Fwd: KURDISH CLOUDS OVER DARKENING WEST ASIA HORIZON

KURDISH CLOUDS OVER DARKENING WEST ASIA HORIZON

 

 "Those who control the present control the past"*

 

In 1969 when I was posted to Ankara , the word Kurd was almost a taboo in Turkey .Kurds were called mountain Turks .But the truth  was brought home to me very vividly a few months after my arrival when  after  a long tour of the Black Sea coast including Samsun , Trabzon and cutting via Erzurum ( cold and gloomy) and Bingol ,I and family  drove into Diyarbakir, with its black rock walls , the largest Kurdish city ( although some people claim that Istanbul, a mega polis of 12 million ,might have surpassed it in the number of Kurds) . After installing my family in the hotel I came out to look for a restaurant .Lo! I was surrounded by five six young boys singing Kurdish songs and repeating 'Kurdum, Kurdum ' ( I am a Kurd ,in Turkish)

 

I visited Diyarbakir a few times more, the last time in 1997.

 

Turkey's Kurdish problem is as old as the establishment of the secular Republic by Kemal Ataturk .The Kurds have been inhabiting the east and south east of Turkey much before the Turkish tribes started arriving in from central Asia in 11^th century. Even now the percentage of Turkish citizens who came from Turkistan in central Asia would be less than 15%.

 

As late as around 1980 a Turkish minister was charged when he said that there were Kurds in Turkey and he was a Kurd .It was in end 1980s that president Turgut Ozal publicly proclaimed the presence of Kurds in Turkey and admitted to his own part Kurdish blood. It is suspected that he was poisoned by those who believe in the unitary state since he was trying to find a solution to the vexing problem which had enflamed a few years earlier.

 

The current Islamist AKP has instituted an enquiry into Ozal's death .Hopefully it will not be to further humiliate the proud Turkish armed forces, which along with Republican Peoples Party established by Kemal Ataturk and virulently pan Turanian party, the MHP (National Action party) oppose concessions to Kurds on even matters of culture and language .The continuing AKP tirade and actions against the military could one day lead to a blowback. In Sunni Muslim states, the struggle between the ruler and cleric continues (Prophet Mohammad was both the religious leader and the military commander) at the moment the military is on the back foot in Turkey as well as in Pakistan and Egypt.

 

The Kurdish rebellion against the state was led by Abdullah Ocalan (Ojalan) and began in early 1980s with the Marxist Kurdish Labour party (PKK) as the vehicle.

 

Part I , below covers the period from the beginning of the insurgency and the capture , sentencing and imprisonment of Ocalan in 1999.

 

*During the rule of the secular parties in Turkey until 2002, history of Turkey during its Anatolian past was not highlighted and of the Byzantine/ Roman etc era glossed over .As if the history began with arrival of the Turkish tribes into Anatolia in 11 century .Since the arrival of Justice and Development party (AKP) in end 2002 and Islamisation the republican era is being glossed over.

 

ABDULLAH OCALAN AND TURKEY'S KURDISH PROBLEM

        

 Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocala (c=j), sentenced to death for treason on 29^th June 1999 after a trial by a Turkish Tribunal at the Imrali island (where coincidentally Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and his two colleagues were hanged after the 1960 military takeover), represents the violent face of resistance since millennia by a minority tribe, community or a nation against forced assimilation by majority ethnic, linguistic or religious groups. In view of Turkey's laws, its judicial system and the fever pitch passions aroused against its enemy number one, with masses baying for Ocalan's blood, the death sentence was not surprising. Since 1984, Ocalan led PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) rebellion for a Kurdish state in South and East of Turkey has already cost over 45,000 lives, mostly Kurds including 12000 female cadres and also includes over five thousand soldiers. Thousands of Kurdish villages have been bombed, destroyed, abandoned or relocated and millions of Kurds have been moved or migrated to shanty towns in South, East and West wards .Added to the migration for economic reasons, half the Kurdish population now lives in Western Turkey, making disentangling of the two communities extremely difficult. With 1/3^rd of Turkish army tied up in South East, the cost of countering the insurgency has mounted to $6 to $8 billion per year , shattered the economy of the region and brought charges of police and military brutality and human rights violations in the West to which Turkey is linked through  NATO and OECD. It has also harmed its chances of joining EU, with which it has a Customs Union. The consequences of Ocala's sentence carried out or not will be a major defining moment in the history of the Republic. Already April 1999 Elections have highlighted an upsurge of nationalism and a swing for ultra-nationalist National Action party (MHP), giving it second  slot from  nowhere  and the top slot to Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's Democrat Left Party (DSP) for his Govt's successful hounding and capture of Ocalan ,further polarising Turkey's already fractured polity.

 

The problem was brought to a head when late last year Turkey, hoping to give a hammer blow to the Kurdish rebellion, threatened war on Syria to force out Ocalan and PKK, sheltered in Syria as a lever against Turkey for denial of its fair share of Euphrates waters and   irredentist claims over Hatay province annexed to Turkey in 1939 (but still shown within Syrian maps).  Egypt and others including Iran helped defuse the situation but a somewhat isolated Syria had to expel Ocalan, who first went to the Russian Federation and then to Rome looking for asylum .The Italians instead arrested him on a German warrant .But sensing further mayhem and the strife it would create among its Kurdish and Turkish populations, FRG got cold feet and did not extradite him .Nor was he extradited to Turkey causing bad blood between Turkey and EU. In mysterious circumstances with some Greek assistance Ocalan then disappeared looking for a safe haven but found none. He was eventually apprehended in Nairobi on 16 Feb,1999 by Turkish agents assisted  by other countries and brought  handcuffed to a rapturous Turkey .His capture  was followed by violence and  demonstrations in Turkey and Europe ,where Kurds number 850,000  among  4 million Turkish immigrants ( 3 millions in FRG alone of which nearly half a million are Kurds) .

 

Majority of Kurds in Turkey would be satisfied with cultural autonomy but the hounding of Ocalan, touched an emotional chord uniting Kurds all over the world against their persecution over millennia and suppression of their aspirations for autonomy and freedom, dashed time and again. The Kurdish nation totaling over 25 million straddles mostly the mountainous regions of Turkey (14 in 70 million), Iran (8 out of 70 million), Iraq (4 out of 20 million) and with more than half million in Syria and another half million in Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

 

Kurds are an Aryan Iranian people caught up in ethnic upheavals and  intermingling of Aryan, Turkic and Semitic races going on since two millennia from  the Eurasian steppes to the Mediterranean , the Gulf and the Arabian Sea .But Kurds have lived in the region since they shifted from the steppes in 2^nd millennium and some can  perhaps claim Kassites and Mitannis as their forefathers .Most descend from the Iranian Medes .They were  mentioned as the Kurduchoi who had harassed  Xenophon and his Ten Thousand  retreating towards the Black Sea from Babylon in 401 BC .

 

Turks started moving into Anatolia only in 11^th Century after the Byzantine defeat at Manzikert. In spite of the long stay in the region, the Kurds, most Sunni Muslims, have failed to carve out a kingdom, barring petty dynasties at Diyarbakir and Kermanshah region during 10^th and 11^th centuries and some principalities during early 19^th century. Salahaddin remains their greatest medieval hero. They have been kept divided, abused and exploited as pawns by the ruling Persian, Turkish or Arab empires and colonial powers, enjoying autonomy only when the Empires were weak .Sunni Ottomans granted them autonomy and used them to guard the frontiers against Shea Safaris of Iran. Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria might have adversary relations with each other but when it comes to Kurds they close ranks but throughout history whenever suppressed the Kurds become outlaws and take to the mountains.

 

Belonging to Iranian family, Kurdish is spoken in 5 dialects and many sub-dialects but the divisions are reflected not only in the dialects or the countries the Kurds inhabit. Differences among them have persisted throughout history .In North Iraq the Kurds are split among Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talebani and Kurdish Democratic Movement (KDM) of Masud Barzani who have been fighting each other since decades. But the Iraqi Kurds ,even when divided have nevertheless ,enjoyed  some semblance of autonomy first under the British mandate , then the leftist regime of Brig Kassem and even under the kid glove and poisoned sword treatment of Saddam Hussain, with an almost free hand during Iran-Iraq War and then US led protection after the Gulf War . Thus in spite of the Kurdish identity having been suppressed in the unitary Turkish state, the idea has been kept alive across in Iraq.

 

The Iranians have manipulated Iraqi Kurds as had the Russians the Iranian Kurds during the 2^nd World War encouraging them to declare the Mahabad Republic, which after the Russian withdrawal in 1946 was annihilated. Iran gives shelter to Iraqi Kurds and PKK and supplies them with arms .In return after the 1979 Khomeini revolution the Iraqis supported Iranian Kurds. But unlike Iraq ,Iran and elsewhere , the Kurds of Turkey are the  most well integrated with other citizens .Many have moved  west wards  in recent decades, making Istanbul ,with over 1 million Kurds one of the largest Kurdish cities. Unfortunately the Kurds have been subjected to growing harassment and discriminations since the Kurdish insurgency began , although they enjoy equal legal rights .Ataturk's right hand man Ismet Pasha, later President had Kurdish blood as did President Turgut Ozal .The former Foreign Minister and the Parliament Speaker Hikmet Cetin ,a full blooded Kurd is another of many such examples of prominent Kurds in Turkey.

