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Iraq War: lessons for Pakistan
Publish Date : 10/18/2004 2:16:00 PM   Source : World News Onlypunjab.com

The recent, and yet another uncalled for, murder, of a British citizen, Ken Bigley, has added to the collateral damage of the war against Iraq.
This unjustified war has claimed the lives of more than 13,086 civilians, including foreigners and Iraqis. According to the Iraq Body Count Website, around 140 foreigners of many nationalities have been taken hostage in Iraq since last April. Most have been released but at least 30 have been killed by militants. Bigley, aged 62, was working as an engineer in Iraq as was only weeks from retirement.
An official US report stating that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction when US-led forces invaded has intensified the debate about justification for the war. Half a dozen investigations by US intelligence on Iraq have reached similar conclusions.
The mistakes were caused by limited and unreliable information from inside Iraq and an unshakable belief by the US administration that Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction.
The latest and most definitive findings came this week from the head of the U.S weapons hunt in Iraq, Charles Duelfer. He concluded that Saddam did not have stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons, had no programme to make Iraq a nuclear power and had little ability to revive the banned weapons programs.
Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry has criticized Bush as being too eager to involve the USA in war with Iraq and too unwilling to admit mistakes.
The weapons assumption was also a problem in Great Britain, where intelligence services had reached similar conclusions. This is not the fist incident in history whereby a leader, under the illusion of absolute power, has shown total disregard for weaker opponents.
The world has so far witnessed two World Wars and many other incidents of forceful occupation of weaker nations. Today Iraq and Afghanistan serve as testaments to the above.
We have now seen that pre-war intelligence of British and US intelligence agencies was a failure and as a result, the entire case of WMD and Saddam’s link with Al-Qaeda has fallen apart.
Today the report of the Iraq Survey Group is no different from that presented by Hans Blix. Absolute power paralyses the one exercising it, as it did after 1947 when those at the helm of affairs under the same illusion, amazingly declared those who supported Pakistan Movement as traitors.
Those claiming to be patriots invaded East Pakistan thinking that Bengalis are weak and will succumb to their absolute power. However, history stands witness that the presumed weaker people defeated the strong armed forces of West Pakistan and more than 93000 army personnel were made prisoners of war.
Action taken without thinking about the repercussions. Similarly an army action was commissioned against the Baloch and later on in 1992, an army operations was launched against the innocent civilians of Sindh, particularly, Karachi and their representative political party, the MQM. The then Chief of Army Staff, while day dreaming of weilding absolute power, embarked upon cursing the MQM. Thousand of MQM leaders workers and supporters were extra-judicially executed and thousand of others were incarcerated in prison on false and fabricated charges.
Unfortunately Pakistan has witnessed army rule directly or indirectly since its independence in 1947. As a result, those at the helm of affairs, under the delusion of having absolute power, continued exploiting the resources of the country and using heavy hand to suppress the masses.
We as a country must keep a keen eye on world occurrences and learn from history. A super power fully capable of winning the wars has failed to act accordingly in a post war scenario.
It may have won the battle but seems to be losing the war on moral and ethical grounds. It, therefore, highlights once again the reality that those with absolute power must first recognize their limits, not be short sighted, have enough foresight and awareness to not only justify their acts but also to keep themselves aligned with other nations and most importantly, not allow power in any form to corrupt them.