Safer World

THE big surprise, viewed from my own narrow perspective five years later, has taken place in the mysterious zones of extremist ideology. In the months and weeks before the invasion of Iraq, I wrote quite a lot about ideology in the Middle East, and especially about the revolutionary political doctrine known as radical Islamism.

I tried to show that radical Islamism is a modern philosophy, not just a heap of medieval prejudices. In its sundry versions, it draws on local and religious roots, just as it claims to do. But it also draws on totalitarian inspirations from 20th-century Europe. I wanted my readers to understand that with its double roots, religious and modern, perversely intertwined, radical Islamism wields a lot more power, intellectually speaking, than naïve observers might suppose.

I declared myself happy in principle with the notion of overthrowing Saddam Hussein, just as I was happy to see the Taliban chased from power. But I wanted everyone to understand that military action, by itself, could never defeat an ideology like radical Islamism — could never contribute more than 10 percent (I invented this statistic, as an illustrative figure) to a larger solution. I hammered away on that point in the days before the war. And today I have to acknowledge that, for all my hammering, radical Islamism, in several of its resilient branches, the ultra-radical and the beyond-ultra-radical, has proved to be stronger even than I suggested.

A lot of people right now make the common-sense supposition that if extremist ideologies have lately entered a sort of grisly golden age, the Bush administration’s all-too-predictable blundering in Iraq must bear the blame. Yes, certainly; but that can’t be the only explanation.

Extremist movements have been growing bigger and wilder for more than three decades now, during that period, America has tried pretty much everything from a policy point of view. Our presidents have been satanic (Richard Nixon), angelic (Jimmy Carter), a sleepy idiot savant (Ronald Reagan), a cagey realist (George H. W. Bush), wonderfully charming (Bill Clinton) and famously otherwise (George W. Bush). And each president’s Middle Eastern policy has conformed to his character.

In regard to Saddam Hussein alone, our government has lent him support (Mr. Reagan), conducted a limited war against him (the first President Bush), inflicted sanctions and bombings (Mr. Clinton, in other than his charming mode), and crudely overthrown him. Every one of those policies has left the Iraqi people worse off than before, even if nowadays, from beneath the rubble, the devastated survivors can at least ruminate about a better future — though I doubt that many of them are in any mood to do so.

And each new calamity for Iraq has, like manure, lent new fertility to the various extremist organizations. The entire sequence of events may suggest that America is uniquely destined to do the wrong thing. All too likely! But it may also suggest that America is not the fulcrum of the universe, and extremist ideologies have prospered because of their own ability to adapt and survive — their strength, in a word.

I notice a little gloomily that I may have underestimated the extremist ideologies in still another respect. Five years ago, anyone who took an interest in Middle Eastern affairs would easily have recalled that, over the course of a century, the intellectuals of the region have gone through any number of phases — liberal, Marxist, secularist, pious, traditionalist, nationalist, anti-imperialist and so forth, just like intellectuals everywhere else in the world.

Western intellectuals without any sort of Middle Eastern background would naturally have manifested an ardent solidarity with their Middle Eastern and Muslim counterparts who stand in the liberal vein — the Muslim free spirits of our own time, who argue in favor of human rights, rational thought (as opposed to dogma), tolerance and an open society.

But that was then. In today’s Middle East, the various radical Islamists, basking in their success, paint their liberal rivals and opponents as traitors to Muslim civilization, stooges of crusader or Zionist aggression. And, weirdly enough, all too many intellectuals in the Western countries have lately assented to those preposterous accusations, in a sanitized version suitable for Western consumption.

Even in the Western countries, quite a few Muslim liberals, the outspoken ones, live today under a threat of assassination, not to mention a reality of character assassination. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch legislator and writer, is merely an exceptionally valiant example. But instead of enjoying the unstinting support of their non-Muslim colleagues, the Muslim liberals find themselves routinely berated in the highbrow magazines and the universities as deracinated nonentities, alienated from the Muslim world. Or they find themselves pilloried as stooges of the neoconservative conspiracy — quite as if any writer from a Muslim background who fails to adhere to at least a few anti-imperialist or anti-Zionist tenets of the Islamist doctrine must be incapable of thinking his or her own thoughts.

A dismaying development. One more sign of the power of the extremist ideologies — one more surprising turn of events, on top of all the other dreadful and gut-wrenching surprises.

Labels: Radical Islam

In 1971, Dr. Matthew Israel founded the Behavior Research Institute in Canton. Its name was later changed to the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center to honor the jurist who upheld Israel's controversial methods in court. At Harvard in the 1950s, Israel was a student of B. F. Skinner, founder of behavioral psychology and author of "Walden Two," a utopian novel whose heroes try to build a perfect society through behavioral conditioning. In "Walden Two," people are encouraged by a system of rewards and punishments to live simple, frugal lives, to express themselves through art and classical music, and to trust the wisdom of their leaders. After college, Israel formed the Association of Social Design, a Skinner-esque utopian community in Boston. The community failed, and Israel went on to start what became the Rotenberg school.

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In 1994, Matthew Israel and David Marsh obtained a patent for an "apparatus for administering electrical aversive stimulus." (An image from the patent is shown here.) They dubbed the device a Graduated Electronic Decelerator, or GED, its purpose being to "decelerate" a patient engaged in inappropriate behavior by administering an electric shock.

In the GEDs used at the Rotenberg Center, battery and receiver are bundled into a backpack, with electrodes routed through the straps to make contact with the patient's skin. Guards carry remote control devices with patients' photos emblazoned on them.

