September 16 , 2011

September - A Witness to Wars

 

Several world conflicts have started or ended in the month of September – perhaps the calendar’s ominous month.

The Second World War, the biggest of the twentieth century and in world history, started on September 1, 1939 and ended six years later on September 2, 1945. The latest, the war on terror also started in September following the plane-bomb attacks of 9/11 ten years back. Its complete end is still not in sight.

September has also witnessed some significant episodes in the almost perennial Arab-Israel conflict. The eight-year long war between Iran and Iraq started in early September 1980. The Indo-Pakistan war of 1965 started on September 6 and ended seventeen days later on September 23, 1965.

9/11 & THE WAR ON TERROR: From the viewpoint of a Pakistani-American, the on-going war on terror is perhaps the most significant. This is the first time that a war was waged without formal declaration, against a vaguely defined enemy and without concerted efforts to eradicate its root cause. The road map for the solution of the Palestine issue was presented after the occupation of Iraq. That too has unfortunately foundered on the rock of obstinacy of the concerned parties. Although no Pakistani was involved in the plane-bomb attacks of 9/11, immigrants of Pakistan have borne the brunt of the new restrictive immigration legislation. Of the 2,760 persons deported in 2002 under this dispensation, as many as 961, over 34 % were Pakistanis.

Like the traditional wars, the war on terror too has had severe negative impacts. The extent of its cumulative cost to the US taxpayer is still to be worked out. The expenditure on the operations in Iraq has been estimated to have cost as much as a billion dollars a day. It may be recalled here that the war on Iraq was vehemently opposed throughout the world; the demonstrations against it were unprecedented in world history.

There isn’t any Kuwait or Saudi Arabia to pick up the bill of this war. The US has gone much deeper into the hole of national debt owing to this ill-conceived war.

INDO-PAKISTAN WAR (Sept 6-23, 1965) Carried away by their chauvinism and enthusiasm, Pakistani spin-doctors of that period projected the outcome of the ‘65 war as a victory of a small army over a five times bigger force. The claim was not without substance; Pakistan’s armed forces did give an excellent account of their courage and mettle. But, the war could not succeed in its basic objective of wrenching Kashmir from the grip of India.

The media, which had been totally tamed and made to abdicate its adversary role, continued to play up the euphoria of victory at the behest of official media managers. In such a milieu came the Tashkent Declaration of January 1966 signed by President Ayub and Prime Minister Shastri. This statesman-like act elicited an adverse reaction, an anti-climax, in West Pakistan that was in a victorious, celebratory mood.

The Tashkent Declaration was characterized as Ayub Khan’s unnecessary capitulation to India.

The people of East Pakistan, on the other hand, had felt abandoned during the war and left in the lurch by the Punjab-dominated armed forces. The seeds of secession had thus started germinating.

The political parties, particularly the newly set up PPP of Z.A. Bhutto, jumped upon the opportunity to pressure Ayub to quit. Within a month of the Declaration, in February 1966 to be exact, a national conference was held in Lahore where opposition parties decided to launch an agitation forcing President Ayub to quit. He handed over power to the then C-in-C, Gen. Yahya, instead of the Speaker of the Parliament as required under the Constitution. A power-seeking Bhutto maneuvered this aberration of Ayub to take the country to a war with India leading subsequently to the independence of Bangladesh, surrender of Pakistan’s army and presentation of power on a platter to him.

SECOND WORLD WAR (Sept. 1, 1939 to Sept. 2, 1945): More has been written about this than about any other war. It claimed more than 50 million lives, decimated great centers of civilization, cost an enormous amount of $1.154 trillion, and changed the course of history such as few events before or after. Its legacy still grips mankind. It ended the ascendancy of Europe that had endured since the collapse of Muslim Spain in 1492 and had halted the expansion of the Ottoman Empire after the death of Suleyman the Magnificent in 1566. The WWII sapped the intellectual vitality of Europe, brought its vast empires to the brink of collapse, and passed world leadership to two new giants –the USA and the Soviet Union.

The war also served as a midwife for inventions. Its role as a catalyst for change, innovation, research and development has really changed the shape of things as never before in human history.

For the US, the war was a blessing in disguise. The demand for consumer goods, apart from arms and ammunition, transport and fighter planes, war vessels and other equipment, pulled the country out of the ruined and desolate landscape of the Great Depression. It fostered the country’s rise to the super power status with relatively light losses, about 300,000. This figure is dwarfed when compared with the losses of Germany: 5.6 million, Japan: 2.3 million, China: 10 million, and the Soviet Union: a staggering 20 million. The US was unique among the combatants in being neither invaded nor bombed. Notably, the first ever external attack on the US mainland occurred on September 11, 2001.

Germany and Japan, though defeated and humiliated in WWII, succeeded since then in emerging as economic giants of modern world. They have vindicated the finding of Prof. Arnold Toynbee, the well-known historian, that the rise or fall of a nation depends on how it responds to a critical national challenge. It was evidently the unremitting struggle of these two great and gifted nations that enabled them to come out of their darkest period. Both have been registering for years enormous surpluses in their trade with the US. And, both have had a great advantage. The disarmament imposed on them by victorious allies had obviated the need for them to spend money on defense. They have achieved in peace what they had failed to get through war – a substantial share in world markets. The victors of Europe, on the other hand, lost their colonies and the captive markets.

SOME CONCLUSIONS:

*War is the “story of senseless butchery” in the words of historian John Green. Tolstoy’s epic “War and Peace” portrays eminently the horrors of the Napoleonic war in which the great military leader’s army was ruthlessly destroyed in 1812 in Russia. No army is thus invincible.

* It would be in the national interest of the US to keep re-evaluating the fruits and failures of its policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. Perhaps the US objectives could have been better achieved through peaceful measures in concerts with the world community. The bellicose policies of the Bush administration are claimed to have saved the country from another 9/11. President Obama’s decision to pull out of the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan indicates the fallacy of the claim.

* The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have aggravated further the antipathy of the Arab states towards Israel which has to, in all circumstances, survive in that very region.

* The challenges posed by the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars could have been turned into fruitful responses of an inherently dynamic people of Pakistan had they been led not by intellectually ill-equipped Generals or self-serving politicians who fooled the people by drawing visions of a glorious future. The leaders must be made to realize that they should come clean with the people and take them into confidence. The people will astonish them by rising up to the challenges and working harder than expected to achieve national goals

*Many of the ills of Pakistani society may be traced to poverty and illiteracy. Priorities of national effort and expenditure will have to be reworked to overcome these. Feudalism, which thrives on the illiteracy of the serfs, will have to be done away with. Defense expenditure will have to be cut down to divert the savings towards education. What is needed is a well-planned army of scientists, technicians, engineers of the lowest to the highest level.

* All conflicts point to the reality that a war, no matter how successful it might appear, turns out eventually to be a national misfortune. The cold war kept enervating the Soviet Union till it collapsed. The “long war” on terror, or in the words of President Obama “the war of necessity”, is unlikely to present ultimately a different scenario. The advent of the Arab spring, helped and hailed by the US is more likely, on the other hand, to endear the youth of that region to the United States. And, it has cost a fraction of the expenditure on the fruitless Iraq war.

arifsyedhussaini@gmail.com