South Asia Times: The March of Time with journalist Manzoor Chandio

CAPITALISM AT WORK

2011-07-29T09:55:00.000-07:00

-The pursuit of profit may finally be self-defeating
By Ashok Mitra
The Telegraph, July 29, 2011

It was late afternoon on the fourth day of the third and final Test between India and West Indies at Dominica earlier this month. The West Indies were tottering in their second innings, seven wickets were already down, Rampaul, the pace bowler, had just joined the dour Shivnarine Chanderpaul. A risky run was taken, Rampaul made a dive towards the wicket-keeper’s end, the fielder at square leg made a sharp, accurate throw, Dhoni collected the ball and thrust the bails out. While Rampaul was still clearly out of the crease, the field umpires were not altogether sure though whether Dhoni had the ball actually in his gloves when he broke the stumps. They referred to the third umpire, who took quite a while before making up his mind, looking closely at the video takes from different angles. Seconds ticked by, suspense mounted in the field and among the millions watching the match on the television channels. Time is money, each second works out to perhaps a few thousand dollars or more, the telecast was peremptorily interrupted, what followed was a rush of maybe a dozen advertisements stretching for a full five minutes, the viewer had no way of finding out during this interregnum whether Rampaul had been declared out or not, agony got added to the continuing suspense. It was only after the telecast was resumed to show Fidel Edwards keeping Chanderpaul company that one had confirmation that the eighth West Indies wicket too was down.
A safe wager to take; the same commentary was being telecast by some channel or other in the West Indies, in England, Australia and New Zealand, in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, possibly in South Africa as well, in none of these countries were the viewers denied their right to know the third umpire’s decision the moment it was flashed across the big screen on the field. In India, it had to be different. Capitalism is here rushing to its climacterics. Money-making — maximization of profit — is here not merely a humdrum professional goal of the business and industrial communities; it is the be-all and end-all of their existence. Squeeze to the limit whatever is squeezable is a religious credo, the rate of return must be pushed up and further up. In the context of this overriding objective of profit maximization; all other considerations are of zero worth. A television channel owes its allegiance only to the quantum of money it makes through the display of advertisements, not to the game of cricket; the Test match commentaries are merely a cover for the advertisements that are the source of amassable wealth; letting the viewers watch the proceedings while the game is actually on is reckoned to be enough, the time the third umpire takes to give his verdict cannot be allowed to go to waste. What do the Indian entrepreneurs care about the agony of the cricket buff?
The perpetrators of this kind of outrage that reduces cricket lovers to helpless fury have of course their own point of view. They are not the least apologetic in airing it either. Cricket, they will argue, has long ceased to be an indolent game to be savoured in a lazy, leisurely manner, conforming to the civilities of pastoral life. It is now an industry, an international industry; it is entertainment: at the same time, more than entertainment, like horse-racing or motion pictures. Cricket as business involves investment of millions and millions of dollars. If these millions were sunk elsewhere, the rate of return would have been of a certain order. If investors fail to attain more than that rate from their outlay on cricket they will have no alternative but to move away, that is to say, phase out their investments in cricket and depart with their kitty for other pastures. Among other things, that will also mean the end of global telecasts of cricket commentaries, a surcease of the luxury viewers enjoy, lounging in their living room in Patna or Madurai and watching Sachin Tendulkar launching on a delectable straight drive to the fences — which also fetches him his umpteenth Test century — the moment he launches on it. The viewers have a choice, they either accept cricket telecasts with all their imperfections and alleged crudities or push back the game to the insularity of the pre-information technology revolution era. Indian entrepreneurs, it will also be added, are least bothered about the extent of consideration accorded to the viewers by the channel in Australia, England or South Africa. None of these countries can match India’s scale of civilities or rate of growth. Cricket in India, in the manner it has been organized and managed in recent decades, has played its humble part in propelling this magnificent national growth. Those associated, directly or indirectly, with the business of cricket, including the channels, are determined not to do anything that could adversely affect the prospects of India’s rapid and yet more rapid economic progress. Is not the whole world watching in awe the spectacle of Indian capitalism single-mindedly at work?
Which means here in India cricket telecasts will continue to be choked off the instant someone gets out or an appeal to declare him out is posted with the umpires; no opportunity will be provided to the viewers to learn what the commentators have to say on the nature of the ball that claimed the wicket or the stroke that felled the batsman or the quite unbelievable catch the third man has taken — and of course there is no question of permitting television watchers in Mumbai and New Delhi the privilege of sharing with spectators in the field at Port of Spain the moments of exciting uncertainty preceding the decision of the third umpire on a dicey leg-before-wicket appeal. Pampering such flippancies harms the cause of profit maximization.
In a society assumed to be free, there ought to be some space for devil’s advocates. Consumer sovereignty is one of the essential features of the free market. It puts the imprimatur on the process that leads to profit maximization. Advertisement money spent by the sponsors is intended to win over the legions of cricket fans who sit glued to the television sets. Their number has already reached millions and is likely to grow even faster in future. They are, besides, quickly travelling through the learning curve and coming to appreciate to an increasing extent the charm wrapped in the mystique of this somewhat sophisticated game. Viewer psychology is a complex phenomenon. Once a sufficiently large number of television watchers enters the ethos of cricket, these watchers would conceivably like to experience every moment of it and share, along with the spectators actually present at the Test match venue many thousands of miles away, the excitement and suspense over an appeal pending for leg-before-wicket or a run out or a stumping, they will hate any distractions at this point. Initially, there will be no grouse, they will endure the sales pitches for the goods and services the sponsors are anxious to sell them. One never knows, as capitalism matures, consumer taste too can mature, tolerance can gradually gravitate towards impatience; impatience can beget irritation, that may, in the course of a short time, develop into hostility. When that stage is reached, the advertisements may turn out to be counterproductive. In the recesses of the mind, the wares being advertised can begin to be considered as infernal nuisance, sabotaging the right of viewers to enjoy their cricket. What a calamity, the sales curve may in fact start wobbling.
Such is the problem with resurgent capitalism. It does not at all know, or does not know enough, about the boundary conditions of profit maximization. A rising rate of profit tempts its protagonists to target an even higher rate of profit. At some stage, any sense of proportion gets lost, howlers are committed, howlers that have a negative impact on earnings, dragging down the rate of profit. The seekers of insensate profit, therefore, every now and then, need advice and counsel for their own good. In the present instance, sponsors have to fill in that role, and for their own interest. The consumer is sovereign; an excess of advertisements that cuts athwart the consumer’s right to savour his coveted leisure can be costly beyond measure.
But, then, there is a school of thought which is confident that capitalism of the Indian genre is maturity-proof and consumer preference too will always remain overwhelmingly banal.

Pakistan government defaults on its electricity bill

2010-07-04T11:53:00.000-07:00

By Aijaz Maher
BBC News, Islamabad
Wednesday, 30 June 2010

Government institutions in Pakistan owe $2bn to the cash-strapped national power company, it has emerged.
Power Production Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf told parliament that the defaulters included the army, the Supreme Court and the presidency.
Pakistan is currently going through a major power crisis which has slowed down the economy and led to riots.
The latest disclosures will embarrass the government which has threatened to jail people who do not pay their bills.
It has launched a massive campaign against private defaulters, accusing them of being unIslamic.
The crisis is due to a massive power shortfalls caused by poor electricity infrastructure and the shortage of new production units. Both problems stem from a lack of finances.
'Raising hackles'
"The biggest single defaulter is the ministry of defence, which includes the three armed forces," Mr Ashraf said in parliament in reply to a question.
The country's energy infrastructure lacks investment "The amount owed by defence comes to a billion rupees ($11.76m)," he stated.
This is about half of what the federal government owes to the country's Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda).
Pakistan's Presidency, on the other hand, owes a comparatively low 20m rupees ($235,294).
The Supreme Court's dues are pegged at 2.5m rupees ($29,400).
The figures are likely to raise hackles across the country as ordinary Pakistanis continue to grapple with long hours of power cuts.
The government's discomfiture over unpaid bills is likely to be enhanced because it has recently launched a new television advertisement campaign which portrays defaulters as working against the national interest.
The government has frequently warned that that bill defaulters are liable to imprisoned and fined as are people who have illegal connections.
The authorities regularly disconnect supplies to those companies or individuals who miss out on even a couple of months' payments.
But it is unlikely that any punitive action will be taken against defaulting government institutions.

Sindh: An oasis of peace and tolerance

2009-06-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

By Manzoor Chandio

Published in Sindh Watch in June 2009

Why should we take sides and condemn atrocities wherever they are being committed, with a conviction that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”?

Decades ago, during civil rights movement, Dr Martin Luther King took this stand against racial discrimination in the United States. It would be no exaggeration to say that the same is also the collective wisdom of people of Sindh in southern Pakistan.

Since the start of war on terror, the people of the non-Muslim world have been shown a terrific aspect of Pakistan, which is also home to Sufi Sindhi people. Sindh’s Sufi saint Shah Latif promoted his philosophy of universal brotherhood centuries ago.

The people of Sindh have always stood up for justice and tolerance. Their home, the soil of Sindh, is popular as the land of saints and sages who always preached the message of love and brotherhood.

The world not only highlights the failure of the Muslim world but also points out to a deficiency of an independent Muslim political thought which works out automatically to get the Muslim countries and their people out of ancient thinking.

Sindh has poets like Shah Latif and Sachal Sarmast, who centuries ago, disseminated universal brotherhood. They are the epitome of religious tolerance. Some western scholars conclude that nothing is enlightened with the Muslims through which they can replace obscurantism and extremism. But this is not the case of Sindhi Muslims, who with their Sufi inclination are tolerant to all other religions.

The deficiency of free inquiry and interpretation is so acute among Muslim scholars, that an army General used Wahabi Sect for his own survival and created Taliban who today are the biggest threat to peace. But the people of Sindh rejected Wahabi teachings in Pakistan. Sindhis are the only group of people in Pakistan, who never followed the line of extremist Islam.

For that reason, the extremist Islamabad establishment victimized the people of Sindh. Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands others jailed and sent into exile.

Similar examples of injustice and intolerance have been seen in other parts of the Islamic world. About 300,000 Kurd and Shia Muslims were killed during the Saddam regime in Iraq. The dictator used weapons of mass destruction, not against any non-Muslim country, but against fellow Muslims during the Iran-Iraq war and also used chemical weapons against Kurds in his own country.

Almost five thousand Kurds were killed in just one attack in Halabja in 1988. Iraq fought two wars against fellow Muslim states of Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990.Ironically, Israel deterred the Syrian army from invading Jordan on the pretext of supporting a Palestinian uprising in 1970. Syria occupied Lebanon in 1976 and effectively annexed it after 15 years.

In 1982, Syria massacred 20,000 people in the Muslim Brotherhood with strong hold of Hammas.Nearly 100,000 Muslims have been killed at the hands of Muslims in Algeria. After Dr. King, there were a few free thinkers in the West who challenged the perception and stood by the oppressed. If there were no Noam Chomsky (a Jew) and Edward Said (a Christian), perhaps all the Muslim had been dubbed as terrorists.

This is the time the world must know about Sufi Islam followed by the people of Sindh in Pakistan.During East Pakistan crisis, the extremist establishment projected false ideas of military and totally ignored realities on ground. The military massacred thousands of Bengalese. Today, people of Sindh and Balochistan feel that they are being targeted. The extremists in Islamabad, instead of bridging the appalling development gap that separates the Baloch and Sindhis from other nationalities, launched an action against them.

Somnambulists in Islamabad must understand history that the suppression of own people can only invite the ineluctable wrath of the mighty like the one we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The big question before the Pakistani establishment is whether it will ever be able to show its human face?

The collective wisdom of people of Sindh says yes. Before partition of subcontinent, people of Sindh following different religions, such as Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Sikhism and Zorastarism, lived together side-by-side.

Therefore, it is necessary for the world to understand the tolerant face of Islam, which is followed by the people of Sindh.

There are shrines of saints and sages across Sindh and mosques and temples inside one compound.Sindh is the soil where there is no room for Taliban. Despite being part of Pakistan, Sindh is an oasis of peace and tolerance.