 

However , the 1990-91 Gulf War proved to be a water shed in the evolution of the Kurdish problem. The current nebulous and ambiguous situation in North Iraq came about when at the end of the War, US President George Bush without perhaps consulting the coalition's Arab Allies like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait encouraged the Kurds (and the hapless Shias in South) to revolt against Saddam's Sunni Arab regime. Turkey, as it would have given ideas to its own Kurds, Saudi Arabia and others opposed the creation of a Kurdish state in the north and a Shia one in south Iraq .The latter would have only strengthened Shia Iran. The hapless Iraqi Kurds and Shias paid a heavy price. In the background of the 1988 gassing of Iraqi Kurds and international media coverage of their pitiable condition, escaping Saddam Hussein's forces in March 1991 led to the creation of a protected zone in North Iraq patrolled by US and British warplanes. The Kurds have since even elected a Parliament, which did not function. But Barzani and Talebani ran almost autonomous administrations in their areas; much too Turkish disquiet as this also allows PKK a free run. An attempt by PKK in 1993 to have an understanding with Barzani, who is sympathetic to PKK, soon came apart .Many times Iraqi Kurds have cooperated with Turkish military in its many punitive forays against PKK in North Iraq .But the attitude of Iraqi Kurds to PKK, in spite of differing outlook and philosophy remains ambivalent but their natural sympathy cannot be in doubt.

 

President Turgut Ozal, confident after turning around the Turkish economy , perhaps looking for a larger role in the region by  bringing Iraqi Kurds under Turkish control , softened the rigors against his own Kurds .He publicly proclaimed in1991 that there were 12 million Kurds in Turkey and  allowed them use of  Kurdish in speech and music. Earlier in 1989 acknowledgement of his Kurdish ancestry had ended the legal taboo on the use of word "Kurd" since 1924. The Kurds had to be called Mountain Turks. On this writer's first visit in 1969 to Diyarbakir ,the biggest Kurdish city ,he  was  soon accosted by  urchins singing Kurdish songs and muttering defiantly  'Kurdum !Kurdum' (I am Kurd ) As recently as 1979, when a former Cabinet Minister for Public Housing said that there were Kurds in Turkey and he himself was a Kurd ,he was charged and sentenced  to 2 years imprisonment. In 1924 the Kurds were also debarred  from adopting Kurdish names so they take on Arabic ones. They, therefore, found Turkish protests hypocritical when Bulgaria forced its Turkish origin citizens to take on Bulgarian names in late 1980s.

 

Not only Ozal but many Turks remain fascinated with the dream of 'getting back' Ottoman province of  Mosul and Kirkuk ; which were included within the borders of  the Republic by the National Pact of 1919.The oil rich Mosul region was annexed to Iraq by the British in 1925 much to Turkish unhappiness  after the ceasefire .At the same time Turks remain equally apprehensive of  an evolution of  an independent Kurdish state  in Iraq which will act as a magnet for its Kurds .In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War Turkey lost out much instead of gaining. The closure of Iraqi pipeline, economic sanctions and loss of trade with Iraq, which used to pump in billions of US dollars into the economy and provide employment to hundreds of thousands, with 5000 trucks roaring up and down to Iraq, has only exacerbated the economic and social problems in the Kurdish heartland and the center of the rebellion.

 

Who is Abdullah Ocalan !

Nicknamed Apo (uncle in Kurdish ), Ocalan was born in 1949 at Omerli ,a small town on Euphrates  in Urfa ( ancient Edessa) .His family took  the surname of Ocalan ( avenger ) having rebelled against Ataturk's Republican Turkey in 1920s .One of  seven siblings ,Ocalan  claims a Turkish grandmother and some Arab blood too and was greatly influenced by his strong willed mother. With mixed population in South Turkey , many  people speak Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic.

 

More fluent in Turkish than Kurdish, Ocalan was a bright student and after the usual religious education in the village Mekteb, at which he excelled, he won a scholarship to the prestigious Political Science Faculty at Ankara, a breeding ground for Turkey's intellectuals, civil servants and even politicians .In the heady days of early 1970s after the Paris students uprising it had become a center of leftism. To begin with, Ocalan was an admirer of Ataturk but the total suppression of ethnic or cultural pluralism as if Kurdish history and identity did not exist and a spell in jail, following a crackdown on radical students after the 1971 military intervention, where he held discussions with similar minded Kurdish students, turned him into a hardened Kurdish nationalist.

 

Ocalan took the first tentative steps in 1974 to initiate a Kurdish liberation movement with 6 others at Ankara. But PKK (in Kurdish -Partia Karkaran-e Kurdish ) -an alliance of workers , peasants and intellectuals for a democratic independent Kurdistan based on Marxist –Leninist principles was officially founded with 12 others in the village of Lice in Diyarbakir on 27 Nov 1978 .The circumstances of its origins, tribalism , feudalism , the grinding poverty of the region compared to the growing prosperity in Western Turkey makes Marxism an abiding ideology which attracts poorer but educated youth of both sexes. The first attack , unsuccessful., was made in 1979 on a Kurdish MP Mehmet Bucak , now a pro-establishment anti-PKK Kurdish clan leader? But the real violent incidents , which brought recognition to PKK were carried out in 1984 in Sirit and Hakkari near the  Iraq-Iran border in which two soldiers and a dozen civilians were killed and PKK propaganda was broadcast.  From a few hundred in 1984 the number of PKK cadres has now gone up to many thousands and had peaked in the first half of 1990s when PKK was churning out 300 fighters every quarter. If the state has used all brutal power at its command the PKK has fought back savagely by killing govt village guards, teachers, doctors, village headmen, apart from innocents and the military and police soldiers. Brutal reprisals and killings by security forces brought in thousands of volunteers to PKK.

 

Ocalan left Turkey for Lebanon just before the 1980 military intervention preceding which in two years of almost total anarchy, over five thousand people had been killed in clashes between leftists and rightists (grey wolves) –the latter now form the MHP cadres and were then encouraged by the establishment to counter communism. The military junta feared that Islamic revivalism and Kurdish nationalism will undermine the state .So it banned many political parties and debarred politicians ,came heavily on media, politicians , students and Kurdish radicals .But the prisons  proved to be academies for new recruits to the PKK cause. Ocala first contacted PLO leftists but was soon adopted by the Syrians, who provided him a residence in Damascus and the Beck valley for training his cadres. He spent some time in GDR, but mostly functioned from Syria and Lebanon

 

APO turned out to be a ruthless and cruel leader, with a charismatic hold over his followers and in spite of never returning to Turkey, he is revered by his dedicated followers and feared and obeyed by most. Except for 1993 cease-fire interregnum the PKK- State violence increased  from 1991 and continued unabated till 1996 reaching peaks during the 1992 Nauru  and after the break down of  March 1993 cease-fire. But in spite of the success of  the Turkish forces in curbing PKK ,in areas bordering Iraq and Syria i.e.  Mardin , Nusaybin, Cizre and around Diyarbakir, Tunceli , the Turks dare not venture out after the  dusk.

 

The roots of the Kurdish problem

The roots of the Kurdish problem lie buried deep in the Turkish psyche .The seeds were sown during the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of the Turkish Republic after the 1^st  World War. The Ottomans granted religious freedom to its Christian, Armenian and other millets with autonomy in their personal laws and education .Turks complain that the Christian West used the stick of religion and nationalism in Eastern Europe to break up the Empire during the 19^th and early 20^th century .The first to leave were the Balkan Christians and in late 19^th century it was feared that even the Kurds might desert like the Egyptians. But the last straw was the revolt by Muslim Arabs , for the Ottomans always were Muslims first and then Turks .In fact the word 'Turk' until Ataturk endowed it with dignity – How happy is he who says he is a Turk.- now written all over Turkey -was used as a term of contempt by the Ottoman elite.

 

Hence Turks manifest a pervasive distrust of any cultural or autonomous movement that might lead to fragmentation of the unitary Republic .It revives memories of western conspiracies against Turkey and the ungratified 1920 Treaty of Sevres forced on the Sultan by the First world War victorious Allies which  would have divided Anatolia providing outright independence to the Armenians and autonomy to Kurds leading to independence and zones of influence for France, Italy and Greece .The Ataturk led War of Independence and a new Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 did away with any division and there is no mention of Armenia or Kurds in it–not even their language Kurdish but it permitted Geeks , Armenians and others to speak their tongues

 

To begin with Ataturk himself had talked of Turks, Kurds, Lazes and others but a  dramatic change came over in 1923 -24 and he opted  for a unitary state .Perhaps because of the British detachment of the Mosul region , ambivalent attitude of many Kurds and minor revolts after the Treaty of Sevres .Free from fissiparous forces he wanted to concentrate on modernization and  reforms ,many against religious obscurantism .In 1924, he abolished  the Caliphate and the Kurds  were just turned into non-persons ; their language, music, dress and culture ,even use of Kurdish first names made illegal .The conservative Kurds led by Sheikh Said, a follower of Nakshbandi sect ( as are  many  present day Islamist leaders like former Prime Minister Necemettin  Erbakan ) who had earlier enjoyed almost total  autonomy and religious freedom in their domains  rebelled against the ungodly laic state in 1925.The  fledgling Republic, under pressure from the radicals , suppressed ruthlessly with 'exemplary ' punishments the rebellions ,some of which  lingered on into 1930s e g in Tunceli.( Dershim).The  influential Kurdish  families were relocated to Western Turkey , which were rehabilitated back only after  the introduction of multi- party democracy and slackening of unitary state's heavy hand in 1950s .

