Newsline 24 April 2010, http://www.newslinemagazine.com/2010/04/the-bad-war/
Boloji 27 April 2010,
http://www.boloji.com/analysis2/0591.html
Uday India 07 May 2010,
http://www.udayindia.org/content_08may2010/view_point.html
============================================================
War is bad. Isn’t it a platitude to reaffirm and reassert this aphorism? However, the war that we are focusing on in the world’s largest democracy is not a war having simple connotations.
It is a war emanating from within. It is a war which engulfs about a third of the landmass. It is a war which makes the marginalized tribal groups squeal.
It is a war which perturbs the mind of the ordinary citizenry in the sprawling conurbations. It is a war with divided opinions. It is a war by virtue of which the country’s Home Minister proposes to put down his papers. And it is a war where even the Armed forces are not overtly willing to take part.
Nonetheless, it is a war. And it is being fought in the ‘fat strip’ of land hanging from the Indo-Nepal border down to Nizam’s Hyderabad; oh no, Sania Mirza’s Hyderabad. The capital of the insurgency is concentrated in the dense forests of Dandakaranya in the Central Indian province of Chhattisgarh. Adding spice to the meaty war, Chhattisgarh is ruled by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the major opposition to the ruling coalition in New Delhi led by the Indian National Congress (INC). Thus, BJP and INC may bicker on every trivial issue umpteen numbers of times at every nook and corner of the sub-continent; but on this very aspect are exhibiting strong resilience and camaraderie.
Now, who are the protagonists in this war? Activists and sympathizers say the tribals are spearheading the movement whereas the ruling elite castigate a group of ‘hoodlums’ termed as the Maoists to be behind this mayhem. The sleeping power structures of India have been forced to wake up and take into cognizance the increasing ‘threat scenario’ lurking around the socio-political dimensions of the nation. After all, 200 districts out of 600 are feeling the soaring temperatures of Improvised Explosive Devices, Pressure Bombs and Light Machine Guns; sometimes sophistication galore through the Insas and AK-47 rifles.
Skirmishes between security forces, basically police and the paramilitary on one side and the tribal-ultra combo on the other have consumed countably finite lives since 2004; when the resurrection of the Maoist activity in India took place.
But, surpassing limitations and belying imaginations, the Leftist ultras have dented the pride and esteem of the security forces on a number of occasions.
Nevertheless, the latest blow inflicted on the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) on the wee hours of Tuesday 06 April, has surely given the biggest ever conceivable jolt to the authorities since 1967, when the ephemeral and chimerical ‘revolution’ actually started off. A bunch of urban intellectuals centered in Kolkata manned the movement; effortlessly embraced their tribal brethren in the hinterlands and dreamt of overthrowing the vestiges of the colonial form of ‘parliamentary democracy’.
Political equations have evolved since then. Dynamics, both intra-party doctrinal conflicts amongst the splinter groups of the Maoists as well as their ‘territorial spread’ and ‘hold’ on the psyche of the tribal population, have also undergone robust structural changes. Rapid economic growth in the cities has to a large extent widened the gulf betwixt the rich and the poor in India. Hence, poverty thrives in the majority of the areas which makes these places more vulnerable to insurgency; non-violence being a largely outmoded option, long buried in the coffins of Satyagraha of pre-independent India.
Now, the talk of the town at the present juncture is obviously not the justification of the insurgency or evaluation of the exactitude of the government’s anti-insurgency policy; rather the present imbroglio that has cropped up after the mass assassination of the CRPF personnel on 06 April needs to be strategically measured.
Security analysts and former army personnel have left no stone unturned in chastising the lack of preparedness of the CRPF jawans, in criticizing their top brass for improper assessment of the ground situation and in clobbering the infrastructural architecture of the region: for instance, a CRPF jawan has to tread an arduous 3 km to access water; potability being a remote possibility.
The ‘atomic salary’ not being commensurate with the demands of the job, mass murder of this unprecedented scale is bound to de-scale the morale of the paramilitary.
Few pertinent questions still need to be answered. By whom, is not a matter of strangeness at all.
First, what was or is the role of the state police in combating the terror unleashed by the Leftist ultras. Since law and order is a state subject as per the Constitution, the affected states have to take up the cudgels and not ‘pass the buck onto the Union government’.
Amusingly, on the day of carnage which left around 75 CRPF personnel in the graveyard, there was hardly a sizeable contingent of state police along with them. As a matter of fact, only one state police personnel were butchered. The 62nd battalion of the CRPF, half of which was assassinated had gone for a ‘combined operation’ of area domination(1) in the core Maoist belt. Does this indicate that the state police are not efficient enough to be included in such ‘combined’ operations or is the CRPF taking up too much responsibility?
Furthermore, the CRPF came back along the same route which evidently made them fall into the trap set by the Maoists who are extremely adept in that forested topography. The ambush was carried out to the finest precision. There were only 7 survivors to tell the macabre tale. The CRPF jawans were so terrorized that the first estimate of the numerical strength of the ultras which they presumed was close to 1000.
This is something which warrants surprise and rightly so. The basic tenets of Guerrilla Warfare do not recommend so many troops when they are fighting in a favourable terrain. Definitely, the forests and hills are their favourable domains and moreover, the village of Chintalnar-Tarmetia, where the paramilitary was actually ambushed at around 7 am in the morning is part of the core area of the Maoists.
In fact, the legendary revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara opines: “the aggressiveness of the Guerrilla band can be greater in such a terrain on account of the difficulties that the enemy faces in bringing in reinforcements. They can get closer to the enemy, fight much more directly, more frontally and for a longer time with very few guerrillas”. (pg 33, Guerrilla Warfare).
The experienced Guevara’s tactical reading has to be spot on. Later reports do indicate that about 200 to 300 guerrillas had surrounded the security forces. Also, the reinforcements to the paramilitary arrived quite late. By then the ultras had clinically finished their key job and even completed their ancillary work of looting the ammunition of the opponents.
Underdevelopment or overexploitation, a serious tribal insurgency or a petty ideological upheaval, counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism; jargons have overflowed the jar containing solution and analyses.
Well, how will the government react now? If spontaneity had prevailed, then the authorities would have stepped up the combing operations, brought in more troops into the region and even used the aid of the Armed forces for logistical purposes. But these did not happen due to multifarious reasons. Firstly, the morale of the security forces has been severely dented and if we go by recent media reports then one is led to believe that the CRPF is not really enthusiastic in carrying forward with the present operations against the ultras.
Secondly, the option of using the Armed forces received a jolt when India’s Army General uttered caustic rhetoric regarding deploying them ‘against their own people’. And thirdly, though the ‘wise heads’ of New Delhi have tripped on many occasions in dealing with internal insurgency, by no stretch of imagination are they fools. Presently, they are playing a ‘wait and watch’ game and most probably would strike back when the militants would be off-guard. But for that to happen, Indian security forces need to have a strong foundation in Jungle Warfare Tactics; from the bottom to the top echelons of the elite forces. And for all practical purposes, that would require a considerable amount of time.
Prima facie being a potent weaponry, but deployment of the Army is not a feasible option as that would by all means aggravate the wound.
In this scenario, how shall the militants respond?
The militants have made their stand pretty clear. They have vowed that if the government does not release their top leaders and not halt the ongoing operations, they would continue to harass and heckle the security forces at different points in space and time. If it is Chattisgarh now, it can be West Bengal (eastern province of India) or even Maharashtra (western province) later. It is no clandestine affair that guerrilla tactics thrive on ‘unpredictability’ and the Indian Maoists would tend to hold that line in near future.
Undoubtedly, the fall in security situation does not augur well for development of tourism and foreign as well as domestic investment. As sources of foreign exchange and rejuvenating factors of the economy, these need to be bolstered. Thus the containment of this lethal insurrection is a sine qua non for the maintenance of Indian economy. Interestingly, even indigenous corporate houses have come up with solutions to tackle this imbroglio. For instance, Tata Steel has called for social infrastructure development in the Maoist areas. Already, ITC has served the peasant community by introducing agri-marketing through Information Technology.
Whether it is a jawan or a tribal-transformed Maoist, whoever falls, it’s ultimately an Indian which succumbs. Isn’t it the onus of all the Indians to put an end to the ongoing anarchy before the ‘bad war’ reaches its ne plus ultra?
Till then, the war shall go on, somewhat sporadically, in the arboreous heartlands of the sub-continent, with masses falling like hairpins.
Before winding up, the writer would prefer to humbly suggest the following:
Kindly bring the ultras to the negotiating table. Yes, that portends the danger of letting them regroup and invigorate. Officials experienced with dealing the Maoists in Andhra Pradesh would bludgeon this argument. Nevertheless, talking seems to be a fair option. But it won’t be unwise to talk to the ultras from a ‘position of strength’.
But how to define ‘a position of strength’? May be a major counter-offensive by the police and paramilitary in some other stronghold of the Maoists would confer that position on the authorities. Then again, the cycle of revenge may go on in an unending fashion.
It is noteworthy that ‘talking’ to the Leftists shall grant ‘time’ to the government too; something which is necessary so as to devise a coherent policy framework.
The ‘Andhra Model’ of tackling the Maoists by unleashing ‘terror versus terror’ may be kept in the reserve, lest the talks fail. The elite ‘Greyhound’ anti-insurgency forces built by Andhra Pradesh in the 1990s paid rich dividends in terms of obliterating the Maoists from that province. By all probability, personnel from that force can ‘coach’ the state police.
But the ‘den’ of the ultras should not be attacked. Rather, the peripheral outgrowths in other provinces should be pruned off first.
The guerrillas plan to ‘circle out’ and capture the Indian cities. The authorities should ‘circle in’ and capture their redoubts.
Human intelligence network of the police has to be improved. To achieve that, if needed even ‘bribing’ the local population to alienate them from the ‘core elements’ can be tried. But a grisly methodology like the ‘Salwa Judum’ (using tribals against the Maoists by supplying arms to them) has to be resisted.
Now for all these to fructify, the training procedure of the security forces has to be revamped. The political will has to be discovered. Unity of command needs to be coordinated.
A mammoth job indeed.
================================================================
1: “CRPF team had just no chance: Dantewada SP”, Rajeev Deshpande, Times of India, April 7 2010, pg 6
23 April, 2010
10 April, 2010
All Jungle No Mahal
The following piece has been published in "Uday India", Vol 1, No 18, April 17 2010
====================================================================
Abstract: This essay is a non-partisan attempt to present a critique of the ruling power-elite of West Bengal. It delves into the underlying causes of the emaciated state of Bengal. Furthermore, the piece forebodes a ‘change’ in the offing.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
If one ambles around the streets of Kolkata these days, he is bound to see a change amidst the infrastructural bouillabaisse that one is so accustomed with. A glance toward the main road (still recuperating from the inherent damage that it suffered when first constructed) shall bring into view the preened new buses, quite contrasting in style and make-up compared to the ramshackle old ones.
These are the products of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). They have been unleashed in the City of Palaces quite recently.
In fact, some of them are fully air-conditioned, a matter of immense delight for the Kolkata-ites; since time immemorial they are undergoing a life of penance and austerity. In that life of theirs, it was routine to save electricity and supply it to richer but ‘wanting’ provinces while they themselves burnt candles and carried lanterns.
Hence, to expect air-conditioning while commuting is to go to the extreme levels of hedonism.
It would be better to shake the memories. The Calcutta Metro Rail (underground railway), at the time of commencement, had air-conditioning. With time, the “Calcuttans” have become ‘conditioned’ to accept the non-existent.
If anybody thought the ‘bad days’ are over for Kolkata in particular and Bengal (the term West Bengal has become cliché, let’s use Bengal) in general, there is a catch. The prices of the tickets of these AC JNNURM buses are on the higher side. And very few Kolkata-ites have struggled to improve on their pay-package, exceptions notwithstanding.
The result? The beggarly haggard would slaver when he has the sight of the ‘running limousine’ but ‘financially coerced’ to jump onto the decrepit chassis.
Since 1977, Bengal has maintained the status quo: in terms of lack of industrialization, dilapidation of the education system and enrichment of the cadre-strength of the ruling party.
Bengal has shown utter disregard to improve the wherewithal of agriculture, power and infrastructure. And consequently stagnation of jobs has been the order of the day.
But surely, Bengal has mustered a few things, which is worthy to be emulated for any power-elite. It has shown the world how to ‘rule’ in the guise of ‘people’s friend’, without disclosing the stratagems (at least the ruling elite thought so!).
The process of manipulation was simple and not ahistorical. It did not demand any hyperingenuity. Still, it had to be implemented.
Therefore, one has to prostrate in front of those ‘geniuses’ of Bengal who really brought the plan to fruition.
The theorization of controlling the state machinery under the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ is extant. Who can forget Lenin’s thesis: “Party as vanguard of the Revolution”. The stalwart had faced contestations on this contentious issue from none other than his German compatriot Rosa Luxembourg. It is quite possible if Lenin had not expired so early, he might have reconciled with Rosa’s ideas later on. He was pragmatic enough. In fact, just after the Bolshevik Revolution, he adapted the bourgeoisie New Economic Policy, in order to stabilize Soviet Union.
But the communists of Bengal, primarily those who joined the party after the revolution in 1977, neither belonged to the same league as of the members of the then Bolshevik Party, nor had to go through an exertion to purify themselves. They kept on and still keep on proclaiming about the legendary Mao Zedong’s “Long March”. But they are nothing but windbags and their version of the ‘march’ is to proceed toward the Maidan in Central Kolkata and jam the roads and bring the whole city to a standstill.
And that has what has been in Bengal and Kolkata for the last three decades.
The citizens’ minds have been so amputated that even a single “Nandan” has been interpreted to be an amphitheatre and a single football stadium accommodating hordes has been projected as the ‘Garden of Eden’.
Nobody has bothered that there is not a single urban conurbation in Bengal which can be compared to even the collapsing Kolkata. Nobody has exhibited grievance against the daily bouts of power-cuts. Nobody uttered a single word against the blatant nepotism in the recruitment process of the judiciary, education et al. And nobody recriminated when the muscular communists of Bengal termed Netaji as the ‘quisling’. Just nobody.
Nirad Chowdhury had lamented in his “Autobiography of the Unknown Indian” when the trams of Calcutta were burnt during the freedom movement. This perception of his may be construed as blasphemous but ‘burning trams and buses’, breaking anything constructive and useful has become a culture in the last three burdensome decades for Bengal.
The countryside was deliberately kept ‘countryside’, distanced from the only city and towns were nobbled from growing into cities. The ‘outsider’ was asked to believe in the mysticism of the ‘fertile soil’ while the economist and the agronomist were befooled alike.
This mammoth task was achieved by inculcating the spirit of the 1977 revolution in the minds of the citizenry, stoking the so-called ‘cultural revolution’ along the lines of Mao Zedong and building a potent group of ‘cadres’ whose sole aim was to sustain the party structure and nothing else. The cadres and their families got the share of the pie while ‘others’ were simply alienated and forced to lead a life of penury.
A systematic build-up on these lines makes even Lenin salute the Bengal Communists and their cohorts.
Perhaps, some ‘light’ peeps in through the dark clouds. Like the JNNURM AC buses, like the burgeoning engineering colleges, like a few IT firms, like some ‘Pizza Huts’; items the communists have been forced to co-opt under the market forces. Well, after all Soviet Union collapsed and China survived by implementing ‘State controlled Capitalism’ and at the end of the day, our Bengal communists have been only blind followers of either China or USSR since the days of the Communist International.
However, the ‘light’ is not the modicum of capitalist items imported to the ‘land of the red’. Rather, the ‘light’ is the change in mindset of the masses, of the proletariat, of the ‘subalterns’; whom the communists vowed to protect, nurture and uplift to the utopia of communism: where ‘from each according to his faculty, and to each according to his need’.
The communists doctored the ‘needs’ of these ‘subalterns’, infiltrated in their domestic domains and stymied ‘their growth’.
Time seems to be up. The power-elite of Bengal is feeling the palpable ‘heat’ of ‘change’. The ‘change’ is not merely at the top. It shall not be just a ‘defeat’ at the assembly polls. It shall not be just the ‘juggernaut’ of the opposition party. Rather, it is the ‘change’ of ‘attitude’ of the ‘subalterns’.
Whether it is the Maoist-dominated Jangalmahal area or the Sundarbans or Darjeeling or the townships or Kolkata itself, the ‘change’ is visible. The ‘subalterns’, after decades of repression and arm-twisting which choked their vocal-chords, are gradually breaking the ‘communist’, rather the ‘Stalinist’ yoke.
Today if there is a prolonged power-cut, the ‘subaltern’ has the temerity to come out of his ‘hut’ and block the road. Today, he generates the steam to defy the diktat of a party-goon. And today he can march with impudence toward the Writer’s Building housing the babudom and their patriarchs.
A ‘subaltern’ in Bengal has invigorated himself.
This ‘change’ might be very well and quite naturally be cashed on in by the opposition in the coming assembly elections. In fact, the coalition did a similar thing in the concluded Lok Sabha polls. But the bells of warning need to be appreciated by the opposition too. A mileage in the elections may turn out to be an elegy in the long run if they too falter in the ‘path to deliverance’.
It has been all jungle-raaj here in Bengal for the last three decades. Mahals have been brought to dust, slowly but surely. The City of Palaces, through a quirk of fate has been reduced to an ‘urban disaster’. This has not been a ‘joyous’ phenomenon for Bengal’s masses.
The state has acted as a Goliath. Today, the Davids of Bengal are unidirectional in their approach and unequivocal in their assertion.
Can Bengal again have a set of palaces? Will the jungle-raaj evaporate? Or is this a quixotic desire?
====================================================================
Abstract: This essay is a non-partisan attempt to present a critique of the ruling power-elite of West Bengal. It delves into the underlying causes of the emaciated state of Bengal. Furthermore, the piece forebodes a ‘change’ in the offing.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
If one ambles around the streets of Kolkata these days, he is bound to see a change amidst the infrastructural bouillabaisse that one is so accustomed with. A glance toward the main road (still recuperating from the inherent damage that it suffered when first constructed) shall bring into view the preened new buses, quite contrasting in style and make-up compared to the ramshackle old ones.
These are the products of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). They have been unleashed in the City of Palaces quite recently.