Sufism Of saints and sinners

2009-03-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

Dec 18th 2008 DELHI, LAHORE AND SEHWAN SHARIF
From The Economist print edition

The Islam of the Taliban is far removed from the popular Sufism practised by most South Asian Muslims

By Declan Walsh

“NORMALLY, we cannot know God,” says Rizwan Qadeer, a neat and amiable inhabitant of Lahore, Western-dressed and American-educated, eyes shining behind his spectacles. “But our saints, they have that knowledge.”
Mr Qadeer is standing in the belly of a shrine that he is building to a modern gnostic, Hafiz Iqbal, whom he venerates especially. Cool, and smelling pleasantly of damp earth and mortar, it holds Iqbal’s grave, covered by an embroidered green shroud and sprinkled with pink rose petals. A young man—a Pakistani resident of London, Mr Qadeer says—stands in silent prayer to the saint, who was employed by Lahore’s municipal government as a street-sweeper, and died in 2001. In a tradition of popular Sufism, which mingles classical Islamic mysticism with Hinduism and folk beliefs and is a dominant feature of Islam in South Asia, the saint’s divine essence, or baraka, emanates from his tomb. “Physically, our holy saints do die,” says Mr Qadeer. “But the spirit is still here, because they have reached eternity.”
Echoing down a winding stairwell, a scraping of masonry and clink of chisel on marble signal a remarkable monument rising. It is in the scruffy Lahori suburb of Baghbanpura, where Iqbal lived for six decades. From a narrow alley running alongside the shrine, it is mostly hidden: its high outer walls, of recessed brickwork speckled with multicoloured tiles, rising out of sight to a pair of domes and skinny minarets. A few steep steps lead into a small cloistered forecourt, where masons are at work.
Either side of the forecourt, about ten metres apart, are two false burial chambers. These are beautifully decorated, with white marble lattice and marble mosaics studded with green jade, lapis lazuli and agate. One is for Iqbal and the other for his mentor, a mystic called Baba Hassan Din, who lived in a brick cell on this site and died in 1968. The men’s true graves lie underneath, in brick-walled chambers, faintly murmuring with the sounds of the street outside.
According to Mr Qadeer—who had it from Iqbal—Din was, unbeknown to many of his disciples, an Englishman from Birmingham who, early in the last century, abandoned his family and his job on the railways to become a Sufi ascetic. His real name was Alfred, or possibly Albert, Victor. He received his vocation one fine summer evening, in a visitation from Abu Hassan Ali Hujwiri, an 11th-century Persian saint, who is better known as Data Ganj Bakhsh.
In the 1950s, according to Mr Qadeer, Din arrived in Lahore, and passed himself off as a Punjabi. He also adopted a poor local boy, Iqbal, and raised him to be a scholar. According to Mr Qadeer, Iqbal earned several degrees from Government College University, Lahore—one of Pakistan’s finest. But in the early 1960s he embarked on his own spiritual training: taking a job as a sweeper, under an assumed Christian identity. He could not have sunk lower. In the Hindu caste system, which is still discernible in Muslim Pakistan, many generations after its inhabitants converted from Hinduism, street-sweeping is a profession for “untouchables”. Most Christians in Pakistan and India were originally members of that despised Hindu group.
Mr Qadeer, a well-to-do, secular Pakistani, who studied engineering at the University of Houston, became a follower of Iqbal in 1990. He was referred to him in a state of anguish, which he credits the saint, an irascible chain-smoker, with ending. He also believes Iqbal cured his young daughter of a rare intestinal ailment. Other disciples of Iqbal attribute miracles to him, including curing cancer. They say he was omniscient. They believe that, as the height of Sufi attainment, Iqbal knew God.
The stringent, legalistic creeds of the Taliban and other revivalists are on the rise in South Asia, but only a minority follow them. Most of the 450m Muslims in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh—nearly a third of the Islamic world—practise a gentler, more tolerant faith, in which pre-Islamic superstitions are still evident. It is strongly influenced by Sufism, an esoteric and, in theory, nonsectarian Muslim tradition, which is strictly followed by a much smaller number of disciplined initiates. In its popular form, Sufism is expressed mainly through the veneration of saints, including self-styled mystics like those in Lahore, canonised by their followers.
South Asia is littered with the tombs of those saints. They include great medieval monuments, like the 13th-century shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, founder of South Asia’s pre-eminent Sufi order, in Ajmer. But for every famous grave, there are thousands of roadside shrines, jutting into Delhi’s streets, or sprinkled across the craggy deserts of southern Pakistan. On a single hillside in Pakistan’s province of Punjab, outside the town of Thatta, legend has it that 125,000 Muslim saints are buried.
Pakistan’s southernmost state of Sindh, a vast desert bisected by the Indus river, is perhaps best known for its shrines. A few miles outside the city of Hyderabad, in sight of the Indus, a middle-aged dwarf called Subhan manages one of them. She found the shrine deserted a few years ago, and moved into it. It is a small shack, with a low doorway hung with cowbells, in the tradition of a Hindu temple. A dusty green shroud covers the grave. Incense burns at its foot. Subhan says it holds the dust of a medieval saint called Haji Pir Marad. Sometimes, she says, he wrestles with the Indus to prevent it from changing course. In fits of terrible rage, he has caused pileups on the road. She advises passing motorists to propitiate the saint with a modest gift of rupees. On a good day, she collects around 50 rupees (60 cents) from the travellers who stop to pray.
All the traffic, on that recent sunny day, was bound for the nearby town of Sehwan Sharif, where Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, one of Pakistan’s most prominent Sufi saints, is entombed. It was the 734th anniversary of his death, an event marked by an annual festival attended by several hundred thousand devotees. This event is known as Qalandar’s urs, or wedding-night, to signify his union with God. A three-day orgy of music, dancing and intoxication, literally and spiritually, the urs at Sehwan is one of the best parties in Pakistan, or anywhere.
Outside Qalandar’s shrine, a white marble monument, decorated with flashing neon, pilgrims work themselves into an all-night ecstasy. Tossing their long black hair, a dozen prostitutes from Karachi or Lahore have a place reserved by the shrine’s golden doorway, to dance a furious jig. It is the dhammal, a rhythmic skipping from foot to foot, for which Qalandar’s followers are well-known. Thousands are moshing to a heavy drumbeat. The air is hot and wet with their sweat. A scent of rose petals and hashish sweetens it. In a flash of gold, out in the crush, a troupe of bandsmen in braided Sergeant Pepper uniforms are blowing inaudibly into brass instruments, then lifting trumpets and trombones into the air as they dance the dhammal.
Fighting through the crowd, a stream of peasant pilgrims flows into the shrine. Many carry glittering shrouds, lovingly embroidered by a wife or mother, as an offering for the tomb. They will be bestowed with a poor man’s prayer, for a good harvest, debt relief, or a son. “Last year I told my master [Qalandar] that I would bring him a goat if he gave me a son. I have come to honour that promise,” said Muhammad Riaz Rahman, a shopkeeper from Multan, tugging a calm-looking billy, daubed with pink dye, through the crowd.
To orthodox Sufis, all this is absurd. Islam’s mystical strain, like the Jewish and Christian traditions it somewhat resembles, is a strictly delineated path to self-knowledge. The proper Sufi seeks to attain this state through rigorous disciplines, of which dhikr, the remembrance of God, by reciting or meditating on his name, is the most common. Through self-knowledge, the devout mystic strives to attain knowledge of God Himself. This sets Sufis apart from Islam’s other functionaries, its jurists, or mullahs, and its theologians.
Throughout Islamic history, Sufis and mullahs, dedicated to enforcing Koranic laws, have clashed. Mullahs demand obedience; Sufis tend to stress tolerance. In their poetry, which mullahs shudder to read, Sufis often represent the state of rapture that they seek in the language of physical love or drunkenness. “I have no concern but carousing and rapture,” wrote Rumi, Sufism’s greatest poet, whose followers, of the Turkey-based Mawlawi order, remember him in a whirling dance, the saga, which has become synonymous in the West with all Sufism.
Alixandra Fassina
Building Baba Hassan Din’s shrine
Yet—despite what the hordes at Sehwan may believe—orthodox Sufis are also law-abiding Muslims. There should be no contradiction between these two positions. “Sufism is Islam and Islam is Sufism,” says Khwaja Hasan Thani Nizami, the hereditary keeper of the shrine of Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi. In orthodox Islam, for example, the limits of sainthood are strictly prescribed. Dead Muslim saints cannot intercede with God or perform miracles. If Muslims pray at their shrines, it can only be for the dead man’s salvation. They may not pray to him, which would be shirk, a form of idolatry. According to Ahmed Javed, a bearded Pakistani Sufi and scholar: “You can’t ask a dead saint to mediate, to solve a problem, to fulfil a wish, never, never, never. That is shirk in law and in Sufism.”
But South Asians never have been terribly law-abiding. Nor, during the centuries-old process of Islamisation that they led, have the Sufi orders always insisted that they should be. This really began in the 13th century, soon after the conquest of Delhi by an army of Persian-speaking Afghans. A powerful Sufi order, the Chistis, proceeded to spread across north India, led by Chisti, the great mystic buried in Ajmer.
Chisti’s initiates wore motley, practised poverty, neglected their families and despised the Muslim sultans and emperors who would rule India for five centuries. In the words of a famous Chisti couplet: “Why must you enter the doors of emirs and sultans? You are walking in the steps of Satan!” The Chistis were known for their love of poetry and, especially, music. Pilgrim-poets still gather in the shrine of Nizamuddin Auliya, another great Chisti saint and poet, in Delhi, wearing the yellow pixie-hats of the order’s initiates.
Under Chisti influence, low-caste Hindus converted to Islam, to escape their low birth. Women, who are everywhere prominent in Sufism, were also especially welcomed. Perhaps most remarkably, the Chistis accepted recalcitrant non-Muslims as Sufi initiates. This set the tone for an astonishingly harmonious cohabitation between Hindus and Muslims in South Asia which continues, though it is sorely tested, to this day.
In the shrine of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, a great poet of Sindh, musicians gather to sing hymns. As their voices rise, in the blue-tiled portico of the shrine, a line of brightly clad Hindu women traipse in from the Sindhi desert which, for nomads like them, is still an open border to India. The Pakistani Muslim crowd, seated cross-legged on the forecourt, stirs to give them room. The women pass through, to give obeisance to Bhitai’s tomb. It is a moving scene.
For its message of tolerance, Sufism has long been fashionable outside the Muslim world. Outside Philadelphia, amid rolling green hills, is the shrine of Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, a Sri Lankan Sufi saint, who died in America in 1986. In recent times, moreover, Western interest in Islamic mysticism has become urgent. Some American commentators see Sufis as potential allies in a hostile Muslim world. A report by RAND Corporation, an American think-tank, recommended bolstering Sufism, as an “open, intellectual interpretation of Islam”.
On the face of it, this makes sense. In north-western Pakistan, where the Taliban rule, the Pushtuns have often taken against Sufi saints. According to the 1911 Census of British India, the Afridi tribe, having no shrine to worship at, “induced by generous offers a saint of the most notorious piety to take up his abode among them.” They then slit his throat, buried his corpse, and built a splendid shrine over it. These days, alas, they would probably not build the shrine: the Taliban tend to consider Sufism idolatrous. They are in the same puritan camp as Saudi Arabia’s unforgiving Wahhabi sect, their sometime sponsors. In the land of Muhammad, whom mystics revere as the first Sufi, the Wahhabis have bulldozed many old shrines.
At Qalandar’s shrine in Sehwan, a pilgrim called Tanvir Ahmed describes spending four months among the Taliban last year, in Swat, a Taliban fief near the Afghan frontier. He had thought to join the militants. But he was put off by their injunctions against Sufi saints. To a murmur of approval from other devotees, gathering thickly around us, Mr Ahmed says: “No one can deny our respected saints of God.”
But the urs also presents troubling scenes. As dusk falls, and the crowd dancing the dhammal outside the shrine swells, so does an army of men and boys, stripped to the waist. Legs akimbo, they sing a funeral dirge to the Shia martyr Hussain. It describes the battle of Karbala, in which Hussain fell, and Sunni and Shia Muslims were so painfully divided. As their deep voices rise, so the men’s arms lift together. Then each hand slaps down, with a thwack, on its owner’s red and glistening chest.
Alixandra Fassina
Hashish helps a mystic along the path to enlightenment
In daylight, inside the shrine, an even more strikingly sectarian ritual takes place. Shia pilgrims flagellate themselves with chains dangling with knife-blades and cry out to Ali, father of the martyred Hussain, and revered in Shia Islam. As they open their backs, sending blood onto the shrine’s floor, other pilgrims recoil. Many appear disgusted. In theory, Sufism transcends Islamic sects. For example, Qalandar was a Shia; many—or most—of his devotees are Sunni. Yet the shrines of Sindh, where many Shia Muslims live, are increasingly seeing strident sectarian displays. This may be partly a reaction to the attacks Pakistani Shias increasingly face from fundamentalists like the Taliban. It is a sign of popular Sufism under duress.
Sufi scholars, in Karachi, Delhi and Lahore, are concerned by this. But none wants government help—least of all from a reviled Western government. Many also note that Sufism is not, as Westerners seem to think, uniform. The conservative Naqshbandis, followers of another of South Asia’s main orders, have helped spread jihad: there was a Naqshbandi insurgent group in Iraq.
Qalandar, one of Pakistan’s most prominent Sufi saints, was not really of any order. He exists in a tradition of eccentric, mendicant Sufis. He was strongly influenced by Hinduism; many Hindus consider him a manifestation of Shiva. A Hindu performs the opening ritual of the annual urs. During the festival many devotees bring clay dishes of henna to Qalandar’s tomb, as to a Hindu bride on her wedding-night, and spread it on themselves, invoking the name of a Hindu water-god.
Amid syncretism, heresy thrives. Outside Qalandar’s mausoleum, just before dusk, a tall bearded man, wrapped in a black cloak and carrying a silver club, shouts into a loud-hailer: “Ali Allah! Allah Ali!”—“Ali is God! God is Ali!” He is Sayeed Ghafur Ali, a fine-looking dervish, and leader of a sect in Karachi which propagates this fearful blasphemy. In many Muslim places it would cost Mr Ali his head. But in Sehwan no one seems to mind. Asked, in a calmer setting, whether he has been a dervish for long, Mr Ali smiles and removes two tightly-bound parcels, about the size of American footballs, from his trouser pockets. They contain his hair, which grows in thick tresses under his cloak. Mr Ali says he has not visited a barber since he dedicated himself to Qalandar.
Unlike most renowned Sufi saints, Qalandar left little literature. In academic histories, his name hardly appears. To plug the gap, his devotees attribute miracles to him. One tells how Qalandar reconstituted a Hindu disciple, Bodhla Bahar, after an evil raja had made mincemeat of him. The narrator of this story may appear to have been smoking drugs. For Qalandar’s black-clad fakirs, many of whom are full time vagrants, much like Hinduism’s dread-locked saddhus, the urs is a wonderful opportunity to eat, dance and get stoned among friends. “Though I only smoke in the mornings to strengthen the body,” cautions Emir Bux, an elderly itinerant inside the shrine, with an orange hennaed beard and a headdress of curvy wooden snakes.
Sex is also to be had at the urs, but less freely. Sufi shrines have always appealed to prostitutes. This is partly because of the Sufis’ tolerance of sinners, but also because they make good places to sin. At Sehwan, which has a name for licentiousness, a transsexual prostitute—or hijra—called Ghazala says she came from Lahore, with 15 of her eunuch sisters, to pray and dance. Smoking a cigarette down to its filter, Ghazala, a muscular figure with greying temples, claims: “We came here only to worship our saint.” That is an unlikely story.
Presiding over this riot, from a grand house beside the shrine, is Mehdi Shah, a doctor from Islamabad, who recently inherited the title of sajjada nishin, or keeper of the shrine. This is an important office in Pakistan. The wardens of its most important shrines, including some, known as pirs, who claim descent from important saints, are among the country’s biggest landowners. This is partly a legacy of their usefulness to two former invaders of South Asia, the Mughals and British, both of whom patronised the shrine-keepers. Since the early 1960s, Pakistani governments have been taking over the most lucrative shrines, including Qalandar’s. But Pakistan’s pirs are still formidable. By one estimate, pir politicians command 10% of the popular vote. The current prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, and foreign minister, Shah Mahmud Qureshi, are both pirs.
Aaron Huey
A colourful version of Islam
Like so much else in Sehwan Sharif, this tradition has got messy. Mr Shah, the keeper of the shrine, is candid about the responsibilities pir-dom confers: “To guide people and make money.” But he regrets the competition for the office this has engendered. In Sehwan Sharif, several dozen local families claim to be guardians of the shrine. “There may be a thousand Tom, Dick and Harrys claiming to be sajjada nishin,” grumbles Mr Shah.
In a small room next to the shrine, decorated with peacock feathers, one of these wannabes, Paryal Shah, has set up shop. As Mr Shah, a bearded man rattling with amulets, enters the room, pilgrims hurl themselves at his feet. Grunting, occasionally slapping a pilgrim who crushes his toes, Mr Shah dispenses blessings among them. “God will help you,” he growls, doling out white cotton threads, blessed in advance, or a scrap of paper scribbled with a Koranic verse. It is hard to know how seriously anyone takes this charade. Mr Shah’s English-speaking right-hand, Ahmed Bhutto, winks and says that he and Mr Shah’s other disciples practice strict chastity: “I only do it with my wife!”
A more troublesome rival to Mehdi Shah is his uncle, Mozafir Ali Shah. They are locked in a property dispute so ugly that Mehdi Shah refuses even to visit his uncle’s house for a traditional family celebration: a dance performance by a visiting troupe of prostitutes. To the uninitiated, this splendid occasion is not obviously religious. The men of Mozafir Ali’s house sit in proud silence, as prostitutes straddle its courtyard, thrashing their long hair and kissing these hereditary notables’ knees. The women of the house rain rupee notes down on the dancers from a balcony discreetly above. A drummer shouts: “Sakhi Shahbaz Qalandar duma dum mast!”
True Sufis are embarrassed by such scenes. At Delhi’s great Sufi shrine, Mr Nizami, the keeper, says a Sufi must have three qualities: knowledge of Islam; love of God; and sanity. Whatever else they lack, he scoffs, the devotees of Qalandar are insane: “there is no Sufi among them!” Mr Javed, the Sufi in Lahore, agrees. But he contrasts such harmless superstition, as he terms popular Sufi beliefs, with the ruthless literalism of the Taliban. He says: “I feel safe among shallow-minded occultists. I do not feel safe among literalists.”
Scholars like these are Sufism’s true keepers. But in the undergrowth of popular Sufism, it is remarkable how little of their prescriptions survive. It has always been so. The diversity of South Asian Islam is a staggering multicultural achievement. If its mystics, orthodox and popular, are now increasingly besieged by mullahs, fellows of the Taliban, the massive gatherings at Sehwan and other Pakistani shrines suggest they will not be overrun soon.
Moreover, South Asia’s popular Sufism is not all degenerate. Some of South Asia’s greatest artistic achievements, especially in architecture, are expressions of it. The shrine to Baba Hassan Din rising in Lahore is among them.
Mr Qadeer and Mr Niaz, the disciples of Hafiz Iqbal, began work on it a few months after his death. It is being constructed entirely in natural materials, including clay bricks, white marble, gemstones, and lime plaster strengthened, as luck would have it, by the thousands of frogs that perished in it. The craftsmen building the shrine use traditional tools and techniques, some revived especially for the task.
Unsupported by concrete, the shrine’s domes rest on the weight of their own artful construction. Its cloisters are modelled on the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf. Its bejewelled mosaics are copied from the walls of Delhi’s 17th-century Red Fort. On the walls of the false burial chambers, Koranic verses, chosen by Hafiz Iqbal, have been inscribed in an ink made from burned mustard oil, in a style of calligraphy taken from the Taj Mahal. It is a wonderful creation. Kamil Khan Mumtaz, the architect, a Sufi initiate himself, believes there has been no Islamic monument built like it, anywhere in the Muslim world, for 300 years. May it last longer.