In filing his patent, Israel followed the example of Skinner. Among Skinner's best-known inventions was the operant conditioning box, or Skinner Box, a cage designed to allow researchers to administer rewards (food) and punishments (electric shocks) to lab animals without having to interact directly with the animal. Skinner also invented the "air crib," a box for taking care of infants without having to swaddle or diaper them. Among his most controversial inventions, it was also jokingly called an "heir conditioner."

"The method of treatment of this invention," according to the patent, consists in "securing a remotely activated apparatus for administering electrical aversive stimulus to a patient to be treated. The patient is then observed for signs of undesired behavior." The patent specifies self-injury as the sort of behavior to be deterred. But, according to a January article in the Globe, therapists at the Rotenberg Center have been accused of being more liberal in their definition of "undesired behavior," delivering shocks for offenses such as swearing or shouting. In August of last year, therapists at the school received a call from a disgruntled patient posing as a staff member, who ordered them to administer multiple shocks (in one case, as many as 77) to two students with whom he was having a dispute. The shocks were administered before the hoax was discovered.



In Skinner's "Walden Two" the founder explains that children in the community are taught to control their impulses "[b]y having the children 'take' a more and more painful shock" because, he explains, "[s]ome of us learn [self-]control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way." The problem with utopian solutions in real-life communities like the Rotenberg Center, of course, is that not only the children need to learn self-control; self-control is also required of those with their fingers on the shock button.

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, at 83, has outlived Ian Smith, the final white leader of Rhodesia, who died last month. In 1980 Mugabe began with a working democracy, a sound infrastructure and a healthy economy. Inflation is now the highest in the world; there is no work and little food – and what is available is used to control the remaining population

Some 40 golfers braved the midday heat to battle for the big prize on a parched nine-hole golf course that had seen better days. The winner of the weekend competition at the Hornung Sports Club in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, would walk away with 25 litres of unleaded petrol. “Last weekend, first prize was a box of vegetables,” a wiry veteran explained as he shaped up to tee off. “Veggies are welcome, but the petrol prize is something special, it’s like gold dust these days.”

In Zimbabwe, a white elite who once lived a charmed existence can barely manage to fill their fuel tanks. And years of economic and political mismanagement threaten the lives of the majority black population. Four out of every five black Zimbabweans live below the poverty line. Every wage earner is feeding almost 20 people from a monthly salary. Just over a decade ago the life expectancy of the average Zimbabwean woman was 66. Today it is 33. The central bank’s foreign exchange reserves have been destroyed; supermarket shelves are bare.

When President Robert Mugabe came to power in 1980 the country was thriving. Its health and education services were the envy of the region and, thanks to a first-class infrastructure and a healthy economy, the future looked bright. It doesn’t look like that now.

Last Friday the ritual queuing began at first light in the centre of the capital, Harare. As dawn broke, two separate lines intertwined on the corner of Lake Takawira Street. The longest was motivated by a rumour that circulated around the city overnight that there was bread in town. Up and down the line people were on mobile phones, texting and calling friends to give them the latest information. Yet many people walked away empty-handed. When bread and flour do come on the market, they are often bought up in bulk and sold on at inflated prices on the black market, which is the real market.

It’s not just bread. Those who have the purchasing power buy what they can maize, cooking oil or beans often at government-subsidised prices. Instead of supplying the domestic market, they export the goods to neighbouring Mozambique or Botswana to earn precious foreign currency, although the poorest in Zimbabwe can barely afford one meal a day.

“If I don’t get the bread today, who knows, maybe I won’t be able to afford it tomorrow,” a woman in the bread queue told me. She was probably right. Within a month inflation, which already stood at 7,900%, the highest in the world, was widely reported to have jumped to 14,000% (1). For those lucky enough to have a job unemployment is about 80% inflation rates destroy their wages. Teachers are still being paid around 12m Zimbabwean dollars a month, about the cost of six litres of cooking oil.

Absence of cash
The second queue was for the Post Office Savings Bank where scores lined up to withdraw money. The value of the Zim dollar (2) has fallen so sharply that the government can’t print enough notes to keep up with demand. On a bad day, by the time the last in line reaches the cash dispenser the currency will once again have fallen in value.

The government further tightened the screw on the availability of hard cash by halving the daily limit one person can withdraw from an ATM. The queues on Takawira Street will lengthen.

The impact of this economic meltdown is much more serious than having to birdie the ninth to fill a fuel tank or being forced to stand in line for cash. Four million citizens will need food donations to make it through the next four months. Zimbabwe gets much of its electricity from South Africa but supply is at best sporadic a direct effect of the fact that Mugabe’s government can’t pay its electricity bills. All over the country, dams are drying up and people are digging their own wells or making do with foul water supplies.

The downward spiral of the economy even affects the dead. In rural areas people can no longer afford to buy coffins for their loved ones. Neither can they afford to register their deaths. Nobody knows exactly how many people are dying in Zimbabwe from hunger or disease. In Bulawayo, the state-owned newspaper, the Chronicle, regularly published the number of deaths from starvation until the government banned that.

Contaminated water, poor nutrition and a HIV/Aids rate of 15% would put heavy demands on any health service. But in Zimbabwe it is failing people when they need it most. Public hospitals are almost at a halt; if a patient needs a simple procedure, like a couple of stitches or an injection, the instruments or antiseptic might not be available. Two weeks ago, three of the main hospitals were without electricity for more than four days. Fires burned outside the kitchen doors so staff could cook to feed patients. Half of all medical posts are now vacant as doctors leave for London, Dublin or Sydney.