In fact, some of them are fully air-conditioned, a matter of immense delight for the Kolkata-ites; since time immemorial they are undergoing a life of penance and austerity. In that life of theirs, it was routine to save electricity and supply it to richer but ‘wanting’ provinces while they themselves burnt candles and carried lanterns.
Hence, to expect air-conditioning while commuting is to go to the extreme levels of hedonism.
It would be better to shake the memories. The Calcutta Metro Rail (underground railway), at the time of commencement, had air-conditioning. With time, the “Calcuttans” have become ‘conditioned’ to accept the non-existent.
If anybody thought the ‘bad days’ are over for Kolkata in particular and Bengal (the term West Bengal has become cliché, let’s use Bengal) in general, there is a catch. The prices of the tickets of these AC JNNURM buses are on the higher side. And very few Kolkata-ites have struggled to improve on their pay-package, exceptions notwithstanding.
The result? The beggarly haggard would slaver when he has the sight of the ‘running limousine’ but ‘financially coerced’ to jump onto the decrepit chassis.
Since 1977, Bengal has maintained the status quo: in terms of lack of industrialization, dilapidation of the education system and enrichment of the cadre-strength of the ruling party.
Bengal has shown utter disregard to improve the wherewithal of agriculture, power and infrastructure. And consequently stagnation of jobs has been the order of the day.
But surely, Bengal has mustered a few things, which is worthy to be emulated for any power-elite. It has shown the world how to ‘rule’ in the guise of ‘people’s friend’, without disclosing the stratagems (at least the ruling elite thought so!).
The process of manipulation was simple and not ahistorical. It did not demand any hyperingenuity. Still, it had to be implemented.
Therefore, one has to prostrate in front of those ‘geniuses’ of Bengal who really brought the plan to fruition.
The theorization of controlling the state machinery under the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ is extant. Who can forget Lenin’s thesis: “Party as vanguard of the Revolution”. The stalwart had faced contestations on this contentious issue from none other than his German compatriot Rosa Luxembourg. It is quite possible if Lenin had not expired so early, he might have reconciled with Rosa’s ideas later on. He was pragmatic enough. In fact, just after the Bolshevik Revolution, he adapted the bourgeoisie New Economic Policy, in order to stabilize Soviet Union.
But the communists of Bengal, primarily those who joined the party after the revolution in 1977, neither belonged to the same league as of the members of the then Bolshevik Party, nor had to go through an exertion to purify themselves. They kept on and still keep on proclaiming about the legendary Mao Zedong’s “Long March”. But they are nothing but windbags and their version of the ‘march’ is to proceed toward the Maidan in Central Kolkata and jam the roads and bring the whole city to a standstill.
And that has what has been in Bengal and Kolkata for the last three decades.
The citizens’ minds have been so amputated that even a single “Nandan” has been interpreted to be an amphitheatre and a single football stadium accommodating hordes has been projected as the ‘Garden of Eden’.
Nobody has bothered that there is not a single urban conurbation in Bengal which can be compared to even the collapsing Kolkata. Nobody has exhibited grievance against the daily bouts of power-cuts. Nobody uttered a single word against the blatant nepotism in the recruitment process of the judiciary, education et al. And nobody recriminated when the muscular communists of Bengal termed Netaji as the ‘quisling’. Just nobody.
Nirad Chowdhury had lamented in his “Autobiography of the Unknown Indian” when the trams of Calcutta were burnt during the freedom movement. This perception of his may be construed as blasphemous but ‘burning trams and buses’, breaking anything constructive and useful has become a culture in the last three burdensome decades for Bengal.
The countryside was deliberately kept ‘countryside’, distanced from the only city and towns were nobbled from growing into cities. The ‘outsider’ was asked to believe in the mysticism of the ‘fertile soil’ while the economist and the agronomist were befooled alike.
This mammoth task was achieved by inculcating the spirit of the 1977 revolution in the minds of the citizenry, stoking the so-called ‘cultural revolution’ along the lines of Mao Zedong and building a potent group of ‘cadres’ whose sole aim was to sustain the party structure and nothing else. The cadres and their families got the share of the pie while ‘others’ were simply alienated and forced to lead a life of penury.
A systematic build-up on these lines makes even Lenin salute the Bengal Communists and their cohorts.
Perhaps, some ‘light’ peeps in through the dark clouds. Like the JNNURM AC buses, like the burgeoning engineering colleges, like a few IT firms, like some ‘Pizza Huts’; items the communists have been forced to co-opt under the market forces. Well, after all Soviet Union collapsed and China survived by implementing ‘State controlled Capitalism’ and at the end of the day, our Bengal communists have been only blind followers of either China or USSR since the days of the Communist International.
However, the ‘light’ is not the modicum of capitalist items imported to the ‘land of the red’. Rather, the ‘light’ is the change in mindset of the masses, of the proletariat, of the ‘subalterns’; whom the communists vowed to protect, nurture and uplift to the utopia of communism: where ‘from each according to his faculty, and to each according to his need’.
The communists doctored the ‘needs’ of these ‘subalterns’, infiltrated in their domestic domains and stymied ‘their growth’.
Time seems to be up. The power-elite of Bengal is feeling the palpable ‘heat’ of ‘change’. The ‘change’ is not merely at the top. It shall not be just a ‘defeat’ at the assembly polls. It shall not be just the ‘juggernaut’ of the opposition party. Rather, it is the ‘change’ of ‘attitude’ of the ‘subalterns’.
Whether it is the Maoist-dominated Jangalmahal area or the Sundarbans or Darjeeling or the townships or Kolkata itself, the ‘change’ is visible. The ‘subalterns’, after decades of repression and arm-twisting which choked their vocal-chords, are gradually breaking the ‘communist’, rather the ‘Stalinist’ yoke.
Today if there is a prolonged power-cut, the ‘subaltern’ has the temerity to come out of his ‘hut’ and block the road. Today, he generates the steam to defy the diktat of a party-goon. And today he can march with impudence toward the Writer’s Building housing the babudom and their patriarchs.
A ‘subaltern’ in Bengal has invigorated himself.
This ‘change’ might be very well and quite naturally be cashed on in by the opposition in the coming assembly elections. In fact, the coalition did a similar thing in the concluded Lok Sabha polls. But the bells of warning need to be appreciated by the opposition too. A mileage in the elections may turn out to be an elegy in the long run if they too falter in the ‘path to deliverance’.
It has been all jungle-raaj here in Bengal for the last three decades. Mahals have been brought to dust, slowly but surely. The City of Palaces, through a quirk of fate has been reduced to an ‘urban disaster’. This has not been a ‘joyous’ phenomenon for Bengal’s masses.
The state has acted as a Goliath. Today, the Davids of Bengal are unidirectional in their approach and unequivocal in their assertion.
Can Bengal again have a set of palaces? Will the jungle-raaj evaporate? Or is this a quixotic desire?
01 April, 2010
Nuclear Energy from 823 Corpses
Published in Global Politician (01/04/2010)http://www.globalpolitician.com/26328-india
=====================================================================
Uddipan Mukherjee, Ph.D. - 4/1/2010
Yesterday my friend was narrating the story line of a blockbuster Bollywood movie. As usual, it went like this. Once upon a time on the hills, a wealthy father had two sons. The elder one was sheepish and stolid whereas the younger one was rambunctious and hence unwieldy. One day, few bandits attacked their mansion. Actually they were in cahoots with the younger son. Since he was a cunning fellow, he fought and drove them away exhibiting histrionics. On the other hand, the elder one was slow to react and was dumbfounded in the process. The father was naturally too pleased with his younger son and proffered opulence to him. However, he was seized by greed and sought a blank cheque instead.
Aggravating frustration, my friend had to leave on an emergency, leaving the story unfinished at that critical juncture.
If you are not at all bewildered by the innovation of the script, no Oscar jury would express wonder either. Since you very well know that the above story conforms to reality, rather to a stark reality. And that pertains to the family of USA, India and Pakistan. No guesses for fitting in the characters though.
Pakistan has displayed perfect political acumen in 2009 vis-à-vis India in handling USA. Moreover, the Obama administration, since its inception has not been skewed toward the ‘Snorting Elephant’; quite unlike its predecessor George Bush Junior.
Furthermore, Pakistan received few full tosses, which were bestowed to it by both providence as well as its past deeds. Nevertheless, it bludgeoned those full tosses with impunity. Invasion of Swat was the first hit. But the second one was more productive as it had a direct bearing with US interests in Afghanistan. And the third hit crossed the boundary with élan. Presently, Pakistan is cruising towards victory. Still it needs to be cautious.
After Swat, the ground attack of the Pakistani Army in South Waziristan was crucial in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). They started the Operation Rah-i-Nijat (Path to Deliverance) on 17 October 2009 amidst a lot of speculation by media, analysts and the US government. The attitude of the military elite under Kayani was not beyond doubt. As time progressed, the zone of conflict spread to other agencies of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA); like North Waziristan, Khyber, Kurram and Orakzai.
US pressure was relentless and the Pakistanis had to comply. They not only adhered to the US dictates but also yielded more fruits as they clamped down on the top notch Taliban leadership like Mullah Baradar; which dealt a heavy blow to the Taliban Shura based in Quetta. Now, it doesn’t require only the US intelligence and General McChrystal to repeatedly stress on the need to dismantle the Quetta Shura so as to facilitate a smooth power transfer to Karzai’s fledgling cabinet.
On the eastern side of the Indus river, comfortably housed within the confines of South Block, the ‘wise heads’ of New Delhi could hardly chalk out the contours of policy required to handle the Af-Pak region. They stumbled and rambled but hardly gambled with a post-1991 foreign policy. Or did they at all have any such policy to play with?
Recent news is that the ‘wise heads’ of New Delhi have started crafting a ‘new’ ‘Afghan policy’! According to reports, New Delhi may even be ready to talk to the ‘reactionary’ Taliban and the Hizb-e-Islami group headed by Gulbuddin Hikmetyar. That too while continuing their dalliance with the Northern Alliance. How would these contrasting and mutually antagonistic moves be reconciled is another question altogether.
The result of India’s inaction in Afghanistan has crudely manifested when Pakistan’s Foreign Minister smiled at the US Secretary of State, shook hands with her and even had the audacity to dwell upon a ludicrous 56-page ‘wish list’. Washington too, was flirtatious with its ‘tottering ally’ with not merely the assurance of weaponry, drone technology or dollars; rather pierced the comfort zone of South Block by allowing Qureshi to proclaim about a Pak-US civilian nuclear deal in the offing, in line with the Indo-US 123 deal.
From 2001 to 2004, India’s Prime Minister; the geriatric Vajpayee provided the momentum for an invigorated Indo-US camaraderie by igniting the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership. The move paid off handsomely for India, both technologically and in terms of political mileage; when after about five years the civilian nuclear deal fructified. India was too pacified with it and more so as US assured a ‘no-deal’ to Pakistan.
Well, India has just not been able to de-link itself from its amputated body part since 1947 and hence keeps on comparing itself to the ‘Land of Jinnah’.
2010 gives a bitter twist to the status-quo. It’s now Pakistan which has pulled off a victory through the Strategic Dialogue with White House. There’s no need to watch the ‘Next Steps’ with a telescope. They would be visibly clear but the issue of consideration here is whether Pakistan can clinch a Nuke Deal like that of India’s?
Going by Pakistan’s credibility (A Q Khan issue and the territory being the breeding ground for extremists), this seems the ‘remotest of remote’ cases. However, ‘Realpolitik’ knows no bounds and ethics and morality can muster no force against the Realist Doctrine in International Relations.
Obama needs a feasible but ‘imperious’ ‘exit path’ from the ‘Graveyard of Empires’. And if the Kayani-Zardari-Gilani triumvirate can provide him such a route, clear it by sweeping away the pebbles and microliths; then anything is possible.
It may be beyond rational expectations the kind of gift and honour that Pakistan can generate through years of hobnobbing with the neo-imperialists.
When Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik was bloating in the Parliament that 823 militants have perished during the last five months in the Operation Rah-i-Nijat, the numbers being contested by his opposition colleagues; the trumpets had already been blown in front of her Highness Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Benjamin Franklin Room and concessions prayed for.
Is the Pakistani establishment honestly worried about its power-starved masses or is it merely wishing a political parity with its ‘childhood enemy’?
Would the Obama regime so easily allow its errant son or even for that matter its bovine son to run away with the nuclear stockpile without putting their thumb impressions on the asymmetric charter infamously called the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?
Uddipan Mukherjee has a PhD from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in the Department of Atomic Energy, India.
=====================================================================
Uddipan Mukherjee, Ph.D. - 4/1/2010
Yesterday my friend was narrating the story line of a blockbuster Bollywood movie. As usual, it went like this. Once upon a time on the hills, a wealthy father had two sons. The elder one was sheepish and stolid whereas the younger one was rambunctious and hence unwieldy. One day, few bandits attacked their mansion. Actually they were in cahoots with the younger son. Since he was a cunning fellow, he fought and drove them away exhibiting histrionics. On the other hand, the elder one was slow to react and was dumbfounded in the process. The father was naturally too pleased with his younger son and proffered opulence to him. However, he was seized by greed and sought a blank cheque instead.
Aggravating frustration, my friend had to leave on an emergency, leaving the story unfinished at that critical juncture.
If you are not at all bewildered by the innovation of the script, no Oscar jury would express wonder either. Since you very well know that the above story conforms to reality, rather to a stark reality. And that pertains to the family of USA, India and Pakistan. No guesses for fitting in the characters though.
Pakistan has displayed perfect political acumen in 2009 vis-à-vis India in handling USA. Moreover, the Obama administration, since its inception has not been skewed toward the ‘Snorting Elephant’; quite unlike its predecessor George Bush Junior.
Furthermore, Pakistan received few full tosses, which were bestowed to it by both providence as well as its past deeds. Nevertheless, it bludgeoned those full tosses with impunity. Invasion of Swat was the first hit. But the second one was more productive as it had a direct bearing with US interests in Afghanistan. And the third hit crossed the boundary with élan. Presently, Pakistan is cruising towards victory. Still it needs to be cautious.
After Swat, the ground attack of the Pakistani Army in South Waziristan was crucial in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). They started the Operation Rah-i-Nijat (Path to Deliverance) on 17 October 2009 amidst a lot of speculation by media, analysts and the US government. The attitude of the military elite under Kayani was not beyond doubt. As time progressed, the zone of conflict spread to other agencies of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA); like North Waziristan, Khyber, Kurram and Orakzai.
US pressure was relentless and the Pakistanis had to comply. They not only adhered to the US dictates but also yielded more fruits as they clamped down on the top notch Taliban leadership like Mullah Baradar; which dealt a heavy blow to the Taliban Shura based in Quetta. Now, it doesn’t require only the US intelligence and General McChrystal to repeatedly stress on the need to dismantle the Quetta Shura so as to facilitate a smooth power transfer to Karzai’s fledgling cabinet.
On the eastern side of the Indus river, comfortably housed within the confines of South Block, the ‘wise heads’ of New Delhi could hardly chalk out the contours of policy required to handle the Af-Pak region. They stumbled and rambled but hardly gambled with a post-1991 foreign policy. Or did they at all have any such policy to play with?
Recent news is that the ‘wise heads’ of New Delhi have started crafting a ‘new’ ‘Afghan policy’! According to reports, New Delhi may even be ready to talk to the ‘reactionary’ Taliban and the Hizb-e-Islami group headed by Gulbuddin Hikmetyar. That too while continuing their dalliance with the Northern Alliance. How would these contrasting and mutually antagonistic moves be reconciled is another question altogether.
The result of India’s inaction in Afghanistan has crudely manifested when Pakistan’s Foreign Minister smiled at the US Secretary of State, shook hands with her and even had the audacity to dwell upon a ludicrous 56-page ‘wish list’. Washington too, was flirtatious with its ‘tottering ally’ with not merely the assurance of weaponry, drone technology or dollars; rather pierced the comfort zone of South Block by allowing Qureshi to proclaim about a Pak-US civilian nuclear deal in the offing, in line with the Indo-US 123 deal.
From 2001 to 2004, India’s Prime Minister; the geriatric Vajpayee provided the momentum for an invigorated Indo-US camaraderie by igniting the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership. The move paid off handsomely for India, both technologically and in terms of political mileage; when after about five years the civilian nuclear deal fructified. India was too pacified with it and more so as US assured a ‘no-deal’ to Pakistan.
Well, India has just not been able to de-link itself from its amputated body part since 1947 and hence keeps on comparing itself to the ‘Land of Jinnah’.
2010 gives a bitter twist to the status-quo. It’s now Pakistan which has pulled off a victory through the Strategic Dialogue with White House. There’s no need to watch the ‘Next Steps’ with a telescope. They would be visibly clear but the issue of consideration here is whether Pakistan can clinch a Nuke Deal like that of India’s?
Going by Pakistan’s credibility (A Q Khan issue and the territory being the breeding ground for extremists), this seems the ‘remotest of remote’ cases. However, ‘Realpolitik’ knows no bounds and ethics and morality can muster no force against the Realist Doctrine in International Relations.
Obama needs a feasible but ‘imperious’ ‘exit path’ from the ‘Graveyard of Empires’. And if the Kayani-Zardari-Gilani triumvirate can provide him such a route, clear it by sweeping away the pebbles and microliths; then anything is possible.
It may be beyond rational expectations the kind of gift and honour that Pakistan can generate through years of hobnobbing with the neo-imperialists.
When Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik was bloating in the Parliament that 823 militants have perished during the last five months in the Operation Rah-i-Nijat, the numbers being contested by his opposition colleagues; the trumpets had already been blown in front of her Highness Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Benjamin Franklin Room and concessions prayed for.
Is the Pakistani establishment honestly worried about its power-starved masses or is it merely wishing a political parity with its ‘childhood enemy’?
Would the Obama regime so easily allow its errant son or even for that matter its bovine son to run away with the nuclear stockpile without putting their thumb impressions on the asymmetric charter infamously called the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?
Uddipan Mukherjee has a PhD from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in the Department of Atomic Energy, India.
Don't Forget the Tajik Elections
http://www.diplomaticourier.org/kmitan/articleback.php?newsid=501
=======================================================================
March 29, 2010
By Uddipan Mukherjee, Guest Contributor
Amidst the election hullabaloo in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Iraq, the parliamentary election in the Central Asian state of Tajikistan proceeded with scant notice by international media.