 

Turkey's Constitution describes itself as a Laic state, which according to many is more Jacobin than genuinely secular. It is based on nationalist philosophy of Zia Gokalp, himself a Kurd, who unfortunately used for laic /secular the word "la din" i.e. anti- religion. After the founding of the Republic the Christian minorities of Turkey were exchanged with Turks from Greece and the remaining squeezed out later. Few left in South East are leaving now .So the concept of secularism in Turkey has somehow become anti- religion and negative and tends to become anti this or anti that and intolerant .

 

The Sunni dominated police establishment have regularly harassed the Shiite Alexis, ironically perhaps the original Turcoman who helped conquer Anatolia and now the Kurds. But perhaps the problem lies in the fatal belief of the establishment; a curious amalgam of military led secular elite and Sunni dominated interior ministry organization to resolve problems by force as a compromise might be seen as weakness. It  considered Islamic revivalism and Kurdish rebellion as  two major threats to the security, stability and integrity of the State .But left of Center Social Democrat Party( SHP) then led by Ismet Pashas'  intellectual son Erdal Inonu (who became Deputy PM in Suleyman Demirels' coalition Govt (in 1991-95) had come to the conclusion in 1990 based on a study that neither Kurdish nationalism nor Islamic fundamentalism posed a threat to the Republican order .(But since end 2002 when Islamists AKP un expectedly won a thumping almost two/third majority with only 37 % of the votes cast , Islamisation of the seculr republic has begun )Many other subsequent reports had also confirmed the same conclusions , underlining that most Kurds want respect for their identity ,use of Kurdish language for education and Television and cultural freedom.           

 

Apart from foreign hands, especially of the neighbors, the Kurdish problem has now acquired complex dimensions Attempts to even look at the problem dispassionately have come to naught .Unfortunately Ozal, who helped bring out the problem into the open died in April, 1993. Had he lived on he might have found a solution as he had wanted to do- ' a last service to the nation' Soon after his death , the unilateral cease fire by PKK , tacitly observed by the Govt  , broke down  when in May, 1993 near Bingol 33 unarmed soldiers were massacred by PKK .At first the situation was not clear but PKK countered that the State had not keep its 'promise' and had continued to lean heavily on militants and Ocalan owned it. New Prime Minister Tansu Chiller's probing attempt in 1974 to look at the Basque model was brushed aside by the military Pashas and President Demirel , who has shown much less vision than Ozal in handling the problem.

 

 Many analysts feel that under the pretext of guarding Ataturk's unitary state, any solution to the problem has been thwarted by the vested interests, which have also been cited as the main obstacle for keeping the Islamists out of power as the secular elite does not wish to share the cake with the rising conservative classes from the heartland of Anatolia and elsewhere, who support Islamic parties. There is also considerable leakage in the billions of dollars spent in security operations against the Kurds and scandals crop up from time to time. Like rebellions elsewhere PKK has been accused of making money from the drug trade (also from donations, extortions and taxes in Turkey and Europe) but many in the establishment have also been accused of the same charge, with scandals cropping up from time to time .Many, including politicians talk of the long shadow over democracy of Turkish military, the self styled guardians of Ataturk's unitary and secular state, making political solutions difficult.

 

The Kurdish problem also affected adversely Turkey's aim of becoming full member of EU, although it might not be the real cause .Apart from the fear of 70 million Muslim Turks having a run of their countries, European diplomats in private confess that they were happy to have Europe's border at Bosporus and would not like to extend it to states ruled by the likes of Saddam Hussein, Ali Khameini and Hafez El-Assad. Because of Turkey's continued importance  for NATO , PKK' s Marxist philosophy and Soviet support earlier, PKK remains an anathema  to USA  but Europeans  with  Kurdish populations in their countries are  more sympathetic to their plight. Peaceful espousal of the cause has been allowed by Europeans in spite of Turkish protests but when the Kurds have resorted to violence and started attacking Turkish interests as in 1993, they have come down heavily. Europe has provided a safe haven to expelled and persecuted Kurdish MPs and others. Many Europeans Parliamentarians and others have extended vocal support to the Kurdish cause raising Turkish heckles and accusations of western conspiracy. Mrs. Dannielle Mitterand was a very steadfast supporter and helped organise in 1989 the first international conference on Kurdish problem in Paris .But compared to say Kosovo, Europeans in general and USA in particular have been soft on Turkey's human rights record, because of the need to humor an ally, who is also a useful buffer against the volatile Middle East and for its links and influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

 

Forming 20% of the population, normally 80 to 100 Kudish deputies get elected in a house of 550, but their cause is not taken up by their parties and they are not allowed to form a Kurdish party to ventilate their grievances politically. Such attempts lead to harassment, removal of immunities, jailing and even killings of MPs and their supporters. Kurdish parties like HEP ( Kurdish Labor party), DEP ( Democracy party) and HADEP (People's Democracy party) were obstructed and suppressed  and  their members harassed, jailed and even killed .Many  times the radicals across the board set the Agenda discouraging any peaceful and meaningful discussion of  the problem in the Parliament or outside .Since early 1990s attempts to  explain the Kurdish view-point through media by newspapers like Ozgur Gundem ( Free Agenda), Ozgur Ulke (Free Country) and others have  been stopped through harassment , imprisonment ,and even outright murder of  journalists and distributors with connivance or help from the establishment. Main line media was punished for writing about Kurds, their problems and even mishandling of the rebellion. When Urfa born Kurdish singer Ibrahim complained that he could not sing in his mother tongue he had hell to pay .Kurds and even Turks including famous writers like Yassar Kemal continue to be harassed and imprisoned for writing about Kurds and their problems   .                .             

 

But the Govt statements and action before and after the verdict of death for Ocalan showed caution and circumspection maintaining that the law take will take its course. The Parliament even replaced the Tribunal's third military judge with a civilian one. Although the death penalty remains on the statutes book, since 1984 , of many scores convicted to death  not one has been hanged .The Ocalan verdict would have been challenged in the Supreme Court and then go for ratification via its Judicial Committee to the Parliament and  finally to the President. And then an appeal can be made to the European Court. .Any show of leniency in the highly charged atmosphere seemed improbable, but with time consumed in legal formalities it might be possible to let Ocalan live on .Making him a martyr would have been is a terrible mistake, apart from re-igniting the insurgency.

 

Unlike the violent protests in Turkey ,Europe and elsewhere  against Ocalan's capture , the reaction after the verdict was muted and peaceful barring some violent acts in Turkey. No doubt, Ocalan was in custody and promised to work for peace and bring down PKK fighters from the mountains. Unlike some others (reportedly ZA Bhutto) awaiting a certain death sentence, from the glass cage, Ocalan's sober performance was admirable. He came out as a cool and unperturbed leader ,clear and consistent in his defense  Apart from 1993 conditional cease-fire , he had offered  the olive branch  many times in 1994 and 1995 .The first offer was made in an interview in mainline Hurriyet newspaper in 1990.After the rapturous joy in Turkey at Ocalan's capture and an orgy of celebrations after the death verdict led in many cases by those who had lost a dear ones  in  the  war against PKK, there was a feeling of the night after the binge ,some  signs of  rethinking ,even some softening of attitude towards the Kurds. 

 

Poet philosopher PM Ecevit was opposed  to death sentence in principle. He  initiated steps for Repentance Law to pardon PKK cadres not involved in violent acts. The insurgency became  much degraded on the ground. Ideological benefactor former USSR no longer exists. Syria was more interested in peace with Israel although its grouse about Euphrates water still remains. Greece burnt its fingers in the Nairobi incident. There has also been a chorus of demand from the West including USA against the hanging  But political parties took   rigid and some irreconcilable positions .There was always a danger of  politicians outdoing each other in  whipping up  national fervor for short term political gains ,specially the Ultra-nationalist MHP which  recently rose  like Phoenix .Many a times even  when politicians had wanted to calm the situation  the establishment puts spanners in the path e g the continued  harassment  in 1993 even  when the state had tacitly accepted the  PKK cease fire and the creation of  the Hezbollah with its murderous squads in East against PKK , halted only when it started expanding to the West .

 

And the Republic instead of resolving problems politically resorts to legal measures i.e.  closing down political parties ;not only Islamic but others ,even the one founded by Ataturk after the 1980 intervention and military takeovers  or extra-constitutional means like military threats to force out elected Govts  as  in 1971 and 1997 .was  it confident enough  and ready to address the underlying, social and economic causes of the rebellion ie  the Kurdish aspirations for cultural autonomy and economic development of the region .Many analysts feel that after 75 years, the Republic has matured enough and is strong enough to  resolve  problems politically  Turks must think and decide that while the Empire was built on the loyalty to the Turkish house of Osman and Islam , the Republic as a secular unitary state, with some  loosening of state's heavy hand and  Jacobin attitude having taken place since 1950s ,perhaps  time has come for more flexibility in resolving  problems through discussion and mutual accommodation. But many a times the Turks have the habit of turning logic upside down .

 

However Turkish PM Bulent Ecevit persuaded even his ultra nationalist coalition partner ,National Action party ,baying for Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan's head , to delay sending for  the Parliament's consideration  his  death sentence , pending disposal of his appeal in European Human Rights Court , which might take up many years A death sentence can be executed only after Turkey's Parliament and President approve it .But while still on the statutes not a single sentence has been carried out since 1984.

