Twilight of hope

By M J Akbar

There comes a moment when every man's obituary appears on his face. Suddenly the hero of a hundred battles is suffused with a childlike helplessness, and his hand clutches for support from a friend, unsure whether this will be the last gesture. It is a moment of truth beyond denial. It is the face of a man who has seen the approach of the angel of death, and knows that there are no answers, there is no negotiation, there is only submission to the will of God. It was such a face that a genuine hero of our times, Yasser Arafat, presented to television when cameras glimpsed him on Thursday, 28 October. May God grant Arafat a much longer life, but his days as the commander in chief of the Palestinian resistance are over.

No man can be a hero all his life, unless that life is a short one. Arafat was a hero in spasms, and stubbornly human the rest of the time, wandering through error, calculation and miscalculation. Tragedy was the inevitable fate of this refugee who never found any refuge, not even in the compound where Israel kept him imprisoned to humiliate as and when it suited some passing policy of Ariel Sharon.

What was Arafat thinking about on Thursday ? That his life had been, as Shakespeare discovered in another context, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? The sound and the fury took him to the centre of the world stage, where he played more than one part even as the cast of characters around him kept changing. But because that part ended on the margins, did it also mean that his life signified nothing? That would be too harsh, perhaps. If nothing else, then Yasser Arafat embodied a national dream. The flaw was that it became a dream without a horizon. Or to put it another way, reality always fell short of the dream, and he repeatedly was unable to accept this reality. The horizon was always beyond reach because he had trained himself to distrust what was within reach. Any trained negotiator, or any head of Government, would have permitted space for pragmatism, for there are no perfect solutions. The Sadat-Begin pact was not perfect but it has anchored the peace in the region. The Assads of Syria have not, and cannot, forego their claim on the Golan Heights, but they have not gone to war over that claim for 35 years.

Arafat also persuaded his people that acceptance of anything less than the ideal was betrayal of the idea of Palestine, even though in the last six decades that ideal itself has shrunk repeatedly with time and defeat-- defeat on the formal battlefield and defeat on the official diplomatic table. Yes, the spirit is undefeated, and heroically so. But the spirit has its limitations unless you are indifferent to time.

There is always solace in the romance of the spirit. I wonder what images flit through Arafat's mind as he wanders through levels of consciousness. Leila Khaled in 1971? The young woman who hijacked a plane and became an icon? (Where is she? How transient is heroism...) The radical urges of George Habash who tried to wrest the movement away from Arafat? The moments of opportunity that were lost between the lawns of the White House and the recesses of Camp David?

My own image of Arafat is at least partly mythical: trapped in Beirut with his depleted fighting force, forsaken if not forgotten, surrounded, down to his last bullet and last namaz but still possessed of that vibrant gleam in eyes that shone through folds of tired and tense flesh. In that depth of despair he found the courage and resolve of a man of destiny. Tragically , that destiny eluded him.

There are also real memories: of him striding across the stage to shake hands with ''my sister'' Indira Gandhi (he was much shorter than her) during a Non-Aligned Movement conference in Delhi, his trademark revolver buckled on to his belt; of an interview in which he repeated his standard formula-- blame Israel and praise his hosts (in this case an ever-sympathetic Indian Government as long as it was led by Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, the sympathy waned with the arrival of PV Narasimha Rao, and became formal during the Vajpayee era). Arafat tried his best never to bite the hand that fed him, although he did not always succeed. Some of that feed, particularly from his Arab brothers, was heavily barbed with septic wire.

Curiously, Arafat's last investment among his brothers was in Saddam Hussein. The second Iraq war has erased memories of the first, but emotions, intense in depth but limited in range, ran high on the streets in 1991 as well for Saddam did manage to rouse anti-American sentiment. But his cause was palpably indefensible. He had invaded and occupied an independent country. Unlike in the present crisis, Iraq was aggressor, not a victim. The Arab countries of the region were formidable in their unity against Saddam. Arafat could have been more discreet, but he actually seemed to believe that Saddam could confront and succeed against a more powerful alliance than the one that defeated the Axis powers in the Second World War. He did not have the compulsions of King Hussein of Jordan, who had his trade with Iraq to protect. At the very least Arafat could have been a moderate. But he stuck his neck out. As miscalculations go this was in a class of its own.

