The
death of Eqbal Ahmad on May 11 was an occasion of great sadness
for those who had the privilege of knowing and working with him.
Eqbal was associated with MERIP for many years as a Contributing
Editor, but this affiliation hardly conveyed the key role he played
in MERIP's formative years. If we could designate a category for
those whose example, encouragement and vision were crucial in transforming
MERIP from an idea into a reality, Eqbal would be in the first rank.
I
first met Eqbal in 1969, during the meetings, demonstrations and
civil disobedience campaigns against the US war in Vietnam. Eqbal
was a gifted orator whose sharp and articulate political analysis
displayed serious scholarship as well as militant commitment to
principles of political liberation. No one who heard Eqbal's faultless
phrasing and compelling cadence, his grasp of modern history with
a distinctive Asian and African inflection, and his insistence upon
responsibility and accountability from ourselves and from our adversaries
in the seats of power, will ever forget the experience.
Eqbal
was also distinguished by his extraordinary graciousness, warmth
and generosity of spirit. In the late 1960s, he was teaching at
the University of Chicago, active in the Committee of Concerned
Asian Scholars and constantly on the road participating in teach-ins
against the war. Yet he was always ready to take time to talk when
the opportunity arose, and to respond to our letters with comments
that were remarkably comprehensive and thoughtful.
Eqbal's
enthusiasm and encouragement for MERIP stemmed from his abiding
insistence that the antiwar and anti-imperialist movement must incorporate
the Middle East, the Arab world and especially Palestine into its
worldview. Eqbal brought to the movement the sensibilities of a
staunch secularist steeped in his Indian Muslim culture and opposed
to the politics of exclusion, whether rooted in religious or ethnic
communalism or political ideology. His critique of power and his
disdain for those wielding it was not limited to the likes of Henry
Kissinger but included, in the very early 1970s, false saviors of
"Arab socialism" like the Iraqi and Syrian Ba‘thist
regimes. Nor was Eqbal a naïve proponent of armed struggle,
despite his first-hand engagement in the Algerian anticolonial war
and his strategic understanding of the Vietnam guerrilla war. He
was a tireless proponent, deriving from his boyhood in Bihar in
the era of Gandhi and his admiration for the African-American civil
rights struggle, of massive militant civil disobedience as a crucial
Palestinian strategy against Israeli occupation.
Teacher,
friend, activist, scholar, orator and pamphleteer extraordinaire
-- we will all miss this good man.
Joe Stork
Former Editor, Middle East Report
MERIP
OP-EDS
A Country at a Crossroads The Austin-American Statesman (Austin, Texas) November 9, 2007
Kamran Asdar Ali
"A
very frank discussion"— so President Bush described
his Nov. 7 telephone
conversation with Pervez Musharraf, four days after the Pakistani
general
imposed a state of emergency and dissolved the high court expected
to rule
his continued presidency unconstitutional. And frank the discussion
probably
was: In the face of spirited protest in Pakistan, and a querulous
press in
Washington, back-channel pressure succeeded in persuading Musharraf
to
promise parliamentary elections. Yet the generous U.S. aid earmarked
for
Pakistan — on top of nearly $10 billion since 2001 — is
quite evidently not
at risk.
What may be at risk is Musharraf's tenure as head
of the military government. Full
story>>
The
war debate in Washington is bogged down. Partisan rancor is one
reason why, and bipartisan desire for US hegemony in the oil-rich
Persian Gulf is
another. But many Americans are vexed by a nobler concern: that
a
“precipitous” US departure from Iraq would leave intensified
civil war,
ethnic-sectarian cleansing and massive refugee flows in its wake.
This
concern is legitimate. Unfortunately, the sad fact is that Iraq’s
civil war
and humanitarian emergency have grown steadily worse as the US
military
deployment there wears on. Full
Story>>
Should
the United States, seeking to recalibrate the balance between
security and liberty in the "war on terror," emulate
Israel in its treatment of Palestinian detainees? That is the position
that Guantanamo detainee lawyers Avi Stadler and John Chandler
of Atlanta, and some others, have advocated. That people in U.S.
custody could be held incommunicado for years without charges,
and could be prosecuted or indefinitely detained on the basis of
confessions extracted with torture is worse than a national disgrace.
It is an assault on the foundations of the rule of law. Full
Story>>
There
is an oft-told Palestinian allegory about a family who complained
their house was small and cramped. In response, the father brought
the farm
animals inside -- the goat, the sheep and the chickens all crowded
into the
house. Then, one by one, he moved the animals back outside. By
the time the
last chicken left, the family felt such relief they never complained
of the
lack of elbow room again. Full
Story>>