Truthfully, the elections were too predictable to warrant much coverage. President Emomali Rahmon’s National Democratic Party of Tajikistan commanded the polls, as has always been the case, in post-Soviet Tajikistan; his entourage nonchalantly bagged 55 of the 63 parliament seats.
Rahmon overtly detests any remnant of the Soviet-era. Three years ago he even changed his surname from the Soviet-esque, “Rahmonov” to the more indigenous, “Rahmon.” Behind this façade, however, Rahmon mans his nation’s helm like a Soviet-style Communist Supremo—flouting democratic norms openly.
The man has quite literally ruled Tajikistan since 1992. He clenched power in three consecutive Presidential elections: 1994, 1999, and 2006 and has conveniently altered the Constitution to extend the presidential term from five to seven years.
Almost all opposition parties were banned by the Rahmon government in late 1992, with most Islamic activists exiled. While Political opposition does exist in the country today, it functions without any discernible effect. The Islamic Renaissance Party or the Islamic Revival Party (IRP), championed by Muhiddin Kabiri, protested alleged fraud and irregularities in the recent February parliamentary election, but has been wholly ignored.
Indeed, under the direction of Rahmon, the electoral democracy of Tajikistan has yet to see the light of the day. The United States, along with the Organization for Security and Cooperation’s (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, observed that the February 28 election “was beset by procedural irregularities and fraud, including cases of ballot stuffing”. Other electoral malpractice like use of coercion against the opposition candidates has also been reported.
Rahmon is poised to maintain power through his political musculature for many years to come. The moot point is whether the current situation in his country is fuelling any socio-political flutters.
At the very outset, Tajikistan’s history in the post-Soviet domination is indicative of a rebellious mindset amongst its citizenry. Furthermore, though secularism is part of its socio-cultural fabric, Tajikistan may turn to Islamism in the long run if there is a continuance of dictatorship. Lastly, neighboring Afghanistan is already squealing under the influence of Taliban-Al Qaeda and hence a corollary of that conflict is a spillover across the river Panj to Tajikistan. This scenario is more probable now as the United States is using the Central Asian territory to supply non-military goods to its troops in Afghanistan in the form of the infrastructure called Northern Distribution Network.
Thus it may be inferred that entropy could slowly be increasing in Tajikistan and the potentialities of chaos do exist. With the present war in Afghanistan taking ominous proportions and disgruntled Tajik youth returning from Russia due to lack of economic activity, the interiors of Tajikistan may turn out to be a cauldron of conflicts.
Divestment of political powers and democratic reforms must be adopted by the present dispensation to pacify matters. If not, an Orange Revolution might not be totally ruled out, at least on a theoretical plane.
It remains to be seen how the international players, especially United States takes cognizance of the state of affairs in the region.
Mukherjee holds a doctoral degree from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai (under Department of Atomic Energy of India). He is a Columnist at UPI Asia.com and has published widely in global publications. Presently he writes on International Relations and security issues pertaining to India.
[DIPLOMATIC COURIER]
Copyright 2006-2010 The Diplomatic Courier™. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
=======================================================================
March 29, 2010
By Uddipan Mukherjee, Guest Contributor
Amidst the election hullabaloo in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Iraq, the parliamentary election in the Central Asian state of Tajikistan proceeded with scant notice by international media.
Truthfully, the elections were too predictable to warrant much coverage. President Emomali Rahmon’s National Democratic Party of Tajikistan commanded the polls, as has always been the case, in post-Soviet Tajikistan; his entourage nonchalantly bagged 55 of the 63 parliament seats.
Rahmon overtly detests any remnant of the Soviet-era. Three years ago he even changed his surname from the Soviet-esque, “Rahmonov” to the more indigenous, “Rahmon.” Behind this façade, however, Rahmon mans his nation’s helm like a Soviet-style Communist Supremo—flouting democratic norms openly.
The man has quite literally ruled Tajikistan since 1992. He clenched power in three consecutive Presidential elections: 1994, 1999, and 2006 and has conveniently altered the Constitution to extend the presidential term from five to seven years.
Almost all opposition parties were banned by the Rahmon government in late 1992, with most Islamic activists exiled. While Political opposition does exist in the country today, it functions without any discernible effect. The Islamic Renaissance Party or the Islamic Revival Party (IRP), championed by Muhiddin Kabiri, protested alleged fraud and irregularities in the recent February parliamentary election, but has been wholly ignored.
Indeed, under the direction of Rahmon, the electoral democracy of Tajikistan has yet to see the light of the day. The United States, along with the Organization for Security and Cooperation’s (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, observed that the February 28 election “was beset by procedural irregularities and fraud, including cases of ballot stuffing”. Other electoral malpractice like use of coercion against the opposition candidates has also been reported.
Rahmon is poised to maintain power through his political musculature for many years to come. The moot point is whether the current situation in his country is fuelling any socio-political flutters.
At the very outset, Tajikistan’s history in the post-Soviet domination is indicative of a rebellious mindset amongst its citizenry. Furthermore, though secularism is part of its socio-cultural fabric, Tajikistan may turn to Islamism in the long run if there is a continuance of dictatorship. Lastly, neighboring Afghanistan is already squealing under the influence of Taliban-Al Qaeda and hence a corollary of that conflict is a spillover across the river Panj to Tajikistan. This scenario is more probable now as the United States is using the Central Asian territory to supply non-military goods to its troops in Afghanistan in the form of the infrastructure called Northern Distribution Network.
Thus it may be inferred that entropy could slowly be increasing in Tajikistan and the potentialities of chaos do exist. With the present war in Afghanistan taking ominous proportions and disgruntled Tajik youth returning from Russia due to lack of economic activity, the interiors of Tajikistan may turn out to be a cauldron of conflicts.
Divestment of political powers and democratic reforms must be adopted by the present dispensation to pacify matters. If not, an Orange Revolution might not be totally ruled out, at least on a theoretical plane.
It remains to be seen how the international players, especially United States takes cognizance of the state of affairs in the region.
Mukherjee holds a doctoral degree from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai (under Department of Atomic Energy of India). He is a Columnist at UPI Asia.com and has published widely in global publications. Presently he writes on International Relations and security issues pertaining to India.
[DIPLOMATIC COURIER]
Copyright 2006-2010 The Diplomatic Courier™. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
16 March, 2010
Brother In, Friend Out
This is an Op-Ed piece for News Blaze
http://newsblaze.com/story/20100315112819uddi.nb/topstory.html
================================================================
One thing is as clear as crystal. India needs to pack its bags and leave Afghanistan. None of the parties want it to stay. The Taliban and the Pakistani government never wanted it to. Now, even its 'friend' Karzai, to an extent under coercion, does not want it to meddle in Afghan affairs any further.
It's just a matter of time now. Only the modalities need to be sorted out.
The Afghan President Hamid Karzai's most recent visit to Pakistan last week, agreeing to arrange a series of peace Jirgas (Councils of Tribal leaders) with 'active Pakistani involvement' made matters absolutely transparent that finally the US-Pakistan camaraderie in the 'Global War On Terror' is bearing its true fruit.
USA has disbursed the Kerry-Lugar largesse to the civil administration of Pakistan. In return, the Pakistani authorities have acted with alacrity in tightening the noose around the Taliban by pumping in resources to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in order to continue the military offensive.
Ground operations in Swat valley have also gone on with enthusiasm. And to add to the list of accomplishments, several top Taliban commanders have been arrested in Pakistan, the big fish being Mullah Baradar; the man only second in the hierarchy to Mullah Omar.
Pakistan should be eulogized for its cunning diplomatic moves. On one hand, it appeased the Americans by acting against the Taliban and on the other it did not totally alienate the Taliban either. Pakistan is yet to reach the 'breaking point'.
Moreover, the civil administration seems to have handled pressure from the judiciary well, at least for the time being. Furthermore, the Zardari-Gilani duo configured proper arrangements with the Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Pervez Kayani; which could be seen from the service extension of Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the Chief of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).
India however, appears to have bungled, at least as far as the ground realities are concerned. No doubt, it had put in a good deal of finances in rebuilding war-torn Afghanistan, even completed the 200 km Delaram-Zaranj highway but was never unequivocal in its approach.
What did India actually want to achieve in Afghanistan? Did it want to thwart the Pakistani moves of establishing a 'strategic depth'? Or did India wish to use Afghanistan as a spring board to launch into resource-rich Central Asia? Or was it just an economic venture anyway?
These queries may be answered only by the Foreign Policy establishment of the 'Land of Eternal Peace'.
Nevertheless, the situation today is that even Karzai has come to terms with reality. He knows that in order to entrench himself in the seat of authority, he has to do three things.
First, he should be on mutually agreeable terms with the Americans. Thus, he must negotiate with the Pakistani government.
Second, he needs to bring the Taliban, either the 'good' or the 'bad' or both, to the discussion table. To implement that, he must again appeal to the Pakistanis because of their close links with key Taliban leaders.
And third, so as to make the first two issues a reality; he must not alienate the Pakistani civil-military elite in any manner. Thus a natural corollary is to maintain a safe distance from the Indians.
All of the above three moves are directly hurting Indian interests in the region.
Actually India's calculations regarding Afghanistan were spectacularly misleading. It probably believed, definitely on an emotional note, that the Americans could be bought by the nuclear deal, vote against Iran, stalling the Indo-Iran gas pipeline and some nice rhetoric.
But USA wanted a far stronger ally which could be a force not only in finances but also military into Afghanistan if needed. And India vacillated on this very point.
It was torn apart between the pulls of the Gandhi-Nehru doctrinal ideology and the post-cold war realities.
Finally, India succumbed to indecision, which has been the hallmark of Indian foreign policy since independence.
Thus, when the Indian educated Karzai says: "India is a close friend of Afghanistan but Pakistan is a brother of Afghanistan. Pakistan is a twin brother. We are conjoined twins, there's no separation," India surely needs to shiver.
But this fever had to come. The signals were there for the taking. India just did not possess the radar. Or may be it did not pay any heed to the vibrations on the screen.
The last option seems to be more plausible.
http://newsblaze.com/story/20100315112819uddi.nb/topstory.html
================================================================
One thing is as clear as crystal. India needs to pack its bags and leave Afghanistan. None of the parties want it to stay. The Taliban and the Pakistani government never wanted it to. Now, even its 'friend' Karzai, to an extent under coercion, does not want it to meddle in Afghan affairs any further.
It's just a matter of time now. Only the modalities need to be sorted out.
The Afghan President Hamid Karzai's most recent visit to Pakistan last week, agreeing to arrange a series of peace Jirgas (Councils of Tribal leaders) with 'active Pakistani involvement' made matters absolutely transparent that finally the US-Pakistan camaraderie in the 'Global War On Terror' is bearing its true fruit.
USA has disbursed the Kerry-Lugar largesse to the civil administration of Pakistan. In return, the Pakistani authorities have acted with alacrity in tightening the noose around the Taliban by pumping in resources to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in order to continue the military offensive.
Ground operations in Swat valley have also gone on with enthusiasm. And to add to the list of accomplishments, several top Taliban commanders have been arrested in Pakistan, the big fish being Mullah Baradar; the man only second in the hierarchy to Mullah Omar.
Pakistan should be eulogized for its cunning diplomatic moves. On one hand, it appeased the Americans by acting against the Taliban and on the other it did not totally alienate the Taliban either. Pakistan is yet to reach the 'breaking point'.
Moreover, the civil administration seems to have handled pressure from the judiciary well, at least for the time being. Furthermore, the Zardari-Gilani duo configured proper arrangements with the Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Pervez Kayani; which could be seen from the service extension of Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the Chief of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).
India however, appears to have bungled, at least as far as the ground realities are concerned. No doubt, it had put in a good deal of finances in rebuilding war-torn Afghanistan, even completed the 200 km Delaram-Zaranj highway but was never unequivocal in its approach.
What did India actually want to achieve in Afghanistan? Did it want to thwart the Pakistani moves of establishing a 'strategic depth'? Or did India wish to use Afghanistan as a spring board to launch into resource-rich Central Asia? Or was it just an economic venture anyway?
These queries may be answered only by the Foreign Policy establishment of the 'Land of Eternal Peace'.
Nevertheless, the situation today is that even Karzai has come to terms with reality. He knows that in order to entrench himself in the seat of authority, he has to do three things.
First, he should be on mutually agreeable terms with the Americans. Thus, he must negotiate with the Pakistani government.
Second, he needs to bring the Taliban, either the 'good' or the 'bad' or both, to the discussion table. To implement that, he must again appeal to the Pakistanis because of their close links with key Taliban leaders.
And third, so as to make the first two issues a reality; he must not alienate the Pakistani civil-military elite in any manner. Thus a natural corollary is to maintain a safe distance from the Indians.
All of the above three moves are directly hurting Indian interests in the region.
Actually India's calculations regarding Afghanistan were spectacularly misleading. It probably believed, definitely on an emotional note, that the Americans could be bought by the nuclear deal, vote against Iran, stalling the Indo-Iran gas pipeline and some nice rhetoric.
But USA wanted a far stronger ally which could be a force not only in finances but also military into Afghanistan if needed. And India vacillated on this very point.
It was torn apart between the pulls of the Gandhi-Nehru doctrinal ideology and the post-cold war realities.
Finally, India succumbed to indecision, which has been the hallmark of Indian foreign policy since independence.
Thus, when the Indian educated Karzai says: "India is a close friend of Afghanistan but Pakistan is a brother of Afghanistan. Pakistan is a twin brother. We are conjoined twins, there's no separation," India surely needs to shiver.
But this fever had to come. The signals were there for the taking. India just did not possess the radar. Or may be it did not pay any heed to the vibrations on the screen.
The last option seems to be more plausible.
What Blocks Global Investment in India
Published in Diplomatic Courier, 12 March 2010
http://www.diplomaticourier.org/kmitan/articleback.php?newsid=491
=======================================================================
In this causally-connected post Cold War neo-liberal world; any real-estate dilemma in Europe or USA makes the Indian stock indices jittery. Similarly, any socio-political imbroglio in India also curtails the investment capacities of multinational corporations : more so keeping in mind India’s immense potentialities as a ‘consumer market’.
Thus, the apparition of 1967 is haunting India and consequentially the world too.
The then ‘Naxals’ are now being termed as ‘Maoists’. Nomenclature has changed, but the essence of the problem remains. The genesis of the armed resistance in 1967 was in the hamlet of ‘Naxalbari’ in the eastern province of West Bengal. At that juncture, the movement was temporarily curbed by the ‘state apparatus’.
Any insurgency sustains itself by feeding on the population and the Maoists are doing it no differently. The ‘protracted people’s war’ which was thought to have fizzled out in the early 1970s raised its serpentine head in 2004. Since then, the Maoists have ‘upped the ante’ and extended their dominions to penetrate large swathes of the Indian landmass. Presently, about one-third of the districts (substantially rural) in India are under the ‘Maoist Influence’. The area basically stretches from the Indo-Nepal border in the north to the southern part of the subcontinent; cutting across several provinces in its trajectory.
The Maoists staunchly oppose any form of market liberalization and global integration of goods and services. They view globalization as a powerful vehicle that assaults ‘tribal culture’ and threatens their ‘socio-economic existence’. They strictly disbelieve in the ‘trickle-down theory’ adopted by a welfare state.
Hence, they are opposed to mega projects by transnational corporations. About US $3 bn Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) being poured in by global steel giants like ArcelorMittal (Luxembourg based) and Posco (of South Korea) is hanging in balance due to the hurdles in acquiring spaces in the rural hinterlands. An attempt of the ‘Indonesian-based Salim Group’ to set up a chemical hub in a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in West Bengal was thwarted in 2007. On the other hand, Indian giants like the Tatas and the Vedanta group are facing strong opposition by the Naxal-backed tribals while making inroads into the rural backyards.
The strong propaganda machinery as well as the armed militia of the Maoists deters the growth of infrastructure and ‘first world development’ in the rural zones of the subcontinent. Though they speak volumes for ‘lack of development’ of the Indian peasantry, but ironically tend to impede ‘growth’ in the long run citing ideological rationale.
India is in definite need of FDI along with the concomitant infrastructure. In 2009, total FDI inflow into India as per the estimates of Ministry of Commerce and Industry amounted to US $19.9 bn (till August). China, on the other hand mustered an FDI four times compared to India in the same period.
The contribution of the manufacturing sector towards overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in India is hovering around 28 per cent for the last seven to eight years. And with the declining contribution of the decrepit agricultural sector (about 17 per cent in 2007-08), India needs to boost its secondary sector so as to climb up the ladder of industrialization. In that venture, FDI is imperative. In this scenario, the Maoist insurgency is a serious impediment and the authorities have to act in a positive definite manner to boost India’s image as an ‘investor friendly’ nation.
Data from the Ministry of Home Affairs clearly show a gradual rise of the number of casualties due to Maoist insurgency since 2004. The ‘liberated zones’ established by the insurgents in the Indian interiors pose dual problems of security and underdevelopment.
Manmohan Singh has been the ‘poster boy’ of the LPG (Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization) policy of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. In fact, he was the votary of ‘opening up India’ since 1991. Thus it is not only the Indian state that is confronting a major challenge but Dr. Singh’s credentials as a suave economist is also at stake. Returning back to power in May 2009, the UPA coalition had a formidable task to deal with; and that was to tackle the Left Wing Extremism which had emerged according to Singh, as the ‘biggest internal security threat’.
Hence, the much hyped “Operation Green Hunt” was launched in the Dantewada district of the Central Indian state of Chattisgarh in September 2009 to flush out the rebels. In the face of vehement criticism by large sections of civil society against this military offensive, the Home Ministry has probably put a halt on the operation.
Alarmingly, though the ultras prima facie despise globalization and liberalization, they are going ahead in forging a pan-South Asia network of terror. There are reports of a covert alliance of the ‘almost decimated’ Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Maoists of India. Actually the sagging LTTE may want to bolster their structure through a fresh base in South India, close to the Lankan landmass whereas the Maoists would seek to cash in on their ‘land warfare expertise’. Also, the knowledge of the LTTE about the global arms racket can be a viable option for the Indian Maoists.
Any further ‘alliance of sorts’ of this combo with the Pakistani based jihadi groups would prove ominous to both India and the US as the Taliban and Al Qaeda would then find sanctuaries in India.
