particular, reveals a leviathan that clearly has no idea how to articulate, let alone formulate, its long-term policies. More often than Taiwanese care to be reminded, US policymakers have held on to the principle of a “peaceful” solution to the dragging Taiwan Strait tensions. Whether the terminology comes from the White House itself, the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom or the countless talking heads at the various think tanks peppering Washington, “status quo,” “one China,” “strategic ambiguity” and whatever euphemism is de rigueur at the time, all the rhetoric posits that somehow, at some indistinct point in time, China and Taiwan shall miraculously drop the gloves and make up. Speaking earlier this week at a forum on US-Japan security at the conservative Heritage Foundation, former commander of US forces in the Pacific Dennis Blair added his voice to the above-mentioned chorus by saying that “the way to solve [regional festering problems] by peaceful means is to ensure that the use of military force by either the PRC [People’s Republic of China] or North Korea will be unsuccessful ... and therefore peaceful means will be the way to solve [them].”

This is all nice and well, but the problem is that parallel to all this abundance of “peaceful” talk is the forceful push by Washington for Taiwan to boost its defenses through the procurement of US-made weapons — most but certainly not all defensive in nature — and increasing anger over Taipei’s inability to unlock the funds necessary to do so. Simultaneously, and again a position echoed by Blair, Washington has been calling upon Japan to play a more proactive security role in the region, to such an extent that the White House is no longer averse to allowing Tokyo to alter the very peaceful Constitution that the US imposed upon Japan in the wake of its defeat in World War II.

The reason behind Washington’s change of heart on Japan, however, isn’t altruistic. In fact, in a different world, Washington would rather keep Tokyo under its heel, as it seeks to prevent countries that could at some point in the future challenge it militarily from doing so (a policy initially formulated by the embattled Paul Wolfowitz as the Cold War was winding down and appropriated for official policy a few years ago). But given the current template, with US forces stretched close to the limit and troop withdrawal from Iraq or otherwise, signs that they will remain engaged in the Middle East for years to come, Washington needs “dependable” allies — or proxies — to do its bidding in other regions of the world. For North East Asia, Japan is quickly becoming the US’ indispensable forward guard. Hysterical perceptions from certain quarters of the Washington establishment vis-à-vis the China “threat” aside, and in spite of the “peaceful” resolution rhetoric, what Washington is accomplishing in North East Asia is a militarization of the region, an outcome it conveniently blames on a Chinese military build-up.

No one, however, ever asks whether Beijing’s modernization of its military might not be in response to the sense of encirclement that the bolstered US-Japan alliance has engendered.

From Washington’s perspective, the push for militarization stems from two drivers: lucrative contracts for its flowering military-industrial complex and, the one it more readily admits to and uses in its rhetoric, military deterrence. Regardless of the efficiency of the types of weapons Washington has been pressing on Taiwan — raising the question often results in accusations of Taiwan “freeloading” on defense — the pressure is on Washington, through various defense lobbies, to complete the transaction.

Past experience, with Saudi Arabia providing a lurid example, shows that billions of dollars of US weapons cannot guarantee the security of a state. When, in 1990, Iraqi forces threatened to press forward into the Kingdom after invading Kuwait, Riyadh found itself incapable of mounting a proper defense and nearly begged Washington to come to its rescue (after first turning down Osama Bin Laden’s offer to do so). Given the force disparities between China and Taiwan, it is unlikely that a few additional air defense systems, along with some submarines, would represent so formidable a deterrent as to make Beijing think twice before launching an attack. US defense analysts debating this issue with regard to Taiwan (or any of the small states in the Middle East to which the US has opened its arms catalogues in the past years, culminating in an unprecedented shopping spree in Abu Dhabi in February), sadly, have distinguished themselves by their silence.

Japan, on the other hand, does hold the potential to mount a formidable military. Thanks to the size of its economy and a stunningly healthy military with an estimated US$45 billion budget and one of the world’s most advanced navies, a Japan freed of its pacific Constitution and unleashed as a regional peacekeeper would be a tremendous force and, in Washington’s view, a powerful deterrent to Chinese (and North Korean) aggression.

The flaw in Washington’s strategy of militarizing the region, however, is that it is predicated on a flawed understanding of deterrence, with its proponents having developed the concept during an altogether different era — the Cold War. Back then, deterrence worked mostly because failure to prevent war ran the risk of resulting in nuclear annihilation for both sides of the divide, the West and the Soviet Union. The reason why you are able to read this blog today has much to do with the fact that rational decision-makers chose to abide by the logic of deterrence from the perspective of the nuclear threat.

Absent the threat of annihilation, however, deterrence loses much of its effect and is even more fickle when one of the belligerents is the size of China, with numerous key cities and multifarious strategic nodes. In fact, in conventional warfare, an arms race — such as the one that has been sparked by the US, Taiwan and China — creates its own upwards dynamics, but it does not make the threat of war any less. In fact, it only exacerbates the likelihood of error resulting in military exchanges. The more players are part of the conflict equation, the greater the quantity and complexity of the weapons involved, the likelier that, at some point, human or systems error will lead to an accident with terrible consequences — and this is before we even add political tensions resulting from such conflict accelerators as nationalism and disputed territory to the mix.

Two belligerents armed with nothing but slingshots cannot do much damage, accidental or otherwise. Four belligerents equipped with advanced systems involving thousands of missiles, with intricate, shifting alliance structures, however, and any mishap can be catastrophic.

If Washington means what it says about facilitating a peaceful resolution to the Taiwan Strait conflict, it had fain reconsider the dangerous arms race it is on the verge of sparking in North East Asia. Faith in conventional deterrence amid a modern arms race simply comports too many risks.

