EDITORIAL : THE HINDU, INDIA

Regime change under UNSC cover

It is now obvious that Nato's purported mission, under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, to protect civilians in Libya is expanding into a flagrantly illegal attempt at regime change. With fierce fighting between rebels and government forces reported in the eastern city of Adjabiya and the western one of Misrata, President Barack Obama has stated that a military stalemate obtains. That means Nato has failed to protect civilians and prevent Muammar Qadhafi's ground forces from recapturing key rebel-held areas, with civilian casualties as a tragic consequence. In response, however, Mr. Obama and his main Nato collaborators, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron, have published a joint article in The Washington Post, The Times, and Le Figaro, holding that “it is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Gaddafi in power” and that “so long as Gaddafi is in power, Nato and its coalition partners must maintain their operations.”

The main problems in this exercise in military adventurism have been caused by the Resolution's lack of a clear political objective; it is the political issues that are now proving the most troublesome for the Alliance. One major miscalculation was the assumption that Mr. Qadhafi might be sufficiently influenced by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) or the League of Arab States (the Arab League) to consider an agreement with the rebels or even to leave office. The Libyan President's defiant reaction exposed that idea as vacuous. Now Mr. Cameron refuses to rule out the deployment of ground troops, despite the fact that the U.N. Resolution specifically excludes that. The coalition's disarray is further confirmed by France's proposal, with which the United Kingdom disagrees, of a new Resolution; in any case Russia and China are likely to oppose anything that authorises regime change. Nevertheless, the evidence is increasingly clear that, even before they obtained the existing mandate, Washington, London, and Paris wanted only to remove Mr. Qadhafi. The U.S. has since approached various African Union member states about giving asylum to Mr. Qadhafi provided he leaves office. Secondly, at a recent coalition conference, Qatar and Italy pressed for arms supplies to the rebels. The most damaging evidence, however, is that the U.S. has sent an envoy to Benghazi to learn more about the rebel grouping, the Interim Transitional National Council. In effect, going through the U.N. was only a smokescreen for regime change. The Obama administration and its allies are repeating all the mistakes and miscalcuations made by George W. Bush and Tony Blair over the infamous and illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Free this man

No angle of the Khalil Chishty episode provides a pretty view. The octogenarian Pakistani was recently convicted in a 1992 murder case and handed down a life sentence by a trial court in Ajmer. Two weeks ago, the Rajasthan High Court turned down his plea for suspension of the sentence. For the nearly 20 years the case took to be decided, Dr. Chishty — a highly-qualified virologist — was out on bail, but remained hostage to the shockingly slow pace of the proceedings. His passport impounded, he could not return to his country. The case in which he was one of four accused related to a group clash in Ajmer that resulted in one person succumbing to a gunshot injury. Dr. Chishty, on a visit to Ajmer from Karachi, was present when the clash took place, apparently between two sets of his relatives. The trial court was evidently not impressed with his claim that he was only an onlooker and played no part in the violence. Independent of the merits of the case, it defies comprehension that a sessions court should have taken 19 long years to decide the matter. This is glacial speed even by the standards of the Indian judiciary. Even less comprehensible is the Rajasthan High Court's observation while turning down Dr. Chishty's plea for suspension of the sentence that “no leniency” could be shown to him as he was a Pakistani national, even as it granted identical appeals by the three others convicted in the case. Dr. Chishty, who is unable to walk unaided, began his sentence at the end of January this year; he is warded in the Ajmer jail hospital. While the courts may have decided to make an example of Dr. Chishty, awarding an old, infirm and ailing Pakistani, a life sentence after a delay of two decades is hardly a shining example of the Indian judiciary at work.

Dr. Chishty's saga stands out all the more in the light of the generosity of spirit Pakistan demonstrated by releasing Gopal Dass, an Indian citizen who had been incarcerated for 27 years, on an appeal from the Supreme Court of India. The recent thaw in relations has also seen Pakistan and India release a number of each other's nationals from jail. The two governments have decided to speed up the release of other prisoners. It seems to have finally dawned on the two sides that prisoners — mostly arrested for minor offences such as overstaying their visa or crossing the border — must not be used for settling scores between the two countries. In keeping with this, it would only be right for the Indian government to respond positively to the appeals for the release of Dr. Chishty by his family and human rights activists in both countries. He should be allowed to return to Pakistan and to his family immediately.