Absence of medicines
Dr Andrew Fairbairn, a white Zimbabwean, whose family has been here for two generations, is one of the few who haven’t left. He runs a private clinic on the outskirts of Harare. Every week he watches the gradual decay of the health system. “Medical care is almost not available to people who can’t afford it, so that someone needing surgery or chronic medication cannot get it.” He was making plans to travel to Baghdad for two months as a doctor-for-hire to earn foreign currency before coming home. He is struggling to keep his clinic going because of the severe drugs shortages and the spiralling cost of treatment. “It’s shocking to see some elderly people coming in here, wasting away, losing weight because they can barely afford to buy food,” he said. “Many people are cutting their medication in half, or not taking it at all. They come to me and ask me which of their medicines they can do without because they can’t pay for them.”

The shortage of medicines has placed pharmacists in the frontline of the battle to treat a population in desperate need of care. Restricted by price or unavailability, pharmacists occasionally stock medicines not registered by the Zimbabwean authorities. Friends of Fairbairn have been arrested and thrown in jail for days for attempting to supply their customers with drugs they need. “A couple of pharmacies have been closed down. It’s common for them to be arrested on a Friday so that they squirm in an overcrowded cell all weekend without access to a lawyer,” he said.

Fairbairn claimed he was determined to stay in Zimbabwe no matter how much conditions deteriorate. “I feel an obligation to stay until things come right again.” And when might that be? “I am thinking something might change after next year’s elections, but then I am a committed optimist.”

’Support the ruling party’
Robert Gabriel Mugabe believes he knows the outcome of the presidential elections next March; he will win. In almost three decades in power, he has efficiently quelled dissent and outmanoeuvred all opponents. He has been consistent in ensuring his ruling party, Zanu-PF, always succeeds at the ballot box. And he uses every means: intimidation, torture, forced exile. Infiltration of communities and of the opposition, by his Central Intelligence Office (CIO), help him stay in total control.

But as the economy of Zimbabwe continues to disintegrate, his most effective tool is the manipulation of food for political ends. Through the state-controlled Grain Marketing Board, the government holds the sole right to import and distribute maize, the staple of millions of Zimbabweans. Throughout the country, as elections loom, the message is clear: support the ruling party and you will not starve.

’Show your Zanu-PF card’
Jacob switched on the battered radio and his small, dilapidated shack was flooded with pounding hip-hop. His baby daughter lying on the couch woke with a start as our small group pulled a little closer together. “Just so they will not hear us talking,” Jacob said, explaining that CIO operations are common in the area. “Now you can go ahead and ask your questions.”

His home is in Tafara, a huge township about 20km west of Harare. Jacob is a monitor with the Zimbabwean Peace Project (ZPP), a human rights NGO which tracks political violence and intimidation. On the couch beside him was Saveri Mafunga, 32, a victim of Mugabe’s efforts to shore up support ahead of the 2008 elections. He was refused subsidised food because he does not support Zanu-PF.

Saveri’s voice shook a little. He was nervous. He knew it was dangerous to talk to journalists or human rights groups. It is officially illegal to criticise the government. Unofficially, he could be beaten or tortured for doing so. One side of his face was lit by the sun streaming through the window and he looked gaunt and tired as he said he was sick with worry that he wouldn’t be able to feed his wife and baby daughter.

Two weeks before, he went to a government food distribution point near his home. Officials were handing out maize, beans and cooking oil at subsidised prices, all that most people can afford now. He checked if his name was on the register and was relieved to see it was. For months he had hustled for part-time work, but there wasn’t nearly enough to keep up with runaway prices.

“When I got to the top of the queue I was asked to show my Zanu-PF card,” he explained. “I do not have one and they told me that even though my name was on the list, that I was entitled to food, there would be nothing for me.” The government official told him that there was no record his attendance at Zanu-PF meetings and if he wanted food, he should get it from Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the main opposition party in Zimbabwe. “I am also asked for a Zanu party card when I look for work and often there is no work without it,” he said. “I don’t know what we are going to do now to survive. Anything I have, I get from friends and from good neighbours.”

This has been declared a drought year in Zimbabwe and now is the beginning of the hungry season. Human rights organisations say the government is using food as a political tool against millions of people who are now at their most vulnerable. The ZPP has recorded hundreds of people being refused subsidised food because they don’t support Zanu-PF. Their project director, Jestina Mukoko, fears this tactic will have the desired effect at the ballot box: “People might be forced to vote with their stomachs, simply because they want to guarantee their food. For many people it is a matter of survival.”

The project has evidence of discrimination against those too young to vote. Some households, where both parents are dead and the eldest child is caring for younger siblings, are being denied food if the parents were suspected or known to have supported the opposition. “Children are having to suffer for the ‘sins’ of their parents,” Jestina claimed. “To want to see somebody go hungry when food is available is inhuman. I think it is within the powers of the authorities to sort it out.”

The government has free rein to manipulate its own subsidised food and has also attempted to interfere in the distribution of international food donations. Between now and next March, the UN World Food Programme will feed 3 million in Zimbabwe. When WFP officials first negotiated the distribution of donor food, there was a stand-off with the government. The ruling party wanted community chiefs – most of them loyal to Mugabe – to decide where the food would go. The WFP refused to go along with this but has occasionally been forced to suspend distribution because politicians have, to quote a WFP spokesman, “tried to make their presence felt” at distribution points. “We have a very rigorous and thorough process in place for handing out food, from registration all the way through to distribution. The beneficiaries get food strictly on the basis of need,” the spokesman said.

Justina Mukoko believes there is a low level of manipulation of international donations: “Lists are compiled in the community and I think it takes the international organisations some time to realise that people are being left out.”