Indus civilization's industrial town found

2009-01-23T11:36:00.000-08:00

The News

April 6, 2008

Lakhyun-jo-Daro, the 5000 years old industrial area settlement of Indus period, is now a modern day industrial site

By Yasir Babbar

Lakhyun-jo-Daro, a repository of nearly five thousand years of history, is a classic example of governmental neglect: The Archaeology Department has ignored it; the authorities of archaeology department of Shah Abdul Latif University (SALU) Khairpur have not properly documented the rich history of this ancient site; the announcement of a museum at the site made by ex-Chief Minister Sindh Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim in 2006 has not been fulfilled either.

Indus, being one of the most enigmatic civilizations, was a herald of numerous developments in human culture. This was a period of aggregation and establishment of metropolitan centres with pervasive interaction networks through which many commodities moved around and consequently arrived in far-flung corners of the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra valley.

According to research, 1500 Indus period settlements existed and still many more await the spade and Lakhyun-jo-Daro is one of them. It is located in the Northwestern part of modern city of Sukkur.

Advocate Shabir Hussain Khoso, a resident of Khosa, a village near the site, in a private excavation discovered certain articles of archaeological worth and showed them to the archaeology department. He also wrote an article about this site which was published in a local Sindhi magazine about 40 years ago.

The site of Lakhyun-jo-Daro is situated near a village and graveyard named Lakha. The area is in the middle of the city in between the industries; the plots for which were allotted in 1970s. Unfortunately the archaeologists did not survey the area at that time. Now this area is under Sindh Industrial Trade Estate (SITE) Department and is called the industrial area of Sukkur.In 1981 Maalik Khoso, a student of Archaeology Department, SALU Khairpur had brought some potsherds (pieces of pots) to M. Mukhtiar Kazi, the Chairman of the Department of Archaeology SALU at that time. In 1988 the first archaeological work was carried out jointly with Federal Department of Archaeology and Archaeology Department SALU Khairpur.

The first research paper was published by M. Mukhtiar Kazi and Qasid Ali Mallah, which drew the attention of archaeologists worldwide to this site. Since then, Lakhyun-jo-Daro became the focus of scholars and archaeologists.Unfortunately, the area has received scant attention by officials of Archaeology Department SALU Khairpur and Federal Archaeology Department in the last three years. SITE Department allotted an area of 2 acres for the construction of a factory to the president, Sukkur Chamber of Commerce a few months ago but it was cancelled after a huge struggle. SITE Department then allotted another plot to a local political leader for the same purpose which was also cancelled. After the cancellation of these allotments, the authorities of Archaeology Department did not make further efforts to secure this site.According to the SALU Khairpur, at least five small-scale excavations in 1988, 1994, 1996, 2000 and 2006 were launched at the site.

During 1988, a drain about 259 meters long and almost one meter wide and deep, running east and west, was dug for the disposal of sewage water by the modern factory owners. During this process, cultural deposits were seen but were destroyed by the local workers. Nothing was left at the site except the section wall of the trench.In 1994, the Archeology Department SALU and the provincial Department of Archaeology and Museums jointly planned a small-scale quarry ((extracting stone or slate) and a total of seven trenches were opened at different parts of the mound. Mud and mud-brick structures, artificially raised platforms and burnt brick structures were exposed along with a huge variety of cultural material.

In 1996, eight trenches were opened where residential features like walls, floors, covered drain, single burnt brick line structures, bathing platforms along with a huge assortment of cultural material was discovered. The evidences of a white paste micro-beads manufacturing workshop, copper implements, copper figurines, semi-precious stone beads, polishers, bone tools, weights of terracotta and banded chert seal and a huge number of terracotta artifacts were discovered. The painted pottery of typical Mature Indus wares, in various decoration styles and shapes, was part of the collection.In 2000, the excavations resumed and only three trenches were partially excavated, where artifacts including terracotta figurines, toy cart frames, cups, and sling balls were discovered. The pottery with several decorative motifs of Mature Indus period (2600-1900 BC) was part of the cultural repertoire.

The inhabitants of this ancient site had a river port on the Indus and were transporting goods through the Indus highway. Materials like copper and industrial objects like jewellery, statues and other goods were exported to Iraq, Bahrain and other countries.Dr. Michael Jansen, a German archaeologist, agreed with Dr. Ghulam Mustafa Shar, Chairman of Archaeology Department SALU Khairpur that people of Lakhyon-jo-Daro planned and built Mohenjo-Daro. Dr. Michael Jansen has done a lot of work on Mohenjo-Daro who visited the Lakhyun-jo-Daro recently.

Dr. G. Mustafa Shar, while talking to TNS, told that according to research the area of Lakhyun is about 3x4 Kilometres (12 square kilometres) whereas Mohenjo-Daro is 2x5 km (10 sq kms). So Lakhyon is bigger than Mohenjo-Daro. Dr.Shar added that the findings from this site are several seals of copper and steatite, which bear Indus period language, workshops of semi-precious stone like agate, lapis, carnelian, and turquoise. One of the most important antiquities is the measuring scale which decoded and measured the length of time.

The next major discovery is the copper figurine or statue. This human figurine is wearing a modern style trouser and a belly belt.Dr.Shar claimed that now it is going to be reported to UNESCO as an endangered site. Dr. Michael Jansen has promised this in recent visit to Lakhyun-jo-Daro. The 5000 years old precious city, proved to be an industrial area settlement of Indus period, is a site where another industrial area has been built.Dr Shar condemned the recent illegal allotments made by SITE officials. "Our own people are damaging the culture for the achievement of temporary monetary benefits. If we could save the site, we will have antiquities for hundreds of museums, and the country will attract tourists and earn huge foreign exchange.

We are the caretakers of most civilized period of our past and it is our responsibility to transfer it to the coming generation without damaging it. We must save it. There is also an Antiquity Act 1975 present in our constitution. The law must act against those who have no respect for their ancient civilization and history."Ali Hyder Gadehi, an officer of Archaeology Department, said while talking to TNS: "Our department is working to secure ancient sites including Lakhyun and others in Sindh. But there is a huge shortage of staff as well as lack of funds in our department."

