Don't beat around the bush, GMA, when you get to the White House

As President Macapagal-Arroyo prepares to fly to the United States in a speech-cum-handshaking expedition culminating in a "coffee session" with American President George W. Bush, she had better be clear in her mind as to what she wants to accomplish by that visit.

The Chief Executive’s "address" to the United Nations General Assembly in New York will be touted as a big deal. While it gives her the opportunity for a bit of preening and hype, it’s not. Dozens of other visiting Chiefs of State will be speaking on the same day, and no matter what heights of rhetoric she scales or idealistic drum-beating she achieves, her gems of insight and wisdom will be swallowed up like a tiny pebble in the vast lake of UN non-listeners who’ve grown accustomed, over the years, to snore speeches and debates away.

They’ve heard it all before. Nobody’s exotic and different when appearing before that forum: they’re all exotic and different. President GMA must not worry or be miffed. The UN delegates treat everybody, from Big Powers to Small Bananas with the same kind of polite yawn. It used to be said in the 1940s whenever a new play or musical was being launched: "But how will it play in Peoria?" This referred to Peoria, Illinois, which used to be regarded as Hicksville, USA. Today, of course, even Peoria is forgotten.

In sum, what GMA says in her speeches abroad will be rated by a similar query: "How will it play back in Manila?"

As for her rendezvous with Mr. Bush, there’s no doubt it will be a friendly one. It will also be short. Whether it will be productive in terms of benefit to our country and people depends as much on George’s mood as it does on Gloria’s charm. She must be clear in her mind as to what we need, and, not to forget, what Washington will be able to deliver. Bush has a lot of "worries" on his plate nowadays (he can’t even open his mail for fear of anthrax), and we’re not a frontline state like Pakistan or Uzbekistan – or, for that matter, Russia.

But it never hurts to ask.

Winston Churchill of Britain cajoled, sweet-talked, Svengali’d, caroled, nagged and badgered Franklin Delano Roosevelt for years, in order to convince him to bring America and the huge human and industrial resources of the "New World" into the war against Hitler and the Axis Powers. Churchill event went to the extreme of reminding Roosevelt that his mother had been American. In the end, the Japanese did Churchill a favor: They bombed Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt, who had been fretting at the bit to help his crony Churchill and the gallant and beleaguered Brits finally got and seized his cue.

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The media suffered their first fatalities in the Afghan war when four journalists were killed in a Taliban militia ambush while covering the advance of troops of the rebel Northern Alliance. Two were French, one a German, and the fourth an American. What’s no longer strange is that two of the slain journalists were women.

Covering the fighting in a rugged country which alternates between desert and mountain fastness and is festooned with caves is no joke – particularly with winter arriving with its freezing rain, heavy shows, and the wind chill factor. When you’re operating in a land of wild tribesmen who hate each other, but much more foreigners, particularly when life and death mean nothing to them and are treated with the frustrating Islamic fatalism which still manages to confound Westerners, a war correspondent’s life must be difficult. However, the lure of fame and journalistic adventure are irresistible.

We hear much of the town of Peshawar in the frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan these days. What’s symbolic about Peshawar is that, judging from the current photographs and descriptions, it’s the same dustbin of donkey piss it had been when we covered the area. They still smoke argeeli or "hookan" water pipes by the roadside, wear the same colorful but soiled Pushtun (Pathan) turbans, brandish similar weapons, although they have graduated from homemade rifles and curved Kyber knives, to AK-47s, AGS-17 grenade launchers, RPG-18 anti-tank rockets, and moth-eaten tanks, mostly of Soviet manufacture.

As it has always been on the North West Frontier, Peshawar is a "Pathan" town, whose residents are the brothers, sisters and first cousins of the Pushtuns across the nearby Khyber Pass and the Afghan border. I remember, however, my first trip to a border outpost. Instead of being Caucasian-looking but unwashed Pushtuns, the four guards looked decidedly Oriental in character. They turned out to be Uzbek Afghans, a race composed of Mongolians and Turkish bloodstrains. The Tajik Afghans (who also lead the Northern Alliance) are descended from the Persians and used to be the nation’s educated "elite." Yet the "poor" tribal Pushtuns comprise 40 percent of the Afghan population.

The theory is that these fierce Mujahideen won’t accept "rule" by the Northern Alliance’s Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hasaras. For this reason, the Pakistanis – who invented and used to control the Taliban – are panicked by the Northern Alliance threat to capture Kabul, with the highway from Herat now, almost miraculously open to them. (Much of the "miracle", it has to be said, was accomplished by American and Allied bombing.) My view is that the rebels, unhampered by the same silly policy-making in Washington, DC which screwed up their Vietnam war effort, should be given free rein to take Kabul, then things can be sorted out later. The trouble is that nothing is ever sorted out in Afghanistan except by the barrel of the gun.

One thing is sure: A democracy it won’t be – not in this century.

