"Englishmen are as great fanatics in politics as Mohamedans in religion. They suppose that no country can be saved without English institutions."

Thomas Munro, an administrator intimately associated with the Madras Presidency on behalf of the East India Company for over 30 years grasped the religious fervour of his countrymen for their institutions several centuries ago. Centuries later, the dissolution of the Empire notwithstanding, Occidental Mysticism and the unshakeable Faith of the Faithful in the supremacy of their Institutions works miracles that few other religions can hope to compete with.

If Ahmad Zhaoui's case in New Zealand is anything to go by, the Institutions (and it must, henceforth, be written with a capital 'I') spawned by Englishmen continue to work their miracles in much the same way as a conjuror who works his magic with several balls in the air. Just when your eye rests on one, behold it has vanished into the air to be replaced by another!

Ahmad Zhaoui is an Algerian national who fled Algeria in 1993 and through a tortuous route via Belgium, Switzerland, Burkina Faso and Malaysia landed in 'God's own country', New Zealand, seeking refuge. Zhaoui sought refuge from an army that repudiated the election results in 1991, an election that returned him as an elected member of the Parliament. The army sentenced Zhaoui to death and to six life sentences, all in absentia. Of the Commandments in the Occidental Faith, the Algerian State had violated three already. The first one, all nations shall periodically hold elections and respect its results; second, that no person shall be sentenced without a trial and third, that the right to freedom of thought and expression is an inalienable right of all individuals.

So Zhaoui felt he might be granted refuge in God's own country. Instead he was arrested, shackled and put into solitary confinement in a high security prison for eleven months and continues to remain in prison. This despite the fact that the Refugee Status Appeals Authority (RSAA) in New Zealand, after an extensive hearing and an exhaustive decision running into more than 180 pages, has unequivocally determined that Zhaoui was a genuine refugee and should be granted permission to live in New Zealand.

The RSAA, however, is only one of the many Institutions involved in the conjuror's game that democracy has become. The decision of the RSAA and the hard fact of the military dictatorship in Algeria quickly went up in the air and disappeared. Two other magical balls from the bag of Institutions replaced it: National Security acting through the New Zealand Security and Intelligence Services (SIS) and the principle of the brotherhood of white nations that locks New Zealand into a web of complex institutional arrangements for intelligence sharing.

What one Institution, the RSAA cannot do another, the SIS, can. The New Zealand SIS, armed with new powers in the wake of the War on Terror, issued a Security Risk Certificate against Zhaoui that nullified the findings of the RSAA. For the Faithfuls in the government ably guided by the invisible hand of the Market on the one hand and the invisible SIS official on the other, the Security Risk Certificate was a miracle that could displace the RSAA's copious judgment.

The point is not so much that no one knows the basis on which the SIS official issued the certificate, but that no one CAN know the basis on which the certificate is issued or the criteria that must be used for assessing security risks. The mystical divinations of the SIS on who is and who is not a 'security risk' cannot be called into question in any court or judicial authority. At best it can be looked at by the Inspector General of SIS Intelligence and Security, who is also not entitled to know more than what his/her subordinate employees security intelligence officers are prepared to tell.

Even the Prime Minister and the Minister of Immigration are entitled to limited information through oral briefings by the SIS official issuing the certificate. Zhaoui is the last person deemed fit to appreciate the mystical revelations that led to the Occidental Fatwa in the form of the Security Risk Certificate.

However, like Thomas Munroe all those centuries ago, doubters, skeptics, cynics continue to lurk everywhere, including New Zealand. Soon, candle light vigils followed congregations on streets. They asked questions about international refugee and humanitarian law ordained by yet another Institution, the United Nations. They asked questions about democracy and transparency in public administration, a founding tenet of the Occidental Faith. And, they invoked that elusive and mystical principle called 'Humanity' in the treatment of Zhaoui, why hold him in isolation in a fortress like high security prison, even if he were a terrorist?

And, the miracle, it happened again. The reliance on the security institution, the SIS, vanished only to be replaced by yet others from the bag of English Institutions. Two new magical balls appeared before the citizens of New Zealand instead. Of course they valued democracy, international refugee and humanitarian law and kow-towed to the difficult principle of 'Humanity', the high priests of State Institutions argued.

It was precisely because they valued it so much that they must hold Zhaoui in detention: to save him from being tracked down by demonic unspecified terrorists who might want to gun him down. It was to protect Zhaoui and the New Zealand public from the Algerian mess landing at their doorsteps. Henceforth, if lives are in danger from gun-totting dictatorships, the safest place to keep people fleeing persecution is in high security prisons. After all, Australia, another member of the brotherhood of English Institutions does the same on a grander scale, all within the "rule of law" of course, because the law allows the executive authority to exercise discretionary powers in public interest.