Update

A week has now passed since my article “Why Celil doesn’t stand a chance” was published in the Taipei Times (see “The forgotten Canadian,” April 28 below). Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay has done his visit to Beijing, where, as he had said prior to leaving Ottawa, he “raised” the issue with the Chinese authorities and in return received a healthy dose of propaganda to the effect that Celil had been treated humanely while in jail. As I predicted in my article, little more has happened since, and MacKay, who continued on to South Korea to talk trade and pressed Seoul to life its ban on Canadian beef, seemed content with the “assurances” he had received concerning the jailed Canadian. Equally sad, a mere day after MacKay’s talks in Beijing and already the news wires had abandoned Celil, as did the Canadian media. The Canadian embassy in Beijing’s Web site, for its part, did not carry a single item on the issue, aside from the mention, prior to the visit, that the foreign minister intended to raise the issue.

Meanwhile — and perhaps more encouragingly — my story has appeared on a number of Web sites (one dedicated to freeing Celil, another calling for a boycott of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and the Uyghur American Association), and the Voice of America interview that I did on April 27 has been carried by at least two dozen Chinese-language Web sites in Taiwan, the US and Canada.

Hopefully things will change. But I strongly doubt it.

The forgotten Canadian

I would never have thought that writing an op-ed in the Taipei Times would result in my being interviewed, 12 hours after publication, by Voice of America in Washington. On April 27, 2007, I published a piece in the Taipei Times about Huseyin Celil, a Uighur Canadian who was sentenced to life in jail in China for allegedly being part of a terrorist organization. I argue that despite precedents set by the Canadian government, as in the Maher Arar case, Celil will soon be abandoned by the Canadian government because of trade considerations.

During my half-hour telephone interview with VOA, I argued that even if Canada were to adopt a proactive approach to dealing with abuses of human rights by Beijing — which in the worst case scenario might result in short-term losses of business contracts — the long-term consequences of taking action would be fairly limited, as trade has a tendency to adjust itself. In other words, and as MacLean's argues in its March 5, 2007, issue ("Go on, take a stand," pp. 30-1), whether Canada adopts a tough stance on human rights with Beijing or not has a negligible impact on bilateral trade. A such, I argued Canada need not undermine its ideals and credibility abroad in order to conduct business with China.

Readers can read the full article, titled "Why Celil doesn't stand a chance," by clicking here.

For those who can read Chinese, the Voice of America Web site published excerpts of my telephone interview during its April 27, 2007, (10:00am – 10:30am) broadcast, which you can access at http://www.voanews.com/chinese/w2007-04-27-voa42.cfm.

Asking the wrong question

The Canadian Parliament yesterday turned down a motion, by 150 votes to 134, by the Liberal opposition requesting that Ottawa commit to a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2009. While at first glance the request would appear sound to a majority of Canadians, further investigation shows that its genesis lies in the wrong principle. The question being asked by the Liberals — or the New Democrats, who demand an immediate withdrawal — as well as the majority of Canadians who are in favor of pulling troops from Kandahar Province is whether Canada can afford the rising cost in soldiers' lives (54 to date, along with one diplomat) and in monetary terms of what is ostensibly turning into an “open-ended” military commitment to Afghanistan.

This type of opposition to the war is reminiscent of that of the great majority of Americans who, in the 1960s and with increasing momentum in the 1970s, opposed the Vietnam War. Then, much as now in Canada, the opposition resulted from calculations that the war was being too costly.

Despite this seemingly “anti-war” opposition, it is flawed because of its fundamental lack of morality, which in turn results in the wrong question being asked. What peace activists in the US through the 1970s were asking, as are the Liberals today, is whether we can afford the cost of the war. They were not against war per se; rather, they were against how much it was costing Americans then, and Canadians today.

What is not being asked, what the opponents of the Canadian presence in Afghanistan have failed to put on the parliamentary agenda, therefore, is whether we should be there in the first place. In other words, is it moral for Canadian soldiers, initially deployed to assist in provincial reconstruction, to presently be engaged in a violent war against the Taliban and other insurgents, to be fighting alongside US and other NATO troops in the most volatile area of Afghanistan? Are we welcome there, or are we deceiving ourselves, just as the US did in Vietnam (and today in Iraq), into believing we are there as “liberators”? The paradigm — that we are there to do good, or that by being there we can do good — has very much been imposed from the top-down; in other words, the government, with the complicity of the mainstream media, has told Canadians what they should believe, and very little has happened since in terms of testing and, if need be, revisiting that assumption.

Sadly, now that the motion has been defeated, we are unlikely to hear much of this type of debate, and Canadian soldiers will continue to die, and kill (and hand over suspected Taliban prisoners to Afghan authorities without assurances that they will not be tortured, if we are to believe recent reports in the Globe and Mail), in a foreign land, for a purpose whose morality — the most important factor — has not been put into question, let alone debated on.

As expected

The history of public intellectuals facing personal attacks, and sometimes threats to their safety, is, sadly, a long one. Individuals, groups and sometimes entire states will turn to slander, lawsuits and at times persecution to silent those who, through their work, attempt to expose injustices that otherwise would remain hidden. Few subjects in recent years have so often given rise to this type of behavior than Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

It was with this in mind that I wrote my article “The insidious language of victimhood,” which appeared in the Taipei Times on April 18. I knew very well that by publishing an article critical of the Israeli military’s recourse to illegal methods — in this case using Palestinians as human shields — and putting my name on it would surely invite a type of attack that has become par with the course. Already, academics like Edward W. Said and Noam Chomsky, to name just a few, as well as reporters like Robert Fisk, are well known to have been slammed by Israel for their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More so, on some occasions the state-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was attacked by the Israeli lobby for being “skewed” after inviting Fisk to participate in a program or of being “one sided” or “anti-Semitic” when it provided reporting on Israeli atrocities in the Occupied Territories. This type of censorship, a negative response to an article or report meant to silence their authors, is what Chomsky and Edward Herman in their book Manufacturing Consent call “flak.”

So I received my first piece of “flak” yesterday, a letter sent to the Taipei Times’ Letters to the editor by a Taiwan-based Israeli. The editor, for reasons that should soon become apparent, chose not to publish it, and I will not reply to that person directly. I have nevertheless chosen to dissect it here, an exercise that should allow me to put my theories to the test. Aside from demonstrating that the writer’s arguments soon crumble upon scrutiny, responding to them gives me an opportunity to expand on some of the points I tried to make in my article.