 

Öcalan has been held in solitary confinement as the only prisoner on İmralı island in the Sea of Marmara near Istanbul . More than 1,000 Turkish military personnel are stationed on the island to guard him. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after  the abolition of the death penalty in Turkey in August 2002. In 2005, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Turkey had violated articles 3, 5 and 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights by granting Öcalan no effective remedy to appeal his arrest and sentencing him to death without a fair trial. Öcalan's request for a retrial was refused by a Turkish court.

 

This piece  was written in 2002 while I was resident at Bucharest .Part II will cover the effects of 2003 US led illegal invasion of Iraq and emergence of north Iraqi Kurdistan as an autonomous if not an  almost independent entity and AKP's effort to negotiate the problem with Ocalan following the foreign aided uprising in Syria , with Ankara taking a prominent role encouraged by US, UK and France and financially supported by petro and gas dollars from Qatar and Saudi Arabia .Watch this space ,

 

 Amb (Rtd) K Gajendra Singh. 13 May , 2013 .Mayur Vihar , Delhi 91.

Re: The Rise and fall of Gen Pervez Musharraf !

he Rise and fall of Gen Pervez Musharraf !

Military's 'veiled warning' over treatment of its former Chief

Also a Tale of two Cities; Ankara and Islamabad.

 

Part I

 

Gen Asfaq Kayani said: "In my opinion, it is not merely retribution, but awareness and participation of the masses that can truly end this game of hide and seek between democracy and dictatorship."

 

Note ( Gen Pervez Musharraf  returned to Pakistan On 24 March 2013, after a four-year self imposed exile. His reception was less then enthusiastic he had hoped for .For all his faults and mistakes him is perhaps one of the best rulers of Pakistan.)

 

While I was resident in Bucharest as a journalist, in 1998 Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif forced Army Chief Gen Karamat Jehangir into retirement and replaced him with Gen Pervez Musharraf, a Mohajir. In a state ruled most of the time directly or indirectly by the military it seemed irrational so I went over to the Pakistan ambassador , a friendly Pashtun diplomat . I was told that Gen Karamat, after a lecture at the Pakistan Defense Academy, in response to a question, had only expressed the need for a National Security Council (NSC) in view of the introduction of nuclear weapons into Pakistan's arsenal. But the armed forces took a serious note of the insult and were prepared next time around.  

 

Many ignorant and glib writers and even historians forget to note that in states which practice revealed religions , 'The Book' or Books play a key role .  Of the oldest of the three revealed religions, Judaism's only state since ancient times , Israel , founded on leftist tenets has since morphed into a rule by Zionist-Military oligarchy. Christians after centuries of warfare in Europe have somewhat managed to create secular polities which are still underpinned if not haunted by sectional religious ideologies.( Look at the Christian fortress Europe Union's refusal to grant full membership to Muslim but secular Turley). In the last of 'the Book' based polity Islam, the lines between the Mir and the Pir ,the temporal ruler and spiritual ruler still remain blurred ,contested and changing.

 

Prophet Mohammad was both the religious leader and the military commander.

 

Apart from Pakistan , in Egypt too the military ruled since 1952 and only a massive uprising forced former Air Chief president Hosni Mubarak and his cronies to leave power .Egypt is a poor country and the continuing resistance against the ruling Moslem Brotherhood by the poor, young and laboring classes might lead to a colonels coup supported by poor fellahin soldiers a la 1952 .Syria's president Bashar Assad's father who took over power 3 decades ago too was the air chief . There are many such examples in Sunni Muslim world from Algeria to Nigeria to Indonesia

 

In Turkey in 2002 with the help of Saudi billions , Islamists took over power and are Islamising the secular state , but their attempts to humiliate and exorcise the proud Turkish armed forces who under  the legendry Kemal Ataturk fashioned  the secular republic from the ashes of the shrinking moribund Ottoman Empire ruled by Sultan Caliph from Istanbul, could backfire. Notwithstanding the uprisings of the Arab masses against US puppets in the region , wrong and not thought through  and wildly ambitious Ankara's foreign policy , for example , lending active support for  the regime change in Damascus , would spill over , perhaps giving the Kurds another chance to go for a state of their own and unforeseen outcome in the Gulf from where most of the money is being poured to fulfill Washington neo-colonist policies to keep the Arabs and other Muslims fighting on ethnic or Shia -Sunni divide.

In Iran after the 1979 revolution, Shias created the ideal but mythical office of Imam in the person of Ruhoallah Khomeini . The status of the Imam was evolved into the doctrines of intercession and infallibility, i.e., of the faqih/mutjahid .But the Iranians have since found that a system based on the concepts of 7th century AD is inadequate to confront and solve the problems of 21st century. Thus there is a struggle to loosen the total clerical control over almost all aspects of life .Like the first Imam Ali, Iran is ruled by the supreme religious leader, Ali Khomeini, who incidentally is Azeri Turk .The cement keeping Iran united now is its common nationalistic and patriotic heritage and Islam.

 

In Syria the ruling Shia Alawite elite, 12% of the population which has been staunchly secular under the Assads since four decades is now besieged and attacked by MB Syrians, extremist Sunni infiltrators from outside with help and support by Sunni states like Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and others and NATO powers to weaken Shia Iran of which Syria is an ally and its strategic partner and hedge Russia and China. In Lebanon the Hezbollah, which coordinates with some secular strands, combines in Hassan Nasrallah, the powers of both a military and spiritual leader. To understand the evolving situation around Pakistan and elsewhere  we might look at some what similar situations in Islamic history.
 
The Arabs from the sands of arid Arabia who conquered the territories of the Byzantine and Persian empires who had exhausted themselves fighting each other over many centuries collapsed easily .( MAD balance between USSR and US led West led to the collapse of USSR and its allies and now over stretch of NATO is leading to US decline and fall )  Caliphs lost out on power by 10th century to the Turkish slaves from central Asia who formed the core of their fighting forces .The Turks raised the minor title of Sultan to a high rank who literally became a protector of the Caliph , left with only spiritual powers. Even that role was seized by the Ottoman Sultans ruling from Istanbul in early 16 century.

 

Coming  back to Gen Pervez Musharraf , I wrote the following piece soon after he took over power , which was also used by Delhi's  "Poineer" too.

TURKPULSE No:10 ............................NOVEMBER 21^th,  1999

(Used by Delhi's Pioneer  titled 'Uphill task ahead ')

Below is an article by retired Indian Ambassador to Ankara, Gajendra Singh on the latest military coup in Pakistan. As a Turkey expert who has been in this country for over ten years in two different diplomatic assignments and now as a journalist/writer, Ambassador Singh has very interesting observations of the Turkish model in the Islamic world and especially in Pakistan.

NEW PAKISTANI RULER AND TURKISH POLITICAL MODEL
Ambassador Gejandra Singh

Guest Writer

Delhi born Gen Pervez Musharraf, the new ruler of Pakistan, has taken upon a much harder task of rescuing his country from "rock bottom" than that faced either by FM Ayub Khan in 1958 or Gen Zia-ul-Haq in 1977. Ayub had taken over at the peak of the Cold War when the fight against Communism rather than the so-called crusade for democracy was the top priority with Pakistan neatly fitting into US strategy. Zia was a pariah until the 1980 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan fell like manna from heaven, allowing Pakistan to complete its nuclear bomb program. Now Pakistan's economic position is desperate and US is more focused on fighting terrorists, who last year bombed its Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, led by the likes of Ben Laden, ensconced among Pak nurtured and backed Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately for Pakistan, now detained Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif used his 2/3^rd  parliamentary majority to bully the President, bend the higher judiciary to his will and force Gen. Musharraf's predecessor Gen Jahangir Karamat to resign a year ago, but this time around found the Armed Forces united against him. In mooting a decision making National Security Council (NSC) with a say for the Armed Forces, Gen Karamat was only stating a political reality, which might have avoided the recent unsavoury confrontation and the ugly outcome.

The failure now of Sharif, a more representative leader than the professional feudal landlord types and of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto earlier, the two politicians who had the opportunity and political support to lay the foundations of democracy but instead chose despotic ways to steam-roller the check and balance institutions, highlights the inability of the Pakistani mind frame to accept the give and take of a democratic regime.

Gen Musharraf has made it quite clear that the generals are unlikely to let Sharif or Benazir Bhutto back in hurry and it could be quite some time before another civilian gets a chance.

Gen. Musharraf, soon to visit Turkey, where he did his schooling, has publicly expressed admiration for Kemal Ataturk of Turkey, whom he would like to emulate. After the military take-over, the initial broad based choice of his team so far shows similarities with Turkey's situation after the 1980 coup carried out by Gen Kenan Evren who was shrewd enough to give charge of economy to technocrat Turgut Ozal who turned around Turkey's moribund economy utilising its talented expatriates. Sooner or later the self-styled Chief Executive should move over to the Presidency as did Gen Evren (for 9 years) and then take a couple of years to sort out the mess and usher in a referendum approved new Constitution institutionalising the role of the Armed Forces which cannot be questioned.

As members of Western Alliances Turkey and Pakistan have maintained close relations since 1950s and Pakistani military brass is well aware of the role of the Armed Forces in Turkey. Like Turkey in 1980 (and earlier in 1960) Gen Musharraf's first step was to create a National Security Council (and not a Revolutionary or Redemption Council).

However, proposals to create a NSC are not new and had been mooted in the past. President Gen. Zia ul Haq tried in the 1980s, it was opposed and hence dropped. Another by President Farooq Leghari on 6 January 1997 through a decree, inspired and patterned on the Turkish model, lapsed after the massive electoral victory of Nawaz Sharif. Therefore, Turkey's experience of military in politics is likely to influence the latest way to "real democracy" in Pakistan and has been so acknowledged by Gen. Musharraf himself.