Height of irresponsibility

2008-12-23T11:43:00.000-08:00

The Hindu
Dec 22, 08

If Abdul Rahman Antulay has made his continuance as Minister untenable by blatantly ignoring the facts behind the terrorist attacks on Mumbai and buying into a strange conspiracy theory over the killing of the Maharashtra Anti-terrorism Squad chief Hemant Kharkare, the United Progressive Alliance government has not displayed any great sagacity in prevaricating over his resignation.
In the days since the attack, compelling evidence has surfaced to establish the Pakistani identity of the assassins of Mr. Karkare, Additional Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamte, Inspector Vijay Salaskar, and three of the four constables who accompanied them.
In an over-the-top interview to a television channel, Mr. Antulay insinuated a Hindutva plot to kill Mr. Karkare.
Later, speaking in Parliament, he alleged that Mr. Karkare and the other two police officers had been sent to their deaths by a telephone caller who summoned them to Cama Hospital.
He asked: “Why did all three of them go in the same vehicle to Cama Hospital? Who directed them there?”
Mr. Antulay’s indiscretion was the worse because he held the sensitive portfolio of Minority Affairs. The Minister clearly failed to appreciate that in the tinderbox environment terrorism has engendered, the smallest provocation can inflame communal passions. And thanks to the sanctity that attaches to the words of a Minister, there is already some consternation in sections of the Muslim community.
The Mumbai attack had been widely condemned by Muslim organisations; ordinary Muslims wore black bands on Eid to protest it.
Today sundry Urdu newspapers have joined the Antulay chorus.
This is unfortunate given that there are two eyewitnesses to the ambush of the policemen. The account of the surviving Pakistani terrorist, Mohammad Ajmal Amir has been corroborated by Constable Arun Jhadav who was left for dead by the assassins.
There is no disputing the reason why the police officers rushed to Cama hospital, which was the second place to come under attack after Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. Mr. Karkare and his two fellow officers had received information that Additional Commissioner of Police Sadanand Date was injured in that attack.
In part as a consequence of the needless twist given to this straightforward story, Pakistan today refuses to accept that the Mumbai terror attack originated on its soil. For the Muslim community, targeted and taunted by the Sangh Parivar for its alleged terror links, Mr. Karkare was a hero, who uncovered the truth of the Malegaon terror blast and established the justness of the Indian legal system.
His death has created a climate ripe for conspiracy theories. As a Minister, Mr. Antulay had a responsibility to advocate calm and reason. Regrettably, he did the opposite.

Obama and FDR

2008-11-27T10:33:00.000-08:00

The Hindu
Nov 27

Historical comparisons can be powerful, even when they need intellectually to be handled with care. There is a global consensus that the financial crisis of 2008 is the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The bursting of asset price bubbles, the collapse of many financial institutions, the freezing of credit, the contraction of effective demand, the economic slowdown that has spared no country or continent, recession across the developed world, the adverse effects on the livelihoods and food security of hundreds of millions of people in developing countries, deep forebodings of worse to come, and an underlying fear that the real economy will not turn round for some years have combined to depress people’s spirits worldwide.
During such a time of troubles, the clock seems to move very slowly — and it has moved very, very slowly for the American people (nearly 67 million of whom voted for ‘yes we can’ change).
They have huge expectations of the role of government in bringing economic order to their lives. They find the transition from a deeply unpopular administration whose policies they hold responsible for the present mess to a new dispensation that will take over in January 2009 excruciatingly long and costly.
They worry over the power vacuum in the world’s largest and most powerful economy, which is in the grip of not depression but what Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman calls depression economics.
He explains what he means by this in his accessible new book, The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, and also in a recent newspaper column: “for the first time in two generations, failures on the demand side of the economy — insufficient private spending to make use of the available productive capacity — have become the clear and present limitation on prosperity for a large part of the world” and “the usual tools of economic policy — above all, the Federal Reserve’s ability to pump up the economy by cutting interest rates — have lost all traction.”
Doing something, almost anything, to get credit to flow again and create demand to make use of the economy’s capacity are the keys to recovery, which means John Maynard Keynes “is now more relevant than ever.”
For the United States, Professor Krugman favours a major stimulus package of the order of $600 billion. He also advocates throwing out of the window faint-hearted notions of fiscal prudence and adopting, as Franklin D. Roosevelt did in the 1930s, a strategy of trying things out.
“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands,” FDR famously proclaimed in 1932, the year this patrician who was considered a political lightweight swept into historical ignominy an ideologically blinded, do-nothing President Herbert Hoover, “bold, persistent experimentation.
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”
These words (ghosted, incidentally, by a reporter) anticipated the New Deal and the thrilling, if flawed, experimentation of FDR’s first hundred days in office. The 32nd President of the U.S. was not known to be well versed in economics: when Lord Keynes, an admirer of his programme, visited him in the White House in 1934, FDR was bewildered by the Englishman’s “rigmarole of figures” and supposed him to be “a mathematician rather than a political economist” while the visitor confessed that he had expected the President to be more economically literate.
Seventy-four years later, an intellectually better prepared, if politically less experienced, President-to-be faces a “crisis of historic proportions” (to use his own words). He knows he won big, by close to 7 percentage points, on November 4 thanks largely to the financial crisis and on the strength of his promises to restructure and reform the economy in a fairer, more equitable, and sounder direction.
But Mr. Obama’s medium- and long-term economic agenda has been overtaken by crisis events. In response, he has promised big, bold, and far-going action to jolt the economy back into shape. He will start his presidency with a huge legislative advantage: a Democratic hegemony in Congress. The Obama stimulus package is widely expected to surpass the expectations of the big league Keynesians. The President-elect has even promised that his economic recovery plan would create 2.5 million new jobs by 2011. He has announced a high-powered economic team — led by Tim Geithner, a fiscal bail-out top gun, and Larry Summers, a card-carrying Keynesian — that seems to have raised confidence levels on both Wall Street and Main Street. The man who would have no truck with the November 15 Washington Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy has now made it a point to emphasise that the economic crisis was “no longer just an American crisis” and that his administration would reach out to countries around the world to craft a global response. But that is not all. Unlike President-elect FDR who in early 1933 rebuffed all efforts by lame-duck President Hoover to draw him into joint proclamations to tackle the banking crisis, who refused to “tie [his] hands” before becoming President, Mr. Obama has found his ‘we have only one President at a time’ gambit to be politically unsustainable. So he has let his good personal rapport with George W. Bush (FDR and Hoover had poisonous personal relations) develop into some kind of coordination to calm the jittery financial markets.
The size, orientation, and details of the Obama stimulus package aside, the key question on the minds of the historically minded is: will President Obama show the history-making leadership qualities — the self-confidence, the spirit of experimentation, the hopefulness, the warm empathy with working and middle class people, the first class temperament — that FDR brought to handling the unprecedented challenge of the Great Depression, which was actually brought to an end only by the Second World War?

Mission perfect

2008-11-11T11:06:00.000-08:00

The Hindu

Nov 10, 2008

The successful critical manoeuvre on November 8 that put Chandrayaan-1 in an orbit around the moon marked the completion of the most important phase of the Indian lunar mission.

The rest of the mission involves only standard orbit manoeuvres, the likes of which the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is quite used to, and the performance of the on-board scientific instruments during the mission life of two years.

The precision with which the crucial operation was exe cuted has unequivocally demonstrated ISRO’s capability to take up the more complex deep space missions as distinct from numerous near-earth missions in the past.

The achievement has put India in the exclusive club of space-faring nations that have ventured beyond the sphere of earth’s gravitational influence.

That ISRO brought this off in its first attempt is all the more commendable.
Although ISRO’s inherent scientific ability was never in doubt, Chandrayaan-1 — the maiden deep space endeavour — posed new technological challenges in telemetry, tracking, miniaturisation of on-board systems and devices, novel power packs and special thermal control of the spacecraft to withstand conditions of high solar load hitherto not experienced in the near-earth environment.

The performance of the mission so far is testimony to ISRO’s advanced capabilities in all these respects.

Nevertheless, as ISRO plans for Chandrayaan-2 in 2012-13 and a manned mission to space in 2015, when it will face even greater technology challenges, the question is whether the venture is worth the huge cost it will entail. A political factor that is relevant is the world’s constant India-China comparison and the latter’s demonstrated technological prowess in space technology. What is more, given the resurgent interest in tapping the moon’s resources, there is a strategic dimension to space missions.

This becomes particularly relevant if one notes the discordance between the Moon Treaty, which very few countries have ratified, and the Outer Space Treaty, which most nations have. While the former emphasises the principle of ‘common heritage of mankind,’ the latter articulates it weakly. It is from this perspective that the rhetorical question posed by ISRO’s former chairman K. Kasturirangan, “Can we afford not to go to the moon?” and the basic question of whether India should venture into deep space need to be addressed.

At the same time, as ISRO begins to think in terms of manned missions to space, which will cost a great deal more than unmanned missions, the cost-benefit analyses need to be done more rigorously than for relatively low-cost missions such as Chandrayaan. But these are policy issues that can be taken up later. Now is the time to congratulate ISRO on taking India’s exploration of space up a level — which very few developing countries have even aspired to reach.

Financial Times review of book 'Empires of the Indus'

2008-10-10T06:25:00.000-07:00

Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River

By Alice Albinia

John Murray £20 384 pages

FT bookshop price: £16

Review by Paddy Docherty

Empires of the Indus is a magnificent book, a triumphant melding of travel and history into a compelling story of adventure and discovery.

Alice Albinia has taken her obsession with the great river and wrought a captivating account of her explorations through Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Tibet, taking us hundreds of miles upstream and back in time to the earliest days.

She begins in Karachi in Pakistan, close to where the Indus enters the Arabian Sea.

By the time she reaches the source of the river in Tibet, we have been drawn through an array of peoples, cultures, landscapes and stories.

The book is deftly structured: the further upriver we journey, the deeper into history we go. This approach does not, however, tie Albinia narrowly to the river itself, and she branches off on numerous adventurous diversions around the cultural watershed of the Indus.

These forays, and her evident determination to track down little-known rock carvings or tribal villages, are enlightening.

I was especially taken by her burqa-clad and highly illegal journey through the tribal badlands of Waziristan, for which she surely deserves a medal.

Elsewhere, we follow her as she walks the path of Alexander the Great as he arrived at the Indus, and – clad in a piece of plastic sheet against the rain – tramping through snowy Tibetan mountains.

These exploits serve to illuminate or uncover rich historical evidence. Most notable is the deeply varied nature of the cultures and religions that grew or coalesced around the river: we learn of Sufi saints, river cults and Kalash practices besides Buddhism, Sikhism and Hinduism.

There are some surprising tales of collaboration between Muslims and Hindus and between Muslims and Sikhs – reminders that religions do not have to divide us – and many curious cultural fusions.

Hidden history is brought to light, notably a chapter on the Sheedi people of Sindh, descendents of African slaves now living as modern Pakistanis. Another surprise was the sexual current that runs through the book, from Pashtun catamites to Tibetan polyandry.

The entire journey is linked by a thread of the Rig Veda, the ancient Sanskrit hymns of worship which exalted the Indus as the ”Unconquered Sindhu”, river of rivers. Albinia is an engaging travelling companion with a quietly determined and gently humorous voice, often to be heard persuading bemused army officers or incredulous tribal leaders into letting her into forbidden places or across closed borders.

A reader cannot help but be delighted as she describes her discoveries, such as when she is led to an unexpected prehistoric stone circle in Kashmir:

“I hear myself gasping out loud. The circle is resplendent, majestic, isolated – a solid ring of stones in this silent, empty place. On our left is a sheer brown wall of rock, and the blue slither of the river; to our right, a wider, greener river, and a dark mass of mountains in the distance.

In the east, beyond the point where the rivers meet, snow-topped mountains shine fiercely in the afternoon light. I can almost hear, like a whisper, the footsteps of the people who created this circle.

For the first time in my life I want to get down on my knees and worship at this altar to human endeavour, to the power of Nature.”Her passion is infectious throughout; I felt Albinia’s relief and frustrations, her alarms and compulsions as I read. There is concern, too, for the riverside peoples and cultures, and for the river itself.

At times this anxiety even becomes sadness, a momentary lament for the impact of the modern world on the ancient Indus waters. Ultimately, though, this is an inspiring book, and readers with even a fraction of Albinia’s wanderlust will want to set off on their own explorations.

Paddy Docherty is the author of ‘The Khyber Pass: A History of Empire and Invasion’ (Faber)

Baloch provinces of Afghanistan seek independence

2008-10-06T13:09:00.000-07:00

Courtesy: Baloch Voice

Different tribal and ethnic groups are trying to control their areas and declaring their autonomy from a non existing central authority in Afghanistan.
Baloch tribes of Nemroz, Helmand and Farah provinces in South Western Afghanistan have decided to secede from Kabul and to declare their independence, the Balochistan News Service reported on Nov 24, 2001.
The decision was taken unanimously by a tribal Jirga recently held in Nemroz province.
A five-member provisional committee was nominated to take the administrative control of the declared autonomous region with Karim Shagzai Muhammad Hassani as its head.
Baloch provinces of Nemroz, and Helmand.
The region is the agricultural back-bone of Afghanistan for its century’s old agricultural channels along the banks of River Helmand, border with District Chagai (Balochistan) of Pakistan in the south and Iranian Province of Seistan and Balochistan in the west.Both the provinces along with the southern part of Farah province is overwhelmingly inhabited by Baloch tribes like Mengal, Barakzai, Gorgegh, Baranzai, Mohamed Hassani, Naroi, Sanjarani and other Rakhshani tribes.
These are cross border tribes, also inhabiting the Chagai and Kharan districts of Pakistan and the adjoining areas of Iranian province of Seistan and Balochistan.The population of these tribes is said to be more than 1.2 million.
The action to take control of the Baloch areas by tribesmen was prompted by the attempts of a group of former Mujahideen supported by “foreign elements” to occupy Nemroz and Helmand after the withdrawal of Taliban warriors from the area in the first week of this month, a source told BNS.Political observers in the provincial capital Quetta, are of the opinion that Baloch Nationalist parties would welcome independence of these areas or the merger of these Afghan provinces into Pakistan.
Meanwhile, former member of National Assembly of Pakistan Sana Baloch in a statement appealed to western coalition not to consider inclusion of Nemroz, Helmand and Baloch majority areas of Farah provinces as part of southern Afghanistan, in a future political dispensation, in case of impending dissolution or disintegration of Afghanistan.He appealed for an autonomous status for the area.
He declares support to the tribes and said that Baloch tribes across the borders are ready to assist their brothers in Afghanistan if they are attacked or their areas are threatened by hostile forces.Political observers believe that in the eventuality of the disintegration of Afghanistan which is on the cards, Pakistan can claim this area for security reasons. It can also control the area indirectly with the help of its own frontier tribes of Chagai and Kharan.