As if often the case when flak is at play, the letter constitutes more of a personal attack than an argument resulting from solid research, and the writer oftentimes commits the very intellectual crimes he accuses his “opponent” of having committed (the so-called “one-sidedness). “There is no other way to describe the piece except as total rubbish,” the writer begins, in reference to my article, which he says was by a “writer.” Already, the writer's position of opposition is clear and furthermore the writer questions my abilities or professional skills by putting my title between quotation marks. I am not a writer, he writes. I am a “dupe.” (These types of remarks bear all the hallmarks of thought processes as part of a totalitarian state, of the type that I constantly encountered when I worked for an intelligence service.)

He then presses the matter by writing that readers “are not told of any expertise or relevant experience” on the issue that I write about, which he then argues explains why I was so easily deceived by the writings of Edward Said, a Palestinian. Aside from the fact that he also fails to mention any expertise of his own on the subject, readers here would know that I have a master’s degree in War Studies, which included a course on asymmetric warfare; a diploma in humanitarian assistance, where I met many aid workers who worked in the Occupied Territories; a diploma in peacekeeping; and that I worked for three years as an intelligence officer on the very issue of “Islamic terrorism,” including 14 months where I was in regular contact with Israeli intelligence officers. And yet the writer portrays me as a “gullible person” who “swallowed the rhetoric hook, line and sinker.” He then accuses me of being “oblivious” to the basic tenets of journalism, which hold that one should analyze both sides of a topic. In other words, the writer accuses me of bad journalism because he assumes I am only basing my assessment on Said’s work, which he erroneously says I quote in my article. The fact is, Said (and other “pro” Palestinians) constitutes only a small proportion of the enormous amount of reading I have done on the issue. During my graduate studies at the Royal Military College, most of the assigned readings on the Middle East came from think-tanks like the RAND Corporation, CSIS, the US Naval Institute, the CIA and other US centers attached to the defense and intelligence establishments — all hardly presenting material in favor of Palestinians. Moreover, in the more public sphere, I have also read, among others, Thomas Friedman, Shlomo Ben Ami and Fouad Ajami and many academic "specialists" on terrorism, such as Bruce Hoffmann and Walter Laqueur. Again, these tend to provide a view that is favorable to Israel. Lastly, as an intelligence officer, I read hundreds upon hundreds of classified reports, domestic and foreign, on the issue of Israel and its regional enemies and also spent more than a year writing threat assessments, as well as a Federal Court warrant against a Levant-based organization. Needless to say, not a single page written in the documents that I read while working there painted anything remotely close to a position favorable to Palestinians. In fact, such documents are paranoid in the extreme and see Palestinians as anythign but victims in the conflict. So the writer’s contention that my article — and the conclusions reached — were singly the result of my having been influenced by Said’s “propaganda” is invidious at best.

The writer, who cannot spend enough time blasting Said (a national past time, in some quarters), then writes that Said comes from a culture where “criticism of the Palestinians or any exoneration of Israel were tantamount to a death sentence.” Here, the writer seems to conveniently overlook the fact that throughout his life Said was attacked by both sides, as he spared neither. Not only did he never condone the use of Palestinian violence and the tactic of suicide bombings (as I do not), but he also relentlessly criticized the Palestinian authorities for their incompetence and corruption. The writer also fails to note that despite his origins, Said lived a long life in exile and was based in New York City, where he taught at Columbia University, thus making his “death sentence” argument a moot point.

The writer then argues that I should stick to “facts” and “logic” rather than appeal to the emotional. He takes issue when I write that throughout his life Said had “exposed the grave injustice done to Palestinians,” adding that I accept the “unproven premises” of Palestinians as victims and a media conspiracy to “conceal the truth” (his quotes, not mine). Sticking to facts for a moment, it is difficult to imagine anyone who has been alive in the past sixty years who could deny, based on facts, that the Palestinians have not been victims. Not only were they expelled from their homes, with millions to this day still living in atrocious conditions in refugee camps throughout the Middle East, but on a daily basis they are exposed to Israeli bombings, incursions, arrests without due process, disappearances, discrimination, long waits and searches are Israeli-created borders, and so on. To write that Palestinian is an unprovenpremise is nothing but morally repugnant.

After attacking me for my apparent lack of historical knowledge, the writer then questions my use of the term “illegal” to describe Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Leaving aside the amorality of the occupation and strictly sticking to legal matters, in terms of international law any territory gained by the use of force and held as such is illegal, which means that territory seized by Israel in the 1967 war it is holding illegally. Furthermore, by repressing an entire population because of a minority elements (Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Lebanese Hezbollah) who have turned to violent resistance, it is breaking the Geneva Convention. When it razes villages, destroys houses of suspected “militants” or terrorists, steals large quantities of potable water and uses carpet-bombing methods to arrest individuals suspected of involvement in “terrorism,” Israel is illegally occupying a people and illegally using force against them. These are the facts.

The one-sidedness of my argument, if we follow the author’s logic, is that I do not talk about Palestinian violence in my article. What he fails to understand, however, is that this is not the topic of my opinion piece, as I was focusing on the use of language to describe Israeli military action against Palestinians. Furthermore, every day people the world over are bombarded with images and news of Palestinians “terrorists” and “radicals” and “militants” and “extremists” attacking Israelis or, more recently, killing each other. Everybody is aware of that and there is no question that it does happen. What I did seek to expose, though, was that every time Israel uses force, it is depicted as self-defense or, for the more sardonically inclined among us, to liberate Palestinians, to save them from themselves, as it did in Lebanon in the 1980s (or the US did in Vietnam and Iraq, or the Soviet Union in Afghanistan). Moreover, my piece did not state that there is a “conspiracy” to hide the truth (otherwise I would not have used the term “insidious”), but rather an intellectual reflex, sometimes unconscious, to depict Israel as the victim no matter what it does. A Palestinian who calls for violence against Israel is depicted in the media as a radical or a terrorist. Why, then, won't an Israeli commander ordering the destruction of an entire neighborhood in Beirut, knowing fully well that doing so will kill countless civilians and achieve little of military significance, also be described in the media as a radical or an extremist (let alone a terrorist)? The only difference between the two is that he is part of a modern army equipped with modern weapons non-state groups like Hamas and Hezbollah could only dream of ever putting their hands on, and that for years his side has been depicted as the victim. As long as it is self-defense, it seems that it cannot be called a crime or an atrocity.