Article 118 of the 1982 Turkish Constitution provides for a ten member (5 from the military) NSC, chaired by the President and in his absence by the Prime Minister. In Turkish Protocol, the Armed Forces Chief of General Staff (CGS) comes next to the Prime Minister and the two along with the President form the triangle, which rules the country. The agenda of the Council meetings is proposed by the Prime Minister and the CGS and only matters of prime importance are discussed. Though not institutionalized like CGS, the position of the Army Chief in Pakistan, originally based on the British colonial pattern but modified by 52 years of experience since independence, half under military regimes, is not so different. In practice his position has remained decisive and certainly more arbitrary.

The Turkish Armed Forces, rooted in a mixture of Ottoman army traditions, modernized and westernized by French and German staff officers were forged into a nationalist fighting force during the War of Independence by Turkey's founder Kemal Ataturk and later to uphold secularism and guard against any tilt either to the left or the right. But Ataturk had ensured that the military men gave up the uniform before joining civilian duties.

After Turkey joined NATO in early 1950s, its Armed Forces have been influenced by the Western practices. Following the first intervention in 1960 when the Prime Minister and two of his colleagues were hanged (as was Bhutto by Gen Zia), in 1971 the Military members of the NSC, egged on by radical junior officers, had forced Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel to resign. A National Govt to carry out radical reform was formed. By the time Army was forced to intervene in 1980, the country was at the edge of an abyss, with more than 1000 people having been killed in left right violence in the previous 6 months. The politicians had literally abdicated their responsibility by refusing to even elect a President of the Republic for months.

Gen Evren sent the discredited political leaders packing and had debarred them from politics, but almost all returned to politics by 1987. It is the general consensus that the Turkish Armed forces have interfered only when things have spun out of control in the Turkish experiment with democracy and after setting things right, have always gone back to the barracks; the Turkish masses also expect them to do so. The Armed Forces enjoy almost total autonomy in their affairs and even the Islamic PM Erbakan had to endure Army's annual (1996) cleansing of officers with suspected religious linkages or proclivities.

Since the 1960 coup, the politicians slowly worked out a modus vivendi with military leaders with incremental assertion of civilian supremacy. Barring President Celal Bayar, ousted in 1960, most Turkish Presidents had been retired Military chiefs, but first Ozal (1989 to 1993) and since then Demirel have strengthened civilian ascendancy by getting themselves elected Presidents, but have to take note of Military's views in regular NSC meetings.

Unlike the secular Turkish Armed Forces, the Pak Military, though starting with British colonial traditions have become politicised and now Islamised specially at the level of junior officers (as was evident by the bearded soldiers manning the Govt buildings in Pakistan after the latest intervention) with its involvement with Afghan Mujahaddin and terrorist groups and nurturing and bringing up of the Taleban organisation. Many observers fear that instead of the Turkish model Pakistan might end up closer to the Sudanese model with a Turaibi like figure from Jamait-e Islami as an ideologue (Jamait leaders have already expressed their opposition to Musharraf's liking for Kemalism).

Having stoked the fire of Islamic fundamentalism, with its fighters now active all over the world, Pakistan may find that the monster at home can now no longer be contained. In contrast Turkey perhaps closest to the Western perceptions of democracy in the Islamic world had had a long tradition and history of modernisation and westernisation, first during the last century and half of the Ottoman decline with constant interaction and rivalry with European powers, ideas and non Muslim millets. And after the inception of the Republic in 1923 though forced reforms by Ataturk against tremendous odds and religious and conservative opposition. And certainly Muslim religion is an important determinant; for except for Turkey, democracy as understood in West and India has not really taken root in most Islamic countries.

Pakistanis may vehemently deny but the Hindu cultural influence over Pak Islam and psyche is undeniable, i.e. converts from Hindu castes continue to marry among themselves. With a dynamic and aggressive Punjabi (nearly 60 % of Pak population) core personality, in sibling like rivalry, Pakistanis believe that they can do anything better than the Indian Hindus across the border, even in having a democracy. How Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had crowed when Emergency was declared in India in 1975. This remains an important factor in Pak's endeavour to bring back democracy, notwithstanding the fact that the movement for Pakistan and certainly the leadership of Pakistan has not emerged from the grassroots like India's Lals and Yadavs. The oligarchy of feudal landlords, bureaucrats, army officers and businessmen still remains the ruling elite, for many massive drug trade profits provide a major source of income from opium grown in Afghanistan and the border provinces of Pakistan (a major chunk of world production).

A complicating factor for Gen. Musharraf is his Mohajir origin (Pakistanis born in what is now India and their descendants, now mostly confined to Karachi and Sindh, persecuted and treated as second class citizens) which coincidentally was a major reason why Sharif had picked him over others. Gen. Musharraf 's two brothers and son have opted for careers in USA and his own father, a former Pakistan diplomat, has become a naturalised US citizen.

Mohajirs in power must appear to be more loyal than the King. An anti-Indian stance if not an obsession, inborn with the creation of Pakistan itself, cultivated and encouraged during the Cold War, should therefore be expected. A silver lining perhaps is Musharraf's greater acceptability by other nationalities of Pakistan, which have felt the heavy hand of Pathan leavened Punjabis.

But Gen Musharraf is no Ataturk, the Gallipoli hero of the First World War and the leader of War of Independence, who after expelling the Ottoman Sultan and abolishing the Caliphate, had concentrated on building a modern nation, totally eschewing all foreign adventures.

 Amb (Rtd) K.Gajendra Singh 6 November 1999, Berlin uras@ada.net.tr,

 

Who is Pervez Musharraf?

 Pervez Musharraf was born on August 11, 1943, in an old haveli (mansion) in Neharvali Gali (street) behind the Golcha cinema in Delhi.  When he was four years old, his family - mother and father and two brothers (his father hugging a box stuffed with a few lakhs of rupees) - migrated to Karachi in the new Pakistan soon after it became independent on 14 August, 1947.  

Non-Punjabi speaking immigrants from India (Urdu was the home language of the Musharrafs) are now mostly concentrated in the ghettoes of Karachi and nearby Hyderabad in Sindh, and are known as Mohajirs (a name preferred by them to that of "refugees") and they form over 8 percent of the population. They have been openly discriminated against by the ruling Punjabi-Pathan elite and have, therefore, established a political organization of Urdu-speaking migrants, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), in Karachi, whose leader, Altaf Hussain, now lives in London. But exiling powerful leaders in nothing new in Pakistan polity.  Starting with president Iskender Mirza, who was exiled by General Ayub Khan after the 1958 coup, the tradition has been kept up. Former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif are the latest examples.  

The Mohajirs, led by the Karachi-born Jinnah of the Ismaili Bohra community, who built up his legal practice and political career in Bombay, now Mumbai, were primarily responsible for the creation of Pakistan.  Being generally better educated, they had formed the ruling group in Pakistan's then capital city of Karachi before the new capital was built and power center moved up north to Islamabad in the heartland of the Punjabis, who form around 60 percent of the population.  

After spending six years in Ankara, where Pervez learned to speak and write Turkish fluently, he completed his further education in English medium schools in Karachi and Lahore.  He joined the Pakistan Military Academy in 1962 and finished second in the class after Quli Khan.  The military has always been a coveted profession in Pakistan, but its officer class has traditionally been dominated by Punjabis, with the Mohajirs actively discriminated against.  Nevertheless, Musharraf proved himself loyal and diligent, especially with regard to Pakistan's anti-India policy.  

Other members of the Musharraf family have sought greener pastures outside Pakistan.  Except for his married daughter, Ayla, an architect, who lives in Karachi, the oldest brother, Javed, is an economist with the International Fund for Agricultural Development in Rome. Another brother, Dr Naved Musharraf, is based in Illinois, US, and is married to a Filipino.  Musharraf's son, Bilal, an actuary, is settled in Boston, US, and even his mother and father, who passed away a few months after Musharraf took over, had become naturalized US citizens.  

Raised by parents who were moderate in their religious outlook, modern and almost secular in outlook, and well educated (his mother had a master's degree in literature from Delhi and had worked for the International Labor Organization in Karachi), Pervez's catholic outlook was reinforced by his stay in Ankara.  Outgoing and extrovert, Musharraf is a caring family man, but somewhat authoritarian.  After a normal retirement as a lieutenant-general, Musharraf would have perhaps divided his time between Pakistan and the US. Even now, whenever he visits USA on official visits, he spends time with Bilal in Boston, but still utilizes the time to promote the cause of Pakistan.  

Destiny's wheel

But destiny had other plans for Musharraf.  Two things happened that catapulted him to the top of the heap.  A thoughtless and erratic prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who twice came into power in the musical chairs with Benazir Bhutto - conducted by the Pakistan military after the death of dictator General Zia ul-Haq in 1988 in an air crash - started to go haywire after his 1997 election victory.  After getting a two-thirds majority, with an abysmal turnout of less than 30 percent, an arrogant Sharif amended the constitution, stripping the president of the power to dismiss the government and made his power to appoint military service chiefs and provincial governors contingent on the "advice" of the prime minister.  

Worse, in a rush of blood, he forced into early retirement General Musharraf's predecessor, General Jahangir Karamat, an able and apolitical general.  Gen Karamat, after a lecture at the Pakistan Defense Academy, in response to a question, had only expressed the need for a National Security Council (NSC) in view of the introduction of nuclear weapons into Pakistan's arsenal. But the armed forces took a serious note of the insult.  