India 'not a threat to Pakistan': Zardari

2008-10-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

By Barbara Plett
BBC News
Sept 5

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari says India has never been a threat to Pakistan, and that militants in Indian-administered Kashmir are terrorists.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he also seemed to acknowledge that his government has given consent to US air strikes in Pakistan.
The unorthodox views run counter to those held by Pakistan's military, which views India as a threat.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars but have made recent peace moves.
Deep suspicions
Pakistan's powerful military has long-defined India as an existential threat, and in the past it has given covert backing to the militants in Kashmir.
The two regional rivals did take part in a faltering peace process under the former president, General Pervez Musharraf. But suspicions always ran deep, and relations have soured recently.
Mr Zardari's comments thus mark a radical break with the past.
The Wall Street Journal also reports that Mr Zardari acknowledged that the US was firing missiles at militant targets inside Pakistan with his government's consent.
"We have an understanding, in the sense that we're going after an enemy together," it quotes him as saying.
But the Pakistani army is adamant that coalition forces do not have permission for such cross-border raids.
These incursions have stoked enormous anger in Pakistan - and Mr Zardari's comments may do the same.

Why Begum Khaleda and Sheikh Hasina should talk

2008-10-03T11:40:00.000-07:00

The Daily Star

October 4, 2008

By Harun ur Rashid

A lot of articles have appeared in the newspapers recently on the proposed face- to-face dialogue between the two former prime ministers. Some writers and politicians doubt whether any fruitful outcome would emanate from their talks.
Barrister Rafique-ul Huq first raised the matter, expecting that a new dawn could rise in restoring healthy political environment in the country if the two national leaders talked to each other.
This is a commendable initiative, coming from an eminent barrister who, as a citizen of the country, has the right to propose such a meeting.

Furthermore, his standing is greater than other people's because he represented both the leaders before the courts at a difficult time in their personal lives.
The leaders will not talk about their personal matters, or about removing their dislike for each other, but about promoting representative democracy in the country.

There is a saying that the interests of a political party come before self-interest, and the interests of the country come before the interests of a political party.
Briefly, politics in the country since 1991 was characterised by and large by the following unsavoury practices:
-The mutual dislike for each other continued unabated between Begum Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina. They did not speak to each other for years. As a result, confrontational politics prevailed.
-If one lady won the election and ran the government, the other lady and her party MPs boycotted the parliament on allegation of the election being rigged and non-cooperation in the parliament by the ruling party.

The issues were raised on the streets and violence would erupt among the supporters of rival parties.
-The prime minister became an authoritarian leader because of dynastic reasons. One is the wife of a slain president and the other lady is the daughter of assassinated president and founder of the nation.

Hardly any cabinet minister or MP had the courage to express different views on the prime minister's decisions.
-Politics became a big commercial investment because if one could become an MP, it was a gateway for him/her to make money by being corrupt and abusing power and privilege. If MPs and ministers became corrupt, bureaucrats were not far behind them.
Suspected corrupt ministers and MPs were never dismissed or put on trial, and corrupt individuals and musclemen moved freely under the patronage of influential politicians. Criminalisation of politics became a routine affair. A section of ministers and MPs had allegedly pampered criminal elements to make money by extortion as long as they could bring enough votes for politicians during the elections.
State institutions became weak, and it is alleged that successive governments appointed their own people in the state institutions.

In the perception of the public, there was almost a complete breakdown of integrity of some of the state institutions. Bureaucracy became politicised, and those who "did not go with the flow" were marginalised.
Given the confrontation between the two major parties since 1991, democratic norms and traditions totally disappeared from ethical standards of most of politicians.
Democracy in the country was dominated by tyrannical rule of the majority and a recalcitrant minority. The conduct of both parties had alienated an overwhelming majority of common people, and when 1/11 came there was a relief in the country.
But everyone realises that the caretaker government has been a stop-gap one and that an elected government has to run the country, and, therefore, politicians have an important role to play in restoring representative democracy in the country.
What should they talk about?It is assumed that the two leaders must have gone through a process of self-analysis and introspection when they were in prison. Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living.
The leaders must have taken stock of the past deeds of their parties' stalwarts and realised that there must be a new beginning in politics, which will not be influenced by money, muscle and corrupt elements.
Broadly, they need to talk about the following:

Acceptance of the outcome of a fair election with grace.
Role of ruling party and opposition in parliament.
No boycott of the sessions of parliament.
Political issues not to be settled on the streets.
Some guidelines for conduct of supporters during hartal.
Revision of the Constitution.

A few words about revision of the ConstitutionThe 1972 Bangladesh Constution provides for representative democracy in which the ability of the elected representatives to exercise decision-making power is subject to rule of law (not merely rule by law) that places constraints on the government leaders on the extent to which the will of majority can be exercised against the rights of minority parties.
37 years of governance have demonstrated the pitfalls, and misinterpretation, of the provisions of the Constitution. Some of the amended provisions (such as Article 70) tend to be totally against the democratic norms of the Consitution, and they need to be deleted.
What is imperative is that provisions of the Constitution must be made explicity clear, with checks and balances on the separation of powers among the organs of the state --executive, legislative and judiciary. There exists an imbalance between the powers of the president and those of the prime minister, which needs to be rectified.
It does not matter whether their parties or members of civil society initiate the process of talks, if the two former prime ministers can arrive at a consensus on the issues mentioned above it will augur well for the country.
Politics is the art of the possible, as Bismarck said. Both the prime ministers have served the people, and it is always the politicians in all countries who provide service to the community. Politics is the highest call of service to people.

Barrister Harun ur Rashid is a former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva.

Art of War: Are we deceiving ourselves again?

2008-09-30T11:20:00.000-07:00

Book written by Arun Shourie
Reviewed by Brahma Chellaney for Hindustan Times

India and China are both adept at playing with numbers. While China invented the abacus, India conceived the binary and the decimal systems.
But India, having forsaken the Kautilyan principles, has proven no match to China’s Sun Tzu-style statecraft.
From Nehru’s grudging acceptance of Chinese suzerainty to Atal Behari Vajpayee’s blithe acceptance of full Chinese sovereignty, India has incrementally shed its main card — Tibet.
As a result, India has found itself repeatedly betrayed.
Indeed, it wasn’t geography but guns — the sudden occupation of the traditional buffer, Tibet, soon after the communists seized power in Beijing — that made China India’s neighbour.
Jawaharlal Nehru later admitted he didn’t anticipate the swiftness of the Chinese takeover of Tibet because he had been “led to believe by the Chinese foreign office that the Chinese would settle the future of Tibet in a peaceful manner”.
Shourie’s well-researched, powerfully written book relies on Nehru’s letters, speeches, notes and other correspondence to bring out the significance, in Nehru’s own words, of the events from the 1950-51 fall of Tibet to China’s 1962 invasion.
The author then draws 31 lessons from those developments for today’s India.
After all, there are important parallels, as Shourie points out, between the situation pre-1962 and the situation now.
Border talks are regressing, Chinese claims on Indian territories are becoming publicly assertive, Chinese cross-border incursions are rising, and India’s China policy is becoming feckless.
Indeed, what stands out in the history of Sino-Indian disputes is that India has always been on the defensive against a country that first moved its frontiers hundreds of miles south by annexing Tibet, then furtively nibbled at Indian territories before waging open war, and now lays claims to additional Indian territories.
By contrast, on neuralgic subjects like Tibet, Beijing’s public language still matches the crudeness and callousness with which it sought in 1962, in Premier Zhou Enlai’s words, to “teach India a lesson”.
India’s crushing rout in 1962 hastened the death of Nehru, “a fervent patriot,” according to Shourie, who “misled himself and thereby brought severe trauma upon the country, a country that he loved and served with such ardour”.
The defeat transformed Nehru from a world statesman to a beaten, shattered politician.
A classic example of Nehru’s selfdelusion cited by the author is the following note he wrote on July 9, 1949, to the country’s top career diplomat: “Whatever may be the ultimate fate of Tibet in relation to China, I think there is practically no chance of any military danger to India arising from any change in Tibet.
Geographically, this is very difficult and practically it would be a foolish adventure. If India is to be influenced or an attempt made to bring pressure on her, Tibet is not the route for it.
I do not think there is any necessity for our defence ministry, or any part of it, to consider possible military repercussions on the India-Tibetan frontier.
The event is remote and may not arise at all.”
What Nehru naively saw as a “foolish adventure” was mounted within months by China. What Nehru asserted was geographically impracticable became a geopolitical reality that has impacted on Indian security like no other development since the 20th century.
Right up to 1949, Nehru kept referring to the “Tibetan government” and to Tibet and India as “our two countries”. But no sooner had China begun gobbling up Tibet than Nehru’s stance changed. He started advising Tibetan representatives, as Shourie brings out, to go to Beijing and plead for autonomy.
By 1954, through the infamous ‘Panchsheel Agreement’, Nehru had not only surrendered India’s extra-territorial rights in Tibet but also recognised ‘the Tibet region of China’ — without securing any quid pro quo, such as the Chinese acceptance of the McMahon Line.
From Nehru’s grudging acceptance of Chinese suzerainty over Tibet to Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s blithe acceptance of full Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, India has incrementally shed its main card — Tibet — and thereby allowed the aggressor state to shift the spotlight from its annexation of Tibet and Aksai Chin to its newly assertive claims on Arunachal Pradesh.
The irony is that by laying claims to additional Indian territories on the basis of their purported ties to Tibet, China blatantly plays the Tibet card against India, going to the extent of citing the birth in Tawang of one of the earlier Dalai Lamas, a politico-religious institution it has systematically sought to destroy. Yet India remains coy to play the Tibet card against China.
The sum effect of failing to use Tibet as a bargaining chip has been that India first lost Aksai Chin, then more territory in 1962 and now is seeking to fend off Chinese claims to Arunachal Pradesh.
And as Shourie reminds us, India has still to grasp that the Chinese modus operandi of promising a peaceful settlement and then employing force to change facts on the ground is an old practice.
The lessons he paints — from not running policy on hope to ensuring peace by building capability to defend peace — are words of warning no leadership ought to ignore. Shourie’s book is a call for a downthe-earth Indian policy which, without pushing any panic buttons, begins to build better Himalayan security and countervailing leverage to ensure that China’s growing power does not slide into arrogance and renewed aggression.
After all, China’s dramatic rise as a world power in just one generation under authoritarian rule represents the first direct challenge to liberal democracy since the rise of fascism in the 1930s.
But just as India has been battered by growing terrorism because of its location next to the global epicentre of terror, it could bear the brunt from its geographical proximity to an increasingly assertive China.

-Brahma Chellaney is a political commentator

A fresh start?

2008-09-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

Daily DAWN

Sept 27, 2008

IT is hoped that Thursday’s meeting between President Asif Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will help undo the grave damage that bilateral relations have suffered in recent months.

Among other agreements, a pledge has been made to revive the composite dialogue process which was dealt a severe blow in July this year when the Indian embassy in Kabul came under ferocious attack.

New Delhi, possibly at the instigation of Kabul, was quick to accuse Pakistan of direct involvement in the bombing.

The severity of the charge and the undiplomatic language used by Indian officials was shocking, and tensions were ratcheted up further by subsequent clashes across the LoC and a string of bombings in India.

Hopefully New Delhi will show more tact in the future. Instead of being broadcast to the world, any and all terrorism-related concerns must be addressed discreetly and at the proper forum, which in this case would be the Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism.

Given this backdrop, it will take more than a photo-op meeting in New York to restore trust between the two neighbours but at least a fresh start seems to have been made.

Prime Minister Singh has also vowed to resolve the ongoing dispute triggered by the Baglihar Dam project in Indian-held Kashmir. Pakistan has not been receiving anywhere near its share of water envisaged under the Indus Water Treaty, and agriculture this side of Wagah has suffered as a result. It was also announced that at least four trade routes are to be opened, one of them across the LoC.