If, again, the writer of the letter wants facts, he should look at the cold numbers of victims in the numerous wars Israel has fought since its creation in 1948. In every one of them, the ratio has been somewhere around 1:10, the latter number being that of its enemies, thanks to overwhelming US military support, to the order of (what we know of) US$5 billion every year. In fact, so dedicated is the US to Israel that last week it was already announcing the resumption of sales of MK-84 "general purpose" cluster bomb munitions, worth US$65 million, to Jerusalem (3,500 of them, as per Israel's request), after a brief interruption in the wake of Israel’s illegal (yes, it is illegal as per international law) use of them in civilian areas in Lebanon, which resulted in a number of deaths and casualties after the hostilities had ended.

What the writer ultimately fails to recognize (because he is committing the very error of becoming emotional, as opposed to rational, on the issue), is that at no point do I state that Israel has no right to defend itself, nor do I ever refer to all Palestinians (or Hezbollah, with which I am quite familiar) as “peace-loving” (a cynical use by the author, in reference to the ungrateful Palestinians who turned down a peace offer that included a non-viable series of disconnected statelets that only a people facing a powerful military could ever be asked to contemplate, something else this so-called history savvy author conveniently omits). What I question is language that claims the Israeli military was “forced” (Associated Press) to turn to illegal tactics (the use of human shields, a crime of war) to conduct door-to-door operations in Palestinian territories. Having studied asymmetric warfare, I could be tempted to condone the recourse to suicide bombings as the result of an unequal armed conflict, in which one side has one of the world’s most powerful and modern military and the other has not air force, no navy, no helicopters, no cluster bombs but only small arms and home-made explosives. But I do not. I do not condone, nor do I support, the targeting of civilians by suicide bombers, or Hezbollah’s firing rockets at Israeli civilian positions. These are, without any question, illegal acts of war, as my previous writings have shown. From a tactical perspective, however, we can try to understand why Palestinian "militants" turn to such military uses, and it soon becomes evident that it would be suicidal for them to engage the Israeli military directly.

Hezbollah’s rocket attacks against Israel during Israel’s war in Lebanon last summer were illegal, and the reason I do not discuss these when, in my article, I refer to Israel’s use of cluster bombs is, again, because it is not the issue. My article was about the use of language to describe Israeli action. Just because it was using a modern military to “defend” itself (initially to free two Israeli soldiers who had been kidnapped by Hezbollah) doesn’t mean it could use its overwhelming military force to destroy a great deal of the Lebanese civilian infrastructure and kill more than a thousand civilians in the process, ten times more Lebanese — mostly civilians — than Israeli died in the conflict (mostly soldiers).

Finally, the writer attacks my conclusion, which he sardonically calls “brilliant,” that language that truly reflects reality is needed. Whether one agrees with my position is for the reader to decide. But a spade needs to be called a spade. If such language had been honestly used from the onset, perhaps there would have been more pressure on Washington — from within the US and at the international level — to stop it from launching a war against Iraq, ironically another war of “self-defense” and, post facto, when weapons of mass destruction were not discovered, to “liberate” the Iraqis, to save them from themselves. The same holds for Israel and Palestine. If Israeli actions were truly exposed for what they are, states that sell them modern military equipment would perhaps think twice. And the real victims — the Palestinians (this is not naïve use of propaganda but something that is based on facts and numbers and history) — would perhaps not feel as abandoned and wronged against as to believe that the only recourse left is to strap explosives against their waist and blow themselves up at a bus stop.

Manicheans in Ottawa

Parallel to the ongoing debate in the US over troop withdrawal from Iraq, Ottawa has been going through a similar process, with the Liberal Party proposing a bill that calls for a definite withdrawal from southern Afghanistan in 2009. The Conservative government, however, has refused to say whether it will respect that deadline, with some party members saying that Canada has a duty to remain in Afghanistan until the job is done and that it should stand by the “war on terror” (the British government has endeavoured to ban the term “war on terror,” deeming it unconstructive; it seems, however, that Canada has yet to make that intellectual journey).

Using language that is disturbingly reminiscent of that of a famous (or infamous) president south of the border, chief government whip Jay Hill (Conservative) said that “in a fight against evil, there are no conditions for a withdrawal: you either win or you lose,” buttressing his argument by comparing Canada’s mission in Afghanistan to World War I and World War II.

Setting aside for the moment the altogether false analogies in Hill’s comparisons to the two world wars, his Manichean perspective on the mission in Afghanistan (and, it follows, in the “war on terrorism”) tells us that we are fighting “evil,” as restrictive a description of the enemy as is possible. This presupposes, as some elements within the Canadian government have argued for a while, that terrorists are apolitical and have no grievances, and in the Afghan case specifically, it bans the possibility that some, if not many, elements may not perceive NATO’s presence in their country as that of a benefactor or liberator, as was the case in Vietnam and certainly is the case in Iraq today. These elements are evil, pure and simple.

This point of view implies that these monsters cannot be reasoned with and that a diplomatic approach is impossible. The only solution, therefore, cannot but be a military one. And once a government has decided it cannot lose and has embarked on a purely military way to address the problem, “winning,” if we follow Hill’s logic (note that he fails to provide a definition of the sought end state), means exterminating every single individual who opposes Canada’s and NATO’s presence in Afghanistan, their country.

