When President Bush launched the bombing attacks on Afghanistan, he termed the war against terrorism as one that was “upholding and defending American
values”. These “American values” were broadly defined as justice, freedom, human rights and the rule of law. Conversely, he criticised the Taliban for their
“intolerance, bigotry, and absence of human rights and lack of any democratic norms promoting the rule of law”.

However, in the last few weeks, with the Taliban on the run, it seems that some of the recent changes altering the character of the American state, particularly
attitudes towards civil liberties and human rights, may be more inspired from a Taliban-like mindset than two centuries of tradition rooted in the American
Revolution.

A series of changes in the laws have given arbitrary powers to the American President and US law-enforcing institutions to violate constitutional rights and
established legal traditions, with a Clinton Cabinet official, Robert Reich, expressing alarm that “we can find ourselves in a police state step by step” since “the
President is by emergency decree getting rid of rights that we assumed that anyone within our borders legally would have”.

Recent changes that have caused understandable concern:

   ·        Some 1182 persons living in the US, almost entirely Muslim, continue to detained without charges and without being told what their crime is since the
      September 11 attacks;

   ·        Under the USA Patriot Act, suspects can be indefinitely detained without charges for up to 6 months even, with police and the FBI given wide-ranging
      powers to conduct searches of homes and offices, intrude into privacy of financial transactions and intercept phone, mail and Internet communications;

   ·        Some 5000 young men, between ages 18-33, who legitimately entered the US from Muslim countries after January 2000 will be questioned by the FBI for
      possible connections with the terrorists who hijacked the 4 planes on September 11, thereby spreading alarm and fear since they could treated as suspects
      or even potential terrorists;

   ·        To top it all, on November 13, the day Kabul fell, President Bush, declaring an “extraordinary emergency”, decreed the establishment of special military
      tribunals to try non-Americans within the US and overseas who allegedly are involved in committing acts of terrorism, and these handpicked military courts,
      operating in secrecy and dispensing with constitutional rights, can impose a death sentence, without even the right of appeal.

One prescient observer of the American scene has termed this loss of civil liberties and ethnic profiling as “the repackaging of latent racism”. The New York Times,
on November 16, editorially criticised President Bush that with “the flick of a pen” he has “essentially discarded the rulebook of American justice painstakingly
assembled over the course of more than two centuries … (with) a crude and unaccountable system that any dictator would admire”. Denouncing these proposed
tribunals as “military kangaroo courts”, America’s premier conservative columnist, William Safire, otherwise a staunch Republican supporter, wrote on November
15: “non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner”.

Interestingly, these changes in the world’s oldest democracy coincide with somewhat similar changes in the “world’s largest democracy”, India, where a draconian
Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO) has been enforced. Non-bailable arrests of detention are included and what is worse, journalists refusing to disclose
their stories sources, which are suspected of being linked to terrorism, could also be jailed. After the Emergency of Mrs Gandhi in 1975 and the notorious Terrorism
and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA) in 1987, under which 75000 persons were detained without trial on mere suspicion alone, this is the third time that India’s
state machinery is changing the law to violate fundamental rights.

In the US too, this is the third occasion in the last 60 years that such an atmosphere exists where constitutional guarantees and human rights can be thrown aside
ostensibly for a ‘higher cause’.  In 1941, after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour and the American entry into World War II, American citizens of Japanese origin
were hauled up, arrested and detained in special concentration camps set up for the purpose on the mere suspicion that these American citizens might be ‘helpful to
the enemy’.

Another shameful chapter in contemporary American history was during the 1950s when McCarthyism was at its height, harassing, hounding and hunting alleged
‘Communists’ within the media, Hollywood and the government. That witch-hunt destroyed careers and damaged the credibility of America’s judicial system that
was unable to protect law-abiding American citizens from the bigotry of rightwing opportunists. Just as the Cold War provided a conducive political ambience for
McCarthyism to play on the fears of the American people regarding the ‘threat from Communism’, similar the ‘war against terrorism and the threat from al Qaeda’
are providing a pretext to take actions contrary to the spirit of US laws and the Constitution. Actually, what is happening now is an action replay of those unfortunate
events in American history, albeit, on a larger and more dangerous scale with almost unlimited powers given to the President and police to pursue those deemed as
‘threats to national security’.

What is surprising is not that this could happen in a country that could take justifiable pride in being a repository of freedom, but that there is so little visible
opposition to this attempt to take police-state like powers that can and are being used in a whimsical, arbitrary and autocratic manner. Even September 11 was an
unprecedented crime, but the answer does not lie in making a whole community hostage to the campaign against terrorism or changing America’s democratic
character.

The media apart, some feeble voices of resistance are emerging from American politicians to this emerging rule by diktat. For instance, on November 14, the
Chairman of the US Senate’s Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy, while questioning whether the decree regarding military courts “fits under our
Constitution and legal system”, added significantly his concern over “the international implications of the President’s Order, which sends a message to the world that
it is acceptable to hold secret trials and summary executions, without the possibility of judicial review”.

Earlier, in another U-turn regarding media freedom, the United States had formally asked the Emir of Qatar on October 3 to “rein in” Al Jazeerah, the Arab World’s
only independent media outlet, because its coverage of the war was at variance with American policy. Ironically, in its annual report on human rights last year, the
State Department had lauded Al Jazeerah for its “independent coverage”.

All democratic and enlightened opinion within the US and the international community must raise their voice to reject such powers being assumed by the Bush
administration in the name of combating terrorism, because violate universally accepted standards of basic fundamental rights. In any case, America’s own interests
in the Islamic world would be damaged by such actions, since these are being perceived as Muslim-specific.

What kind of country will emerge from this ‘Talibanisation’ of the United States where millions of citizens (at least the 7 million Muslims, for starters) would be living
in constant fear of the midnight knock that can come any time?  Fear and paranoia would extend to the citizenry at large, creating an almost permanent state of siege
within the US.

These actions are a recipe for disaster in terms of the American relationship with the Muslim World, confirming what many Muslims, in the words of Malaysian
Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohammed, feel that “it is beginning to look more and more like a war against Muslims”.

Some cynics feel that having now taken the fateful steps towards arbitrary laws and military courts, President Bush could bring his country closer to Muslim allies like
Pakistan by imposing a Martial Law, elements of which have already been suggested by some politicians in the US. A prominent Republican, Senator John Warner,
even wrote to the Defence Secretary urging him to “enable our military to more fully join our domestic assets in the war against terrorism” with suggestions already
floating to change an 1878 law so that the American military could play a domestic law-enforcement role as well. Interestingly, the US Deputy Defence Secretary,
Paul Wolfowitz, testifying before Congress said he “strongly agrees” with such a suggestion.

Pakistanis would only be willing to extend a hearty welcome to the United States as it readies to join the ranks of the Third World, politically that is.

[Islamabad, 20 November 2001]

* The author, a graduate of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., is former Information Minister of Pakistan