Sharif, whose family is of Indian Punjab origin and now settled in Lahore, was a small-time businessman.  He was groomed (along with many other middle class Punjabis) by General Zia (also from Indian Punjab) as a reliable rival to the Sindhi Benazir Bhutto, and other feudal political leaders. Sharif had promoted Musharraf in October 1998 to chief of Army staff, ahead of many others including Gen Quli Khan.  He thought that being a Mohajir without a Punjabi support base he would not have any Bonapartist ambitions. Perhaps Musharraf would have faded away after completing his term. 

But at a time when the economic situation at home was dismal, in another rush of blood and hoping to gain absolute power and popularity, Sharif dismissed Musharraf and attempted to replace him on October 12, 1999, with a family loyalist, the Director General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Lieutenant-General Ziauddin.  Although Musharraf was out of the country in Sri Lanka at the time, the army was prepared this time and moved quickly to depose Sharif in a bloodless coup.  After Musharraf took over, Sharif was charged with attempted murder and other crimes.  

One of the reasons why Sharif wanted to get rid of Musharraf was that the latter had led the Pakistani forces in the debacle at Kargil, in the summer of 1999.  Infiltrators from Pakistan occupied Kashmir had clandestinely occupied the remote  mountainous area of Kargil in Kashmir, threatening even the ability of India to supply its forces on the Siachen Glacier.  Serious fighting flared up, but the infiltrators had to withdraw after a Washington meeting between Sharif and then US president Bill Clinton in July.  Sharif was severely embarrassed by the incident, although he appeared to be in the loop and would have happily reaped the benefit of popularity if the Kargil misadventure had succeeded.  

Two days before the coup, the Washington Post had noted that "analysts said (that) Sharif has little idea how to restore confidence in a government that has lost credibility at home and abroad - this deeply unpopular government is facing its worst crisis since early 1997". 

A Gallup Poll taken a day after Musharraf seized power revealed that most Pakistanis wanted an unelected, interim government of "clean technocrats" to rule for at least two years.  Even Benazir Bhutto said, "He [Musharraf] was a professional soldier and I thought he was very courageous and brave.  He'd been a commando and one who is a commando can take tremendous risks and think afterwards."  

A Pakistani editorial welcomed the coup, "This is perfectly understandable.  The political record of the last decade of 'democracy' is dismal. Benazir Bhutto blundered from pillar to post during 1988-90. Nawaz Sharif plundered Pakistan (1990-93) as if there were no tomorrow.  Then Benazir was caught, along with her husband, with her hands in the till instead of on the steering wheel. So Sharif returned to lord it over a bankrupt country.  Then, obsessed with power, and emboldened by an illusion of invincibility, he went for the army's jugular and paid the price for his recklessness."  

Turkish connection;  

At his very first press conference soon after taking over as Pakistan's chief executive , General Musharraf spotted some journalists from Turkey. Speaking in fluent Turkish, Musharraf told them that he was a great admirer of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic and its first president.  "As a model, Kemal Ataturk did a great deal for Turkey. I have his biography. We will see what I can do for Pakistan. " Not only is he more at home with Turkish than Pakistan's national language, Urdu, Musharraf also admires Turkey's generals and the country's political model, having spent his most impressionable school years in  early 1950s in Ankara, where his father was posted as a junior diplomat.  Ataturk's legend of forging a new, vibrant, modern and secular Turkey out of the ashes of the decaying deadwood of the Ottoman Empire left an indelible mark on young Pervez, as evidenced by his remarks above and his subsequent actions as the leader of Pakistan.

However, following his statements lauding Ataturk, the Jamaat-i-Islami, the largest of Pakistan's religious parties, immediately expressed its opposition to the secular ideology of Kemalism. As a result, Musharraf now also highlights the aborted vision for Pakistan of Qaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the country's founding father and its first leader after independence in 1947.  Therefore, it came as no surprise when Musharraf visited Ankara in November, 1999, within weeks of taking power, on a pre-coup invitation from Turkey's military chief of general staff, who happened to be away when the Pakistani general landed in Ankara. Musharraf s main objective was to meet with General Kenan Evren, who had carried out the 1980 coup.  But Musharraf found himself a most unwelcome guest because both President Suleyman Demirel and Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, now back in power, had been imprisoned and debarred from politics after Evren's coup.  They advised Musharraf to restore democracy at the earliest possible.  

The influential Turkish Daily News, close to Demirel, castigated the visit as "untimely and unnecessary so soon after grabbing power and jailing elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The coup in Pakistan or one in any other country can never be accepted.  Despite the role of the military in public life in Turkey the general failed to realize the sensitivity Turks feel towards coups and authoritarian rule.  He seemed to forget that Turks have now found out that coups have not solved the problems of the country and that, to the contrary, they have further complicated things. The way the general praised former coup leader General Evren was unnecessary."  

Discouraged from seeing Gen. Everen, Musharraf met his old friends in Ankara and lunched with the chief of protocol, an old school mate. Musharraf did concede before leaving that all countries must find their own solutions.  

Turkish political model

The fascination of the Pakistani military with the Turkish military's institutionalized role in politics through a National Security Council (NSC) is old and abiding.  It stems from the days of General Zia ul-Haq, if not earlier, because of close interaction between their military brass as Cold War allies of USA.  Many senior Pakistani generals have been posted as ambassadors to Ankara.  Zia ul-Haq had wanted to create an NSC in the 1980s, but he was dissuaded from doing so.  President Farooq Leghari, under military prodding, had even issued a decree in January 1997 creating an NSC on the Turkish pattern, but Sharif, on being elected in 1997, allowed it to lapse. 

After the Turkish coup in 1960, the new 1961 constitution transformed the earlier innocuous National Defense High Council into the National Security Council.  The president of the republic, instead of the prime minister, was made its chairperson, and the "representatives" of the army, navy, air force and the gendarmerie became its members, apart from the prime minister and four other ministers. The council now became a constitutional body and offered "information" to the Council of Ministers (cabinet) concerning the internal and the external security of the country. After constitutional amendments following the 1971-73 military intervention, it submitted its "recommendations" to the Council of Ministers. The 1982 constitution, a less liberal product and the result of the 1980-1983 military intervention, further strengthened the NSC's role by obliging the Council of Ministers to give priority to its recommendations.  Threats from the military members of the NSC had made premier Demirel resign in 1971and the first-ever Islamist premier, Necmettin Erbakan, was forced to leave in 1997, thus avoiding direct military takeovers.  

The Turkish armed forces enjoy total autonomy in their affairs.  Its Chief of General Staff (CGS) ranks after only the prime minister, and along with the president forms the troika that rules the country.  Since the 1960 coup, Turkish politicians have slowly worked out a modus vivendi with military leaders, with incremental assertion of civilian supremacy.  Since 1923, except for President Celal Bayar (ousted in the 1960 coup), all Turkish presidents had been retired military chiefs.  But first Turgut Ozal (1989-1993) and then Demirel (1993-2000) strengthened civilian ascendancy by getting themselves elected as president. The current President, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, is a former president of the Supreme Court. 

In Pakistan, the position of the army's CGS, originally based on the British colonial pattern but modified after 55 years of experience since independence in 1947, during which the military has directly governed for more than half the period, is even more decisive and certainly more arbitrary than the Turkish equivalent.  In mooting an NSC in 1998, with a say for the armed forces in decision-making, Gen. Jehangir Karamat was only stating a political reality, which might have avoided unsavory confrontation.  It would have legalized the de fact position of the military and made its role more predictable and even accountable.  

After the 1971 Turkish coup, with the top military command's views expressed in the NSC, putsches by colonels, tried a few times in the 1960s, disappeared in Turkey. The 1971 intervention was a result of pressure from middle level officers.  Like Turkish politicians, Pakistanis will have to slowly work out a modus vivendi with military leaders for an incremental assertion of civilian supremacy.  But while the Turkish armed forces, a bastion of secularism, annually expel officers suspected of any Islamic proclivities, Pakistan's armed forces and the ISI have become "Islamized" at the lower and middle levels, and even higher.  In the short term, Musharraf is following General Evren's "Qaida" (primer).  So soon after becoming the chief executive he created the NSC (now to have 12 members), heavily weighted in favor of the military, and formed a cabinet of technocrats.  

Before the 1980 Turkish coup, political leaders such as premier Demirel and the leader of the opposition, Ecevit, and others, had totally abdicated their political responsibilities.  They went through hundreds of rounds of voting without electing a new president. Nearly a thousand Turks were killed in six months in left against right violence prior to the coup.  So General Evren barred Demirel, Ecevit and others from politics, and closed their parties. Similarly, Musharraf has kept Benazir Bhutto out of politics on corruption charges, and in a deal exiled Sharif to Saudi Arabia in 2000.

Musharraf's army constituency;

 From the outset, Musharraf made no secret of using referendums or amending the constitution to institutionalize the military's role in decision-making and to prolong and strengthen his hold over power.  General Evren had established a committee of experts to recommend a new constitution, the approval of which by referendum also granted him a seven-year term.  Musharraf had also chopped and changed the 1973 constitution, but the referendum in April last year to grant himself five more years as head of state was not a neat exercise (accusations of rigging) and left some legal loopholes.  He is now having problems. He could have done better.