Hope of exile
“I think it would be better if we were killing each other in the streets every night,” the owner of a small hotel in Bulawayo told me as we shared a beer on my last evening in the country. “Then perhaps the world would have to do something.” That day he had been forced to serve notice to half his staff and feared he would soon have to leave the country.

Instead, Zimbabweans suffer a slow strangulation of their society. Intimidation by the government is crushing them. Fear prevents most people from speaking out or rising up. If they can, they leave. Each week, more and more families are being ripped apart as husbands or wives, or both, leave their children behind and make for Mozambique, South Africa or Botswana.

Most people have two hopes: that they will make it safely across the crocodile-infested Limpopo river, which forms a natural barrier between Zimbabwe and South Africa, and find a way to survive in exile; or that their 83-year-old president will not live to inflict many more years of chaos and oppression on his people.

"I walked the floor of The White House night after night until midnight," President William McKinley recalled. "I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance." McKinley was trying to figure out whether to annex the Philippines, captured by U.S. troops in the Spanish-American War of 1898. Finally, it came to him: "There was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them ... "

Never mind that most Filipinos were already Roman Catholic, or that they didn't want to be occupied. In a brutal insurgency that dragged on for three years, more than 4,000 Americans and half a million Filipinos died; American soldiers first deployed the torture known as water-boarding, and may have first used a version of the term "Gook" to describe the Asian enemy they were trying to save.

The many critics of George W. Bush like to paint him as a Holy Warrior. They point to his unfortunate choice of the word "crusade" to avenge 9/11, his frequent use of the term "evil" and his statement, to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, that he does not need to consult his father, the 41st president, because he appeals to "a higher Father." But he is hardly the first president to beseech the Lord in time of war, as McKinley's story shows. On the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg, knowing that a Confederate victory in Pennsylvania could mean the loss of Washington, Abraham Lincoln dropped to his knees and prayed. "I must put all my trust in Almighty God," he explained. "The burden was more than I could bear." In the White House, Lincoln said, he was often driven to his knees "by the overwhelming conviction that I have nowhere else to go." Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush liked to quote that line.

American war leaders have been counting on divine intervention since Washington's nearly vanquished Army escaped the British under cover of a providential fog the summer of 1776. From the beginning of recorded time, soldiers have called on God in the heat of battle. And in America, God and war have a particular kinship: presidents in time of conflict invoke the Lord's name as a way to rally the people, but also as a comfort and consolation for the loneliness of command. Evoking God in the midst of mass killing is inspirational to some and offensive to others. Divine sanction has been used to give meaning to the Constitution's promise of equality as well as to license genocide. Depending on the moment and the character of the particular president, asking the Lord's help in time of war can be a sign of hubris or humility.

The impulse to blend God and war owes much to the American temperament: Americans have always feared one (today, nine out of 10 call themselves believers) and loved the other (the United States has fought in dozens of armed conflicts in the nation's two-and-a-third centuries). Not a few old warriors have admitted to thrilling to the words of "Onward, Christian Soldiers." At times, Jews and Muslims have been just as bellicose as Christians. The God of Abraham is and has always been a martial God.

But how to reconcile such violence with the Biblical commandment to love thy neighbor? Early Christian philosophers like Augustine and Aquinas struggled to shape the concept of a "just war." Over time, theologians have honed the theory into a kind of moral checklist: the cause must be just (self-defense, not mere conquest); the war must be lawfully declared (no sneak attacks) and a last resort; it must have a reasonable chance of success, and the use of force must be proportionate to the ends (no intentional killing of civilians).

Still, faith in "American exceptionalism"—and God's alleged recognition in the eyes of some that we are indeed exceptional—has inspired our leaders to wage wars that, with the benefit of hindsight, seem anything but just. Believing, as Bush put it last Fourth of July, that "freedom is the gift of God," the president has made it his mission, and America's, to spread liberty and democracy far and wide—by force of arms, if necessary. The antiwar left has been quick to point out how such a strategy has failed in the past. Activist and Boston University professor Howard Zinn has noted that shortly after Gov. John Winthrop evoked Jesus by proclaiming the Massachusetts Bay Colony to be a "city on a hill" in 1630, a force of colonists moved out to massacre the Pequot Indians. America's "manifest destiny" was used as a justification to invade Mexico in 1848, and Cuba and the Philippines in 1898, and to wipe out whole tribes of American Indians throughout the 19th century. Zinn quotes McKinley's secretary of War, Elihu Root, in 1899: "The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the world began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, of peace and happiness."

More often than not, though, modern presidents—including Bush, who told Woodward "I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God"—have resisted providing a religious justification for taking up arms. Instead, they have relied on faith to give them, and the country, the strength to endure sending American men and women into harm's way. The judgments made in the Oval Office are so consequential, and sometimes fatal, that presidents need to believe they are serving some higher purpose. "Belief in God, for me at least, gave me hope and kept me going," George H.W. Bush told NEWSWEEK Editor Jon Meacham in an interview in 2005. "I don't show it very much—don't like to talk about it—and maybe I should have been ... a little clearer about my heartbeat. But I felt it—felt it very, very strongly."