The media, that Holy Scribe of the Occidental Faith, through all this maintains its equanimity and its unwavering Faith. It printed pictures of Zhaoui: the family man playing with his children, Zhaoui the wronged man interred behind high prison walls, Zhaoui the man befriended by the Faithful who believed in all the tenets of the Occidental Faith: elections, democracy, transparent administration, rule of law, human rights, et al.

It spoke about Zhaoui, but very little about Algeria and its people. Zhoui Zaoui materialised from nowhere on the day he landed at Auckland airport. And, it remained completely silent about the role of France and the Western powers generally in Algeria. "Are we France, the Western nations responsible in any why for bringing about a situation that required Ahmad Zhaoui to flee his homeland in order to live?" is a question that could become blasphemous with the potential to undermine the Occidental Faith and their Institution worship.

Even the more liberal 'Listener' magazine, highly critical of the SIS, could not go beyond comparing it with similar institutions in Canada, UK and the USA. The horizons do not include the widespread concerns in those countries about the role of security and intelligence institutions in the wake of the War on Terror for racism, xenophobia, refugees, and more importantly the meaning of democracy in the present context. What is important is that New Zealand must be in line with a group of fraternal nations. The Brotherhood supersedes the Commandments on which the Faith is founded.

No doubt more Institutional magic will materialize in the days to come. The Inspector-General has yet to give his findings on the Security Risk Certificate. Five years ago, in a case involving an illegal break-in by the SIS into the house of Aziz Choudry, an anti-globalisation activist, the Court observed that the Inspector-General need not be given any information on the operational aspects of gathering information, e.g. sources for the information. Following judicial precedents is another Commandment in the Occidental Faith analogous to respect for the dead and for ancestors in the oriental religions. Another round of litigation is bound to follow, going over the same facts, the same arguments and the same process.

Zhaoui is however a mere mortal, prone to depression, exhaustion and financial ruin. English Institutions are immortal. They have survived the Empire and other upheavals in history.

There is, by now, a voluminous body of critical writings and dissident voices that point to the rank opportunism that the War on Terror, a term used interchangeably with Islamic fundamentalism, has facilitated. Voices of dissent point to the hypocrisy of Western governments in their treatment of human rights and democracy when their interests are involved. They produce more and more evidence of the double standards of their institutions and the bankruptcy of their politicians and leaders. However, enumerating more and more factual instances of opportunism, double standards and hypocrisy does not explain much. How is it possible for a country that ranks amongst the best on human rights and civil liberties to hold a man in high security prison without any charges for ten months, and a further indefinite period in a regular prison? Why doesn't the SIS have any checks and balances in a country showcased as a model democracy? Above all why should a sovereign nation like New Zealand continue to remain almost entirely dependent for its security and intelligence, for it economy, for its moral and cultural sustenance on the family of nations spawned by England centuries ago?

How does the conjuror perform the Institutional hat trick?

The key to the answer to the question lies in interrogating the relationships between individuals and Institutions in Western societies. The structure of the relationships has deep roots in European social history. While is it commonplace these days to speak of fragmented lives and fragmented world views, it is less common to allude to the ways in which fact that each fragment is enframed within into different institutions that have a distinctive logic and an internal dynamic.

In Zhaoui's case for example, the RSAA, is an institution that enframes one dimension of a refugee's life, the humanitarian dimension. The SIS enframes another dimension: national security. The government's executive powers enframe the bilateral foreign relations and trade aspects that need not be discussed at all. The UNHCR and the international institutions enframe the codes that govern relations between a family of nations with ties that go back to the beginning of colonisation. Much of public international law has evolved through negotiations over colonial governance between colonial powers and continues to be so. Why is the UNHCR so helpless in cases such as Zhaoui's?

The media, another major institution in Western democracies, enframes, institutionally, the ideological and moral dimensions of a discourse. By setting the terms of the discourse and by ensuring that the population remains within the bounds set by it, the media creates the myth of freedom while securing the institutional foundations of society.

How do we explain the fact that even the most liberal sections of the media speak of Zhaoui but never of Algeria? Of the Cold War era when meddling in another country's politics to keep the 'godless' communists at bay was fair game? Of the subsequent economic liberalisation, privatisation, music to Western powers but traumatic for a population faced with unemployment and social distress? That dictatorships favourable to the West, that subscribe to globalisation and privatisation mantra as in Algeria may be condoned, but regimes that don't as in Iraq must be bombed out of existence?

How do we explain the amnesia about history? Algeria's not too distant colonial history that extends into the sixties and the misdemeanours of France that continues? The Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century? The Western hand in the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire? And, how does the information revolution miss the co-relation between imperialism, repression and religious nationalisms that have persisted throughout colonial history?

Fragmented lives are impossible without fragmented institutions. Juggling with different institutions allows juggling with different dimensions of a person's life, to maintain the mythology of freedom while the likes of Zhaoui languish in prisons. The potent power of Occidental Mysticism derives from its ability to pull off hat tricks with its Institutions in the hope that no one will ever find out how the conjuror performs his magic.