This is a welcome move and the plan’s materialisation clearly the need of the day. In this age of regionalism, both countries and their citizens will benefit from freer trade and cheaper goods. In this connection, attention must be given to breathing new life into the comatose South Asia Free Trade Area agreement.

Under Safta, customs duties on most products traded between Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka were to be lifted by 2012. But there has been no movement on this count, to the detriment of the region.

There was also no mention in New York of the popular uprising that is gathering strength in Indian-held Kashmir or the brutality with which security forces there are trying to suppress it. Understandable, perhaps, given that an attempt was being made to ease tensions, not inflame passions.

Still, what President Zardari recently called “the main hurdle in the way towards peace and full normalisation of relations between Pakistan and India” has to be discussed sooner than later. This is not to suggest that the two countries should put everything else on hold until the Kashmir issue is resolved to the satisfaction of all parties to the dispute. But the plight of the Kashmiri people cannot be ignored either.

Global Crises Challenge Leaders

2008-09-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

Daily Outlook Afghanistan

The world’s huge challenges such as human rights violations, insecurity, economic and food crisis required an all-out international plan that is reflected in the Millennium Development Goals. MDGs are eight goals to be achieved by 2015 that respond to the world's main development challenges.

The MDGs are drawn from the actions and targets contained in the Millennium Declaration that was adopted by 189 nations-and signed by 147 heads of state and governments during the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000.

The Millennium Declaration sets the United Nations (UN) agenda for peace, security and development concerns in the 21st Century, including in the areas of environment, human rights, and governance.

Adopting the Declaration, the U.N. General Assembly called upon the whole UN system to assist Member States in the implementation of this Declaration In order to guide the UN system in this task, the Secretary-General prepared a “road-map” for implementing goals.

During the presentation of his first annual progress report on implementing the Millennium Declaration, United Nations’ previous Secretary-General, Kofi Annan warned that prospects for reaching the MDGs on current trends are uncertain, with marked differences between and within regions.

Opening the UN General Assembly's 63rd annual debate, UN Chief Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday stressed the need for "global leadership" as he pressed world leaders not to pursue narrow national interests in the face of hard economic times.

He spoke of a "challenge of global leadership" to tackle the world's worsening financial, energy and food crises. Ban, who has chosen implementation of key poverty reduction goals as a major theme of this year's debate, said he saw "a danger of retreating from the progress we have made, particularly in the realm of development and more equitably sharing the fruits of global growth."

Perusing the current indicators of world development and measurement of eradication of poverty, insecurity and economic and food crisis through out the globe, it comes true saying that global leadership is strongly challenged today.

To prove efficiency of world leaders’ performances, they should, in concert, launch political, social and economic initiatives to overcome today’s big menaces threatening the human community’s interests.

Restore autonomy originally enjoyed by Kashmir

2008-09-19T07:59:00.000-07:00

Ajit Bhattacharjea has been writing on Jammu and Kashmir ever since he went there in 1947 to report the invasion of Pathans sent in by Pakistan.

In his 80s, Bhattacharjea has completed a biography of Sheikh Abdullah to complement his previous book ‘Kashmir: The Wounded Valley’.

Humra Quraishi talks to Bhattacharjea:

How has Kashmir changed?

I went to Srinagar the first time in 1947, soon after our troops landed there. I saw how Kashmiris helped to resist the invasion by Pathan tribals sent in by Pakistan.

The same Kashmiris are now crying for azadi from India. When I was there last year, temples were open in the heart of Srinagar and people were visiting them.

There were so many publications about the culture and history of the Valley and there were tourists. There was hope. There’s little hope left today as the situation amounts to a form of occupation because of our repressive law and order approach.

How did the situation deteriorate?

Sheikh Abdullah and Jawaharlal Nehru believed in secularism and in socialism. Kashmiris were with India and rejected Pakistan because for them it didn’t stand for either socialism or secularism. Over the years Hindutva outfits have exerted their influence over the government of India. With that several factors came up.

The assurances given to Sheikh Abdullah were taken away, the special autonomy promised to J&K was gradually eroded.

There’s a sense of alienation among Kashmiris. That sense of alienation had always been there but today it has increased. Blocking the highway and connecting roads to the Valley was a disaster.

It made Kashmiris feel that they are not part of the country. And now, this news of curfew being imposed in the entire Valley.

The way forward is to invite all concerned for discussions on specific, time-bound measures to revive the autonomy J&K had enjoyed when it joined the Indian Union.

What kind of political solution do you think will be acceptable in the Valley?

People tend to forget that Jammu and Kashmir cannot be treated like any other state. It acceded to India on October 27, 1947, on the condition of being given internal autonomy.

Though Muslims were in a majority, they supported accession and helped Indian troops resist Pakistan. But gradual erosion of the state’s autonomy planted the seeds of alienation. Azadi became a popular slogan, that could mean independence or full autonomy.

I do not see any prospect of early resumption of talks on autonomy after this heavy dose of repression. Prospects had improved after General Musharraf made his out-of-the-box proposals to increase cooperation between the two halves of Kashmir.

But he, too, is gone. Even so, if the Centre offers talks on restoring the level of autonomy originally enjoyed by the state, a new beginning can perhaps be made. But it must seem to be sincere.

Nepal Maoists seek new order with India

2008-09-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

By Sunil Raman

BBC News

Nepalese Prime Minister Prachanda visits India apparently determined to change the terms of engagement with his country's giant neighbour. The visit is being watched with great interest as India prepares to work with a Nepal that looks like being governed very differently from the past.
For years Nepalese leaders have expressed a desire to review a peace treaty which has defined relations between the two countries since 1950.
Prachanda, under pressure from Maoist comrades not to be pro-India, has gone further.
He is being urged to stand up to India and has said he will bring the draft of a new agreement to Delhi.
'Hype'

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru stressed Nepal's importance for a newly independent India in 1959 when he said "we cannot allow anything to go wrong in Nepal or permit that barrier to be crossed or weakened because that would be a risk to our [India's] security".
Prachanda is conscious that his visit to India is unlike trips made by his predecessors. His remarks and body language clearly show that he wants to engage with India as the leader of a sovereign nation and not of a "vassal state".
He has been under pressure from his party comrades and others to scrap the treaty with India. His India trip has dominated Nepalese newspapers, television channels and radio stations for days. Nepal and India have an open border more than 1,800km (1,125 miles) long.

Over five million Nepalese people work and own property in India. They do not need visas or work permits and instead have all the rights of an Indian citizen.
Continuing with the British tradition, India recruits Nepalese Gurkhas into its army. There are 40,000 Nepalese Gurkhas in the 1.13m-strong Indian army and thousands of them receive monthly pensions in Nepal from India.
Former Nepalese ambassador to India, Prof Lokraj Baral, says demands to review the treaty are nothing new. The hype, he says, is more to "satisfy" public opinion.
Some recent media reports in Nepal were highly critical of reports that Indian soldiers might be sent to Nepal to protect river projects.
Massive floods in India's Bihar state after a river burst its banks upstream in Nepal are another source of argument.
Buffer
As a landlocked country Nepal is acutely dependent on India. India sells Nepal all its oil and the Himalayan nation's imports and exports transit through Indian ports.
A difference of opinion about the language of a trade agreement saw India bring Nepal to its knees in the early 1990s, with an economic blockade that lasted several months.
India believes that Nepal, as a buffer with China, is integral to its security concerns.
It is for this reason that a controversial clause in the India-Nepal treaty does not allow Nepal to buy arms and weapons from a third country without consulting India. This clause is seen by many Nepalese as subverting the country's sovereign rights.
In the early 1990s King Birendra threatened to buy weapons from China which saw India froth with anger. While Nepal's dependence on India is something that cannot be ignored by Prachanda and his team, experts feel some of the wording of the 1950 treaty should be changed.
One Indian official admitted that the clause dealing with defence matters will need to be revised. "One has to understand that 2008 is not 1950. People's aspirations cannot be brushed aside," he said.
But Indian commentator Inder Malhotra says it will not be easy for India to agree to change the clause dealing with defence. He says Nepal is too important for India to allow it to embrace China.
Given the high Himalayan ranges to its north, Nepal needs India for access to sea ports. Mr Malhotra blames "traditional anti-India sentiment" of the Nepalese elite for the renewed demands to end the peace treaty.
"Just like the elite in India who for a long time remained anti-America in their outlook, so is the elite in Nepal anti-India," he says.
Even so, India is now dealing with a new order in Nepal which demands to be treated more as a partner than a subordinate nation.

Terror attacks can’t break India’s unity

2008-09-14T07:35:00.000-07:00

Deccan Chronicle

Sept 14, 2008

In a couple of days we’ll probably have a better idea of the damage caused by the Saturday evening blasts in three important markets in the national capital.

We should by then also be able to make some sense of who the perpetrators might be, looking at the nature of the materials used and by the modus operandi of the terrorists.

Early reports suggest more than 10 people lost their lives and more than 80 were injured. Whether this is a coincidence or not, the Saturday blasts bear a striking resemblance to blasts in Delhi three years ago.

They occurred on the same day of the week and approximately the same hour of early evening. Perhaps this points to the fact that the terrorists expect ordinary people to be out shopping in large numbers on weekend evenings.

But whoever they are, the executors of evil designs against innocent people must be warned that they will be exposed in the not too distant future.

Already, several leading dramatis personae of previous terror attacks on prominent cities are finding the going tough. It is no use getting carried away by claims that terrorists make.
This is usually done to demoralise the authorities and the public, especially when the same agency seeks to appropriate credit on more than one occasion.

The intention is to plant the subconscious fear among ordinary people that those who plan to hit them are everywhere, while the providers of security are groping in the dark. These are pretty much standard psy-war techniques.

Ordinary folk should be encouraged to give them short shrift. Terrorist groups sometimes advertise themselves loudly with a view to registering their success with those that dispatched them.

This is a mercenary motive, of course. It is only when the initial impact of a terror attack simmers down and the early excitement abates that it is possible to dispassionately analyse an incident or a chain of events.

The Delhi blasts are also being taken credit for, and the name of a group popping up is the same that tried to foreground its claims on earlier occasions also. It may be no more than a paper front shielding the real culprits, or it may be the alias of another outfit.

Whatever the case, we should await proper identification before jumping to conclusions.
Since the primary purpose of terrorism is to jolt the morale of a people, and create in them a gripping sense of insecurity, as citizens we will do well not to direct suspicion against whole religious communities.

This is a communal reaction that demonises people only on the basis of their faith. The terrorists would have succeeded in their aims if they can elicit such a reaction from us, for the ultimate purpose of the enemy is to disturb the unity of a people.

The terror strike in Delhi should impel us to greater effort to establish a well-coordinated national agency to track and attack perpetrators of terror attacks. Such an agency will naturally need to have strong cooperative relations with police sleuths in the states.

This is because all of India is on the radar screen of those who think nothing of killing innocent people in order to advance their political aims.

Tread with caution

2008-09-11T12:12:00.000-07:00

By Abhijit Bhattacharyya

The Telegraph

Sept 11, 2008

Asif Ali Zardari has arrived at last. He was sworn in as the Pakistani president on September 9. What next? What would be the president’s priority — keeping the polity intact by responding to Nawaz Sharif’s call, avoiding conflict with the army, mollifying the mullahs, taking on the Taliban, terrorists and al Qaida, or starting talks with India? It is indeed a tough call for Zardari as the future of Pakistan depends on his diplomatic skills.
There is one thing that Zardari should surely avoid doing — incurring the wrath of the army and the Inter-Services Intelligence, keeping in mind the role played by both in Pakistan’s history till now.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was ousted from power and hanged to death by the army chief, General Zia-ul-Haq, in 1979. His daughter, Benazir Bhutto, too got it all wrong while dealing with General Mirza Aslam Beg and the ISI chief, Hamid Gul, in the Nineties and ultimately lost her life in 2007 during General Pervez Musharraf’s reign. Zardari’s back room manoeuvring before he became the president to bring the ISI chief under the prime minister’s office backfired badly in July 2008. Hence Zardari needs to tread cautiously.
At present, however, the current army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, does not seem keen on the thorny throne of Islamabad, focussing more on the professionalism of soldiers and skills of the ISI spies. Yet in Pakistan the army still continues to rule, albeit less blatantly, the advent of legal presidency notwithstanding.
The new president should also be careful because he has dethroned an ex-chief of the Pakistani army with the threat of impeachment. Musharraf left, humbled by the civilians. No previous Pakistani army chief had to go like this. In Pakistani tradition, coup is the privilege of the army and not of the civilian, however high and mighty he or she might be.
Cure for headache
The army apart, perhaps the most tricky of all the factors facing Zardari is the geography of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, consisting of the seven tribal regions of Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, North Waziristan and South Waziristan. Endowed with the three characteristics of melmastia (honour and hospitality), nanawati (the pledge never to deny hospitability to a fugitive) and badal (right to revenge), Fata has been renamed by the al Qaida and Taliban as the “Islamic Emirate of Waziristan”. The fight by the tribals for their unique brand of freedom will continue to be a headache even for the best of presidents.
Zardari may also like to decide as to whether or not there is a need to take mid-course correctives, avoiding a repeat of the past actions of Zulfiqar and Benazir, who tried to make the military subservient to the civilians. The Bhuttos also, theoretically at least, had sought better relations with the Pakistani army’s traditional foe, India, and had opposed Islamic extremists whom the army supported.
President Zardari’s greatest test could lie in the fact that he assumed power on the eve of the seventh anniversary of 9/11, when Osama bin Laden continues to be at large and the various factions of the Taliban and al Qaida vie with one another to get the top slot for violence. Zardari now faces the daunting task of balancing the actors and factors in the high drama of Islamabad. First, it is Zardari versus Nawaz Sharif; then the army’s traditional distrust of the Bhuttos; the Bhutto clan’s bitter memory of ruthless Generals; the ISI pursuing its own plans; and finally, the suicide-bombers spanning from Khyber to Quetta, from Mohmand to Multan. Last, but not the least, is the psychology of the Baluch leaders who view the Pakistani armed forces “not as a national military, but a Punjabi force with a mercenary and exploitative character”. Will Zardari succeed?