The problems facing Afghanistan are immense, perhaps intractable. From the little that Canadians are able to gather, progress in the country has been, at best, slow, and the so-called improvements in the quality of life of Afghans trumpeted by Ottawa (see, for example, the Provincial Reconstruction Team section on the Department of National Defense Web site at www.forces.gc.ca) are not easily quantifiable, are certainly fragile, and could at times verge on propaganda (for example, DND says that 4.6 million refugees have returned to Afghanistan, but fails to mention if their quality of life and security upon returning has improved, if they have jobs and so on. Another example is the mention that the economy has tripled, without reference to distribution of wealth. Sixty thousand soldiers have been demobilized, we are told, but we do not know of these individuals have been given jobs in return. All that say that it is easy to throw numbers in such a way as to give the illusion of progress).

Ottawa must engage in a serious debate on whether it should remain committed to Afghanistan. But no matter what decision it ultimately makes, there should be no room for the Bush-like view of reality in terms of “good” and “evil.” The world just doesn’t work that way. Some — perhaps a lot — of people don’t want us there. Others have grievances resulting from a long history or brutal colonialism; others have lost loves ones — including innocent bystanders — on the receiving end of our guns. That anger, that hatred, doesn’t mean they are “evil.”

The insidious language of victimhood

News broke out last week that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had been using Palestinians as human shields when conducting operations in the Occupied Territories. While the practice had seemingly been used for quite a while, it took a brave human rights worker to capture it on film for the story to break out and to expose yet another IDF form of abuse. While the IDF breaking international humanitarian law is not exactly, beyond the story continues to be what I like to call the “insidious language of victimhood” in how the media covers Israeli, a longstanding practice that for 60 years now has portrayed every type of Israeli action — however inhumane — as that of the victim.

The Taipei Times published my article on the matter, titled “Victimhood and Media Rhetoric on Israeli Affairs,” in its April 18, 2007, issue. You can read it by clicking here.

The Wan-an air drill

Nothing serves to remind one that Taiwan faces the constant threat of a military attack than the Wan-an ("everything is safe") exercise, which once a year between 2:00PM and 2:30PM, brings the country to a standstill.

Such an exercise was held on Tuesday, whereupon, to the faint wail of air raid sirens, Taipei came to a quasi full stop. As a rule, people are told to stay put and vehicles must stop circulating, with police officers on almost every street corner ensuring the cooperation of the public. As per regulations, says the Taipei City Government Web site, people are instructed to seek shelter and all business activity must cease. People inside buildings — office, houses, schools — are to stay indoors, turn the lights off and shut the windows. The MRT stops operating above ground, but underground service continues uninterrupted. Individuals caught conducting business during the exercise can be fined NT$30,000 to NT$150,000 (C$1,000 to C$5,000).

Nevertheless — and perhaps as a sign that, despite signs to the contrary emanating out of China, the threat perception of Taiwanese seems to have diminished with time — some people did not respect the regulations and continued driving, and windowwashers were even seen going about their job on a building in downtown Taipei.

Still, as the drill proceeds, the usually bustling city turns eerily silent.

Events like these, regardless of the fact that they are but a simulation, confirm the reality to a country's citizens that the specter of armed conflict looms large. People who come from North America or who, like me, were born in Canada, probably will never have experienced a drill like the Wan-an, unless they grew up under the threat of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War. Despite the constant bombardment in the media of news — some hysterical, some more level-headed — about the Chinese military buildup (with a 17.8 percent increase in its budget this year) and the nearly 1,000 missiles Beijing is pointing at Taiwan, one tends to fall in the routine of daily life and forgets about the ever-present danger.

If it only serves one purpose, the drill is a stark reminder that things could go wrong, that the normal course of life could undergo a radical transformation in a matter of minutes, the time it would take for the People's Liberation Army's missiles to cross the Taiwan Strait. It makes one appreciate the value of peace even more and perhaps one a little more willing to seek ways to prevent such a scenario from becoming an horrific reality.

The Threatened Democracy

A few weeks ago, the senior editor of the Features section at the Taipei Times asked me to write a review of a new book on the Taiwan Strait titled Taiwan: The Threatened Democracy, written by Bruce Herschensohn, a former adviser to US president Richard Nixon. Given that US arch conservatives from centers such as the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institutes often appear in the Opinions section of the Times, and that Herschensohn falls on that side of the political spectrum, I jumped on the occasion to provide a counter to the usual arguments on Taiwan and China propounded by the American Right.

I find it unfortunate that the Right, rather than the liberal Left, has seized on the Taiwan “cause,” as it puts into question that group’s true motive for defending Taiwan’s right to exist as a free nation and makes one wonder if the “freedom” and “democracy” they purportedly defend are not in fact euphemism for regional hegemony in a bid to counter the Chinese “threat” the Right is so hysterically up in arms against.

The Left, so far largely silent on the issue, needs to start arguing in favor of Taiwan, which is what I hope to have begun by publishing the review.

Readers can access the full text of my review article by clicking here.

Taiwan's new "anti-terrorism" bill

The Taiwanese Cabinet last week submitted a revised "anti-terrorism" bill that should alarm every Taiwanese. Lacking a definition of what constitutes terrorism and with little oversight to ensure that intelligence and law-enforcement agencies do not overstep their responsibilities in a way that would infringe upon the rights and freedoms of individuals, the new act, if passed, would represent a grave step backwards for the nascent democracy.

Having experienced and participated in activities that could only have been launched in a system where oversight is lacking and consequently where undue infringements are deemed permissible, I felt compelled to write about the dangers the proposed bill represents to Taiwan. Visitors can view the full op-ed, published in the Monday, March 26 issue of the Taipei Times, by clicking here.

Thursday Afternoon in Taipei

On of the perks of working as an editor for a newspaper is that my work schedule is from 15:30 until 22:00, which, provided I get up early enough, gives me plenty of time in the morning and early afternoon to accomplish what people abiding by more traditional schedules could never hope of doing. Another advantage is that as newspapers are also published on weekends, one’s “weekend” need not fall on Saturday and Sunday. In my case, “weekend” is Thursday and Friday.