A few presidents have tried to conceal their dependence on prayer. On some nights during the Vietnam War, after picking bombing targets in the Situation Room, Lyndon Johnson would secretly pray with monks at a nearby monastery. Others openly gloried in God. Franklin Roosevelt joyously sung Anglican hymns, including "Onward, Christian Soldiers," with Winston Churchill aboard a battleship in the North Atlantic in August 1941. "We are Christian soldiers," FDR told his son Elliott afterward, "and we will go on, with God's help." (The Nazis thought God was on their side, too. Hitler's troops had engraved on their belt buckles GOTT MIT UNS—God With Us.) When FDR conducted a mass prayer on D-Day—with Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of the enemy—the parents of 50 soldiers from Corpus Christi, Texas, crawled two blocks on their hands and knees in an act of penance. The showiest Christian Soldier may have been Woodrow Wilson during and after World War I. "He thinks he is another Jesus Christ come upon the earth to reform men," said the French statesman Georges Clemenceau.

Presidents sometimes wrestle with uncomfortable truths. Lincoln noted that both North and South "read the same Bible and pray to the same God." In his gloomy moments, Lincoln saw war as divine retribution, wondering aloud in his second Inaugural if God was using the "scourge of war" to punish America for the sin of slavery. Closer to the battlefield, the combatants are not always so reflective. Stonewall Jackson would wander in the woods, praying aloud—alarming, not reassuring, some of his troops. Robert E. Lee routinely dismounted to pray with his soldiers. On his scorched-earth "March to the Sea" through Georgia in the winter of 1864, Gen. William T. Sherman was pleased when many of his 60,000 soldiers began singing the Doxology in unison—"Praise God from whom all blessings flow." "Noble fellows," said Sherman. "God will take care of them."

Or so soldiers have prayed from age to age. "Remember, there are no atheists in foxholes," the Rev. William Thomas Cummings, a Roman Catholic priest, told American Army soldiers on the eve of the battle that preceded the Bataan Death March, shortly after the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in 1942. (It's not true, of course: there are atheists in foxholes, but the line has echoed in the culture.) Captured and abused by the Japanese, the American POWs began prayer services every morning at 5. Later, Sen. John McCain, who as a downed Navy pilot was tortured and held for five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, recalled "many times I found myself asking to live just one more minute rather than one more hour or one more day, and I know I was able to hang on longer because of the spiritual help I received through prayer." But no American warrior was more literal in his faith than Gen. George S. Patton. As his armored columns rolled into Belgium in December 1944, rain and snow slowed the advance and gave the enemy cover. Patton ordered his chaplain to write a prayer for good weather. The skies cleared for eight straight days; American air power decimated the Nazis. Patton gave his chaplain a Bronze Star.

Behind the heightened tension with Iran lies a wider problem that world leaders must swiftly and substantively grasp. The Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), drawn up in 1968, needs to be re-written to make it both workable and acceptable to nations who view it as outdated and unfair.

Over the next generation, as the scramble for energy gathers pace, many more governments will announce plans to build uranium-enrichment facilities. Some will be friendly to US interests, some hostile. Some may switch alliances with time.

In recent years, India and the deeply unstable Pakistan have both declared their nuclear-weapons programs. Neither was a signatory to the NPT. North Korea joined, but left. Iran is a member, but stands accused of breaking the rules. Israel is not, and remains secretive and undeclared. Iraq signed back in 1969, then totally ignored it.

So, if the present version of the NPT is proving too hit and miss to survive the next half century of nuclear aspirations, what will replace it?

Into this conundrum comes an agreement between India and the US that, if used properly, could show us the way ahead. After more than 30 years of sanctions because of its nuclear program, India is now being allowed into that select club of declared and accepted nuclear powers.

On the technical side, India will be able to sell and buy civilian-use nuclear products on the international market. On the political side, the agreement heals a wound between two huge democracies by giving India some recognition of national dignity – which is, in part, also what Iran is seeking.

Thirty-seven years ago, when Iran was an ally of the US, American warships were confronting not an autocratic Islamic state in the Gulf, but a young socialist democracy in the Bay of Bengal. India, then viewed by Washington as over-friendly with the Soviet Union, was defeating Pakistan over Bangladesh and needed to be brought into line.

The hostile insertion in 1971 of the USS Enterprise carrier group into India’s backyard failed to turn the tide in Pakistan’s favor. But it did create an anti-American sentiment in India that is only healing today.

It also gave India added grit to develop its own nuclear weapons. In 1974, having bought technology under the guise of using it solely for peaceful purposes, India carried out a nuclear test and was put under sanctions.

India’s Tarapur nuclear complex, three hours drive outside of Mumbai, tells what has happened in the interim. Tarapur comprises a weapons-research center; a Soviet-style closed-city with schools, shops and sporting facilities for the scientists, engineers and their families; and four reactors, two designed in the 1960s and two this century.

The first two, known as Taps 1 & 2, were opened in 1969 and built by the American multinational General Electric (GE) in a turn-key operation that included parts, maintenance, training and uranium-fuel supply. Four years later, after the test, the US government instructed GE to withdraw all support.

Far from being deterred, India pushed its nuclear program with even more urgency. It fuelled the reactors by buying uranium first from France, then Russia and, according to some engineers at Tarapur, even briefly from China.

India bypassed sanctions and created a world-class nuclear program. The control room of Taps 1 & 2 looks like an immaculately preserved example of 1960s technology, while the ultra-modern Taps 3 & 4 that opened in 2005 are evidence of what a determined nation can do if it decides to go it alone.

Visitors wear anti-dust cotton coverings over their shoes, and once inside they watch screens monitoring movements deep inside the radioactive area of the plant. Even under its new agreement, this will remain a place closed to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

At present, India has 17 reactors with five under construction. Of those, 14 will be “safeguarded,” or open to IAEA inspections. Eight will remain closed so they can be used for weapons and other research.

With its billion-plus population and booming economy, India’s plan for the next 20 years reflects much of the developing world’s appetite for secure energy. To meet its galloping demand for power India expects to buy 25 more reactors from Russia, the US and France, as well as build several itself.