But mistakes do not diminish the legitimacy of a cause, and the Palestinian movement remains the world's most visible struggle against oppression and injustice. That was one reason why he did not have to pay any price for his stand in 1991. In a surprising turn of events, Arafat actually found a friend in the White House after 1992. No American President is going to damage Washington's relationship with Tel Aviv, at least in our lifetime, but Bill Clinton was as close to an ally that the Palestinians are going to get in the United States. The last Democratic President before Clinton, Jimmy Carter, had to sack a charismatic ambassador to the United Nations for nothing more than making contact with a PLO official.

Hillary Clinton, in contrast, went on record to say that Palestinians would get a state. After he left office Clinton said repeatedly that the biggest failure of his presidency was his inability to persuade Arafat to sign the accord with Ehud Barak.

The reasons vary dependong on who you talk to. Did Arafat lose a nation because he made the 2% he could not get as important as the 98% he was offered? Were there powerful players in the Middle East who leaned on Arafat to ensure that the agreement was sabotaged? Bill Clinton, who had no particular need to be prejudiced after he left office, told me over a long conversation in Delhi that the differences had narrowed down to the comparatively insignificant, and even contentious issues like control of water sources were on the point of resolution. Then ? Clinton's conclusion was as clean as a surgical wound. Arafat did not sign the agreement, he said, because he could not reconcile himself to peace. Was this the hubris, the fatal flaw? Or is there some anger in Clinton's judgement? Perhaps. And yet a man of Clinton's maturity and experience would not have reached such a conclusion if he did not have genuine cause to think so. Whatever the real reason the consequences are obvious; the rise of Ariel Sharon, the isolation of Arafat, the terrible price paid by innocents, an increasing sense of stagnant hopelessness in the region, and finally, the laughing indifference with which Sharon and Shimon Peres treated the news that Arafat was on his deathbed. They had already killed Sheikh Yasin. They may not have killed Arafat, although Sharon threatened often enough to do so, but they had reduced him to insignificance.

Does this end the Arab-Israel war of 1967? Egypt and Jordan have made peace. Syria is in limbo. The Palestinian resistance after 1967 was led by Arafat, and the more militant strain that traced a line between the Marxist Habash and the Islamic Sheikh Yasin. This generation has fought its battles. But the battle itself is not over, and it will not be until there is an independent Palestine state at peace with an Israel that wants peace.

We do not yet know the name of the next Yasser Arafat, but we do know that there will be one, for the idea of Palestine will never be short of either a flag or a flag-bearer. If the world is wise the next Arafat will not be forced to wear a gun in his belt as part of his workday clothes. We are in a time of flux, in a twilight that has lost the sun but not found the stars. As the poet said, one world is dead and the other is waiting to be born.

Mounting pollution menace

By G L Khajuria

Over the decades, the mounting pollution menace has engulfed the globe to the extent that human survival has become impossible. The problem is not off-shooting and emanating from some natural-disaster, but is man's own creation and the repercussions accruing there upon are being faced by the man hmself and for the generations to come. The problem is awefully alarming throughout the world and if so remains the situation, the coming generations will be inflicted with the most dreadful, unforeseeable and incurable diseases like cancers and the like.

Air pollution the most dreaded one and is taking heavy tolls of human life year after year and the main problem is accruing from the thermal power emissions, the Carban-dioxide and Carbon Monoxide emissions from ever-increasing automobilation (May it be cars, bikes, big Carriers). The blue-ness of sky has lost luster, particularly, in big metropolis like Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai and the like and more hapless is that the twinkling stars which once added natural beauty in the sky has faded away. Even the 'Moon' seems shrouded with smoke. Alas ! all this has illusioned by man's own creation and we as civilized men feel proud of developments. What development ? Developments at the cost of destruction. I still remember what once Mrs Indira Gandhi, the then premier of India boldly remarked at Stockholm (June 01, 1972) on human Development ; 'There should be Development but not at the cost of Destruction.

This Global (Mother Earth) is as big as it was where as the population is escalating at sputnik speed which in many a way is aggravating the mounting pollution (Air, water and noise). There had been unplanned evergrowing roads, industries, project nuclear plants , rail-links, hydel projects, refineries, mines, petrol chemical intermediates, asbests and its derivates, the air ports, nuclear test drug and other units, the smoke emitting distilleries (emitting guagmire effluents) the cement units and foundaries and many more its associates. The fresh mountaineous regions have been deforested by the merciless man and replaced by the tarred roads and concrete structures. The air pollution coupled with water and noise are man made hazards which in one way or the other is mounting pressure over the globe. This has rather mercilessly wounded the ''Mother Earth''- the only bio-sustaing planet in the universe. This pollution parcel has punctured the OZONE shields over Antartica and North America which over the years to come may mar the flora and fauna of this Globe and bring them to the verge of extinction, or to say the verge of death-knell.

