Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2008, pages 40-41

European Press Review

“A Timely Exit,” Says Britain’s Guardian of Musharraf’s Departure

By Lucy Jones

The Aug. 18 resignation of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is a sign of how the “War on Terror” is changing, wrote BBC world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds the same day.

“Musharraf was once the linchpin of Pakistan’s alliance with the United States in President George Bush’s war, but the days of a single strongman laying down and executing the policy are gone,” Reynolds said.

“Instead, a longer-term reliance on the emergence of democratic institutions to offer an alternative to extremism is taking place. This partly explains why for the U.S. and Britain, the departure of their former ally matters less than it once would have. His time came and went,” he added.

“A timely exit,” was how the UK’s Guardian of Aug. 19 described Musharraf’s departure, which took place before the government moved to impeach him. “If he had followed his instincts by fighting impeachment charges in parliament, he would have dragged the army’s name into disrepute…By resigning before charges were laid, the former commando has done himself and his country a large favor,” the newspaper editorialized.

Musharraf’s greatest achievement had been to shift his country’s thinking on India, The Guardian continued, even though it went against the grain of the Pakistani military establishment.

“But his main project, the construction of a modern enlightened state, was doomed to failure,” the paper concluded. “Not only because he tried to do so on the back of a feudal, patronage-driven political machine. The general’s rule failed because he disdained democratic norms, like functioning political parties, the constitution and free elections.”

Musharraf’s resignation leaves Pakistan leaderless at a critical time, warned the London Times on Aug. 19.

“In the tribal areas separatists, Islamist extremists and Taliban supporters are in open revolt against the central government,” it pointed out. “Kashmiri militants are preparing new cross-border attacks against India. Arms are pouring into Afghanistan to fight NATO troops, while al-Qaeda leaders plot terrorism from their border hideouts. The shadowy Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) agency, intent on a proxy war with India, is moving away from government control.”

“Rarely has a power vacuum been so dangerous,” the newspaper warned.

“The country needs clear and decisive leadership. If the politicians cannot agree on a figure who can rise above the squabbles in Islamabad and endow him with the powers needed to be effective in office, they should call for a popular vote. Democracy is always the best answer,” it concluded.

French Involvement in Afghanistan Called “A Tragic Necessity”

The death of 10 French soldiers in an Aug. 19 ambush by Taliban fighters in Afghanistan led French newspapers to question the nation’s presence in the region.

The financial daily Les Echos reported the following day that 2,600 French soldiers are stationed in Afghanistan. Over the last three months, there have been more French casualties in Afghanistan than in Iraq, the newspaper noted.

The same day’s edition of the Catholic daily La Croix described the Afghan conflict as a “never-ending war.”

French troops are being drawn into a “quagmire,” opined Jean-Claude Kiefer in the regional Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace on Aug. 20. “They seem to be paying a forfeit to their great American ally for not participating in the Iraqi adventure,” he wrote.

“In joining Uncle Sam’s war on terror, the Sarkozy administration has led French troops right into Afghanistan’s deadly trap,” commented the communist daily l’Humanité the same day.

However, Christophe Barbier, editor of the L’Express weekly, said in its Aug. 20 issue that it is to be expected that an attack on the scale of the ambush would lead some to wonder whether France should scale down its international commitments.

These arguments are “very dangerous,” he warned, recalling those used to appease Hitler in the run-up to World War II. “Of course we need to be in this theater of operations. We need to be active on the major fault lines that are shaping the security of the planet and of France,” he argued.

In the Aug. 20 edition of the left-leaning daily Libération, Laurent Joffrin described the war in Afghanistan as “a tragic necessity.”

Luc de Barochez in the center-right Le Figaro of the same day agreed, saying that while the worsening situation in Afghanistan is alarming, “it should not make us forget the stakes in this conflict, that are as high for Europe as they are for the United States.”

However, he also asked whether, even “if the aims are just, are the tactics being used to achieve them correct?” He concluded that NATO’s 70,000 men “is not a lot in an immense country with poor communications. Experience has shown, however, that it is difficult to do more.”

In its Aug. 21 edition, the centrist daily Le Monde published several soldiers’ accounts of the deadly attack near the Afghan capital, Kabul. One soldier told the paper that insufficient coordination and the commander’s slow response were at the root of the casualties.

Mosque Will Change Cologne’s Skyline Forever, Says Der Spiegel

After much controversy, Cologne’s city council has voted in favor of building Germany’s largest mosque, Germany’s Der Spiegel reported Aug. 29. The building will forever change the city’s historic skyline, it noted, which features the most famous Gothic church in Germany.

Far-right activists have made a racket about this particular mosque since plans to build it were announced last year, Der Spiegel said. However, on Aug. 28 all parties, except the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and the extreme right anti-mosque initiative Pro Cologne, voted in favor of building the mosque.

Iran’s Geneticists Unhindered by Doctrine, Says British Physicist

Jim Al-Khalili, a professor of physics at the University of Surrey in Britain, wrote in the July 31 Guardian that on a recent trip to Iran he observed that Iranian scientists’ research in genetics was “remarkably advanced.”

“What struck me was the way the authorities overseeing the research seem to have dealt with the ethical minefields of parts of the work,” he wrote, “in stark contrast with the howls of protest from some quarters in the UK in the run up to the human embryo research bill that went through parliament recently.

“The Catholic church has branded research on human embryonic stem cells immoral and says tinkering with life in this way is tantamount to playing God,” the professor noted. “So I was taken aback by the Iranian imam who pointed out, quite rightly, that all that is produced in this research is just a clump of cells and not a fetus, and so what was all the fuss about?

“According to Islamic teaching, I discovered, the fetus becomes a full human being only when it is ‘ensouled’ at 120 days from the moment of conception, and so the research at the Royan Institute in Tehran is not seen as playing God, as it takes place at a much earlier stage,” said Al-Khalili.

“Thus, while there is much that the West finds unpalatable about life under Islamic rule, when it comes to genetics they are not held back by their religious doctrine,” he concluded.

Palestine’s “National Poet” Remembered

Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine’s “national poet” who died Aug. 9, was remembered by obituary writers for using his words to draw attention to the Palestinian cause.

“He was a constant voice calling for coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians,” said a London Times obituary writer Aug. 11.

Darwish “did as much as anyone to forge a Palestinian national consciousness,” wrote Peter Clark in The Guardian the same day.

“Obituaries in the Arab newspapers are mourning the last poet who could fill a football stadium. But Darwish lives in us and in his poetry,” wrote the Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif in the following day’s Guardian. “He lives also in the work of younger Arab poets who will soon be filling football stadiums. They are his disciples. And they are still here,” she wrote.

Lucy Jones is a free-lance journalist based in London.

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