That alone is about 5 percent of the more than 400 power-generating reactors in the world today and evidence of boom years ahead, not only for India, but also for the whole global nuclear industry.

The climate-change debate coupled with unpredictable access to fossil fuels has prompted the nuclear industry to brush off the Chernobyl stigma and declare itself safe, inexpensive and carbon-free. America’s GE, for example, is gearing up to supply the Tarapur complex again, as well as bidding for involvement in India’s new reactors.

Of course, it is not just India. A walk through General Electric’s massive warehouse at its fuel plant in Wilmington, North Carolina, shows the momentum sweeping the nuclear industry along. Reinforced metal boxes containing uranium fuel rods are stacked as if in a supermarket waiting to be shipped out to clients.

“This one’s going to Japan, this to Mexico, this to within the US,” says Andrew White, president and CEO of GE’s nuclear business, “Over the next 20 years we hope to be involved in 60 or 70 new plants depending on the technology.”

China’s nuclear plans mirror those of India, and nuclear energy is due to dramatically increase in Europe, where it makes up 30 percent of power, and America, where it comprises 20 percent. Developing nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America are all looking to create their own nuclear programs to provide energy – and there lies the problem.

Egypt, for example, currently a champion of non-proliferation, has two research reactors aimed at creating an independent nuclear-fuel cycle. It could prove to be a matter of Western concern. Like Iran before, the Egyptian regime risks falling to extreme Islamic anti-American forces.

Both Brazil and Argentina once pursued covert-weapons programs. Some years from now, the increasingly left-leaning Latin America might produce a hostile leader, who would expel IAEA inspectors and send us once again into frighteningly familiar territory.

It is doubtful that global diplomacy can survive scenarios whereby every time a government is accused of stepping out of line, the UN Security Council is called upon to implement sanctions and US carrier groups steam toward hostile coastlines.

More than any other nation, India has the credentials to immerse itself completely in this dangerous conundrum and put forward fresh guidelines to extract us from it. India has persistently condemned the NPT for being discriminatory, arguing that the nuclear-armed UN permanent five cannot forever dictate what other nations do. This view is shared throughout much of the developing world, and as that sentiment grows, it will be more and more difficult to keep a lid on it.

A solution may be many years away, and getting there will be difficult. It will have to include both technical elements, such as guarantees of fuel supplies, and political ones involving perceptions of national dignity and fairness.

India’s elevation to nuclear acceptability comes with a price. It cannot simply accept its new privileges and stay quiet. India went against all odds to create its nuclear program. It must now take up a new challenge to create a nuclear roadmap for the next century.

Creeping `Talibanisation': The Jamia Hafsa is well known for its radical Islamic stand.

AABPARA MARKET, in an Islamabad neighbourhood of junior government employees, is known as the place where you can get everything at half the price of those in the city's posh shopping squares, plus stuff you won't find anywhere else. In its busy inner lanes are about a dozen or so shops selling DVDs, VCDs and music cassettes. Beginning February, the shops started getting unusual visitors who made it clear the very first time they were not out on a shopping trip.

"They came three or four times, some 10 or 15 of them at a time. Their faces were covered and they were holding sticks, and they said to me, `your business is against Islam. You are spreading vice. Why don't you switch to some other business?'" remembered one shop owner, who didn't want his name published.

Pro-Taliban leaning

The boys said they were from the mosque. The Lal Masjid runs two madrassas — the Jamia Fareedia for men and the Jamia Hafsa for women. The mosque and the madrassas are well known for their pro-Taliban sympathies and for the dissemination of militancy.

At first, none of the shopkeepers took the visits seriously. Then, one night in March, some 40 Jamia Hafsa girls, accompanied by an equal number of boys from the Lal Masjid, entered a home in the neighbourhood and dragged out the three women inside, accusing them of running a brothel. Tied up in white sheets, the women were dragged through the neighbourhood and into the Jamia Hafsa, where they were imprisoned for two days. They also took two policemen hostage, in retaliation for the arrests of two teachers suspected of involvement in the kidnap.

A few days later, on a Friday afternoon, the owner of a music shop in Aabpara heaped up his videos and DVDs and CDs on the road outside the mosque. After noon prayers at the Lal Masjid, under the eyes of the mosque administrators and madrassa students, Bilal, the shop owner, set fire to the heap. As the flames ate the movies, he told reporters that he had given up his business voluntarily. He realised it was anti-Islamic. He would start anew with something else.

Abdul Aziz Ghazi, the Lal Masjid prayer leader, announced that if the Government did not close down all brothels and shops in Islamabad selling movies and music within a month, the students would start taking action on their own. He threatened fidayeen suicide attacks if the Government tried to stop them.

The Aabpara market tradesmen fear they are first in the line of fire. "It isn't easy to close down a business. It's taken me years to establish this shop. I can't just abandon this overnight and start something else. And there's no guarantee that I will make money in the new venture," said the shopkeeper. He ruled out closing down. Like him, other music/movie storeowners in the market said they were "watching the situation and praying for the best".

* * *

"Talibanisation" is the term used to describe what is happening in the out-of-control northwest frontier. Even though some say the word is used "loosely" the growing assertiveness of extremist Islamists in the tribal regions of Pakistan is undeniable. In that remote area, pro-Taliban militants and clerics have all but taken over public space.

Spreading influence

Barbers in areas of the northwest such as Dir, Bajuar and Mardan have been ordered to stop shaving customers. School-going girls and women teachers are directed to wear the veil. Clerics oppose a polio vaccination campaign saying it is a western conspiracy to make men infertile. Militants even killed a doctor in charge of the government's anti-polio programme in Bajaur.