In his book Jihad, which covers the Afghanistan 1980s war against the Soviets, a former SAS soldier, Tom Carew, describes Peshawar most graphically: "Peshawar had the bustling purposeful air of a frontier town – which, of course, it is – and was packed to bursting with armed men: Pakistani army, Frontier Police, armed tribesmen and Afghan Mujahideen, all mingling with journalists, film crews, aid workers and all the other tetosterone-tourists from the war-groupie flying circus."

Carew was infiltrated into the country to train the Mujahideen in the years when the nascent Taliban were Britain’s and America’s allies against the Russians. Now the roles are reversed, but I never cease to wonder at the flair for vocabulary, style and writing of such former SAS commandos as Carew and one of my favorite action novelists, Andy McNab (Remote Control, Farewell, Last Light, and of course his non-fiction Bravo Two Zero about the Gulf war). It’s like they picked up writing skills and narrative passion along with lessons in sabotage, para-jumping and all sorts of killing.

From the newsreels, I see that Peshawar, while still dirty and packed with the same kinds of tetosterone-tourists and hold-overs from the war-groupie flying circus, has attained a few refinements. One is the 5-star Khyber InterContinental Hotel. In more primitive days, we had to stay in the crumbling Green Hotel, redolent of Kipling and the last snorts of the British Raj. The Green’s facilities were so backward that, in cold autumn and winter nights, one had to huddle in the space just before the fireplace because they had no idea of central heating, nor air-conditioning for that matter. If you ran out of wood to stoke the fire, you and the bed-bugs in your army blanket had simply to tough it out, teeth chattering until the faint warmth of the day. Beside the newer InterContinental, I’m told, is an immaculate golf course. Wow. A far cry from the spartan days when those Pushtun men on horseback scrabbled and fought with each other for the prize, the head of a goat. Taking human heads has, on the other hand, been always the main event.

Beside the glowering Bala Hissar fort, built of equally crumbling red brick, you’ll still find moth-eaten camels, along with the typically Pathan gaudily-decorated cargo and passenger trucks. The Pushtuns or Pathans traditionally have been smugglers – of opium from the poppy fields, and other contraband. Robbing and killing in their Code are "okay", but never begging.

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And one more thing: All that pious bleating about observing the "holy month of Ramadan" by imposing a ceasefire is sheer nonsense. Most Afghans may be devout Muslims (in the south Sunni, in the north Shiite) but many observe the strictures of Ramadan like fasting, abstaining from drink and sex – between sunrise and sunset – more in the breach than in the observance. Just as Catholics speak of fasting and sacrifice for Lent, but many keep the Mardi Gras going way past Ash Wednesday, there’s a gulf between the lax and the devout. I remember that one of my good friends was a captain in the Pakistani Air Force – British-trained, which doesn’t quite explain his hedonism. One day he took me on a drive in his jeep, uncluttered by aides or security, through the hills of the Tribal Area. When we got to a secluded spot, he halted the jeep and said: "Let’s have a spot of lunch."

"Why," I exclaimed, "Aren’t you supposed to be fasting and abstaining?"

He winked: "Don’t be daft. Anyway, nobody’s looking." Then he brought out a food hamper almost as rich as you’ll ever find in Fortnums and Mason.

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I’m not saying that most Muslims are as lax and lacking in fervor as many of us Christians, but let’s never discount the frailties of the human condition. I found the same joie de vivre during Ramadan in Srinagar, the capital of disputed Kashmir. There were the devout and there were, in contrast, the epicureans. When the period of fasting and abstinence ended with a joyful Eid-ul-Fitr, it was a combination of Christmas and Easter rolled into one.

I’m surprised, though, that GMA has declared the Eid-ul-Fitr, the Muslim "Easter", a compulsory holiday for all Filipinos. We’re a secular state, and no religion, not even Catholicism, ought to be favored. Unfortunately, our President has a "please-all" attitude. Why, she’s even been praising that runaway mouth, Nur Misuari, instead of slapping him down for threatening to rejoin the rebellion and take to the hills. (After all those creature comforts, can brother Nur still stand the mosquitoes?)

In Arab countries, Ramadan, too, is not dour or gloomy. Once, I flew from London to Cairo, arriving there at past midnight at the height of Ramadan. My Egyptian friends who met me at the airport exclaimed: "You’re just in time!" In time for what? For the usual round of night-time parties. After sunset, the eating and "happy-happy" begin and those gatherings spilling over into the streets, go on till 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. Egypt, of course, is – aside from being the Land of the Pharaohs – a comparatively free-wheeling country in the Islamic world. It swings from fanaticism (many of our Islamic rebel leaders trained in Cairo) to liberalism. Those nite-clubs along the Avenue des Piramides extend almost to the Pyramids of Giza. Anyway, up to the Holiday Inn.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not making fun of the Muslim faith. We Christians don’t even try to pray five times a day, much less wash before each prayer. But let’s not go overboard. Sure – they wage war during Ramadan. How do you think the Afghans – would you believe – once stormed south, captured, and ruled Northern India? (And I’m not referring to the Mughals.)

The Afghans are a complex and complicated nation, full of contradictions, and full of fight. When the Americans, Brits, etc., finally get there in full force, the wily and ferocious Pathans will drive them nuts.