Already, it is established that the Nepalese Maoists have close strategic and military links with their counterparts in India.
Recently, the Home Secretary G K Pillai has suggested that ‘small arms and ammunitions’ from China are being smuggled into India to feed the Maoist rebels. This opens up a completely new dimension of the quandary. The disturbed ‘political climate’ between India and China might suffer another blow from this angle with Dalai Lama’s visit to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh already generating controversy.
The solutions to this imbroglio are non-linear. Analysts and experts have opined that the Indian government needs to have ‘unconditional’ talk with the Maoists. Honest efforts have to be made on the part of the mainstream to bring the tribals within the ‘social pale’. The huge tracts of land housing mineral resources need to be holistically dealt with. The government can broker a deal between the tribals and the Transnational Enterprises (TNEs), with a ‘win-win’ situation for both. On an encourage note, India has seen instances of ‘Contract Farming’ ventures by TNEs with PepsiCo successfully entering into one.
The Indian nation-state cannot veer away from the ‘development paradigm’ of interconnectedness with the global economy that it had embarked post Cold War. Similarly, the Leftist rebels have to appreciate the inevitability of integration of the tribals with their urban counterparts. India is on the track of globalization and their cannot exist ‘undeveloped islands’ within its topography. If the sub-continent has to grow in double-digits and the world has to benefit from its growth both as a consumer market and a knowledge powerhouse, then the ‘Maoist Menace’ needs to be sorted out. And if the rebels are loath to accept new ideas and want to stick to the age-old moorings, then it would be construed as an anachronism.
http://www.diplomaticourier.org/kmitan/articleback.php?newsid=491
=======================================================================
In this causally-connected post Cold War neo-liberal world; any real-estate dilemma in Europe or USA makes the Indian stock indices jittery. Similarly, any socio-political imbroglio in India also curtails the investment capacities of multinational corporations : more so keeping in mind India’s immense potentialities as a ‘consumer market’.
Thus, the apparition of 1967 is haunting India and consequentially the world too.
The then ‘Naxals’ are now being termed as ‘Maoists’. Nomenclature has changed, but the essence of the problem remains. The genesis of the armed resistance in 1967 was in the hamlet of ‘Naxalbari’ in the eastern province of West Bengal. At that juncture, the movement was temporarily curbed by the ‘state apparatus’.
Any insurgency sustains itself by feeding on the population and the Maoists are doing it no differently. The ‘protracted people’s war’ which was thought to have fizzled out in the early 1970s raised its serpentine head in 2004. Since then, the Maoists have ‘upped the ante’ and extended their dominions to penetrate large swathes of the Indian landmass. Presently, about one-third of the districts (substantially rural) in India are under the ‘Maoist Influence’. The area basically stretches from the Indo-Nepal border in the north to the southern part of the subcontinent; cutting across several provinces in its trajectory.
The Maoists staunchly oppose any form of market liberalization and global integration of goods and services. They view globalization as a powerful vehicle that assaults ‘tribal culture’ and threatens their ‘socio-economic existence’. They strictly disbelieve in the ‘trickle-down theory’ adopted by a welfare state.
Hence, they are opposed to mega projects by transnational corporations. About US $3 bn Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) being poured in by global steel giants like ArcelorMittal (Luxembourg based) and Posco (of South Korea) is hanging in balance due to the hurdles in acquiring spaces in the rural hinterlands. An attempt of the ‘Indonesian-based Salim Group’ to set up a chemical hub in a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in West Bengal was thwarted in 2007. On the other hand, Indian giants like the Tatas and the Vedanta group are facing strong opposition by the Naxal-backed tribals while making inroads into the rural backyards.
The strong propaganda machinery as well as the armed militia of the Maoists deters the growth of infrastructure and ‘first world development’ in the rural zones of the subcontinent. Though they speak volumes for ‘lack of development’ of the Indian peasantry, but ironically tend to impede ‘growth’ in the long run citing ideological rationale.
India is in definite need of FDI along with the concomitant infrastructure. In 2009, total FDI inflow into India as per the estimates of Ministry of Commerce and Industry amounted to US $19.9 bn (till August). China, on the other hand mustered an FDI four times compared to India in the same period.
The contribution of the manufacturing sector towards overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in India is hovering around 28 per cent for the last seven to eight years. And with the declining contribution of the decrepit agricultural sector (about 17 per cent in 2007-08), India needs to boost its secondary sector so as to climb up the ladder of industrialization. In that venture, FDI is imperative. In this scenario, the Maoist insurgency is a serious impediment and the authorities have to act in a positive definite manner to boost India’s image as an ‘investor friendly’ nation.
Data from the Ministry of Home Affairs clearly show a gradual rise of the number of casualties due to Maoist insurgency since 2004. The ‘liberated zones’ established by the insurgents in the Indian interiors pose dual problems of security and underdevelopment.
Manmohan Singh has been the ‘poster boy’ of the LPG (Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization) policy of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. In fact, he was the votary of ‘opening up India’ since 1991. Thus it is not only the Indian state that is confronting a major challenge but Dr. Singh’s credentials as a suave economist is also at stake. Returning back to power in May 2009, the UPA coalition had a formidable task to deal with; and that was to tackle the Left Wing Extremism which had emerged according to Singh, as the ‘biggest internal security threat’.
Hence, the much hyped “Operation Green Hunt” was launched in the Dantewada district of the Central Indian state of Chattisgarh in September 2009 to flush out the rebels. In the face of vehement criticism by large sections of civil society against this military offensive, the Home Ministry has probably put a halt on the operation.
Alarmingly, though the ultras prima facie despise globalization and liberalization, they are going ahead in forging a pan-South Asia network of terror. There are reports of a covert alliance of the ‘almost decimated’ Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Maoists of India. Actually the sagging LTTE may want to bolster their structure through a fresh base in South India, close to the Lankan landmass whereas the Maoists would seek to cash in on their ‘land warfare expertise’. Also, the knowledge of the LTTE about the global arms racket can be a viable option for the Indian Maoists.
Any further ‘alliance of sorts’ of this combo with the Pakistani based jihadi groups would prove ominous to both India and the US as the Taliban and Al Qaeda would then find sanctuaries in India.
Already, it is established that the Nepalese Maoists have close strategic and military links with their counterparts in India.
Recently, the Home Secretary G K Pillai has suggested that ‘small arms and ammunitions’ from China are being smuggled into India to feed the Maoist rebels. This opens up a completely new dimension of the quandary. The disturbed ‘political climate’ between India and China might suffer another blow from this angle with Dalai Lama’s visit to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh already generating controversy.
The solutions to this imbroglio are non-linear. Analysts and experts have opined that the Indian government needs to have ‘unconditional’ talk with the Maoists. Honest efforts have to be made on the part of the mainstream to bring the tribals within the ‘social pale’. The huge tracts of land housing mineral resources need to be holistically dealt with. The government can broker a deal between the tribals and the Transnational Enterprises (TNEs), with a ‘win-win’ situation for both. On an encourage note, India has seen instances of ‘Contract Farming’ ventures by TNEs with PepsiCo successfully entering into one.
The Indian nation-state cannot veer away from the ‘development paradigm’ of interconnectedness with the global economy that it had embarked post Cold War. Similarly, the Leftist rebels have to appreciate the inevitability of integration of the tribals with their urban counterparts. India is on the track of globalization and their cannot exist ‘undeveloped islands’ within its topography. If the sub-continent has to grow in double-digits and the world has to benefit from its growth both as a consumer market and a knowledge powerhouse, then the ‘Maoist Menace’ needs to be sorted out. And if the rebels are loath to accept new ideas and want to stick to the age-old moorings, then it would be construed as an anachronism.
05 March, 2010
Indian Democracy Overthrown by 2050?
Fri, Mar 5 08:50 PM
New Delhi, Mar 5 (ANI): Union Home Secretary G K Pillai said on Friday that the Maoists have formulated an agenda to overthrow the Indian democratic system by 2050.
Addressing a seminar on "Left Wing Extremism Situation in India", at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis Pillai said: Documents which were found revealed that the Maoist agenda was to overthrow the Indian state by 2050, possibly with the help of ex-Armymen."
Commenting over holding talks with the Maoists in the line of ongoing dialogue with Naga rebels, Pillai said: "Maoists were not serious about talks because they weren't under enough pressure to do so."
He also opined that unless they feel the heat they will not come for talks and whatever statement they were making about peace were not serious.
"Right now, Maoists were looking to regroup and build their own army towards their plans," he added.
Pillai further said that the Maoists were using administrative vacuum and under development to do such activities.
Home Secretary reiterated that development is the only mantra to fight back the Maoists menace.
He said even though the joint anti-Naxal operations were going on, the Naxals have not suffered any significant reverses so far and the government would need seven to eight years to have full control over the areas which were lost to the Maoists.
"The operations have not hit even five per cent of hardcore militants. The real armed cadres are yet to come out," Pillai said.
Earlier, Home Minister P Chidambaram had asked Maoists to abjure violence and asked them to contact for peace talks. (ANI)
New Delhi, Mar 5 (ANI): Union Home Secretary G K Pillai said on Friday that the Maoists have formulated an agenda to overthrow the Indian democratic system by 2050.
Addressing a seminar on "Left Wing Extremism Situation in India", at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis Pillai said: Documents which were found revealed that the Maoist agenda was to overthrow the Indian state by 2050, possibly with the help of ex-Armymen."
Commenting over holding talks with the Maoists in the line of ongoing dialogue with Naga rebels, Pillai said: "Maoists were not serious about talks because they weren't under enough pressure to do so."
He also opined that unless they feel the heat they will not come for talks and whatever statement they were making about peace were not serious.
"Right now, Maoists were looking to regroup and build their own army towards their plans," he added.
Pillai further said that the Maoists were using administrative vacuum and under development to do such activities.
Home Secretary reiterated that development is the only mantra to fight back the Maoists menace.
He said even though the joint anti-Naxal operations were going on, the Naxals have not suffered any significant reverses so far and the government would need seven to eight years to have full control over the areas which were lost to the Maoists.
"The operations have not hit even five per cent of hardcore militants. The real armed cadres are yet to come out," Pillai said.
Earlier, Home Minister P Chidambaram had asked Maoists to abjure violence and asked them to contact for peace talks. (ANI)
NO Indo-Pak Talks?
Fri, Mar 5 11:28 AM (YahooNews)
Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is unlikely to meet his Indian counterpart Dr. Manmohan Singh in Washington, where they are scheduled to attend the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on April 12 and 13.
Pakistan Foreign Office (FO) spokesman Abdul Basit said he is unaware of any such meeting between the two leaders on the sidelines of the upcoming summit.
"I don't know yet," The Daily Times quoted Basit, as saying.
The focus of the conference hosted by President Barack Obama is on securing vulnerable nuclear materials and preventing acts of "nuclear terrorism".
The White House has invited 44 countries to the summit, though the list of delegates has not been finalised yet.
"The purpose of the summit is to discuss steps we can collectively take to secure vulnerable nuclear materials and prevent acts of nuclear terrorism," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs had said earlier.
Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is unlikely to meet his Indian counterpart Dr. Manmohan Singh in Washington, where they are scheduled to attend the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on April 12 and 13.
Pakistan Foreign Office (FO) spokesman Abdul Basit said he is unaware of any such meeting between the two leaders on the sidelines of the upcoming summit.
"I don't know yet," The Daily Times quoted Basit, as saying.
The focus of the conference hosted by President Barack Obama is on securing vulnerable nuclear materials and preventing acts of "nuclear terrorism".
The White House has invited 44 countries to the summit, though the list of delegates has not been finalised yet.
"The purpose of the summit is to discuss steps we can collectively take to secure vulnerable nuclear materials and prevent acts of nuclear terrorism," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs had said earlier.
03 March, 2010
Will the Sheikhs "SHAKE"?
http://newsblaze.com/story/20100303171946uddi.nb/topstory.html
==============================================================
A string of incidents over the last weekend must have perturbed many, especially the Indians.
First, last week, the stalled Indo-Pak talks resumed, though Indian External Affairs Minister expressed an aversion to calling them an extension of the "Composite Dialogue".
The next day, suicide attacks in Kabul claimed a number of Indian lives, along with other foreign guests in Afghanistan. The Taliban lost no time in accepting the responsibility for it; as if we didn't know who did it.
And to provide the cushioning effect, our Premier Dr Singh flew to the "Land of the Custodian of Two Holy Mosques" the following day, for a three day visit.
In between, Twitter-oor (our beloved Shashi Tharoor) came up with another articulated 'gimmick' which has become his usual stuff since he ascended the 'throne' of the 'junior' external affairs minister.
Interestingly, this time round, Twitter-oor might not have been that casual in spelling out that the "Saudis can act as interlocutors in Indo-Pak discussions". Though he soon had to clarify his statement repeatedly in the media (which he cherishes) that he never intended to mean that Saudi Arabia can be a 'mediator'. He showed amazement at the ignorance of politicos and media personnel about the meaning of the word 'interlocutor'.
Well, what does Tharoor think of others? Are they nerds? Are they lamebrains?
People were 'not too idiots' to not have read between the lines of Twitter-oor's statement. To later on pose in the media and harp upon definitions, simply downgrades an erudite fellow as Shashi Tharoor is, or rather was.
Now, getting back to the issue, during his return from Riyadh this week, Dr Singh, to a query, indeed uttered that he did discuss Indo-Pak relations with the King of Saudi Arabia on a one-to-one basis. And in fact, he requested Abdul Aziz to use his good offices to persuade Pakistan to desist from the path of abetting terrorism.
This, to anybody's guess, shall clear it all. Tharoor was not just casually twittering. He had the blessing of Dr Singh. After all, he is the 'junior' External Affairs Minister and a pet of the UPA government. But then, he is slightly pampered and hence leaked the matter before India's Prime Minister could proclaim it at large.
A scholarly analysis of India's standpoint on Kashmir and cross-border terrorism might consume volumes and we are here not in a forum to do so. Our focal point of consideration is why India is keen to enjoin Saudi Arabia to solve Indo-Pak bilateral issues?
The answer to this puzzling question is in fact, quite simple. India's foreign policy has, to date, not been able to break the 'frozen igloos' carefully built during the days of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. We may speak volumes for the 'paradigm shift' in our economic as well foreign policies post 1991, however, the ground reality is far from changed, at least as far as foreign policy is concerned.
Regarding Kashmir, Pandit Nehru referred to the United Nations and that was the genesis of today's intractable "Kashmir problem" and along with it the 'cross-border terrorism'. A number of wars with Pakistan have been the inevitable outcome of such a 'goof-up' committed by our celebrated predecessors.
Nevertheless, the most recent Indian overture to Saudi Arabia to 'talk' (not to mediate!!) to Pakistan, so as to reduce its terror sanctuaries is a logical extension of such a culture persisting in India. On one side, India is reluctant to resume the "Composite Dialogue" with Pakistan on a one-to-one basis, whereas it is prodding the Kingdom to nudge Pakistan on the other.
This clearly portrays India's hypocrisy in formulating a clear foreign policy, and also highlights India's helplessness in tackling terror in South Asia. After all, it is being pushed out of the fray in Afghanistan and Pakistan remains a favourite to the Americans.
In this entangled scenario, to expect the Sheikhs of Arabia to act as 'interlocutors' and persuade Pakistan to dismantle its terror-structure to favour India, is simply ludicrous.
Moreover, the Saudis were the first nation, along with Pakistan, to have acknowledged the Taliban government in Afghanistan.
The Sheikhs may "shake" in their own private ballrooms, but to expect them do that for the Indians would definitely be the expectations of buffoons.
We may watch a Jackie Chan movie instead.
==============================================================
A string of incidents over the last weekend must have perturbed many, especially the Indians.
First, last week, the stalled Indo-Pak talks resumed, though Indian External Affairs Minister expressed an aversion to calling them an extension of the "Composite Dialogue".
The next day, suicide attacks in Kabul claimed a number of Indian lives, along with other foreign guests in Afghanistan. The Taliban lost no time in accepting the responsibility for it; as if we didn't know who did it.
And to provide the cushioning effect, our Premier Dr Singh flew to the "Land of the Custodian of Two Holy Mosques" the following day, for a three day visit.
In between, Twitter-oor (our beloved Shashi Tharoor) came up with another articulated 'gimmick' which has become his usual stuff since he ascended the 'throne' of the 'junior' external affairs minister.
Interestingly, this time round, Twitter-oor might not have been that casual in spelling out that the "Saudis can act as interlocutors in Indo-Pak discussions". Though he soon had to clarify his statement repeatedly in the media (which he cherishes) that he never intended to mean that Saudi Arabia can be a 'mediator'. He showed amazement at the ignorance of politicos and media personnel about the meaning of the word 'interlocutor'.
Well, what does Tharoor think of others? Are they nerds? Are they lamebrains?
People were 'not too idiots' to not have read between the lines of Twitter-oor's statement. To later on pose in the media and harp upon definitions, simply downgrades an erudite fellow as Shashi Tharoor is, or rather was.
Now, getting back to the issue, during his return from Riyadh this week, Dr Singh, to a query, indeed uttered that he did discuss Indo-Pak relations with the King of Saudi Arabia on a one-to-one basis. And in fact, he requested Abdul Aziz to use his good offices to persuade Pakistan to desist from the path of abetting terrorism.
This, to anybody's guess, shall clear it all. Tharoor was not just casually twittering. He had the blessing of Dr Singh. After all, he is the 'junior' External Affairs Minister and a pet of the UPA government. But then, he is slightly pampered and hence leaked the matter before India's Prime Minister could proclaim it at large.
A scholarly analysis of India's standpoint on Kashmir and cross-border terrorism might consume volumes and we are here not in a forum to do so. Our focal point of consideration is why India is keen to enjoin Saudi Arabia to solve Indo-Pak bilateral issues?
The answer to this puzzling question is in fact, quite simple. India's foreign policy has, to date, not been able to break the 'frozen igloos' carefully built during the days of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. We may speak volumes for the 'paradigm shift' in our economic as well foreign policies post 1991, however, the ground reality is far from changed, at least as far as foreign policy is concerned.