Importance of President Zardari

2008-09-07T12:40:00.000-07:00

The Hindu

Sept 8, 2008

Asif Ali Zardari has been elected to one of the toughest jobs in the world.

As President of Pakistan, he is in charge of a country that has a central role in tackling the sources of global terrorism, yet is badly divided on how to go about it, or even if it must.

Large swathes of territory have been taken over by the Taliban, a force that Pakistani officials are now beginning to acknowledge is the “other face of Al Qaeda”.

For his survival in office, as that of the government led by his Pakistan People’s Party, Mr. Zardari must negotiate with the military that has a tradition of producing generals who chafe against civilian leadership and one that seems undecided whether it should perceive militancy as a national threat or continue to retain jihadists as a shadow instrument of foreign policy in the region.

The inherent instability of the system has triggered a serious economic crisis that only a foreign bail-out can end.

Pakistan has never been more in need of a leader with the right blend of political capabilities, sagacity, and statesmanship.

The PPP is Pakistan’s most progressive party and has made unsurpassed sacrifices in the interests of democracy.

Two of its biggest leaders, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his daughter Benazir, were killed in the process. But its record in government is poor.
The PPP’s two terms in power under Benazir were synonymous with corruption and cronyism, for which much of the blame was laid at the door of her husband, Mr. Zardari, though the charges were never proved in a court.

Catapulted to the presidency through part-circumstance, beginning with the December 2007 killing of Benazir and his inheritance of the party leadership, and part-political skill, Mr. Zardari must show he can live down his unsavoury image and give the country the good leadership it needs.

It is clear that despite what the PPP says about the supremacy of Parliament, Mr. Zardari, in the double role of President and party leader, will call the shots.

With the Prime Minister from the same party, that is not a cause for worry. For political stability, it is essential that the PPP does not let bitterness and hostility develop with the Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif.

The ascendance of Mr. Zardari could see a new phase in relations between India and Pakistan. Several times he has articulated a vision that is focussed on building bridges with India through trade and economic ties, setting aside the traditional “Kashmir first” rhetoric.

With a problem on its hands in Kashmir, India will welcome a Pakistani leadership that does not add fuel to the fire and is demonstrably able to overcome all internal opposition to an agenda for peace.

India flooding: The sorrow of Bihar

2008-09-05T10:32:00.000-07:00

Courtesy Wikipedia

On August 18, 2008, the Kosi river picked up an old channel it had abandoned over 100 years ago near the border with Nepal and India.

Approximately 2.7 million people were reported affected as the river broke its embankment at Kusaha in Nepal, thus submerging several districts of Nepal and India.

95% of total flow of the Koshi was reported flowing through the new course. The worst affected districts included Supaul, Araria, Saharsa,Madhepura, Purnia, Katihar, parts of Khagaria and northern parts of Bhagalpur, as well as adjoing regions of Nepal.

Relief work was carried out with Indian Air Force helicopters by dropping relief materials from Purnia in the worst hit districts where nearly two million persons were trapped. It has not been possible to assess the magnitude of deaths or destruction, because the affected areas are totally inaccessible.

150 persons are reported to have been washed away in a single incident (Dainik Hindustan, Darbhanga edition). Another news item stated that 42 people had died in the flood in Bihar.
The Government of Bihar has constituted a technical committee, headed by a retired engineer-in-chief of the water resource department to supervise the restoration work and closure of the breach in the East Kosi afflux embankment. Indian authorities were working to prevent further widening of the breach and channels would be dug to direct the water back to the main river bed.
The fury of the Kosi river left at least 2.5 million people marooned in eight districts of Bihar and inundated 65,000 hectares. The prime Minister of India declared it a national calamity.

The Indian army and non-government organizations were operating the biggest flood rescue operation in India in more than 50 years. It is reported as the worst flood in the area in 50 years.

By Dr A.B. Thapa

Nepalnews.com

June 2004

There are two rivers in Asia, which were known in the past as the rivers of sorrow. The Huang Ho River in China, which is also called the Yellow River, was known as the “Sorrow of China”.

Similarly, the Kosi River that flows from Nepal to India was known as the “Sorrow of Bihar”.

Both these two rivers were named “River of Sorrow” because they had caused widespread human suffering in the past.

At present, the Kosi and the Yellow River have nothing in common.

The Yellow River is already completely controlled, as a result, it does not anymore pose threat to people.

The Kosi still remains totally unregulated. At present, the embankments built on both sides of the Kosi few decades back have temporarily helped to control this river. It is feared that very soon the Kosi would abandon its present course triggering off a new cycle of damages and destructions.

After such incident, the Kosi might not anymore be only the sorrow of Bihar. It could be the sorrow of the West Bengal and Bangladesh apart from the terrible havoc the Kosi floods could be playing with the safety of people in southeastern Nepal.
In the Past the Kosi river known as the river of sorrow of the Bihar shifted from east to west over 12O km in the last 200 years.

In the past about 8000 sq. km. of lands had been laid waste because of the sand deposit.

In course of shifting, many towns and villages were wiped out, and heavy losses of property, cattle, and human life were inflicted.

Fortunately, the embankments built few decades ago temporarily helped to check the lateral shifting of the Kosi.

But at present the detention basin upstream of the barrage at Hanumannagar is almost full of sediments. Soon the embankments would be ineffective to control the Kosi floods.
The Kosi river is now on the verge of shifting to the east far away from its present course. The peoples of Nepal and India are heading for a natural disaster of an unprecedented scale.

But it appears that only very few in Nepal and India have realized the extent of this danger. It would be unfortunate if the Kosi swing to the east takes the life and property of millions in South Asia by surprise while the governments of Nepal and India would merely be silent spectator.
Rise in Kosi River Bed Level
The Kosi River brings every year an enormous quantity of sediments from its catchments in the mountains.

Sir Claude Inglis an expert on Kosi had attributed the shift of the Kosi River channel to excessive sand load carried by the river. Leopold and Maddock considering Kosi behavior had stated that a braided stream will tend to shift laterally at a rate dependent on the rate of accumulation of material being deposited.

As one course becomes higher than possible adjacent paths, the river would shift.
Data published in the American Society of Civil Engineering in March, 1966 indicate that in the period between 1938 and 1957 every year on an average about 100 million cubic meters of sediments used to be deposited on the Kosi River bed.

The maximum such deposition was around Nirmali in India not far away from the Hanumannagar.

There was very big change in sediment deposition pattern immediately after the completion of the Kosi barrage in 1963.

The results of the Kosi River channel study for post barrage period have been published by V.C. Galgali, Central Water and Power Research Station, Pune (India), and Gohain & Prakash of Roorke University.

All the past studies confirm that the Kosi River bed just upstream of the barrage has significantly aggraded due to sediment deposition.

On account of ponding, sediment deposition had occurred, flattening the bed gradient. The bed slope of the river in the pond area was abut 0.61 m per km in the year 1956 prior to construction of the barrage, which became flatter to about 0.42 m per km in the year 1969, ie in six years of the functioning of the barrage.

Studies were made to determine the sediment deposition based on post flood 1963 and 1970 surveys These studies indicated that about 35 million cu.m. sediments had deposited in the pond length of about 10 km upstream of the barrage, giving an average depth of about 0.4 m in about 8 years with a rate of bed level rise at about 0.05 m per annum.
Alarming Situation
Few years after the commissioning of the Kosi barrage there was a big flood in 1968. A discharge of about 25,000 cumecs was recorded. The flood at that time did not pose any serious threat.

At present the conditions might be altogether different. It is said that whenever the discharge exceeds 9,000 cumecs , which is fairly common, the whole area between the embankments is submerged. Such observations raise the fear that a flood similar to 1968 flood in magnitude could prove to be catastrophic. It should be further remembered that the 1968 Kosi flood is not exceptionally rare. A flood of this magnitude has already been observed twice within the last 50 years. Fortunately in course of the last 35 years the maximum flood discharge of the Kosi River has not exceeded 16,000 cumecs.
Embankments Would be Ineffective
Embankments built a few decades ago temporarily helped to check the lateral shifting of the Kosi.

The detention basin upstream of the Kosi barrage near Hanumannagar is going to be very soon full. After that the embankments would be ineffective to prevent the lateral shifting of the Kosi. It is predicted that the Kosi would again take its 1732 course. The farthest position of the new course of the Kosi is expected to be about 120 km away from its present course. The swing of the Kosi river to the east could be sudden and almost unexpected because nobody yet exactly knows when it is going to happen. The people would be completely taken by surprise. So the loss of life could be very high. In a similar type of 1938 flood incident of the Yellow River in China the number of people killed alone was about half a million.

It does not need to be further explained that such shifting of the Kosi to the east would be a biggest disaster for the whole region.

Generally, the flood damages are temporary in nature but the Kosi flood damages would be widespread and also permanent in nature. Mr. Shilling Feld an expert on Kosi, has warned a longtime ago that the eastward movement of the Kosi will be in one big swing accompanied with great loss of life and property.
Resolving the Flood Problem
Provision of dams in the drainage area with very big storage volume is the only lasting solution to the Kosi flood problem. It is the opinion of the renowned experts and scientists involved on the Kosi study in the past. We can draw such lesson from the past experience of China also. It can be concluded that there are not any substitutes for the large storage dams to control the Kosi floods. Thus, our only recourse is storage dam. The storage dams should be provided in time. Unfortunately, some peoples in Nepal and India have misgivings about the Kosi dams. Such misgivings are unfounded and they are often the result of present global disenchantment with the high dams particularly for the generation of hydroelectricity. In case of the Kosi dams this type of notion is completely misplaced. The life and property of too many peoples in Nepal and India would be at great risk if the Kosi dams are not built in time.
Learning to Live with the Floods
Some people in Nepal and India have misgivings about storage dams. They regard that we should learn to live with the floods, therefore, it is not necessary to build storage dams to control the floods. The core issues often raised against the flood control embankments and dams in Kosi drainage area do not appear to be realistic. Some subscribe to the principle that the Kosi should get back its original route to the Ganga. One would certainly be at a great loss to determine the original route of the Kosi to the Ganga. The Kosi route had shifted from east to west over a distance of 120 kms in the last 200 years.
In almost all the cases when there is surplus water in the river, flooding results. It is a well known phenomenon in hydraulic engineering.. The Elbe and Rhine floods reported few years back in our newspapers come under this category. The Yantze River floods are also of similar nature. The flood damages are not permanent in nature. Some people try to attribute future Kosi floods also to this type of hydraulic phenomenon. Unfortunately, the Kosi flood feared to wipe out in future vast area of densely populated lands in our region is altogether different in nature. Unlike the above mentioned floods in Europe and China, the Kosi flood damages would be virtually permanent in nature.
The 1997 Indo-Nepal Study Agreement
In 1997 an agreement was signed between Nepal and India to carry out feasibility studies of the Sun-Kosi project and the Kosi project along with a navigation canal linking Nepal with the seaport. This agreement is a substantial modification to the earlier understanding reached between the Prime ministers of Nepal and India that covered only the Kosi high dam. The modification was made based on the findings of Nepal explained to Indian side in the meeting. There is a very close interrelationship between the Sun-Kosi and the Kosi projects. This interrelationship required the inclusion of the Sun-Kosi dam project in the Kosi development. Even a simple analysis of both these projects clearly illustrates the following points that help to explain why the Sun-Kosi project should be built first, and as a result, the feasibility study of the Sun-Kosi Project had to be completed as soon as possible. (a) The diversion of the Sun-Kosi river at Kurule is the most important project of Nepal for agriculture development in near future. . It can be said based on the Karnali feasibility study that North Bihar would be getting for free about 65% of the water diverted from the Sun-Kosi reservoir for irrigation in Nepal's Eastern Terai as return flow. Moreover, the stored Sun-Kosi water diverted in surplus to the need for irrigation in Nepal for generation of power would also be freely available to irrigate vast area of lands in North Bihar. This very important project would be precluded forever after the completion of the construction of the Kosi high dam project.