One little indulgence I have developed in recent months is to go, mid-afternoon, to this place called in House, a lounge bar situated in the Xin-yi district, about a five minute walk from Taipei 101. Not only is in House one of my favorite lounges in Taipei, with excellent house music and a dreamy décor, but the fact that I am going there in the middle of the week before dinnertime certainly adds to the experience.

After you have been seated by one of the invariably good-looking, fashionable waitresses or waiters, you are handed a drinks menu to choose from which offers a nice variety, from wines to whiskeys to multiple cocktails. Comfortably seated in a leather sofa, with the not-too-loud mix playing round you and the faded pink and blue hues bathing you in a dreamy mood — to which we add hundreds of candles on tables, hanging from the ceiling and on windowsills — you place your order. From noon until 18:00, all drinks come with a cake or sorbet. What will it be, a 15-year-old single malt, or a kamikaze? Red wine, or a Mai Tai?

For me, part of the experience lies in the surrealism of it all. It’s as if reality were a dial and you shifted it, say, thirty degrees. There is something unreal about being in a lounge bar in mid-afternoon on a workday. It’s like stepping into a different world — not altogether unlike the real world, but like I said, a few degrees off. I also like to observe people there, for I never find myself alone in there. For me, I bring a book and read while I munch on peanuts, take a sip from my drink and eat my sorbet or cake. Others come in small groups. Some are hunched around a portable computer, talking shop, the bright monitor an out-of-place yet natural intrusion into the otherwise somber atmosphere. Others come alone, engrossed in a cigar, or deep in conversation on the ubiquitous cell phone. It’s amazing how many people one will find in a lounge at this time of the day. While some do conduct business there, for the majority it is, like me, leisure, a hedonistic escapade from reality. Looking at them, I always wonder what it is they do so that they can be there on a weekday. True, Taipei has more than its share of utterly rich people who need not have a day job for their entire lives. Maybe the people around me think I am one of them, who knows? I could very well see myself spending entire days there, writing a novel, perhaps.

At any time, it’s a place to see and be seen, where one drops all his worries and allows himself to be embraced by the alcohol and the enthralling lounge music. Make that a weekday experience, and the escapism is all the more complete.

Empty Rhetoric in Politics

Diplomacy, it seems, is as much damage control as it is the substantial fashioning of relationships between states. The principal tool of diplomats — especially when it comes to damage control — is, obviously, rhetoric. By paying close attention to what is being said, it is easy to determine whether a state has a well-rounded, coherent strategy or is just struggling to maintain the appearance of having a handle on things. As we saw last week with US Vice-President Dick Cheney’s threats to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on the issue of fighting the Taliban, contradiction are usually indicative of policymaking confusion.

This week, Washington once more proved that its policies on the Taiwan Strait issue is no more coherent. The first instance is actually a long continuation of a trend, which consists of (a) a paranoid view of Chinese military growth (the People’s Republic of China’s military budget increased 17.8 percent this year) and the incessant references to the “threat” that this poses to neighboring states and US interests in the region; and (b) of Washington’s recriminatory attitude whenever Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) makes any kind of reference to independence, which Washington never fails to slap down as a “threat to peace and security in the Taiwan Strait” and as threatening to US support for the democratic nation. Here again, the contradiction is a lurid one: non-democratic, expansionist China is a growing threat, democratic Taiwan is an ally worthy of protection, but any attempt at normalization of status or reference to independence in face of Beijing’s avowed threats of military aggression is portrayed as treason.

The reason why Washington’s rhetoric is so contradictory is that its policy on Taiwan is actually a non-policy — the maintenance, in lieu of progress, of the status quo whereby China will not invade Taiwan and the latter will not declare unilateral independence. It would be all nice well if the international system were static and the balance of power unchanging, but that is not the case. Beijing is building up and modernizing its military, and there are growing indications that Beijing may not always have full control of its military apparatus, which one day could result in enterprising individuals making military decisions that do not entirely correspond to or reflect the wishes of the civilian leadership. While the panicking, to the point of irrationality, segments of the US intelligentsia and policymaking circles overestimate the Chinese “threat” and misrepresent its aims and intentions, it remains that Beijing’s policy on Taiwan does include the use of force — and the odd 1,000 missiles it points at Taiwan as well as the language adopted in its “Anti-Secession” Act attest to that. With these two contradictory forces shaping Washington’s views, its language becomes one of obfuscation, one that simply cannot lead to political development.

Taiwan is therefore a friend, in extremis one worthy of protection, but it cannot be allowed to act in its own interest or to seek for its 23 million people the representation on the world stage that they deserve. Beijing, for its part, is at times friend, at times enemy, a partner in trade but a brewing storm over the horizon. The signals are mixed, and diplomats’ rhetoric reflects that.

Aside from contradictory language, empty, meaningless rhetoric is also part of the diplomat’s toolbox. Something needs to be said to fill a void, but once it is analyzed it is obvious that whatever was said makes no contribution whatsoever. The Taiwan Strait conflict offers many examples of this, such as when US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, visiting China over the weekend, said that the 450 air-ground missiles the US intends to sell Taiwan to equip its F16s “would be for strictly defensive purposes and consistent with our ‘one China’ policy.” Close scrutiny of the language cannot but beg the question: what other use but a defensive one would Taiwan make of these missiles — invade China, perhaps? Everybody and their dog knows that the only reason why Taipei would seek such weapons, along with other packages, is to defend itself from an eventual military attack by China (whether a successful defense, under the present conditions, can be achieved is beyond the scope of this entry).

One would think that clear, rational policies lie behind and inform the relations between states — more so when it comes to unstable issues like Taiwan and China. The reality, however, is otherwise. Look to the language, see what is being said. More often than one would think, the rhetoric is empty and the diplomat is no more than the messenger attempting to buy time.