Regarding Kashmir, Pandit Nehru referred to the United Nations and that was the genesis of today's intractable "Kashmir problem" and along with it the 'cross-border terrorism'. A number of wars with Pakistan have been the inevitable outcome of such a 'goof-up' committed by our celebrated predecessors.
Nevertheless, the most recent Indian overture to Saudi Arabia to 'talk' (not to mediate!!) to Pakistan, so as to reduce its terror sanctuaries is a logical extension of such a culture persisting in India. On one side, India is reluctant to resume the "Composite Dialogue" with Pakistan on a one-to-one basis, whereas it is prodding the Kingdom to nudge Pakistan on the other.
This clearly portrays India's hypocrisy in formulating a clear foreign policy, and also highlights India's helplessness in tackling terror in South Asia. After all, it is being pushed out of the fray in Afghanistan and Pakistan remains a favourite to the Americans.
In this entangled scenario, to expect the Sheikhs of Arabia to act as 'interlocutors' and persuade Pakistan to dismantle its terror-structure to favour India, is simply ludicrous.
Moreover, the Saudis were the first nation, along with Pakistan, to have acknowledged the Taliban government in Afghanistan.
The Sheikhs may "shake" in their own private ballrooms, but to expect them do that for the Indians would definitely be the expectations of buffoons.
We may watch a Jackie Chan movie instead.
Dr Singh Clarifies US stance toward Kashmir
New Delhi, March 3 (ANI): Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday clarified that there is no change in the U.S. policy towards India and Pakistan over the Kashmir issue.
Dr. Singh's reply came in response to senior BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani's question saying that President Barack Obama in his election campaigns had vowed to solve the Kashmir issue, if got elected, as Mr. Advani said: "The new president of America has said many times in his election speeches, that if got elected, I will put full force behind solving the Kashmir issue. However before that American policy was we will not intervene until India and Pakistan both ask for it. If they don't ask we will not intervene and want them to bilaterally hold dialogue."
Replying to Advani's query Dr. Singh said there was no change in the policy of the U.S. towards New Delhi and Islamabad.
"I feel very sorry that you are using this forum of debate, I think, to sow, I think, seeds of, I think, we wouldn't like to say...., what you have attributed to President Obama, is certainly not true. I have had number of discussions with President Obama and he has said to me unambiguously there is no change in the U.S. policy towards India and Pakistan," said Dr. Singh.
U.S. recently welcomed first official talks between India and Pakistan since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, held in New Delhi last week. U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said in Washington the two countries had taken "a courageous step to open the door to dialogue" and he hoped it would be built on.
Re-engaging Pakistan was a politically fraught move for India, given strong public opinion against talks, but a nudge from Washington and dwindling diplomatic options saw India reaching out.
The first official talks between India and Pakistan ended with only an agreement to "keep in touch," signaling that relations between them remain frosty. (ANI)
Dr. Singh's reply came in response to senior BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani's question saying that President Barack Obama in his election campaigns had vowed to solve the Kashmir issue, if got elected, as Mr. Advani said: "The new president of America has said many times in his election speeches, that if got elected, I will put full force behind solving the Kashmir issue. However before that American policy was we will not intervene until India and Pakistan both ask for it. If they don't ask we will not intervene and want them to bilaterally hold dialogue."
Replying to Advani's query Dr. Singh said there was no change in the policy of the U.S. towards New Delhi and Islamabad.
"I feel very sorry that you are using this forum of debate, I think, to sow, I think, seeds of, I think, we wouldn't like to say...., what you have attributed to President Obama, is certainly not true. I have had number of discussions with President Obama and he has said to me unambiguously there is no change in the U.S. policy towards India and Pakistan," said Dr. Singh.
U.S. recently welcomed first official talks between India and Pakistan since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, held in New Delhi last week. U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said in Washington the two countries had taken "a courageous step to open the door to dialogue" and he hoped it would be built on.
Re-engaging Pakistan was a politically fraught move for India, given strong public opinion against talks, but a nudge from Washington and dwindling diplomatic options saw India reaching out.
The first official talks between India and Pakistan ended with only an agreement to "keep in touch," signaling that relations between them remain frosty. (ANI)
Maoist Training Manual?
Narayanpura (Chhattisgarh), March 3 (ANI): Maoists are training their cadres in the usage of modern arms and ammunitions in the thick forest area of Chhattisgarh's Narayanpur District.
The huge forest areas of Bastar in Chhattisgarh state makes them favourable for the insurgent group to train their cadres.
They are also given on-the-job training through real attacks on security forces, planting of explosives, blowing up of government buildings and infrastructure. Guerrilla warfare tactics are also taught.
The trainees also include a large number of women.
The Maoist's military wing in the state regularly conducts rigorous physical and arms training for its cadres.
"The training of guerilla warriors, their warfare and fighting skills is very extensive and strong. The police forces can't fight against them because they are in hiding," said Sujeet Kumar, an expert on the Naxalite Movement.
"In guerilla warfare worldwide, the enemy attacks and runs away and that is what they are doing even here. In Bastar, there is jungle all around the narrow stretch of roads. So, it is easy for Maoists to attack and escape. The police forces don't even come to know," he added.
Maoists recruit children aged between six and 12 into their children's association, called Bal Sangams, where they are trained in Maoist ideology, used as informers and taught to fight with non-lethal weapons.
Kumar further said that the number of women Maoists is increasing by the day. They not only support their cause but are trained enough to carry out attacks and operations single-handedly.
"Women commanders are not just supporters but leaders. As far as their training is concerned, the women Maoists, who are capable of leading the operation, are appointed in the Bal Sangam. Students aged 6-12 are trained in the Bal Sangams," Kumar said.
"After the girls attain the age of 20, they are equipped and trained enough to carry out the operations and lead from the front. These women are tried and tested several time over before andling the responsibility. The number of women Maoists is increasing day by day and I believe that in another 4-5 years their count will reach fifty percent," he added. (ANI)
The huge forest areas of Bastar in Chhattisgarh state makes them favourable for the insurgent group to train their cadres.
They are also given on-the-job training through real attacks on security forces, planting of explosives, blowing up of government buildings and infrastructure. Guerrilla warfare tactics are also taught.
The trainees also include a large number of women.
The Maoist's military wing in the state regularly conducts rigorous physical and arms training for its cadres.
"The training of guerilla warriors, their warfare and fighting skills is very extensive and strong. The police forces can't fight against them because they are in hiding," said Sujeet Kumar, an expert on the Naxalite Movement.
"In guerilla warfare worldwide, the enemy attacks and runs away and that is what they are doing even here. In Bastar, there is jungle all around the narrow stretch of roads. So, it is easy for Maoists to attack and escape. The police forces don't even come to know," he added.
Maoists recruit children aged between six and 12 into their children's association, called Bal Sangams, where they are trained in Maoist ideology, used as informers and taught to fight with non-lethal weapons.
Kumar further said that the number of women Maoists is increasing by the day. They not only support their cause but are trained enough to carry out attacks and operations single-handedly.
"Women commanders are not just supporters but leaders. As far as their training is concerned, the women Maoists, who are capable of leading the operation, are appointed in the Bal Sangam. Students aged 6-12 are trained in the Bal Sangams," Kumar said.
"After the girls attain the age of 20, they are equipped and trained enough to carry out the operations and lead from the front. These women are tried and tested several time over before andling the responsibility. The number of women Maoists is increasing day by day and I believe that in another 4-5 years their count will reach fifty percent," he added. (ANI)
02 March, 2010
Tajik Elections : FREE & FAIR ???
On 28th Feb 2010, the Tajik elections took place which more or less shall bring back or rather re-affirm Emomali Rakhmon in power. OSCE has alleged fraudulence in the elections. The main opposition party : Islamic Revival Party also alleges the same.
The Karachi Project ???
In the 1977 cold war thriller Telefon, a rogue KGB agent creates mayhem in the US simply by picking up a phone and reading a Robert Frost poem 'the woods are lovely, dark and deep...' to hypnotise sleeper agents who then go on to plant explosives across the continent.
The scenario could well echo a nefarious plan that India's security agencies are now grappling with: The Karachi Project set up by the Pakistan Army's ISI and groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and HUJI which utilise Pakistani-trained Indian-operatives to plant explosives in selected cities in the Indian heartland.
For at least three years now, Indian security agencies have known of the outlines of this scheme, which Home Secretary G.K. Pillai held responsible for the German Bakery blast in Pune.
"The link between the LeT and Indian Mujahideen (IM), as part of the project, has been established. The LeT pushed David Headley into India to recce potential targets. IM operatives went to Pakistan and viewed videos shot by him, so that they could be sent to India to carry out attacks," he said.
Named after the Pakistani port city and crime hotbed which has turned into a sanctuary for fugitive Indian underworld dons like Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon, the joint-venture project was conceived some time after 2003. It is part of an overall strategy which, Admiral Dennis Blair the director of National Intelligence told a US Senate committee on February 3, was for Pakistan to "use militant groups as an important part of its strategic arsenal to counter India's military and economic advantages".
The Karachi Project has been directly responsible for the deaths of over 500 Indians in 10 bomb blasts since 2005.
Details of the project were first revealed by Pakistan-born American jihadi David Coleman Headley to the FBI in December last year. According to him, the fugitive Bhatkal brothers Riaz and Iqbal who founded the IM, Mufti Sufiyan and underworld don Yaqoob Khan aka Rasool 'Party' were being sheltered in Karachi by the LeT and ISI.
Headley, who checked out Chabad House close to German Bakery, also told the FBI interrogators about serving and retired Pakistan Army officers being part of the project. Headley confirmed that the ISI had put together a team of Indian jihadis in the port city, calling it the Karachi Project. They were waiting to launch them into India for attacks.
Over 500 people have been killed in 10 terror attacks carried out by the Karachi Project since 2005.
Headley recceed targets for the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks while shuttling between Mumbai and Karachi thrice in 2006 and 2008. Pune also figured prominently in his terror reconnaissance missions. He visited Pune twice, in 2008 and 2009, and stayed at the Surya Villa Hotel near the Osho Ashram and the local Jewish synagogue during his latter visit. This was part of his March 2008 survey of Israeli targets--Chabad Houses across Delhi, Pushkar, Goa, Pune and Mumbai--for future terror attacks.
More details of the plot emerged after the arrest of Abdul Khwaja, second-in-command of Shahid Bilal, who headed the Bangladesh HUJI unit. Khwaja was picked up by the R&AW in a clandestine 'rendition' operation in Bangladesh in December last year.
Spirited out to Sri Lanka and later to Chennai, he was brought to Hyderabad in January where he told interrogators that while he was at a terror camp in Karachi, IM chief Amir Reza Khan was also there during a briefing session when a retired Pakistan army officer showed them videos of terror targets like Pune's Osho Ashram and South Mumbai's Knesseth Eliyahu Synagogue. He revealed the targets include the R&AW headquarters in Delhi's CGO complex, the German Bakery in Pune, RSS offices in Nagpur and Kolkata, and oil refineries in Hyderabad and Chennai. Khwaja and Amir were then asked to take up the project, along with Asif, who is Amir's brother and a fourth IM activist Abdul Aziz.
Khwaja, wanted for a suicide bombing attempt on the Andhra Pradesh task force office in 2005, also told interrogators that the plan includes targeting police officers in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. Echoing Headley's confession, he said a large number of highly indoctrinated jihadi Indian nationals were housed in the Pakistani port city waiting for orders to strike.
The contours of this nefarious joint venture were fairly simple, as an intelligence official puts it, "Use disaffected Indian youth to carry out terror strikes using locally available bomb material. The objectives of the project were twofold: strike terror in the Indian heartland without raising suspicions of Pakistan's involvement."
In intelligence jargon, this is called a plausibly deniable operation. Unlike the 26/11 Mumbai attacks which left behind damning evidence of Pakistani involvement--Pakistani national Ajmal Amir Kasab--this operation would use only Indian nationals. They were recruited by Lashkar spotters either in India, Pakistan or Bangladesh and indoctrinated using propaganda videos showing the Babri Masjid demolition and Gujarat riots.
Through Khwaja and others like him arrested earlier, the agencies deduced that the youth were being trained by the ISI in a remote region of Balochistan. How they figured this was through a detailed study of the interrogation reports of at least a dozen Pakistan-trained Indian militants. The recruits were ferried across the border for arms training in the rugged province of Pakistan.
Here, starting in around 2003, the ISI began training these operatives in small groups of four to five. In two years, intelligence sources estimate, between 40 and 50 jihadis had been similarly trained and infiltrated into India.
Interrogations of at least 12 captured jihadis built up a picture of nondescript two-tent camps along the rugged coasts where candidates were given one-month training capsules, not in firing AK-47s but in bomb-making. "The four of us were driven out of Karachi for nine hours in a covered truck. We reached a camp in a desolate part of Pakistan, ringed by barren hills.
There were a few tents, four instructors and a few sentries. For one month, they trained us in the use of chemicals and locally available materials to fabricate IEDs. We were never told the location of the camp, but when we faced the rising sun, the sea was to our right. One day, one of the trainers pointed out a Pakistani border outpost on the Iran border," reads the confession of a militant trained in one of these camps.
If this sounds exactly like the training given to hundreds of Pakistani recruits in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (POK), there is a subtle but visible difference. Unlike the LeT camps in the hills above Muzzafarabad, the five-times-a-day prayer was not mandatory. Recruits in the Balochistan camps were allowed to play carrom and watch satellite television, mundane pleasures denied to the by-the-book jihadis in the POK camps. The trainers were Pakistani armymen in salwars. The camps were occasionally visited by evidently higher-ranking officials whom the trainers snapped to attention and addressed them by that very military salutation, 'sir'.
After completion of the training, many of the agents were infiltrated into India as sleeper cells, waiting for the command to strike. The agencies are unsure just how many operatives passed out of the camps and like Headley and Khwaja indicated, waiting for the signal to strike.
The template for the project was already there. The March 12, 1993, blasts in Mumbai which killed 257 people were executed by the then Dubai-based Ibrahim's gang. The ISI supplied the RDX for the 13 explosions using the same smuggling routes that landed gold, textile and watches in the 1970s and '80s. It trained Ibrahim's lieutenants and foot soldiers to handle, store, and finally plant the explosives.
Trail of Death
Shramjeevi Express, near Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, July 28,2005 IED kill 10 passengers and injures 79 on the Patna-New Delhi train.
Delhi, October 29, 2005 Three serial blasts before Diwali kill 62 people.
Varanasi, March 7, 2006 Three explosions at Sankat Mochan temple and railway station kill 21.
Mumbai, July 11, 2006 Seven bomb blasts in six local trains at peak hour kill 209.
Hyderabad, August 25, 2007 Twin blasts at garden and snack stall kill 42 people.
Lucknow, Varanasi, Faizabad, November 24, 2007 16 people killed in blasts in court complexes in the three cities.
Jaipur, May 13, 2008 Nine blasts in market place kill 63 people.
Ahmedabad, July 26, 2008 22 IED blasts at 17 places kill 53.
Delhi, September 13, 2008 Five blasts in various locations kill 30 people.
Pune, February 13, 2010 Eleven killed as IED explodes in a popular restaurant.
Ibrahim's syndicate, said the US Congressional Research Service Report released last month, provides an example of how a profit-motivated criminal syndicate morphed into a 'criminal-terrorism fusion model'. It is not the first one. The Taliban funds their insurgency through their formidable drug trafficking structure. But Ibrahim's syndicate is unique in that it has found state sponsorship and shelter.
A facility that the Karachi Project has now extended to an assortment of India's most wanted. Mobster Amir Raza Khan of Kolkata, Rasool 'Party', a don from Ahmedabad, and Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal of Karnataka and a Tablighi Jamaat maulavi Mufti Sufian Patangiya-- a group of fugitives whom one intelligence official calls a "bewildering array of poisonous snakes". Each had good reason to flee into Pakistan.
Patangiya was the main accused in the March 2003 murder of former Gujarat home minister Haren Pandya. Rasool was a former accomplice of slain Ahmedabad gangster Abdul Latif Shaikh and Amir, wanted by the police for his role in the 2002 attack on Kolkata's US consulate. Amir, who fled into Pakistan after the attack was recruited by the LeT military commander Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi.
The fugitives from Indian justice brought with them extensive knowledge of the lay of the land, local intelligence and contacts of the cities they came from and also helped the ISI-recruited jihadis from India. The kingpins dipped into a reservoir of disaffected Muslim youth for their foot soldiers.
Some of them were highly educated and members of the radical Students' Islamic Movement of India and others like Qayamuddin Kapadia, a graphics designer now being tried for the Gujarat bombings, set up the IM.
The IM was another front for the project and claimed credit for a string of attacks in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008, a further attempt by the ISI to distance itself from culpability. The Lashkar cat's paw which carried out a series of attacks was set up precisely for this purpose around 2007. The IM was born out of a meeting between Amir of Kolkata and Riyaz Bhatkal, an engineering graduate from Mumbai's Saboo Siddique college.
Indian investigators say the Karachi Project debuted on July 28, 2005, at around 5.15 p.m. in decidedly unspectacular settings--an IED was placed near the toilet of the Shramjeevi Express hurtling from Patna to Delhi. The results were deadly. Ten passengers were killed and 79 injured when an IED blasted through the coach.
After this, there was a bombing roughly every six months, clinically targeting places of worship, public transport and shopping centres. It seemed that the terrorists had only perfected their deadly art with every attack.
The twin attacks on Delhi in 2005 and 2008 and the dastardly attack on six local trains in Mumbai killed 209 people.The Bhatkals fled the police dragnet soon after the IM's spate of bombings in 2008 and managed to escape into Pakistan where they are now lodged in safe houses in Karachi.
The Indian intelligence agencies, meanwhile, were like the proverbial blind men feeling the sides of an elephant and the nation, seemingly impotent, unable to stop the bombings. Then the successes started coming in, if only in identifying the perpetrators. Between 2005 and 2007, the Delhi and Uttar Pradesh special task forces arrested several Lashkar and HUJI affiliated between 2005 and 2007, who revealed who was behind the plot.
In June 2007, Babu Bhai, a HUJI operative, was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Police while ferrying 8 kg of RDX. He confirmed the involvement of Amir in the network. From then on, investigators began tracing the dots linking Amir to the series of blasts. In fact, the only strikes not attributed to this unholy alliance of the jihadis, Pakistan army and underworld were the Ajmer, Samjhauta Express, Mecca Masjid and Bangalore bombings.