The fast growing 'Pollutions' are leading us all to slow murder in more than many a way as enumerated in the body of the article. A pollution emitting gase provides on an average between 15 to 25 Cigarettes every day to a Non-smoker. And staggering are the figures that more than 60,000 people in India have pre-nature death due to only air pollution as per the world bank reports and studies reveal that this pollution is subjecting over millions to respiratory diseases such as asthma, allergies and other respiratory tract infections such a tuberculosis and the like.

And the out come of the quantum of vehicle which have increased manifold (150 percent within ten years face to face with 16 percent road-length upto mid Oct, 2004) emanating the deadening gases like Co and many more its ilk. The suspension particle ratio of Canaught place, Delhi is equalizing that of 'Raghunath Bazar', Purani Mandi and main Prade ground of Jammu and such is the prevailing scenario else where in the other cities and metropolis. The smoke and the soot emitting from the brick kilns and other industrial installation are the imposing danger signals. All these in unison are the off-shoots of brewing thick ''blackish-brown'' haze mostly engulfing south Asian skies and furthering the nearer areas of gulf region. As per estimate, west Asian region has heavily been sucked in the global pollution circuit moving rapidly several Kms hovering over ground level. And this haze is a combination of ash, aerosols and deadly soots of various hues which most prominently are emanating from burning biomass, fossil fuels, coals and the like. These have commonly been coming locally and from elsewhere ranging from several Kms far far away. This in togetherness is a global challenge in the ensuing years to come and will accelerate momentously to alarming proportions in the nearing future.

A United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) research has come in collision with serious criticism from Indian Government in that this Pollution ''black parcel'' which originally was defined as ''Asian Brown cloud'' has now been named as ''Atmospheric Brown cloud'' by UNEP whereas the most advanced countries are the biggest polluters. And perhaps this is the biggest threat we humans will have to face, with the ever-rolling moments of time face to face with progressive industrialization tantamounting thereby global warming. A very high concentration of (HCH)-alphahexachlorocyclobexane were till recently detected a year or so back in the atmosphere of new Foundland, Nova and Scotia which is hazardous one for bio-survival.

As per research conducted recently, around four of the nineteen glaciers are already doomed having no accumulation area, rather 0.2347 cub. Km of glacial ice was lost during 2001-02 which de facto is an impending catastrophe as the glacial ice is the core of glacier and melting due more so than normal temperatures wanting metamorphesic availability. And 'Baspa' glaciers arounding 5000 metres up mountains is roported to have lost a quarter of its cover at the same time atop, 5400 metres glacier is estimated to have diminished by 15 percent or so. All these pollution related catastrophe factors are exaggerating the rivers run off with minimal water percolation thereby marking sea-water uprise.

Much earlier, a blanket ban on ''Smoking'' in public premises was introduced including offices as well. But it was honoured in only its breach. Smoking is a slow poison, not only to those who smoke but to the passive smoker who are more prone to this dread-full habit. In an homely atmosphere, men smoke with leisure least bothering as to how much hazardous is to their kids and the wives who if under pregnancies are more prone to ill-effects of smoking- the babies in wombs are adversely effected and the inborn may suffer ailments to the extent of still birth.

And now of the latest ''Railway Department'' has imposed blanket ban on smoking, within the tramways, platforms premises and all its surroundings. In any way, tobacco ban is a very good step forward. But how about pollution? And if we nations have to survive, we may have to pledge under one umbrella to make the God gifted planet (Mother Earth) by all the countries over the world to make it pollution free. Admittedly, the fact remains that all nation particularly the advanced rich countries et el US and other European countries who are the big Polluters should come forward so that the other nation may follow suit. They should accept moral responsibility and pay for it. And an Austrialian Environment Minister remarked years back, ''If the advanced countries persists this unyielding approach, donor countries may tell them to stick it up their Jumpers''.

Conclusively, it is added over here what ''Mr Auden'' once wrote : ''O'' God put away Justice and truth for we cannot understand them and don't want them. Eternity will bore us dreadfully. Introduce murial to a handsome officer. Be interesting work like us and we will love you as we love over selves''.