Remembering the 228 Incident

Sixty years ago, on Feb. 28, 1947, began what would lead to the slaughter of between 20,000 and 30,000 Taiwanese during a security crackdown by Republic of China officers. The event, which ostensibly was sparked the previous day by a dispute between a cigarette vendor and an anti-smuggling officer, quickly turned into a days-long civil disorder and open rebellion against the corruption and illegitimacy of the regime that, since the handover by former colonial occupier Japan in 1945, had imposed its rule on the island. The distant Kuomintang (KMT) regime on the mainland soon sent reinforcements and in the ensuing days its officers launched in sometimes random, sometimes systematic killings. An American visiting at the time reported beheadings and rapes. The incident, for which recently released accounts now put the blame on Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), opened the door to the White Terror era, which lasted until 1987 and during which tens of thousands of Taiwanese were disappeared, imprisoned or killed.

As I write this, commemorative ceremonies throughout Taiwan are being held. Just outside the window, a procession is snaking its way through the streets of the neighborhood, loud gongs and cymbals and various wind instruments, accentuated by powerful firecrackers, paraphrasing the screams of those who fell sixty years ago.

Taiwan probably wouldn’t be what it is today without its own terrible formative incidents, of which 228 was, sadly, but one among many. Nor would it be the democracy it is today had it not been for KMT rule, however repressive it might have been. The fact is, nations must build upon the geography and history they are dealt and make the most of it. And 228, painful as the memories are, is part of that dowry. It is important that these events be remembered, dug up, and studied, that attempts to comprehend them be sustained and that future generations be taught them, as they constitute the very DNA of a people. By dealing with those memories in a peaceful — perhaps even forgiving manner — Taiwanese, as have other nations that have come to accept their violent past, can serve as an example to peoples who are currently experiencing political violence or will do so in future.

Signs of failure

Despite US President George W. Bush’s constant declarations to the effect that al-Qaeda has been weakened by the “war on terrorism” launched in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, analysts the world over are now revisiting this assumption (see “How not to win,” Feb. 26).

A clear indication of this failure to eliminate the threat can be found in recent comments by no less a player in antiterrorism than Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of the British domestic intelligence service, MI5. In November, Manningham-Buller — well-known for her usually less alarmist assessments of the terrorist threat than those of the government she serves — said that since 2005 MI5 had identified 30 major terrorist plots in Britain and was monitoring the activities of — take a deep breath — no less than 1,600 Britain-based individuals from approximately 200 terrorist networks. This is on the home front alone! The exact same figures were repeated by London Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson at a security conference in Sydney, Australia, on Monday.

With the population of Great Britain established at 60.7 million as of late last year, this means that there is one terrorist suspect for every 38,000 British — an astounding figure. Such a ratio would mean that Canada, with a population of 33 million, has 868 terrorists in its midst. If this were the case, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service would have to grow something like eight-fold so that it could monitor the activities of all those suspects. And this is excludes all the other usual groups targeted by intelligence services — the usual suspects, if you will — such as China, Russia, Iran and others. Given, based on my experiences, the usual ratio (and I am being very conservative here) of 2 intelligence officers for every target of an investigation, this would mean that in Canada, more than 1,700 intelligence officers would be working on the al-Qaeda file, a figure that excludes the communication intercepts specialists, translators, and other operational staff, not to mention pay and administrative staff, lawyers, and so on. (As of last year, the total workforce at CSIS, including administration, pay services and others, was approximately 2,400.)

But what those numbers truly show is that if they are true, the West is clearly doing something wrong, so wrong, in fact, that defeat in its “war on terrorism” is almost a fait accompli. Ever since they launched the campaign against al-Qaeda and other like-minded groups in 2001, the architects of the “war on terror” have repeatedly said that this new war is as much a military campaign as it is a war for the hearts and minds of people in the Muslim world. Given the MI5 numbers, it would appear that the hearts and minds part has either gone terribly wrong — or worse, that the leadership didn’t mean what it said. This, of course, is not entirely impossible, as to this day British Prime Minister Tony Blair still refuses to acknowledge that Britain’s actions in Iraq and Afghanistan have absolutely no impact upon domestic security.

The most alarming part is that even if the figures are most likely overblown, the intelligence community and the British government believe they are true, and they don’t seem to grasp that they are indicative of a monumental failure on the diplomatic and hearts and minds front. Absent such an understanding, such figures — real or inflated — can only but go up.

How not to win

Amid rising fears — as it does every year around this time — of a new Taliban “spring offensive” against NATO troops in Afghanistan and rising concerns that al-Qaeda, to quote Condoleezza Rice’s odd wording, “has tried to regenerate some of its leadership” and may, as some so-called security experts would have us think, be planning future attacks, here comes US Vice President Dick Cheney, originally bound for meetings with the Afghan proconsul Hamid Karzai but barred from reaching Afghanistan — not by the Taliban, or terrorists, but rather by snow. Cheney therefore makes a secret stop in Pakistan and holds a lunch meeting with President Pervez Musharraf.

The symptoms of incoming defeat often lie in the things that are said by politicians and their spokespersons. For a few years now, the lies and contradictions coming out of the US military leadership in Iraq and in Washington when it talks about Iraq, have served as signal posts indicating the way ahead, and we all know what the road looks like. Because of the sheer amplitude of the Iraq fiasco, which now threatens to inflame an entire region, Afghanistan and even al-Qaeda have been taken off the front page. In fact, as Bruce Hoffman, professor at Georgetown University, puts it: “it appears that Iraq blinded us to the possibility of an al-Qaeda renaissance. The United States’ entanglement there has consumed the attention and resources of our country’s military and intelligence communities — at precisely the time that Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda commanders were in their most desperate straits and stood to benefit most from this distraction.”

So five years on, not only has the world’s most powerful military, with the support of some NATO countries, failed to destroy al-Qaeda, but it has in fact allowed it to regroup. Rather than take the blame for its incapacity to focus on the task at hand — i.e., “defeating” al-Qaeda following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — and to admit that its adventure in Iraq was misguided at best, Washington is resorting to the age-old dirty trick of shifting the blame. Every now and then, it lambastes its servants at NATO and tells them to do more in Afghanistan, to deploy more troops, to be more aggressive in their pursuit of the Taliban.