After the tactical hiatus of 2009 which India experienced as a result of various pressures on Pakistan, the latter calibrated its visible terrorist engagement downwards. These pressures have now been significantly diluted--particularly after the London conference, where the US indicated a pullout and suggested a willingness to 'franchise' the management of the Afghan conflict to Pakistan once again.
From a militant trained in one of the camps in Balochistan
"The four of us were driven out of Karachi for nine hours in a covered truck. We reached a camp in a desolate part of Pakistan, ringed by barren hills. There were a few tents, four instructors and a few sentries. For one month, they trained us in the use of chemicals and using locally available materials to build IEDs. We were never told the location of the camp, but when we faced the rising sun, the sea was to our right. One day, one of the trainers pointed out a Pakistani border outpost on the Iran border."
"All this has enormously increased the degree of impunity with which Pakistan engages in terrorism, and this would have been crucial in the decision to initiate a new phase of attacks against India," says Ajai Sahni of the Institute for Conflict Management.
"Instead of another 26/11 attack, which could lead to war between India and Pakistan, expect frequent smallscale blasts in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games to show India as unsafe," says former R&AW official Colonel (retd) RSN Singh.
Such attacks will need the assistance of youths like college dropout Mohammed Abdul Shahid aka Shahid Bilal, who was one of the first batch of 12 Muslim youth from Hyderabad whom Rasool smuggled into Pakistan in 2002.
Bilal was responsible for the twin Hyderabad bombings of 2007 and later headed the Bangladesh unit of HUJI before being killed by unidentified gunmen there in 2008. "The names may change, but this is a long-term project. It goes on uninterrupted," says a senior intelligence official.
"There are only two ways to shut down this project," says an intelligence official, "Either we neutralise them ourselves (using covert options) or Pakistan hands over the accused like the Bhatkal brothers and Rasool and stop terrorism."
With neither option visible on the horizon, the Home Ministry is going back to asking for Headley in the hope of preventing further strikes.
The project uses Indian jihadis, enabling Pakistan to deny any role in terror attacks.
Following the Pune blast, Home Minister P. Chidambaram said India had once again sought access to Headley. Though details of his interrogation were shared with India, Home Ministry sources said that access to him may have prevented Pune.
Even in this worrisome tale of hunting for the enemies among us, however, there is a slight ray of hope. Indians have so far been used by the ISI only for the kind of "insidious attacks" as Chidambaram called it, leaving behind an explosive-laden bag in public places.
Dangerous Nexus
Conceived in 2003 as a joint strategy between the ISI, Pakistan Army, Lashkar and HUJI to use fugitives given sanctuary in Karachi to Indian youth and bring them to Pakistan for arms and explosives training via Bangladesh and Nepal, where they are indoctrinated by videos of Babri Masjid and Gujarat riots.
Underworld dons and fugitives like Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal are used as spotters to ensure a steady supply of recruits from India for the project. By using Indians, it gives Pakistan the fig leaf of denying involvement.
The project was conceived as a crucial element in Pakistan's strategic arsenal to counter India's military and economic advantages.
Original strategy was to send the trained recruits back to India to plant bags with bombs at strategic locations. Pune shows it is now aimed at foreigners in India. Detailed information about Karachi Project has come from Abdul Khwaja, Bilal's No. 2, who was clandestinely arrested by Indian intelligence operatives in Bangladesh late last year. The other major source of information on the project has been David Headley, who has given the FBI additional details about the project and his role in it as well as the interrogation of Amjad Khwaja, a leading IM operative, arrested recently.
The recruits are being trained by the ISI in a remote region of Balochistan, not far from the Iranian border. They were taught to construct IEDs from locally available explosives. They are allowed to play games and watch satellite television, unlike militants in the camps in PoK.
After completion of the training, the agents are infiltrated into India as sleeper cells, waiting for the command to strike.
First strike on the Shramjeevi Express in 2005, and the most recent one suspected to be in Pune. The project can only be stopped if Pakistan hands over fugitives or India neutralises the operatives.
Resumption of strikes linked to pressure being taken off Pakistan by the international community.
No Indian has so far been used to carry out fidayeen attacks like the one in Mumbai, which calls for a level of indoctrination and brutality that has so far been seen only in Pakistani jihadi recruits. "But who knows what the future holds?" asks a senior intelligence official.
(Courtesy : Yahoo)
The scenario could well echo a nefarious plan that India's security agencies are now grappling with: The Karachi Project set up by the Pakistan Army's ISI and groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and HUJI which utilise Pakistani-trained Indian-operatives to plant explosives in selected cities in the Indian heartland.
For at least three years now, Indian security agencies have known of the outlines of this scheme, which Home Secretary G.K. Pillai held responsible for the German Bakery blast in Pune.
"The link between the LeT and Indian Mujahideen (IM), as part of the project, has been established. The LeT pushed David Headley into India to recce potential targets. IM operatives went to Pakistan and viewed videos shot by him, so that they could be sent to India to carry out attacks," he said.
Named after the Pakistani port city and crime hotbed which has turned into a sanctuary for fugitive Indian underworld dons like Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon, the joint-venture project was conceived some time after 2003. It is part of an overall strategy which, Admiral Dennis Blair the director of National Intelligence told a US Senate committee on February 3, was for Pakistan to "use militant groups as an important part of its strategic arsenal to counter India's military and economic advantages".
The Karachi Project has been directly responsible for the deaths of over 500 Indians in 10 bomb blasts since 2005.
Details of the project were first revealed by Pakistan-born American jihadi David Coleman Headley to the FBI in December last year. According to him, the fugitive Bhatkal brothers Riaz and Iqbal who founded the IM, Mufti Sufiyan and underworld don Yaqoob Khan aka Rasool 'Party' were being sheltered in Karachi by the LeT and ISI.
Headley, who checked out Chabad House close to German Bakery, also told the FBI interrogators about serving and retired Pakistan Army officers being part of the project. Headley confirmed that the ISI had put together a team of Indian jihadis in the port city, calling it the Karachi Project. They were waiting to launch them into India for attacks.
Over 500 people have been killed in 10 terror attacks carried out by the Karachi Project since 2005.
Headley recceed targets for the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks while shuttling between Mumbai and Karachi thrice in 2006 and 2008. Pune also figured prominently in his terror reconnaissance missions. He visited Pune twice, in 2008 and 2009, and stayed at the Surya Villa Hotel near the Osho Ashram and the local Jewish synagogue during his latter visit. This was part of his March 2008 survey of Israeli targets--Chabad Houses across Delhi, Pushkar, Goa, Pune and Mumbai--for future terror attacks.
More details of the plot emerged after the arrest of Abdul Khwaja, second-in-command of Shahid Bilal, who headed the Bangladesh HUJI unit. Khwaja was picked up by the R&AW in a clandestine 'rendition' operation in Bangladesh in December last year.
Spirited out to Sri Lanka and later to Chennai, he was brought to Hyderabad in January where he told interrogators that while he was at a terror camp in Karachi, IM chief Amir Reza Khan was also there during a briefing session when a retired Pakistan army officer showed them videos of terror targets like Pune's Osho Ashram and South Mumbai's Knesseth Eliyahu Synagogue. He revealed the targets include the R&AW headquarters in Delhi's CGO complex, the German Bakery in Pune, RSS offices in Nagpur and Kolkata, and oil refineries in Hyderabad and Chennai. Khwaja and Amir were then asked to take up the project, along with Asif, who is Amir's brother and a fourth IM activist Abdul Aziz.
Khwaja, wanted for a suicide bombing attempt on the Andhra Pradesh task force office in 2005, also told interrogators that the plan includes targeting police officers in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. Echoing Headley's confession, he said a large number of highly indoctrinated jihadi Indian nationals were housed in the Pakistani port city waiting for orders to strike.
The contours of this nefarious joint venture were fairly simple, as an intelligence official puts it, "Use disaffected Indian youth to carry out terror strikes using locally available bomb material. The objectives of the project were twofold: strike terror in the Indian heartland without raising suspicions of Pakistan's involvement."
In intelligence jargon, this is called a plausibly deniable operation. Unlike the 26/11 Mumbai attacks which left behind damning evidence of Pakistani involvement--Pakistani national Ajmal Amir Kasab--this operation would use only Indian nationals. They were recruited by Lashkar spotters either in India, Pakistan or Bangladesh and indoctrinated using propaganda videos showing the Babri Masjid demolition and Gujarat riots.
Through Khwaja and others like him arrested earlier, the agencies deduced that the youth were being trained by the ISI in a remote region of Balochistan. How they figured this was through a detailed study of the interrogation reports of at least a dozen Pakistan-trained Indian militants. The recruits were ferried across the border for arms training in the rugged province of Pakistan.
Here, starting in around 2003, the ISI began training these operatives in small groups of four to five. In two years, intelligence sources estimate, between 40 and 50 jihadis had been similarly trained and infiltrated into India.
Interrogations of at least 12 captured jihadis built up a picture of nondescript two-tent camps along the rugged coasts where candidates were given one-month training capsules, not in firing AK-47s but in bomb-making. "The four of us were driven out of Karachi for nine hours in a covered truck. We reached a camp in a desolate part of Pakistan, ringed by barren hills.
There were a few tents, four instructors and a few sentries. For one month, they trained us in the use of chemicals and locally available materials to fabricate IEDs. We were never told the location of the camp, but when we faced the rising sun, the sea was to our right. One day, one of the trainers pointed out a Pakistani border outpost on the Iran border," reads the confession of a militant trained in one of these camps.
If this sounds exactly like the training given to hundreds of Pakistani recruits in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (POK), there is a subtle but visible difference. Unlike the LeT camps in the hills above Muzzafarabad, the five-times-a-day prayer was not mandatory. Recruits in the Balochistan camps were allowed to play carrom and watch satellite television, mundane pleasures denied to the by-the-book jihadis in the POK camps. The trainers were Pakistani armymen in salwars. The camps were occasionally visited by evidently higher-ranking officials whom the trainers snapped to attention and addressed them by that very military salutation, 'sir'.
After completion of the training, many of the agents were infiltrated into India as sleeper cells, waiting for the command to strike. The agencies are unsure just how many operatives passed out of the camps and like Headley and Khwaja indicated, waiting for the signal to strike.
The template for the project was already there. The March 12, 1993, blasts in Mumbai which killed 257 people were executed by the then Dubai-based Ibrahim's gang. The ISI supplied the RDX for the 13 explosions using the same smuggling routes that landed gold, textile and watches in the 1970s and '80s. It trained Ibrahim's lieutenants and foot soldiers to handle, store, and finally plant the explosives.
Trail of Death
Shramjeevi Express, near Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, July 28,2005 IED kill 10 passengers and injures 79 on the Patna-New Delhi train.
Delhi, October 29, 2005 Three serial blasts before Diwali kill 62 people.
Varanasi, March 7, 2006 Three explosions at Sankat Mochan temple and railway station kill 21.
Mumbai, July 11, 2006 Seven bomb blasts in six local trains at peak hour kill 209.
Hyderabad, August 25, 2007 Twin blasts at garden and snack stall kill 42 people.
Lucknow, Varanasi, Faizabad, November 24, 2007 16 people killed in blasts in court complexes in the three cities.
Jaipur, May 13, 2008 Nine blasts in market place kill 63 people.
Ahmedabad, July 26, 2008 22 IED blasts at 17 places kill 53.
Delhi, September 13, 2008 Five blasts in various locations kill 30 people.
Pune, February 13, 2010 Eleven killed as IED explodes in a popular restaurant.
Ibrahim's syndicate, said the US Congressional Research Service Report released last month, provides an example of how a profit-motivated criminal syndicate morphed into a 'criminal-terrorism fusion model'. It is not the first one. The Taliban funds their insurgency through their formidable drug trafficking structure. But Ibrahim's syndicate is unique in that it has found state sponsorship and shelter.
A facility that the Karachi Project has now extended to an assortment of India's most wanted. Mobster Amir Raza Khan of Kolkata, Rasool 'Party', a don from Ahmedabad, and Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal of Karnataka and a Tablighi Jamaat maulavi Mufti Sufian Patangiya-- a group of fugitives whom one intelligence official calls a "bewildering array of poisonous snakes". Each had good reason to flee into Pakistan.
Patangiya was the main accused in the March 2003 murder of former Gujarat home minister Haren Pandya. Rasool was a former accomplice of slain Ahmedabad gangster Abdul Latif Shaikh and Amir, wanted by the police for his role in the 2002 attack on Kolkata's US consulate. Amir, who fled into Pakistan after the attack was recruited by the LeT military commander Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi.
The fugitives from Indian justice brought with them extensive knowledge of the lay of the land, local intelligence and contacts of the cities they came from and also helped the ISI-recruited jihadis from India. The kingpins dipped into a reservoir of disaffected Muslim youth for their foot soldiers.
Some of them were highly educated and members of the radical Students' Islamic Movement of India and others like Qayamuddin Kapadia, a graphics designer now being tried for the Gujarat bombings, set up the IM.
The IM was another front for the project and claimed credit for a string of attacks in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008, a further attempt by the ISI to distance itself from culpability. The Lashkar cat's paw which carried out a series of attacks was set up precisely for this purpose around 2007. The IM was born out of a meeting between Amir of Kolkata and Riyaz Bhatkal, an engineering graduate from Mumbai's Saboo Siddique college.
Indian investigators say the Karachi Project debuted on July 28, 2005, at around 5.15 p.m. in decidedly unspectacular settings--an IED was placed near the toilet of the Shramjeevi Express hurtling from Patna to Delhi. The results were deadly. Ten passengers were killed and 79 injured when an IED blasted through the coach.
After this, there was a bombing roughly every six months, clinically targeting places of worship, public transport and shopping centres. It seemed that the terrorists had only perfected their deadly art with every attack.
The twin attacks on Delhi in 2005 and 2008 and the dastardly attack on six local trains in Mumbai killed 209 people.The Bhatkals fled the police dragnet soon after the IM's spate of bombings in 2008 and managed to escape into Pakistan where they are now lodged in safe houses in Karachi.
The Indian intelligence agencies, meanwhile, were like the proverbial blind men feeling the sides of an elephant and the nation, seemingly impotent, unable to stop the bombings. Then the successes started coming in, if only in identifying the perpetrators. Between 2005 and 2007, the Delhi and Uttar Pradesh special task forces arrested several Lashkar and HUJI affiliated between 2005 and 2007, who revealed who was behind the plot.
In June 2007, Babu Bhai, a HUJI operative, was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Police while ferrying 8 kg of RDX. He confirmed the involvement of Amir in the network. From then on, investigators began tracing the dots linking Amir to the series of blasts. In fact, the only strikes not attributed to this unholy alliance of the jihadis, Pakistan army and underworld were the Ajmer, Samjhauta Express, Mecca Masjid and Bangalore bombings.
After the tactical hiatus of 2009 which India experienced as a result of various pressures on Pakistan, the latter calibrated its visible terrorist engagement downwards. These pressures have now been significantly diluted--particularly after the London conference, where the US indicated a pullout and suggested a willingness to 'franchise' the management of the Afghan conflict to Pakistan once again.
From a militant trained in one of the camps in Balochistan
"The four of us were driven out of Karachi for nine hours in a covered truck. We reached a camp in a desolate part of Pakistan, ringed by barren hills. There were a few tents, four instructors and a few sentries. For one month, they trained us in the use of chemicals and using locally available materials to build IEDs. We were never told the location of the camp, but when we faced the rising sun, the sea was to our right. One day, one of the trainers pointed out a Pakistani border outpost on the Iran border."
"All this has enormously increased the degree of impunity with which Pakistan engages in terrorism, and this would have been crucial in the decision to initiate a new phase of attacks against India," says Ajai Sahni of the Institute for Conflict Management.
"Instead of another 26/11 attack, which could lead to war between India and Pakistan, expect frequent smallscale blasts in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games to show India as unsafe," says former R&AW official Colonel (retd) RSN Singh.
Such attacks will need the assistance of youths like college dropout Mohammed Abdul Shahid aka Shahid Bilal, who was one of the first batch of 12 Muslim youth from Hyderabad whom Rasool smuggled into Pakistan in 2002.
Bilal was responsible for the twin Hyderabad bombings of 2007 and later headed the Bangladesh unit of HUJI before being killed by unidentified gunmen there in 2008. "The names may change, but this is a long-term project. It goes on uninterrupted," says a senior intelligence official.
"There are only two ways to shut down this project," says an intelligence official, "Either we neutralise them ourselves (using covert options) or Pakistan hands over the accused like the Bhatkal brothers and Rasool and stop terrorism."
With neither option visible on the horizon, the Home Ministry is going back to asking for Headley in the hope of preventing further strikes.
The project uses Indian jihadis, enabling Pakistan to deny any role in terror attacks.
Following the Pune blast, Home Minister P. Chidambaram said India had once again sought access to Headley. Though details of his interrogation were shared with India, Home Ministry sources said that access to him may have prevented Pune.
Even in this worrisome tale of hunting for the enemies among us, however, there is a slight ray of hope. Indians have so far been used by the ISI only for the kind of "insidious attacks" as Chidambaram called it, leaving behind an explosive-laden bag in public places.
Dangerous Nexus
Conceived in 2003 as a joint strategy between the ISI, Pakistan Army, Lashkar and HUJI to use fugitives given sanctuary in Karachi to Indian youth and bring them to Pakistan for arms and explosives training via Bangladesh and Nepal, where they are indoctrinated by videos of Babri Masjid and Gujarat riots.
Underworld dons and fugitives like Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal are used as spotters to ensure a steady supply of recruits from India for the project. By using Indians, it gives Pakistan the fig leaf of denying involvement.
The project was conceived as a crucial element in Pakistan's strategic arsenal to counter India's military and economic advantages.
Original strategy was to send the trained recruits back to India to plant bags with bombs at strategic locations. Pune shows it is now aimed at foreigners in India. Detailed information about Karachi Project has come from Abdul Khwaja, Bilal's No. 2, who was clandestinely arrested by Indian intelligence operatives in Bangladesh late last year. The other major source of information on the project has been David Headley, who has given the FBI additional details about the project and his role in it as well as the interrogation of Amjad Khwaja, a leading IM operative, arrested recently.
