THE final details of the casualties in yesterday’s attack on the Manawan police training school near Lahore are still awaited. However, one thing is already crystal clear: Terrorism has come to Pakistan, not just in its northwest provinces nor in spectacular attacks such as that on the Sri Lankan cricket team or last year’s assault on Islamabad’s Hyatt Hotel. The terrorists, who may well also have been responsible for the ambush on the visiting cricketers, yesterday made their purpose plain. Every Pakistani now finds himself at war with a great evil.
The response from outside defense analysts to yesterday’s events has been largely negative. The prediction is that Pakistan is too weak to resist a determined assault by Al— Qaeda bigots. One observer said that the country’s intelligence service, the ISI was too compromised by its past close association with the Taleban, to be able to act decisively in the all-important intelligence campaign against terror cells. Another predicted that the political system was too weak, too riven by discord, for it to be able to survive a concerted assault by the men of violence. A further intervention by the armed forces, he speculated, might be generally welcome if it restored security.
The problem is that a return of military rule is almost certain not to stop the terrorists in their tracks. Draconian security measures might in the short term make life more difficult for them, but in the longer term it would be playing into their hands, because it would be undermining the constitutional democracy on which Pakistan is built. And anything that undermines this pluralism is welcome to the men of violence. They are also hoping to make life so dangerous for ordinary decent citizens, that those that can will choose to leave the country, robbing it of its professional classes, of its doctors, teachers and lawyers and leaving the poor to bear the brunt of a savage terror campaign.
And there is doubtless another key strand to the terrorists’ thinking. Pakistan could become the first nuclear power to suffer social and security breakdown. In those circumstances, the outside world, horrified at the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of Al-Qaeda or some other groups would seek one way or another, to intervene. Yet, however that intervention was structured, even under UN auspices, it would be a disaster. The solution to Pakistan’s growing tide of problems has to rest in Pakistan’s hands alone, albeit with the unstinting support of the outside world.
The prerequisite for the fight-back against terror is the recognition by the country’s rival politicians and just as importantly by their sometimes almost fanatical followers, that now is not the time for fundamental political division. Nawaz Sharif’s opposition Muslim League and President Asif Ali Zardari’s ruling Pakistan People’s Party must recognize the futility of further bickering and power maneuvers. The terrorists can be beaten but only by the united effort of all Pakistanis regardless of party allegiance. This is the only way to root out the wickedness that has now shown itself to be in their midst.
Fascism’s shadow over Italians
THE Guardian yesterday commented on Silvio Berlusconi and Italy’s fascist leanings, saying in part:
Berlusconi’s central objective as Italian prime minister has long appeared to be dazzlingly and shamelessly obvious. Ever since he strode into the political vacuum created in 1993 by the simultaneous government corruption scandal on the right and the collapse of Italian communism on the left, Berlusconi has used his political career and power to protect himself and his media empire from the law. Yet his latest action — the merger into his new People of Freedom bloc, completed yesterday, of his own Forza Italia party with the Allianza Nazionale which derives directly from Benito Mussolini’s fascist tradition — may leave a more lasting mark on Italian public life than anything else the populist tycoon has done. Unlike postwar Germany, postwar Italy never properly confronted its own fascist legacy. As a result, while neofascism has never seriously resurfaced in Germany, in Italy there were important continuities in spite of Italy’s nominally anti-fascist public culture. Those continuities have just become stronger. It is a day of shame for Italy.
Nevertheless, the AN has come a long way in 60 years. Its leader, Gianfranco Fini, has discarded the old political garments and led his party toward the center. He has worked for more than 15 years as Berlusconi’s ally. He talks about the need for dialogue with Islam, denounces anti-Semitism, and advocates a multiethnic Italy — positions which Berlusconi, with his populist anti-gypsy and anti-immigrant campaigns and his fondness for soft-core racism, would struggle to match.
Despite its distant liberal origins, modern Italy is historically a right-wing country.
Yet it is a very shocking thought that there will be one head of government among the 20 world leaders at the London economic summit this week who has now rebuilt his political base on foundations laid by fascists and who claims that the right is likely to remain in power for generations as a result.