The influence of these "local" Taliban has been spreading into neighbouring "settled" areas. In Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province, co-education schools remained closed for several days after receiving bomb threats. In Tank, a district in NWFP bordering tribal South Waziristan, militants battled security forces last month to avenge the police shooting of two men who were trying to recruit school students for jihad.

* * *

Aabpara is not the wild northwest. Neither is it some far-flung suburb of Islamabad. Constitution Avenue, with the President's Aiwan-e-Sadr office, the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, the Prime Minister's office, the secretariat and all the important ministries including Foreign Affairs and Finance and the Diplomatic Enclave, is less than two km away. But Abdul Aziz and his brother Abdul Rashid, who run the Lal Masjid complex together, are undaunted. Together, they can take the credit for pushing before the world another face of militant Islam — women, covered head to toe in black niqaab, wielding sticks, talking tough on what Muslims must do and not do, and throwing one challenge after another to the government since January.

Challenging the government


When Islamabad's Capital Development Authority began demolishing the first of over 80 mosques that it said were encroachments on public land, the Jamia Hafsa girls seized a children's library next door to their madrassa in protest and continue to occupy it. They led the raid on the alleged brothel. And according to the two brothers, the girls are the ones spearheading the entire exercise to "cleanse" Pakistan.

The activities of the Jamia Hafsa and the Lal Masjid have hammered home the reality that religious extremism is a countrywide reality, not restricted to some remote corner of Pakistan, but present right in the heart of the capital. The mosque has now set up a Shari'a court in its premises, appointing to it 10 senior clerics who can issue fatwas. The first fatwa went out against Tourism Minister Nilofar Bakhtiar, who went paragliding in France recently, and was shown in photographs hugging her male French instructor after her endeavour.

* * *

Where is the Government? This is the question everybody is asking — from music shop owners in Aabpara to newspaper editors. Why is this being allowed to happen right under its nose?

Government's reactions


President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, and the entire cabinet have "condemned" the Lal Masjid activities. They say the Government will not allow anyone to take the law into their hands, and that those who violate it will be "dealt with according to the law". But nothing has been done.

Instead a sense of helplessness prevails. The President says any attempt to use force against the Lal Masjid complex could end in bloodshed. Musharraf has instead appealed to civil society to "educate" the misguided "kids" at the Lal Masjid complex, pleaded with them for "tolerance" and "open minds". He wants to "negotiate" with the girls and the mosque's clerics.

Eijaz ul-Haq, the minister of religious affairs, said that Pakistan had been trying to tell the world that its madrassas were centres of learning, not extremism, but the activities of the Lal Masjid had forced the Government "to hang its head in shame".

Yet the minister participated in a negotiated surrender to the Jamia Hafsa girls on the illegal mosque demolition issue. On TV and in photographs, he was seen laying bricks for reconstruction of the mosques demolished by the CDA. That was the first taste of victory for Lal Masjid, and since then, it has been a one-sided match.

Later, the Government negotiated for the release of the two policemen being held hostage in the mosque. It agreeing to release in return the two teachers arrested for the "brothel" raid. The kidnapped "prostitutes" were left to the Hafsa students, who released them only after extracting a public "confession" of their "sins" and a vow to turn over new leaves.

Genuine dilemma


Not a single policeman was in sight when thousands of madrassa students gathered for a bonfire of videos. Nor have the police stopped the students from threatening shopkeepers in the neighbourhood.

Government supporters say there is a genuine dilemma — action against the Lal Masjid could really set off more suicide attacks. And how to use force against teenage girls? But Opposition parties attribute other motives to the Government's inaction. They argue that in this crucial year of parliamentary and presidential elections, his position weakened by the crisis over the sacking of the chief justice, Musharraf is under pressure even from the U.S. to hold free and fair elections and give up his position as army chief. They see the Lal Masjid crisis as Musharraf's design to first stay on as President, in uniform and second and to divert attention from the lawyers' agitation.

The People's Party of Pakistan says the Government is encouraging the Lal Masjid "drama" to create "the misperception that Talibanisation has spread to the federal capital so as to lift pressure for holding free and fair elections". The Benazir Bhutto-led party accuses the Government of creating such an impression "with a view to deceiving the international community... that the choice in Pakistan is between military dictatorship and religious fanatics".

Why this sudden lightness of touch on the government's part, opponents ask? After all, it bombed a madrassa in Bajaur killing 80 people and killed Baloch tribal leader Akbar Bugti.

Some commentators have also asked if the Government's inaction is a reflection of infighting within the establishment, with some sections still nursing a soft corner for the Islamists. And the Islamist religious-political parties such as the Jamaat-e-Islmai and the Jamaat-e-ulema Islami ask if it is a conspiracy by the ISI to defame madrassas.

* * *

From the jihad in Kashmir to the one in Afghanistan to the madrassas that still disseminate these ideas, the well springs of religious extremism in Pakistan hav been well documented. They have all come together after 9/11 flowing into the same river of intolerance, militancy, violence, and medieval obscurantism. But the river is now flowing backwards with a vengeance. Not a day passes without extremism rearing its head in some lethal way in Pakistan, whether it is to enforce "morality", wage war against the state, or against another Islamic sect.

Bitterness and fear


Fear of radicalised individuals acting on their own to "cleanse" society grew after a man recently shot a woman minister of the Punjab province because he believed it was against Islam for a woman to hold public office. He had allegedly killed several women before but was released each time for "lack of evidence". This time, the courts moved quickly and gave him a death sentence.