More recently, however, the Bush administration has turned the screw on the Pakistani government, which it wants to be more aggressive in its hunt for al-Qaeda. Reports of varying credibility claim that many insurgents attacking Coalition forces in Afghanistan use Pakistan — more specifically the Waziristan area — as a base. Musharraf’s statement that Pakistan “has done the maximum in the fight against terrorism,” was insufficient to prevent finger-pointing in Washington. “The Pakistanis remain committed to doing everything possible to fight al-Qaeda, but having said that, we also know that there's a lot more that needs to be done,” said the ever-Orwellian presidential spokesman Tony Snow. US administration officials now say that if Pakistan, despite the fact that it has done the “maximum” it can, fails to combat al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the so-called “tribal areas” (note the use of language to describe the area where the insurgents allegedly find haven, giving its people an aura of savageness not unlike that which has been used throughout history to characterize groups that needed to be civilized, or altogether eradicated) more aggressively, Washington’s military aid to Pakistan could be cut. In other words, Pakistan would need to receive certification, from no less a figure than George W. Bush, that it is doing all it can to fight al-Qaeda. Since what this imposes on Pakistan is hardly achievable (after all, it’s not like the US has itself been successful at combating insurgencies), we can easily predict that Islamabad would get a failing grade.

One wonders, however, what could be accomplished by this. This is a perfect example of the signals mentioned above, the signs that matters are spiraling out of Washington’s control. The language piles into contradictions. If it were to follow upon its threat to Pakistan, Washington would weaken it military at a time when it asks it to do more. Run faster or else I’ll stop giving you water. Stop giving the marathoner water and he is sure not to complete the race.

What the planners in Washington fail to understand is that its Manichean view of the war on terrorism — the “us against them” or “good versus evil” attitude it has adopted since 9/11 — is the wrong template for a country like Pakistan that is being compelled to wage war against its own people. Things on the ground are not black and white, and not all inhabitants in the “tribal” area are pro-Taliban or al-Qaeda supporters. But Bush, Cheney and their advisers fail to see that, or simply don’t care. The only sure way Musharraf could accomplish what Washington demands of him would be by razing northern Waziristan to the ground, something even Musharraf cannot bring himself to do. Effectively, what Washington is asking the Pakistani president to do is the very same type of action it exploited to demonize a recently hanged dictator — localized ethnocide. But even if Musharraf didn't go to that extent, he must always gauge the reaction of Pakistanis to what he does. In other words, he muct make domestic political calculations.

So Pakistan is stuck in a corner, and the fault is Washington’s. The Taliban spring offensive will come, as it does every year, and al-Qaeda will continue to regroup. Unable to focus on one thing, Washington will continue to do what it does best: call upon its proxies in the region and within NATO to do more, criticize them for not doing enough, and turn its attention elsewhere.

In Iran, perhaps?

A sound signal, with a caveat

The ruling last week by the Supreme Court of Canada that the antiterrorism provision allowing the authorities to detain indefinitely suspected terrorists was counter to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — coming less than a month after Maher Arar received an official apology and a $11.5 million compensation from the Canadian government for its role in his deportation to Syria in 2002, where he was tortured — sends an encouraging signal to the world that Canada is in remission and that it recognizes, however belatedly, that some of the things it has done in the name of security have breached its age-old contract with its citizens.

At the heart of the issue are the Security Certificates which, under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), are emitted against foreign nationals or permanent residents suspected of terrorism. The certificates allow for the detention, without a fair judicial process, of those individuals for extended periods of time, pending deportation. Ostensibly to protect intelligence sources (usually foreign) and methods of collection, the accused and their defense lawyers are given no access to the charges against them or the intelligence used to back those charges, making a proper defense in the court of law virtually impossible. It is a system that, not altogether unfairly, has prompted comparisons to the manner in which the US has treated its prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Eight cases are pending, and twenty have been resolved since 1991. Of the latter, 15 were deported. Of the 28 individuals, nineteen were of Arabic, Northern African or Persian origin. Unfortunately for the individuals whose cases are pending, the court suspended the ruling for a year to allow for a rewriting of the relevant parts of IRPA. The three most prominent cases — Hassan Almrei, Mohammed Zeki Mahjoub and Mahmoud Jaballah — this means a continuation of detentions that started in 2001, 2000 and 2001, respectively. Pictures: Mohamed Harkat (Algeria) released on bail in June 2006; clockwise from centre left: Hassan Almrei (Syria), Mohammed Mahjoub (Egypt), Mahmoud Jaballah (Egypt) and Adil Charkaoui (Morocco), freed on conditional release in February 2005.

Were those individuals Canadians by birth and — let us put it bluntly — Caucasian and non-Muslim, it is highly unlikely that the public, along with government, would allow their detention to continue for a single additional day without fair trial, let alone a year. But given the current state of affairs in the post-911 world and the racist slant against individuals of Middle Eastern or Persian origin, Almrei, Mahjoub and Jaballah will remain incarcerated without provisions for a fair trial with access to the charges against them. Moreover, the ruling was accompanied by a caveat stating that prolonged detention would be allowed if the new version of the law conforms with the Charter. In other words, despite the seemingly path-breaking ruling, there is no assurance that those three individuals — and others to come — will receive a fair trial, let alone be freed and compensated.

This cannot be allowed in a democracy based on a system of law. Whether they are citizens or not, individuals suspected of participation in terrorism-related activities — this alone casting a wide net encompassing all kinds of activities, both passive and active — deserve the full set of defense tools granted individuals suspected of other crimes. If found guilty in a fair trial, they should face the full consequences of their acts. But we cannot allow for the continuation of a system whereby suspects are detained for years without the means to defend themselves and cannot know the substance of the charges against them — especially when much of the intelligence used to send them to jail in the first place is, as most things intelligence-related, of questionable value, oftentimes based on innuendo, institutional sloppiness, false assumptions or outright racism.

Without provisions for a fair trial and unmitigated respect for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Security Certificates are only a tool used by authorities to conceal less-than-airtight cases bent on ridding themselves of individuals who happen to be of the wrong ethnic or religious group.