The recruits are being trained by the ISI in a remote region of Balochistan, not far from the Iranian border. They were taught to construct IEDs from locally available explosives. They are allowed to play games and watch satellite television, unlike militants in the camps in PoK.
After completion of the training, the agents are infiltrated into India as sleeper cells, waiting for the command to strike.
First strike on the Shramjeevi Express in 2005, and the most recent one suspected to be in Pune. The project can only be stopped if Pakistan hands over fugitives or India neutralises the operatives.
Resumption of strikes linked to pressure being taken off Pakistan by the international community.
No Indian has so far been used to carry out fidayeen attacks like the one in Mumbai, which calls for a level of indoctrination and brutality that has so far been seen only in Pakistani jihadi recruits. "But who knows what the future holds?" asks a senior intelligence official.
(Courtesy : Yahoo)
24 February, 2010
Indo-Pak Skirmishes
The following data would be a good one for Indo-Pak analysts.
====================================================================
1947 - Britain divides its Indian empire into secular but mainly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, triggering one of the greatest and bloodiest migrations of modern history.
1947/48 - India and Pakistan go to war over Kashmir. The war ends with a U.N.-ordered ceasefire and resolution seeking a plebiscite for the people of Jammu and Kashmir to decide whether to become part of India or Pakistan.
1965 - India and Pakistan fight their second war over Kashmir. Fighting ends after United Nations calls for ceasefire.
1971 - Pakistan and India go to war a third time, this time over East Pakistan, which becomes independent Bangladesh.
1972 - Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi sign agreement in Indian town of Simla to lay principles meant to govern relations.
1974 - India detonates its first nuclear device.
1989 - Separatist revolt starts in Indian Kashmir. India accuses Pakistan of arming and sending Islamist militants into Indian Kashmir, which Pakistan denies.
1998 - India carries out nuclear tests. Pakistan carries out its own tests in response.
Feb. 1999 - Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee holds summit with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Lahore.
1999 - India and Pakistan fight a brief but intense conflict in the mountains above Kargil on the Line of Control, the ceasefire line dividing the former kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir.
July 2000 - Summit between Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf and Vajpayee in Agra in India ends in failure.
Dec. 2001 - Militants attack Indian parliament. India blames Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatist groups Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad. Close to a million men are mobilised on either side of the border; war only averted months later in June 2002.
2003 - Pakistan and India agree a ceasefire on the Line of Control.
2004 - The two countries launch a formal peace process.
July 2008 - India blames Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency for a bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul.
Nov. 2008 - Ten gunmen launch multiple attacks in Mumbai, killing 166 people. India blames Pakistan-based militants and breaks off talks with Pakistan.
Feb. 2009 - India cautiously welcomes Pakistan's investigation into the Mumbai attack. Pakistan admits for the first time, that the attack was launched and partly planned from Pakistan.
March 2009 - India's home minister says Pakistan is threatening to become a failed state and it was not clear who was in control of the country.
May 2009 - India's new coalition government says it is up to Pakistan to take the first step towards better ties by cracking down on militants on its soil.
June 2009 - Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari meet on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Russia. Singh tells Zardari he wants him to ensure militants can not operate from Pakistan.
July 2009 - India and Pakistan agree to work together to fight terrorism and order their top diplomats to meet as often as needed. But Prime Minister Singh, after talks with his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani in Egypt, rules out a resumption of formal peace talks, known as the "composite dialogue", that Islamabad had been seeking.
Aug. 2009 - India gives Pakistan a new dossier of evidence to investigate the Mumbai attacks and prosecute Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the suspected mastermind of the three-day carnage.
Jan. 2010 - Pakistani and Indian forces exchange fire across their border, the latest in a series of incidents raising tension between the two.
Feb. 2010 - India offers new talks with Pakistan. The talks will be held at top diplomatic level of the two countries.
Feb. 13 - A bomb in a bakery in the western Indian city of Pune kills 13 people. An Indian government official later says the foreign secretary talks would go on as scheduled.
(Compiled by Zeeshan Haider; Additional writing and editing by David Cutler; Editing by Michael Roddy, London Editorial Reference Unit)
====================================================================
1947 - Britain divides its Indian empire into secular but mainly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, triggering one of the greatest and bloodiest migrations of modern history.
1947/48 - India and Pakistan go to war over Kashmir. The war ends with a U.N.-ordered ceasefire and resolution seeking a plebiscite for the people of Jammu and Kashmir to decide whether to become part of India or Pakistan.
1965 - India and Pakistan fight their second war over Kashmir. Fighting ends after United Nations calls for ceasefire.
1971 - Pakistan and India go to war a third time, this time over East Pakistan, which becomes independent Bangladesh.
1972 - Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi sign agreement in Indian town of Simla to lay principles meant to govern relations.
1974 - India detonates its first nuclear device.
1989 - Separatist revolt starts in Indian Kashmir. India accuses Pakistan of arming and sending Islamist militants into Indian Kashmir, which Pakistan denies.
1998 - India carries out nuclear tests. Pakistan carries out its own tests in response.
Feb. 1999 - Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee holds summit with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Lahore.
1999 - India and Pakistan fight a brief but intense conflict in the mountains above Kargil on the Line of Control, the ceasefire line dividing the former kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir.
July 2000 - Summit between Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf and Vajpayee in Agra in India ends in failure.
Dec. 2001 - Militants attack Indian parliament. India blames Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatist groups Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad. Close to a million men are mobilised on either side of the border; war only averted months later in June 2002.
2003 - Pakistan and India agree a ceasefire on the Line of Control.
2004 - The two countries launch a formal peace process.
July 2008 - India blames Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency for a bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul.
Nov. 2008 - Ten gunmen launch multiple attacks in Mumbai, killing 166 people. India blames Pakistan-based militants and breaks off talks with Pakistan.
Feb. 2009 - India cautiously welcomes Pakistan's investigation into the Mumbai attack. Pakistan admits for the first time, that the attack was launched and partly planned from Pakistan.
March 2009 - India's home minister says Pakistan is threatening to become a failed state and it was not clear who was in control of the country.
May 2009 - India's new coalition government says it is up to Pakistan to take the first step towards better ties by cracking down on militants on its soil.
June 2009 - Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari meet on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Russia. Singh tells Zardari he wants him to ensure militants can not operate from Pakistan.
July 2009 - India and Pakistan agree to work together to fight terrorism and order their top diplomats to meet as often as needed. But Prime Minister Singh, after talks with his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani in Egypt, rules out a resumption of formal peace talks, known as the "composite dialogue", that Islamabad had been seeking.
Aug. 2009 - India gives Pakistan a new dossier of evidence to investigate the Mumbai attacks and prosecute Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the suspected mastermind of the three-day carnage.
Jan. 2010 - Pakistani and Indian forces exchange fire across their border, the latest in a series of incidents raising tension between the two.
Feb. 2010 - India offers new talks with Pakistan. The talks will be held at top diplomatic level of the two countries.
Feb. 13 - A bomb in a bakery in the western Indian city of Pune kills 13 people. An Indian government official later says the foreign secretary talks would go on as scheduled.
(Compiled by Zeeshan Haider; Additional writing and editing by David Cutler; Editing by Michael Roddy, London Editorial Reference Unit)
Indo-Pak Military Might
I came across this news today morning.
=====================================================================
REUTERS - The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan will meet in New Delhi on Thursday, marking the resumption of official contacts which India broke off after militants attacked Mumbai in late 2008.
Following are estimates of the military strength of Pakistan and India, as well as some information about where troops are believed to be deployed:
PAKISTAN
Defence budget: Pakistan increased defence spending by more than 15 percent in June last year to 343 billion rupees ($4.2 billion) for the 2009-10 fiscal year ending on June 30.
Estimated nuclear warheads: 25 to 50
Troops: about 620,000 active, about 515,000 reserves, about 290,9000 paramilitary.
Equipment: about 2,460 tanks, about 2,000 artillery pieces, about 1,250 armoured personnel carriers. The air force has about 415 combat aircraft while the navy has 8 submarines, 7 surface combatants.
Pakistan's air force this month inducted JF-17 Thunder, medium-technology jets produced with the help of China. The aircraft is equivalent to the Mirage but has better avionics and weapons.
In December, Pakistan acquired the first of four airborne warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft from Sweden.
Missile types and ranges: Shaheen 1 (600 km/375 miles), Shaheen 2 (up to 2,000 km/1,200 miles), Ghauri 1 (1,500/940 miles) Ghauri 2 (2,300 km/1,440 miles), Hatf 1 (100 km/63 miles), Hatf 2 (180 km/110 miles), Hatf 3 (290 km/180 miles), Babur cruise missile (500 km/310 miles).
Deployment: The military does not publish information about the deployment of troops but it has said nearly 150,000 soldiers, from both the army and paramilitary forces, have been deployed in the border regions with Afghanistan fighting al Qaeda and Taliban militants.
The remainder are stationed at bases around the country, many of them near the so-called Line of Control that divides the Kashmir region, and near the international border with India that runs south to the Arabian Sea.
INDIA
Defence budget: India increased defence spending by nearly a quarter in February last year to $28.9 billion for the 2009-10 fiscal year.
India plans to spend $30 billion to modernise its largely Soviet-era arms over the next four years.
Estimated nuclear warheads: 70-100
Troops: India's military strength stands at 1.3 million, the fourth largest in the world and growing in strength with thousands recruited every year.
Equipment: The army has around 4,000 tanks, 4,500 artillery and 300 armored personnel carriers and a combat aircraft strength of around 700. The Indian Navy has one aircraft carrier, 16 submarines, eight destroyers and 16 frigates.
India plans to buy 126 air and ground attack fighters, which will elevate its air force to super-power status, with deployments planned near the borders with Pakistan and China, officials say. In May last year, India acquired the first of three AWACS from Israel.
Missile types and ranges: Agni 1 (2,500 km/1,560 miles), Agni 2 (3,000 km/1,875 miles; upgraded, up to 3,500 km/2,190 miles), Prithvi SS-150 (150 km/94 miles), Prithvi SS-250 (250 km/156 miles). India said this month it could test a new nuclear-capable missile with a 5,000-km (3,100-mile) range within a year.
Deployment: The Indian military does not give information about deployment of troops but has said its troops are on standby and presently stationed at bases around the country. India also has a huge military presence near the Line of Control.
India says it has made no new deployments since the Mumbai attacks.
(Compiled by Islamabad and New Delhi bureaux; Editing by Jerry Norton)
=====================================================================
REUTERS - The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan will meet in New Delhi on Thursday, marking the resumption of official contacts which India broke off after militants attacked Mumbai in late 2008.
Following are estimates of the military strength of Pakistan and India, as well as some information about where troops are believed to be deployed:
PAKISTAN
Defence budget: Pakistan increased defence spending by more than 15 percent in June last year to 343 billion rupees ($4.2 billion) for the 2009-10 fiscal year ending on June 30.
Estimated nuclear warheads: 25 to 50
Troops: about 620,000 active, about 515,000 reserves, about 290,9000 paramilitary.
Equipment: about 2,460 tanks, about 2,000 artillery pieces, about 1,250 armoured personnel carriers. The air force has about 415 combat aircraft while the navy has 8 submarines, 7 surface combatants.
Pakistan's air force this month inducted JF-17 Thunder, medium-technology jets produced with the help of China. The aircraft is equivalent to the Mirage but has better avionics and weapons.
In December, Pakistan acquired the first of four airborne warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft from Sweden.
Missile types and ranges: Shaheen 1 (600 km/375 miles), Shaheen 2 (up to 2,000 km/1,200 miles), Ghauri 1 (1,500/940 miles) Ghauri 2 (2,300 km/1,440 miles), Hatf 1 (100 km/63 miles), Hatf 2 (180 km/110 miles), Hatf 3 (290 km/180 miles), Babur cruise missile (500 km/310 miles).
Deployment: The military does not publish information about the deployment of troops but it has said nearly 150,000 soldiers, from both the army and paramilitary forces, have been deployed in the border regions with Afghanistan fighting al Qaeda and Taliban militants.
The remainder are stationed at bases around the country, many of them near the so-called Line of Control that divides the Kashmir region, and near the international border with India that runs south to the Arabian Sea.
INDIA
Defence budget: India increased defence spending by nearly a quarter in February last year to $28.9 billion for the 2009-10 fiscal year.
India plans to spend $30 billion to modernise its largely Soviet-era arms over the next four years.
Estimated nuclear warheads: 70-100
Troops: India's military strength stands at 1.3 million, the fourth largest in the world and growing in strength with thousands recruited every year.
Equipment: The army has around 4,000 tanks, 4,500 artillery and 300 armored personnel carriers and a combat aircraft strength of around 700. The Indian Navy has one aircraft carrier, 16 submarines, eight destroyers and 16 frigates.
India plans to buy 126 air and ground attack fighters, which will elevate its air force to super-power status, with deployments planned near the borders with Pakistan and China, officials say. In May last year, India acquired the first of three AWACS from Israel.
Missile types and ranges: Agni 1 (2,500 km/1,560 miles), Agni 2 (3,000 km/1,875 miles; upgraded, up to 3,500 km/2,190 miles), Prithvi SS-150 (150 km/94 miles), Prithvi SS-250 (250 km/156 miles). India said this month it could test a new nuclear-capable missile with a 5,000-km (3,100-mile) range within a year.
Deployment: The Indian military does not give information about deployment of troops but has said its troops are on standby and presently stationed at bases around the country. India also has a huge military presence near the Line of Control.
India says it has made no new deployments since the Mumbai attacks.
(Compiled by Islamabad and New Delhi bureaux; Editing by Jerry Norton)
Indo-Pak Hate Cycle
Published in Newsline on 24 Feb 2010 (http://www.newslinemagazine.com/2010/02/the-indo-pak-hate-cycle/)
======================================================================
When candles were lit in Kolkata for Ankik Dhar and his friends Shilpa and Anindyee, tears flowed; and simultaneously hatred brewed. This has happened whenever explosives detonated either in Mumbai or Delhi or Bangalore or Hyderabad or latest in Pune. Whenever a Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) or a Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) mercenary had been discovered to ignite an incendiary, the men on the ‘wrong side’ of the north-western border have been demonised. Even an innoxious Sufi-Dervish strolling along the squalid Indian streets have been looked at with terror and suspicion : is he an ISI agent?
Over years, this animosity was maneuvered with dexterity by the civil-military elite of Pakistan to stoke similar hatred in the Indus plains. The ‘hate cycle’ formed a regenerative feedback loop. Hence a self-sustained model of Indo-Pak rivalry has blossomed to its egregious maturity.
Commencing from the terrorist attack on the precincts of world’s largest democracy in 2001 to the infamous siege of the financial capital Mumbai on 26 November 2008; the bilateral relationship of the two South Asian ‘giants’ has slowly been pushed towards political bankruptcy.
In between, a minor salvage was attempted by creating a Joint Anti-Terror Cell so as to smoothen future scenarios as regard to handling terror. Indubitably, parties with vested interests existed and continue to exist which leave no stone unturned to provide energy to the ‘hate cycle’. And “Lashkar-e-Toiba Al Alami” appears to be the latest induction in the list of such potent candidates.
Interestingly, it claims to be a breakaway faction of the old LeT and the rationale posited by it for breaking away is that LeT was acting as a puppet of the ISI. Well, what does this mean?
It invariably projects a much more deadly and ominous future for South Asia. Are we headed for an uncontrolled chain reaction of terror? Already, mainland Pakistan is reeling under the venomous Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
For India, having a clean terror-free fourteen months since 26/11 may be perceived in either of the following ways. The enhanced efficiency of the Indian security personnel and better security-intelligence co-ordination is the obvious evaluation of the success; while the pre-occupation of the terrorist groups in the Af-Pak region is the cynical evaluation.
Nevertheless, the RDX-Ammonium Nitrate blasts on 13 February near the German Bakery in Maharashtra’s (India’s western province) cultural capital Pune, did come as a shock to the Indian citizens. Moreover, the blasts were probably tailor-made to blast out the talks at the Foreign Secretary level to be held between the two archrivals on 25 February.
After an interregnum, India and Pakistan would again sit across the table. The astute political observer would definitely hint at an American influence behind this as India was reluctant to ‘chalk out the talks’ due to the lethargic movements of the civil bureaucratic machinery of Pakistan in acting against Hafeez Saeed; the Jamat-ud-Dawa generalissimo.
Furthermore, India would cautiously tread in these bilateral forums, more so keeping in mind the Sharm-el-Shaikh diplomatic fiasco at the sidelines of the recent most NAM Summit.
Surely, Foreign Secretary level talks are just the beginning, but at least a beginning. However, the agenda of the talks remain unclear as ever. Is the situation so benign that both the secretaries could just exchange pleasantries and end with Sir Creek, while meandering around the Indus Water Treaty?
Would bouncers be merely ducked? Why a head-on-collision with the obvious be avoided? Why would Islamabad continue to evade India’s concerns regarding cross-border terrorism and why should New Delhi shy away from Kashmir? Both the parties need to appreciate the fact that by just talking these two so-called ‘contentious’ issues, they are not going to loose Karachi or Mumbai.
If few things need to be sorted out, then those things ought to be prioritized.
Decades ago, the Italian fascist Mussolini, amongst his many ‘not to be revered’ acts and policies, uttered : “The Nation is a single fixed point, the rest is obvious”.
Regarding Indo-Pak bilateral ties, an analogue may be generated : “Kashmir is a single-fixed point, the rest is obvious”. In fact, cross-border terrorism too is inextricably intertwined with Kashmir. However, that in any way does not mean that the terms of the negotiation could be dictated by any terrorist outfit or even by obdurate authorities.
Flexibility, adaptability and pragmatism on both sides would enliven matters and lessen tensions. Both Islamabad and New Delhi need to traverse some distance toward each other, without succumbing to past follies.
Islamabad has its own domestic predicaments; be it the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) or the judiciary-executive tussle or the Balochistan tangle or the terror-implosion since the launch of the Swat-South Waziristan offensive. India, too cannot prevaricate regarding its Maoist insurgency or the tumultuous North-East or for that matter the ‘Kashmir burden’.
Nonetheless, the naïve commoner walking along the alleys of Kolkata or through the by-lanes of Rawalpindi may not appreciate the jargons of ‘geopolitics’ or ‘strategic depth’ or ‘composite dialogue’. Rather the simpleton has the inalienable right to ask the respective policy-makers : “When you talk, why don’t you talk seriously? Why do you only posture?”