Musharraf has succeeded in legalizing the military's takeover in 1999 - the coup was endorsed by the Supreme Court on the condition that elections be held within three years, which he has done - and he has institutionalized the military's voice through the NSC.  His mentor, General Evren, after heading the NSC for two years, had himself elected as president in a referendum for a new constitution. A yes for the constitution was also a yes for another seven years for him. To make it doubly sure, he forbade any discussion of the vote on the constitution for many weeks prior to the poll.  In the end, General Evren remained head of state for nine years. Musharraf has recently reiterated that his presence is necessary to harmonise the various centers of power in Pakistan. 

Pakistan's democracy;

Throughout the Cold War, the so-called democracy in Pakistan was basically a Western media myth to put its ally on a par with India, which was on the opposite side. Utterances by Pakistan prime ministers against India made good copy in Western media. Barring perhaps Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (1972-77), after the military had been totally discredited in 1971 following the liberation of Bangladesh, the Pakistan armed forces have been de jure or de facto rulers of the country. In the 11 years between General Zia's death in 1988 and Musharraf's takeover, Benazir Bhutto and Sharif were eased in and out of power whenever they tried to interfere with the military's autonomy, or their control of nuclear arms, or the policy on Kashmir and foreign affairs.  Constantly squabbling with each other, they nevertheless amassed huge fortunes by corrupt means.  Bhuttos, specially Zulfiqar Ali, and Nawaz Sharif had the opportunity and political support to lay the foundations for democracy, but instead they chose despotic ways to steamroller the institutions that provided the checks and balances in the state. This highlights the inability of Pakistan in general to accept the give and take of a democratic system and administration.  

For all the good copy that Benazir still provides the Western media, she was perhaps one of the most incompetent administrators in Pakistan's history, with her husband, "Mr 10 percent" Ali Zardari, making it worse. She played a seminal role in 1996 in promoting the stranglehold in Pakistan of the Jamaat-i-Islami and other fundamentalist groups, now hiding and biding their time in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  They remain deeply entrenched in the Pakistan armed forces, the ISI and the establishment, with the potential for implosion. Tacitly approved by the US and with support from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, Pakistan created the Taliban and other jihadis to provide peace, stability and security in Afghanistan so that US oil giants could lay a pipeline from Central Asia to South Asia. Despite the ban by the Taliban on growing opium, jihadis, resurgent warlords and drug barons on both sides of the non-enforceable Durand line that separates Pakistan and Afghanistan financed themselves by the cultivation and export of opium and heroin.  Too many vested interests in and outside of Pakistan, especially in the military, benefited from this lucrative arrangement So after some pause since the US war on Talebans, the production and trade in narcotics is going up again.  

Pakistan is now seriously infected with the virus of Islamic fundamentalism. The sympathizers of democracy cannot wish it away with the wave of a magic wand as the country has pursued the path of Sharia law, religious intolerance and authoritarian regimes.  A constitution does not a democracy make. Even Turkey, perhaps the only secular democracy in the Muslim world, 80 years after Ataturk's sweeping reforms with a secular constitution in place since 1923, gets wobbly from time to time.  Even its moderate Islamic parties have to be banned regularly. In November, 2002 Elections, Justice and Development party, which has Islamic roots, won two-third of seats in the Parliament but with 33% votes polled.  Tensions are already building up between the new government and the secular establishment led by the armed forces.    

Pakistan polity;

In any case, unlike India ,Pakistan began with weak grassroots political organizations, with the British-era civil servants strengthening the bureaucracy's control over the polity and decision-making in the country. Subsequently, the bureaucracy called for the military's help, but soon the tail was wagging the dog.  In the first seven years of Pakistan's existence, nine provincial governments were dismissed.  From 1951 to 1958 there was only one army commander in chief, two governor generals, but seven prime ministers.

While the politicians had wanted to further strengthen relations with the British, the erstwhile rulers, General Ayub Khan -encouraged by the US military - formed closer cooperation with the Pentagon.  And in 1958 the military took over power, with Ayub Khan exiling the governor general, Iskender Mirza, to London. A mere colonel at partition in 1947, with experience mostly of staff jobs, Ayub Khan became a general after only four years.  Later, he promoted himself to field marshal.  He eased out officers who did not fit into the Anglo-Saxon scheme of using Pakistan's strategic position against the evolving Cold War confrontation with the communist block.  

General Zia ul-Haq, meanwhile, was a cunning schemer, veritably a mullah in uniform who, while posted in Amman, helped plan the military operation, which expelled Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization from Jordan in the 1970s.  But he is more remembered for having prayed at all the mosques of Amman, if not in the whole of Jordan.  He seduced the north Indian media with lavish praise and chicken and tikka kebabs meals.  He planned Operation Topaz, which in 1989 fueled insurgency in Kashmir, while hoodwinking Indians with his goodwill visits to promote cricket contacts between the countries. His Islamization of the country made the situation for women and minorities untenable, while the judicial killing of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977 turned General Zia into a pariah.  But the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan made him a US darling, restoring and fatally strengthening the Pakistan military's links with the Pentagon. This made the Pakistani military and the ISI's hold pervasive, omnipotent, omniscient and ominous in Pakistan. This defense alliance, the seeds of which were planted by Ayub Khan, and the symbiotic relationship between the ISI and the CIA bolstered under General Zia, was never really dismantled and is unlikely to be fully disentangled.  

Pakistan's external constituency:

The form of government in a country has seldom bothered the US in the pursuit of its national interests.  Otherwise, why would it embrace Pakistan, or say Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia or any of the other kingdoms and sheikhdoms and repressive regimes around the world, and shun democratic India.  Beginning with Ayub Khan's unofficial visit to the US, the foundations for bilateral cooperation in the military field were laid.  These have survived through thick and thin, like a bad marriage where neither side can let go, and despite bad patches, such as the takeovers by Zia ul-Haq and Musharraf.  In fact US finds military or other dictators easier to handle. 

Like the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, September 11 revived the necessity, if not the passion of the 1980s, for Pakistan and the US to come close to each another once again.  A divorce now, as naive Indian policymakers and media propose, is wishful thinking . The US needed Pakistan to protect itself from a backlash of its earlier Afghan policies of creating the mujaheddin and supporting the jihad in Afghanistan and then Talebans, After 11 September, Washington desperately needed to stop Pakistan's nuclear bombs or material from falling into jihadi hands, and to eliminate, or at least curtail, further damage to US interests.  The US and others in the West will keep on making pro forma noises in favor of more democracy but for US there appears to be no alternative to the Musharraf regime. The options are not attractive.  In last years elections ,fundamentalist parties canvassing on anti-US platform , increased their votes to 11% from a normal 3% or so. They now control governments in sensitive border provinces of Baluchistan and North Frontier province and are the major opposition party in federal parliament .

Ataturk as a model

Musharraf, with his elite commando training, is cool and calculating.  He has handled difficult and complex situations well.  And in terms of intelligence, opportunism and dedication, he is professionally far ahead of the bluff and bumbling Ayub Khan.  Zia ul-Haq, a retrograde Mullah in uniform, reversed human rights progress and irreparably damaged Pakistan's polity. And there is not much to write about the befuddled General Yahya Khan, who presided over the breakaway of Bangladesh in 1971. Under Musharraf, media has enjoyed greater freedom then in recent history. Musharraf has tried to reform the economy and reduce corruption. Joining the coalition against terror has helped prop up the external sector with US support, but fundamental weaknesses in Pakistan's economy still remain And while he might have gotten rid of or relocated unreliable and Islamist generals, in such situations the toss up is either thakt (throne) or takhta (noose).

At best Musharraf can be said to have succeeded in emulating his publicly undeclared model Gen Evren and that too not that well. There are some similarities with Ataturk.  Delhi-born Musharraf's family comes from east Uttar Pradesh (India). Blue-eyed Ataturk was born in Salonika (Greece) and his family came from Macedonia.  Ataturk was able to rally the world war-weary Turks, whose land had been occupied by foreigners.  At first he battled the Ottoman Sultan's forces sent to kill him and then vanquished friend turned foe rebel Ethem and his ragtag army, which had helped fight off invading Greeks who had almost reached Ankara. This was something like the various jihadi forces and foot-loose groups that Musharraf now faces. Later, Ataturk ruthlessly crushed religious revolts led by feudal Kurdish tribal chiefs and others.  And to fulfill his destiny, he even got rid of his earlier nationalist comrades, who were in favor of continuing with the Caliphate. 

Musharraf, too, has succeeded in sidelining many unreliable generals but not completely. Despite his belief in his avowed destiny, his proclaimed good luck in escaping helicopter mishaps, not being in the plane crash that killed Zia and victory in the standoff with Sharif, he has not shown the boldness and ruthlessness of Ataturk.  September 11 and December 13 , provided him with a golden opportunity to go the whole hog in the fight against the virus of fundamentalism and usher a new era in Pakistan on the lines of Ataturk's reforms.  He would have got unstinted support from US led West, India and others. 

Ataturk had boldly and ruthlessly carried out westernising and modernizing reforms against religious obscurantism and dogma and forged the remnants of the Ottoman Empire with a 99 percent Muslim population into a secular republic in the 1920s.  The Ottoman Sultan was also the Caliph .He abolished both the offices. But he had kept his external ambitions in check, he did not claim former Ottoman provinces lost in World War I, and had concentrated on building a new Turkey from the bottom up. 