But taking one life for another gives no solace. Among liberal and moderate Pakistanis, who want their country to be "normal", there is a real fear of "creeping Talibanisation". Those who have already tasted its wrath are bitter. Ask Shameem, the woman who was dragged through the streets of Islamabad by the girls and boys from the Lal Masjid complex for being a "prostitute". She told reporters after her two-day ordeal of imprisonment in the Jamia Hafsa, "If this is what Islam is about, I would rather convert to Christianity".

Almost exactly five years ago I was lucky enough to be granted a journalist visa to Iran.

I am not being facetious.

Journalist visas are like gold dust and Iran is a memorable country to visit.

There's the majesty of Isfahan with its blue mosques, giant squares and scented bazaars; the ancient courtyard mansions of Kashan; the sophistication of Tehran, where beautiful women are forced to wear headscarves and anoraks in public and look like supermodels masquerading as spies.

Like all other journalists I made my weekly pilgrimage to the Friday prayer meeting at Tehran University.

Tens of thousands of students and other devotees converged in what could best be described as a giant car-park covered with the kind of roof you expect to find in an aircraft hangar.

We were allowed onto a viewing gallery.

Below us, the veterans of the Islamic revolution, the heavies from the Revolutionary Guard and thousands of students wearing the white clothes of would-be martyrs listened to Iran's spiritual leader Ayatollah Khamenei berate the Great Satan - America - and its understudy the Little Satan - Britain - for their aggression.

'Axis of evil'

Afghanistan had already been invaded. Iraq was next on the list.

Iran had just been named by President Bush as a founding member of the axis of evil.

So, even a cursory glance at the map and American troop movements would have created a lump in the average Iranian throat.

A well-dressed man in his 30s wandered up to me. He looked angry. "How dare you call as an axis of evil?" he said in Farsi and waited for our translator to deliver every word of his diatribe.

"What about your President Bush?" he soldiered on. "He's a top-class aggressor!"

Then he looked around and motioned me to come and stand behind a pillar.

He leant so close to me I could smell the tobacco and garlic on his breath. My personal space was definitely being invaded and I was pondering options.

"There is a joke doing the rounds," he suddenly said in a whisper and in perfect English. "If only the B-52s [bombers] could stop off in Tehran before going on to Kabul.

"After all, it is on the way!" He motioned to the ayatollahs on the podium next to us. "We can't get rid of them without your help!"

Chewing the fat

Later in the day I came across a similar if less brazen view.

The editor of a 'liberal' newspaper which had been shut down no fewer than seven times and reopened under a different name told me he approved of sanctions because they would put pressure on the regime.

Military action, he said, would be counter-productive.

We were invited to attend an editorial board meeting.

The discussion ranged from domestic issues, like the latest arrests of human rights activists, to the turmoil on Tehran's nascent stock market and the war in Afghanistan and how the regime was not sure whether to thank the US for getting rid of its old enemy the Taleban or be afraid of Uncle Sam's designs on the region.

As far as I could tell through the translation, the conversation was sophisticated, funny and relaxed - scribblers chewing the fat. It could have been London or Washington.

Pelted with eggs

Here's the point: Iran is complicated, mercurial and rife with internal divisions.

President Ahmadinejad is no Saddam Hussein, even if he has hosted a "Holocaust Denial" conference, and does want to develop a nuclear capability.

Saddam Hussein personally shot people he didn't like.

The president of Iran has been pelted by unruly students with eggs and insults and no-one was shot.

I'm not saying he's been grossly misunderstood. I am saying that Iran is far less monolithic than many in Washington like to think. The trick is to sweat out the differences.
Today Iran is more isolated than it has been for a long time. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan are lining up with Israel to work against the thing they fear most - a Persian nuke.

Consider that among the last words uttered by Saddam Hussein, of all people, before the noose tightened around his neck: "Damn the Americans and damn the Persians!"

The Russians are annoyed because the Iranians won't pay their dues on the nuclear reactor at Busher. This is hardly ideological opposition, but it's better than nothing.

The Chinese are voting with the other members of the UN Security Council against Iran even though they can't get enough Iranian light crude.

The pressure may be working but it isn't enough.

Lure with iPods

If I were the US government I would issue Iran with 10,000 student visas and 1,000 technology grants to Silicon Valley.

Iran boasts five million college students with higher degrees, the largest proportion in the Middle East.

Instead of encouraging them to turn into head-bashing extremists I would seduce them into becoming head-banging, iPod-wearing computer geeks.

Unfortunately none of this will ever happen.

Even if the administration thought of it, the Democrats, flexing their muscles on Capitol Hill or positioning themselves to race for the White House, would oppose it.

They were, after all, the ones who kicked up a stink about the Dubai ports deal even though the Gulf States actually quite like America and Dubai is already the biggest US naval base overseas.

But subtlety doesn't play well in election campaigns.

What's more, the rhetoric coming from the US is music to Tehran's ears.

Every time there's a tiff the price of oil inches above $65 a barrel, making the Iranian government a little bit richer still.

So - with US Iran policy struck in a groove, Tehran thriving on adversity, an extra US carrier group in the Gulf, the Revolutionary Guards building IEDs [bombs] for Shia death squads in Iraq and the Israelis feeling distinctly twitchy about the prospect of a nuclear Iran - the stars are dangerously aligned for a show-down, even if the White House and Tehran don't actually want one.

Now imagine "an event", an unforeseen crisis that pushes everyone to the brink - like 15 British sailors being held hostage by the Revolutionary Guard Navy in the Shatt al-Arab waterway.