======================================================================
======================================================================
When candles were lit in Kolkata for Ankik Dhar and his friends Shilpa and Anindyee, tears flowed; and simultaneously hatred brewed. This has happened whenever explosives detonated either in Mumbai or Delhi or Bangalore or Hyderabad or latest in Pune. Whenever a Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) or a Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) mercenary had been discovered to ignite an incendiary, the men on the ‘wrong side’ of the north-western border have been demonised. Even an innoxious Sufi-Dervish strolling along the squalid Indian streets have been looked at with terror and suspicion : is he an ISI agent?
Over years, this animosity was maneuvered with dexterity by the civil-military elite of Pakistan to stoke similar hatred in the Indus plains. The ‘hate cycle’ formed a regenerative feedback loop. Hence a self-sustained model of Indo-Pak rivalry has blossomed to its egregious maturity.
Commencing from the terrorist attack on the precincts of world’s largest democracy in 2001 to the infamous siege of the financial capital Mumbai on 26 November 2008; the bilateral relationship of the two South Asian ‘giants’ has slowly been pushed towards political bankruptcy.
In between, a minor salvage was attempted by creating a Joint Anti-Terror Cell so as to smoothen future scenarios as regard to handling terror. Indubitably, parties with vested interests existed and continue to exist which leave no stone unturned to provide energy to the ‘hate cycle’. And “Lashkar-e-Toiba Al Alami” appears to be the latest induction in the list of such potent candidates.
Interestingly, it claims to be a breakaway faction of the old LeT and the rationale posited by it for breaking away is that LeT was acting as a puppet of the ISI. Well, what does this mean?
It invariably projects a much more deadly and ominous future for South Asia. Are we headed for an uncontrolled chain reaction of terror? Already, mainland Pakistan is reeling under the venomous Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
For India, having a clean terror-free fourteen months since 26/11 may be perceived in either of the following ways. The enhanced efficiency of the Indian security personnel and better security-intelligence co-ordination is the obvious evaluation of the success; while the pre-occupation of the terrorist groups in the Af-Pak region is the cynical evaluation.
Nevertheless, the RDX-Ammonium Nitrate blasts on 13 February near the German Bakery in Maharashtra’s (India’s western province) cultural capital Pune, did come as a shock to the Indian citizens. Moreover, the blasts were probably tailor-made to blast out the talks at the Foreign Secretary level to be held between the two archrivals on 25 February.
After an interregnum, India and Pakistan would again sit across the table. The astute political observer would definitely hint at an American influence behind this as India was reluctant to ‘chalk out the talks’ due to the lethargic movements of the civil bureaucratic machinery of Pakistan in acting against Hafeez Saeed; the Jamat-ud-Dawa generalissimo.
Furthermore, India would cautiously tread in these bilateral forums, more so keeping in mind the Sharm-el-Shaikh diplomatic fiasco at the sidelines of the recent most NAM Summit.
Surely, Foreign Secretary level talks are just the beginning, but at least a beginning. However, the agenda of the talks remain unclear as ever. Is the situation so benign that both the secretaries could just exchange pleasantries and end with Sir Creek, while meandering around the Indus Water Treaty?
Would bouncers be merely ducked? Why a head-on-collision with the obvious be avoided? Why would Islamabad continue to evade India’s concerns regarding cross-border terrorism and why should New Delhi shy away from Kashmir? Both the parties need to appreciate the fact that by just talking these two so-called ‘contentious’ issues, they are not going to loose Karachi or Mumbai.
If few things need to be sorted out, then those things ought to be prioritized.
Decades ago, the Italian fascist Mussolini, amongst his many ‘not to be revered’ acts and policies, uttered : “The Nation is a single fixed point, the rest is obvious”.
Regarding Indo-Pak bilateral ties, an analogue may be generated : “Kashmir is a single-fixed point, the rest is obvious”. In fact, cross-border terrorism too is inextricably intertwined with Kashmir. However, that in any way does not mean that the terms of the negotiation could be dictated by any terrorist outfit or even by obdurate authorities.
Flexibility, adaptability and pragmatism on both sides would enliven matters and lessen tensions. Both Islamabad and New Delhi need to traverse some distance toward each other, without succumbing to past follies.
Islamabad has its own domestic predicaments; be it the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) or the judiciary-executive tussle or the Balochistan tangle or the terror-implosion since the launch of the Swat-South Waziristan offensive. India, too cannot prevaricate regarding its Maoist insurgency or the tumultuous North-East or for that matter the ‘Kashmir burden’.
Nonetheless, the naïve commoner walking along the alleys of Kolkata or through the by-lanes of Rawalpindi may not appreciate the jargons of ‘geopolitics’ or ‘strategic depth’ or ‘composite dialogue’. Rather the simpleton has the inalienable right to ask the respective policy-makers : “When you talk, why don’t you talk seriously? Why do you only posture?”
======================================================================
23 February, 2010
Jundallah Boss under Iranian Claws
TEHRAN: An Iranian lawmaker said on Tuesday that top Sunni militant Abdolmalek Rigi was arrested while travelling on a flight heading to an Arab country via Pakistan.
“Rigi was arrested in Persian Gulf waters while he was travelling on a plane via Pakistan to an Arab country,” Mohammad Dehghan was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
“His plane was ordered to land, and then he was arrested after the plane was searched,” the lawmaker said without elaborating.
Earlier, several Iranian media networks reported the arrest of Rigi, the head of the shadowy Jundallah (Soldiers of God) group who was the country's most wanted fugitive.
State-owned Arabic language Al-Alam television reported that Rigi, the alleged mastermind of several deadly bombings and killings, was arrested “inside Iran” on Tuesday in the eastern part of the country.
Courtesy-DAWN
“Rigi was arrested in Persian Gulf waters while he was travelling on a plane via Pakistan to an Arab country,” Mohammad Dehghan was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
“His plane was ordered to land, and then he was arrested after the plane was searched,” the lawmaker said without elaborating.
Earlier, several Iranian media networks reported the arrest of Rigi, the head of the shadowy Jundallah (Soldiers of God) group who was the country's most wanted fugitive.
State-owned Arabic language Al-Alam television reported that Rigi, the alleged mastermind of several deadly bombings and killings, was arrested “inside Iran” on Tuesday in the eastern part of the country.
Courtesy-DAWN
19 February, 2010
Prof Ghosh's Comments # 2 and My Reply
I generally agree with the tenor and apprehensions voiced in this article
by Uddipan Mukherjee. I too am worried about a blood bath of impoverished
tribal Indians in Jharkhand, W. Bengal and Orissa. Mukherjee says,
" Thus he (Home minister Chidanbaram) can afford a tussle with the Red
Taliban at this juncture."
since he has withdrawn 30000 troopers from Kashmir. Is it necessary to
coin the phrase "Red Taliban"? Naxals/Maoists are not at all similar to
the Taliban. Taliban is plural of the word Talib which means 'student'.
To be more specific, student of a Madrasah, that is a Muslim religious
school. It is in such schools of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of
Pakistan the Taliban were motivated with religious fanaticism for Jihad.
These Madrasahs are motivated by Wahhabism, which preaches hatred against
Sufism, Shia Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity. It
preaches that women should be hidden behind the Burqa, not be educated and
have no role in public affairs. It stands for strict implemantation of the
Shariah law which assigns a half-human status to women, one man witness is
equivalent to two women witnesses and so on. I am no aplogist for the
Maoists and condemn their killing spree, but they should not be compared
to the the Taliban, even in jest. They stand for equality between the
sexes and so called 'liberation' of both men and women, They do not want
to turn the clock back and take civilization back to the middle ages in
the way the Taliban want. Mukherjee's use of the term Red Taliban for the
Maoists is unfortunate. It would breed confusion and impart some
respectability to the Taliban.
Mukherjee correctly points out that Nitish Kumar has struck a discordant
note in the last Chief ministers' meeting with Chidambaram by condemning
the heavy handed military approach toward tribal insurgents and Maoists;
Nitish advocates rehabilitation of the surrendered
cadres of the Maoists. Chidambaram is more of a man of the big buisness
and he knows that the tribal areas of Jharkhand, W. Bengal and Orissa are
mineral rich. These areas must be opened up to the mining and metallurgy
industry; that is what the big buisness houses want and is necessary for
the present so-called development model of economy, cherished by
Manmohan-Chidambaram duo. This is opposed by the
tribals who want development in radically different terms. They want
education, healthcare, agriculture and forestry and forest rights. They do
not want the mining and metallurgy industry to disrupt their way of tribal
community life.
Fortunately for Nitish Kumar Bihar's Maoist-dominated areas are not
mineral rich and a compromise is possible. The same compromise is not
possible in W. Bengal, Orissa and Jharkhand. That is the clue to the
differnce between Chidambaram and Nitish.
Kunal Ghosh
======================================================================
Dear Prof Ghosh,
Thanks for the comments.
Actually i never used the term "Red Taliban" in the straightforward manner as one would interpret.
I used it sarcastically. As if the State authorities are terming the Maoists/disgruntled tribals as "Red Talibans'.
Actually the phrase is doing the rounds in the media since the beheading of a police officer by the Maoists last year.
thanks
Uddipan
by Uddipan Mukherjee. I too am worried about a blood bath of impoverished
tribal Indians in Jharkhand, W. Bengal and Orissa. Mukherjee says,
" Thus he (Home minister Chidanbaram) can afford a tussle with the Red
Taliban at this juncture."
since he has withdrawn 30000 troopers from Kashmir. Is it necessary to
coin the phrase "Red Taliban"? Naxals/Maoists are not at all similar to
the Taliban. Taliban is plural of the word Talib which means 'student'.
To be more specific, student of a Madrasah, that is a Muslim religious
school. It is in such schools of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of
Pakistan the Taliban were motivated with religious fanaticism for Jihad.
These Madrasahs are motivated by Wahhabism, which preaches hatred against
Sufism, Shia Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity. It
preaches that women should be hidden behind the Burqa, not be educated and
have no role in public affairs. It stands for strict implemantation of the
Shariah law which assigns a half-human status to women, one man witness is
equivalent to two women witnesses and so on. I am no aplogist for the
Maoists and condemn their killing spree, but they should not be compared
to the the Taliban, even in jest. They stand for equality between the
sexes and so called 'liberation' of both men and women, They do not want
to turn the clock back and take civilization back to the middle ages in
the way the Taliban want. Mukherjee's use of the term Red Taliban for the
Maoists is unfortunate. It would breed confusion and impart some
respectability to the Taliban.
Mukherjee correctly points out that Nitish Kumar has struck a discordant
note in the last Chief ministers' meeting with Chidambaram by condemning
the heavy handed military approach toward tribal insurgents and Maoists;
Nitish advocates rehabilitation of the surrendered
cadres of the Maoists. Chidambaram is more of a man of the big buisness
and he knows that the tribal areas of Jharkhand, W. Bengal and Orissa are
mineral rich. These areas must be opened up to the mining and metallurgy
industry; that is what the big buisness houses want and is necessary for
the present so-called development model of economy, cherished by
Manmohan-Chidambaram duo. This is opposed by the
tribals who want development in radically different terms. They want
education, healthcare, agriculture and forestry and forest rights. They do
not want the mining and metallurgy industry to disrupt their way of tribal
community life.
Fortunately for Nitish Kumar Bihar's Maoist-dominated areas are not
mineral rich and a compromise is possible. The same compromise is not
possible in W. Bengal, Orissa and Jharkhand. That is the clue to the
differnce between Chidambaram and Nitish.
Kunal Ghosh
======================================================================
Dear Prof Ghosh,
Thanks for the comments.
Actually i never used the term "Red Taliban" in the straightforward manner as one would interpret.
I used it sarcastically. As if the State authorities are terming the Maoists/disgruntled tribals as "Red Talibans'.
Actually the phrase is doing the rounds in the media since the beheading of a police officer by the Maoists last year.
thanks
Uddipan
Prof Ghosh's Comments # 1 and My Reply
The article, Comparing Balochistan and Chattisgarh by Uddipan Mukherji,
is brilliant in analysis and drawing similies between the Balochistan
uprising and the Chattisgarh insurgency. Both are fuelled by extreme
poverty and exploitation. Both India and Pakistan are aware and candidly
admit the root cause of the problem. Both the countries
bring in right legislation but unfortunately are incapable of
implementing them at the grass roots level where it matters.
So far so good. Mukherji however proceeds to draw a symmetry between
India and Pakistan and prescribes a corrective policy based on that
symmetry with which I totally disagree. In my opinion there is no
symmetry between these two South Asian neighbours as far as mutual
relationship is concerned. India over last 50 years has been extending the
hand of friendship and Pakistan has been spurning. This becomes clear from
another article contained in the same Digest No. 1573 of SRATEGY_INDIA,
the one written by Michael Williams titled "The Secret War in Pakistan".
William says,
"Islamabad, however, did nothing to root out Islamist radicals near the
border with Afghanistan, nor did it spend the $12bn (given in aid by
the US) on developinggovernance. Instead, the Pakistani government bought
equipment such as F-16s to use in a war against India. Why the Bush
administration allowed this to happen by selling them the equipment is
beyond imagination....
It became pretty apparent a few years ago that it did not matter
what Nato forces did in Afghanistan if the Taliban were allowed to operate
freely in Pakistan. ..... Some segments of the Pakistani military
actually support the Taliban. They see the Taliban as a way to ensure a
friendly government in Kabul, necessary for strategic depth in a war
against India."
The quotation above clearly shows Pakistan's anti-India design. India
harbours no such design toward Pakistan. At the time of Independence and
Partition in 1947 both countries pledged to protect their respective
religious minorities. Pakistan immediately violated the pledge and cleaned
out 99% of the Hindu minority. A tiny Hindu population remains and that
too in the most poverty-stricken areas of western Sindh and all of
Balochistan but their number is dwindling. In the Punjab part of India the
Muslim minority was decimated and in some other sectors there were
anti-Muslim riots but by and large over the vast tracts of India Muslims
were not uprooted or persecuted but continued live a peacefu existence.
Their share of the percentage population is not dwindling but growing.
Where is the symmetry between India and Pakistan? Pakistan's India posture
continues to be defined by Hindu-Muslim rivalry.
It should be noted that Mukherji's article has been published in a
journal called 'Newsline' in Pakistan. Without this contrived symmetry the
article would never be allowed to be published in that country.
Professor Kumal Ghosh, IIT Kanpur
===================================================================
Dear Prof Ghosh,
Thanks for your compliments.
But I guess I would beg to differ with you on the fact that there was a "contrived symmetry" established in the article. It was not an 'artificial construct'. Rather I fully believe what I wrote.
What I wanted to stress was the 'negligence' of both the governments towards their respective citizenry, and that the commonality of that 'negligence' is fostered by the acts of the respective authorities.
I fully agree with you regarding Pakistan's behaviour vis-a-vis India. If you have time, pls go thru this article of mine where I have expressed similar viewpoints (http://www.globalpo litician. com/print. asp?id=6224)
But I guess, that does not exonerate India from its 'domestic malfunctions' .
thanks & looking forward to your erudite comments
Uddipan
is brilliant in analysis and drawing similies between the Balochistan
uprising and the Chattisgarh insurgency. Both are fuelled by extreme
poverty and exploitation. Both India and Pakistan are aware and candidly
admit the root cause of the problem. Both the countries
bring in right legislation but unfortunately are incapable of
implementing them at the grass roots level where it matters.
So far so good. Mukherji however proceeds to draw a symmetry between
India and Pakistan and prescribes a corrective policy based on that
symmetry with which I totally disagree. In my opinion there is no
symmetry between these two South Asian neighbours as far as mutual
relationship is concerned. India over last 50 years has been extending the
hand of friendship and Pakistan has been spurning. This becomes clear from
another article contained in the same Digest No. 1573 of SRATEGY_INDIA,
the one written by Michael Williams titled "The Secret War in Pakistan".
William says,
"Islamabad, however, did nothing to root out Islamist radicals near the
border with Afghanistan, nor did it spend the $12bn (given in aid by
the US) on developinggovernance. Instead, the Pakistani government bought
equipment such as F-16s to use in a war against India. Why the Bush
administration allowed this to happen by selling them the equipment is
beyond imagination....
It became pretty apparent a few years ago that it did not matter
what Nato forces did in Afghanistan if the Taliban were allowed to operate
freely in Pakistan. ..... Some segments of the Pakistani military
actually support the Taliban. They see the Taliban as a way to ensure a
friendly government in Kabul, necessary for strategic depth in a war
against India."
The quotation above clearly shows Pakistan's anti-India design. India
harbours no such design toward Pakistan. At the time of Independence and
Partition in 1947 both countries pledged to protect their respective
religious minorities. Pakistan immediately violated the pledge and cleaned
out 99% of the Hindu minority. A tiny Hindu population remains and that
too in the most poverty-stricken areas of western Sindh and all of
Balochistan but their number is dwindling. In the Punjab part of India the
Muslim minority was decimated and in some other sectors there were
anti-Muslim riots but by and large over the vast tracts of India Muslims
were not uprooted or persecuted but continued live a peacefu existence.
Their share of the percentage population is not dwindling but growing.
Where is the symmetry between India and Pakistan? Pakistan's India posture
continues to be defined by Hindu-Muslim rivalry.
It should be noted that Mukherji's article has been published in a
journal called 'Newsline' in Pakistan. Without this contrived symmetry the
article would never be allowed to be published in that country.
Professor Kumal Ghosh, IIT Kanpur
===================================================================
Dear Prof Ghosh,
Thanks for your compliments.
But I guess I would beg to differ with you on the fact that there was a "contrived symmetry" established in the article. It was not an 'artificial construct'. Rather I fully believe what I wrote.
What I wanted to stress was the 'negligence' of both the governments towards their respective citizenry, and that the commonality of that 'negligence' is fostered by the acts of the respective authorities.
I fully agree with you regarding Pakistan's behaviour vis-a-vis India. If you have time, pls go thru this article of mine where I have expressed similar viewpoints (http://www.globalpo litician. com/print. asp?id=6224)
But I guess, that does not exonerate India from its 'domestic malfunctions' .
thanks & looking forward to your erudite comments
Uddipan
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