Musharraf, a child of his times, did step down, after September 11, from the fundamentalist tiger he was riding and had helped nurture. Quite clearly he is not fully in command on the home front, with suicide bombers killing foreigners and Christians and senior officials being assassinated.  He tightens up from time to time, with some arrests of ranking Al-Qaeda members and others to please USA.  If he tried too hard, these forces, now baying against him, would conspire for his blood and threaten his US allies.

Musharraf's  childhood Ataturk-inspired dream is unlikely to come true. Perhaps he is not ruthless enough, determined and single minded like Ataturk, or maybe there are just too many cards stacked against him.

Note; This piece was written in 2003 ,when the author felt that Gen Musharraf had reached acme of his power and usefulness to Washington. It was matter of time before another convenient pliable ruler of Pakistan was selected and allowed to take over  .But it is to Musharraf's credit that he survived much longer than expected d left Pakistan only in 2008 .

K.Gajendra Singh May 2, 2013 ,Mayur Vihar, Delhi-91

Part II to Follow

Fw: WAS THE PATRIARCH ABRAHAM JUST A STORY?

Is the story about Old Testament and Abraham False

http://beyondallreligion.net/old-testament/

 

I was fortunate to have been posted in Egypt ( land of Pharaohs ) and Prophet Moses, Neferetiti –an Aryan Mittanni princess ,Jordan , just across Palestine /Israel from where at Mount nebu you can see the grand Jordan valley and lights of Jerusalem ( Moses is supposed to buried at Mt Nebu) , 8 years in Turkey with its forty civilsations with major Christian sites ,

 

http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2010/12/fwd-illustrated-sweep-through-history.html

 

since Asia minor was the cradle of Christianity  .Also visited Iraq, Syria ,Iran, Turkmenistan and lectured at Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and Andijan( Babur' birth place ) I have visited a large number of places associated with Christianity and Islam ( even fabled Timbuctou  in 1979) .

 

An Israeli historian had said that the state of Israel and Jewish history is fable , most present day ruling Isarelis from central Europe are converts from tribes north of Caspian Sea .So the story below may not be too farfetched .

 

When I state that the Mahabharata story and Geeta may not be of Indian origin since earliest skeletons of horse are located in Pakistan's frontier province of around 1300 BC ( horse was domesticated in Eurasian steppes around 2300 BC ) Sanskrit spouting Hindus get very upset .

 

From our political discourse now  a days , where Asatyemev Jayate rules , it is difficult what orthodox Hindus say about ancient history . Look at Ashwini Kumars, bansals , rajas and ranis , Reddys and many yadavas and Lals.

 

Even the easy going Egyptians are in revolution and refuse to accept the majoriatarian Muslim Brother hood rule .But will the Hindus cast in the granite like apartheid of the caste system  and ready to bear all indignities and robbing will ever rise .The Mafiosi across the board has seen off Anna Hazare and his kind .Incremental changes will add to nothing .In fact the things are going from bad to worse .

 

Mera Bharat mahan  Gajendra Singh May 5 2013

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OLD TESTAMENT

Abraham, Solomon and David: Romantic Nonsense?

WAS THE PATRIARCH ABRAHAM JUST A STORY?  DID ABRAHAM EXIST?  You decide:

From: http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/amen/a/122710-CW-Archaeological-Evidence-About-The-Story-Of-Abraham-In-The-Bible.htm

Historians date Abraham's bibilical story around 2000 B.C., based on clues in Genesis Chapters 11 through 25. Considered the first of the biblical     patriarchs, Abraham's life history encompasses a journey starts that in a place called Ur. In Abraham's time, Ur was one of the great city-states in Sumer, a part of the Fertile Crescentlocated from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Iraq to the Nile in Egypt. Historians call this era from 3000 to 2000 B.C. "the dawn of civilization" .

It turns out that Abraham in the Bible is undoubtedly just a story.

Abraham in the Bible:  Promotion of lands surrounding and now occupied by Israel began a long time ago in the Old Testament. The Judean scribes did their writing in about 700 BCE, referring to happenings that supposedly existed  more than about a thousand years prior to when they were writing.

Abraham has all the trappings of being just a made-up story.

From the Highly Recommended book, by  W.H. Uffington,  "The Greatest Lie Ever Told", available on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Lie-Ever-Told/dp/0956798004 :

"With a sleight of hand – the one holding the pen – a new history, a new beginning was invented.  And to ensure that no one dared to question its authenticity, we are told that God himself had guided this hand. Fear turned the lie into unquestionable truth.

All the archaeological evidence shows that the people residing within the lands of Canaan were and always had been Canaanites….  There are no grounds for the argument that Abraham infiltrated the area around 2000 BCE. …

The answer is, of course, straightforward: rather than true and accurate eyewitness accounts of history, carefully passed down through the generations, the stories were just vague tribal myths and legends, eventually cobbled together by politically-motivated priests and scribes who were entirely ignorant of any real historical knowledge.

Christian Biblical scholars still insist upon the Bible's historical authenticity, even pointing out that it is the accurate historical details in the stories which prove that they are genuine: an odd claim when the Bible is so full of his historical inaccuracies. Surely, if the proof is in the detail, then inaccurate detail will undermine the whole foundation. We find such an example of this small detail in Genesis 24, that talks of camels being taken through Mesopotamia; women, children and servants riding on camels and indeed, camels repeatedly crop up in the patriarchal stories. Yet we find that camels were supposedly, first domesticated at least 200 years after Abraham's time and they were not used it all as beast of burden until about 1000 years later. Excavations of camel bones indicate that camels were used extensively in the seventh century BCE and became a common site around the Middle East, including Palestine.  The camel became a preferred means of transport just around the time when the first biblical stories were compiled.

The next anomalous detail is the reference to shekels as a means of payment: it is out of its historical era by a considerable margin. The shekel was not Canaanite but Hebrew; nor was it a coin, but a unit of weight, much later used as a silver coin. According to Herodotus the coin first appeared sometime after 550 BCE"

David and Solomon: (also from Uffington's wonderful revealing bookhttp://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Lie-Ever-Told/dp/0956798004):

Did the Great Empire of Solomon ever exist?

"If the great empire never existed,  what  of the great building programme undertaken by Solomon, surely this would support the biblical claims. The problem is, that modern archaeology has failed to find any great structures that might have been built by Solomon. In the past, the opposite was the case: early archaeologists hoping to prove the Bible to be true looked for anything that would confirm it, even if they were fairly liberal with the actual dating. …..Now we have the problem of Jerusalem itself – the capital of the great Solomonic empire. We are given the image of Jerusalem as a place of the impressive grandeur , having a magnificent Temple and a great gleaming palace to house Solomon's 700 wives and 300 concubines, all protected behind huge stone fortress walls – a glorious fabled city which reflected the glory of God. Alas, it is all romantic nonsense. Despite extensive excavations, archaeologists have failed to locate any signs at all that there was ever a Solomon temple, or palace, or great fortifications….

The harsh truth is, that both David and Solomon – if indeed they actually existed, which we must doubt since there is no contemporary evidence to support that they did – would have been little more than tribal chiefs. Considering the poverty of the region and its historical reputation for banditry both David and Solomon nestling in their remote hilltop village, could well have been bandit chieftains.

There is no real evidence to confirm that either of these two kings actually existed, but what we do have is legend, which came about following the story's vigorous promotion by the later Judean state.

 

 MOSES: 

There is  awesome revealing and shocking information in the book:

http://tinyurl.com/7cz2cwv

God commanding Moses to kill:

"They fought against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed every man……..Now kill all the boys [innocent kids]. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.  (Numbers 31:7,17-18)"

Kill everything that "breathes" from humans and animals!  Deuteronomy 20:16

Speaking of Moses:

How about this:  There is no evidence for the existence of Moses. Although he is portrayed as an influential member of the Egyptian royal household, he is not mentioned in any Egyptian record. Nor is there any evidence to support the idea that the Jews were ever held captive in Egypt or that they made an exodus from the country under Moses' command. The Egyptians chronicled their history in great detail but make no mention of any captive Jews. Amongst the hundreds of thousands of Egyptian monumental inscriptions, tomb inscriptions and papyri, there is complete silence about the '600,000 men on foot, besides women and children' who The Book of Exodus tells us escaped from Pharaoh's armies.

The story of Moses, with its many miracles, has all the hallmarks of a myth. The account of Moses' birth is a retelling of the myth of the birth of Sargon the Great, the king of Akkad, which is known in a number of variations from the early sixth century BCE. Like Moses, the child Sargon is 'set in a basket of rushes' and 'cast into the river', from which he is later rescued by an influential woman.

IMAGE OF SARGON THE GREAT

Similar Greek stories tell of the child Dionysus confined in a chest and thrown into the river Nile. These probably all go back to Egyptian stories which tell of Osiris confined in a chest and thrown in the Nile.

Israeli archaeologist Ze'ev Herzog(1) provides a controversial consensus view on the historicity of the Exodus and some other parts of the Hebrew myth.  In 1999, Haaretz weekly magazine cover page article "Deconstructing the walls of Jericho" attracted considerable public attention and debates. In this article Herzog claims that "the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel.

Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, Jehovah, had a female consort (Asherah) and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period (c920-900 BC ) of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai"

If the whole Exodus story itself is unhistorical we can safely dismiss the other parts of the story [the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21), the manna from heaven (Exodus 16:15-35) and the supply of water from the Rock in Horeb (Exodus 17:7)] as mythical addition to an already fictitious account.

Ze'ev Herzog (born 1941) is an Israeli archeologist, professor of archaeology at The Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures at Tel Aviv University.

Ze'ev Herzog is the director of The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology since 2005."