Fortunately, the Kosi high dam project can be built even after the completion of the construction of the Sun-Kosi high dam project. (b) The Kosi high dam along with a navigation canal to link Nepal with seaport is a very big project. Needless to explain that navigation canal would be extremely important for future development of Nepal as well as North Bihar. It will take long time to implement this project. But the Kosi river is on the verge of shifting to the east. The Sun-Kosi dam project could control the Kosi floods in the interim period till the Kosi high dam is completed. (c) Very serious downstream degradation problems could be expected to arise after the completion of storage dam projects. It is due to release of clear water from the reservoir in big quantity. Such acute degradation problem was observed in Boulder dam of the USA. The river bed in the 77 mile canyon reach had been lowered between 6 and 14 feet. Owing to the exposure of rock ledges the river became stable.

However, at about 130 kilometers away, the riverbed rose by six metres necessitating the construction of very expensive flood control structures. Similar phenomenon could be expected after the completion of the Kosi high dam also. The Sun-Kosi high dam built to control the floods in the interim period could help to reduce downstream degradation. It could also help to determine with greater accuracy the volume of flood regulation storage.
In Conclusion
Mr. F.A. Shilling Feld, a renowned expert on Kosi study, had made a chilling forecast a long time ago “ The westward movement of the Kosi oscillation (in the past) is slow and is in a series of steps, each of which is attended with damage to property of temporary nature. The eastward movement (in future) of the oscillation will probably be accompanied with great loss of life and property.” It is hoped that the governments of Nepal and India would take up the Kosi development matters seriously.

--Dr. Thapa writes on water resources.

Arundhati Roy and the K-word

2008-09-04T06:35:00.000-07:00

By Rahul Singh

Daily DAWN

Sept 3, 2008

NATIONS are usually proud of their celebrities. But sometimes these celebrities can be a pain in the neck, if they are a little too outspoken, especially at an awkward time.

Arundhati Roy, the petite Booker Prize winner (author of The God of Small Things) has been exactly that, at least to some Indians.

She has uttered the dreaded K-word, just when Kashmir has been aflame.

“After 18 years of administering a military occupation, the Indian government’s worst nightmare has come true,” she writes in a cover story for Outlook, one of India’s most read and respected news magazines.

“For all these years, the Indian State has done everything it can to subvert, suppress, represent, misrepresent, discredit, interpret, intimidate, purchase — and simply snuff out the voice of the Kashmiri people. It has used money (lots of it), violence (lots of it), disinformation, propaganda, torture, elaborate networks of collaborators and informers, terror, imprisonment, blackmail and rigged elections to subdue what democrats would call ‘the will of the people’.”

Strong stuff. Also a tribute to the extent of press freedom in India. Not many developing countries, even those with a free media, would allow such sentiments to be expressed on a sensitive subject.

Roy continues, “It was always clear that in their darkest moments, it was not peace that (the people of Kashmir) yearned for, but freedom too,” and then concludes in words of great eloquence that will resonate for a long time to come: “At the heart of it all is a moral question. Does any government have the right to take away people’s liberty with military force? India needs azaadi from Kashmir just as much — if not more — than Kashmir needs azaadi from India.”

Basically, Roy was elaborating on the idea of India as formulated by the nation’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru: a democratic federal republic where all have the right to dissent. Her implication was that this idea of India should be big enough to also take in the right of people to peacefully disassociate themselves from the republic.

The Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) immediately condemned her, virtually calling her words treasonable.

The Congress said nothing, though a former Congress prime minister had once said that everything on the status of Kashmir was negotiable, except ‘azaadi’.

Roy’s writing must be viewed in the context of an unprecedented three-month-long mass agitation in Kashmir — which continues at the time of writing — that has taken several lives.

At core of the demonstrations is a relatively minor issue, the handing over of some land at the Hindu pilgrimage centre of Amarnath. Yet, the unrest has spread from the Muslim-dominant Valley of Kashmir to the Hindu-majority Jammu region.Underlying it, however, is something much bigger, the alienation of the Muslims of Kashmir, where a secessionist movement has been going on for almost two decades and which has taken the lives of some 30,000 militants, military personnel and civilians.Human rights abuses have certainly taken place — on both sides. And Pakistan, despite its official denials, undoubtedly helped to arm and train the militants, at least until a few years ago. Whether this was done by the shadowy intelligence agencies acting on their own, is neither here nor there. Sept 11 and American pressure on Gen Musharraf changed all that.Be that as it may, the reality is that pro-Pakistani slogans have now been raised in the Valley and the Pakistan flag flown, in defiance of the Indian army, not by the militants, but the general populace. Make no mistake, this is a mass upsurge.

That disturbs most Indians. You can use the gun against terrorists but what do you do when virtually all sections of society are demonstrating peacefully?Though Kashmiris were never really ‘pro-Indian’, even in the days of the charismatic Sheikh Abdullah, they were not ‘pro-Pakistan’ either. Islamabad learnt this to its cost in the 1965 and 1971 wars, when it expected Kashmiris to rise up in revolt. They didn’t.

In any case, it was a paradox for Pakistan to say that there should be a plebiscite in Kashmir, as had been promised by Nehru, and that Kashmiris should have the right to self-determination when that very right was denied to Pakistanis under military rule. But Pakistan now has a democratically elected government. So, the picture has changed.When Pakistan broke up and Bangladesh was formed, one thing had stuck in this writer’s mind. In the 1960s there had also been a secessionist movement in what is now the state of Tamil Nadu. In fact, the Tamil secessionist demands were more extreme than those made by Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. But in India, the secessionists were voted to power and became moderates.

In Pakistan, there was a crackdown on Sheikh Mujib and his party. And we know what followed.Some people also liken what is happening in Kashmir to what happened with the Sikhs in Punjab. However, that is a false analogy. In Punjab in the 1980s, when Sikh militancy was at its height — and this writer was based there then — the vast majority of Sikhs, though alienated and unhappy over the army assault on the Golden Temple and the anti-Sikh riots that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi, were by no means votaries of an independent ‘Khalistan’. At most, perhaps 10 to 15 per cent were ‘Khalistanis’.

In the Kashmir Valley, on the other hand, the people overwhelmingly want azaadi, so fed up are they with army repression.Nevertheless, how far can one expect any Indian government to go in meeting Kashmiri demands — and listening to Arundhati Roy’s plea? Sadly, not very far. Although Kashmir is a case apart, given the controversy that shrouded its political status when the British withdrew from the subcontinent, the government in New Delhi has over the years whittled down its special status and treats it like any other part of the country.

So, Ms Roy, though many of us admire your boldness and the sentiments underlying your eloquence, the reality is that no Indian government would risk its political future by making Kashmir azaad. That government would fall. What it can do — and what it must do — is to restore to Kashmiris their lost dignity and their sense of well-being. The call for azaadi will then melt away. Ask the Tamilians.

The writer is a former editor of the Reader’s Digest and Indian Express.

singh.84@hotmail.com

Shifts on climate change

2008-09-01T09:28:00.000-07:00

The Telegraph
Sept 1 , 2008

By Chandrashekhar Dasgupta

There is a growing mismatch between the words and deeds of affluent industrialized countries on the subject of climate change. While joining the rest of the world in calling for enhanced action on climate change, they are failing to meet even their existing responsibilities.

They are pressing developing countries to accept new commitments, while shrugging off and retreating from their own commitments.
The facts speak for themselves. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (agreed upon in 1992) called upon the developed countries to restore their greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2000 and, thereafter, progressively reduce their emissions in order to avert global warming.

In gross disregard of these provisions, the total greenhouse gas emissions of the developed countries actually increased between 2000 and 2005 (the latest year for which figures are available).
This alarming trend was less clearly visible during the decade of the Nineties because of the economic collapse of the former Soviet bloc countries. The sharp decline in levels of economic activity in these industrialized countries (referred to as “economies in transition” in climate change agreements) resulted in a corresponding reduction in their greenhouse gas emissions. The emissions of the “economies in transition” fell by 39 per cent during the Nineties. Emissions of other industrialized countries continued to increase but, because of the unintended decrease in the case of the former Soviet-bloc countries, the total emissions of the group of developed countries registered a marginal decline during the decade. This was trumpeted with great fanfare by the developed countries as evidence of their “taking the lead” on climate change.
The hollowness of this claim can no longer be concealed. The recovery of the “economies in transition” during the current decade has led to an increase in their emissions, in parallel with the continuing rising trend in most other developed countries.

As we saw earlier, far from registering a sharp decline, the total emissions of the developed countries actually rose between 2000 and 2005. It is true that some of these countries, such as Germany and Britain, did reduce their emissions but this was not the case with a large majority of the group. Between 1990 and 2005, greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise in 26 out of a total of 40 developed countries.
The framework convention, as its name itself indicates, lays out a general framework of responsibilities and commitments, without assigning specific numerical emission reduction targets. These were set out in an agreement reached in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol. This agreement sought to reduce emissions from the developed countries by about five per cent by 2008-2012, compared to the 1990 baseline. With the major exceptions of the United States of America and Australia (the latter has now ratified the Kyoto Protocol), the developed countries accepted individual time-bound emission reduction targets.

The overall reduction target was rather modest and even this will not be fully attained. Despite these limitations, the Kyoto Protocol has made a real contribution to tackling a global problem. Only quantified emission reduction commitments can offer a reasonable guarantee of achieving real cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. It is essential that the developed countries should commit themselves to a new set of quantified reduction targets for the next decade as required by the Kyoto Protocol.
Negotiations on these targets have been going on for some years but the developed countries have used every ploy to evade the issue. With the sole exception of the European Union, they have maintained a deafening silence on their treaty obligation under the Kyoto Protocol to commit themselves to a second round of quantified emission reductions for the next decade. It is now quite clear that their real intention is to bury the Kyoto Protocol. Indeed, they are talking about a “post-Kyoto agreement”, implying that the protocol should be scrapped. Their intention is to escape from the quantitative emission reduction commitments that are obligatory for developed countries under the Kyoto Protocol and to introduce, at the same time, new commitments for developing countries — in particular the so-called emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa.
Developing countries have a number of commitments under the framework convention and Kyoto Protocol. They are not, however, required to take measures involving significant additional costs that would divert scarce resources from their priority goals of economic and social development and poverty eradication.

The UN framework agreement provides that additional costs of agreed measures implemented in developing countries should be met through transfers of finance and technology from developed countries. These provisions reflect the fact that the industrialized countries are primarily responsible for causing climate change through their excessively high historical and current levels of greenhouse gas emissions, and also the fact that affluent countries have a greater capacity than the poor to meet the costs of a global response to the challenge. The developed countries are thus seeking to undermine the ethical basis of current international agreements on climate change. Their object is to impose a new agreement that will enable them to reduce their own commitments, while imposing additional burdens on developing countries. In short, affluent countries are trying to pass the buck to poorer countries instead of discharging their own treaty responsibilities.
This is not the end of the story, however. A new and disturbing trend is manifesting itself in the negotiations. Trade protectionism, disguised as concern for the climate, is raising its head. Citing competitiveness concerns, powerful industrialized countries are holding out threats of a levy on imports of energy-intensive products from developing countries that refuse to accept their demands. The actual source of protectionist sentiment in the OECD countries is, of course, their current lacklustre economic performance, combined with the challenges posed by the rapid economic rise of China and India — in that order. Defenders of the global economic status quo are posing as climate change champions.
We should not succumb to pressures from rich and powerful countries to accept new, legally binding commitments, especially when they themselves are backing out of their own commitments. New commitments would result in a slowdown of our development and poverty reduction programmes and this, in turn, would leave us without the financial, technological and human resources required for coping with the impacts of climate change.
At the same time, we must act as responsible global citizens and make our due contribution to international efforts to mitigate climate change. This requires us to implement “win-win” measures that promote our development objectives while simultaneously yielding side benefits for climate change mitigation by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The National Action Plan on Climate Change, recently released by the prime minister, sets out an ambitious and comprehensive approach for simultaneously advancing our development and climate change objectives.

--The author has been involved in climate change negotiations for many years. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan earlier this year.

Shoaib Malik denies affair with Sayali Bha

2008-08-30T09:02:00.000-07:00

Indo-Asian News Service

Aug 30, 2008

Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik has denied reports of his making secret trips across the border to keep alive his affair with former Miss India and Bollywood actress Sayali Bhagat.

Shoaib, however, admitted that Sayali was a "close and dear friend" whom he met at a promotional event during the inaugural season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) earlier this year."

Sayali is a close and dear friend and that's about it," said Shoaib.

Media reports from across the border linked Malik with Sayali, the Bollywood beauty who made her film debut by starring opposite Emraan Hashmi in The Train.

Malik has been frequently travelling to India this year and in fact has been spending most of his off season there.

When asked whether his relationship was the reason behind the trips, Malik said: "I've a contract with Reebok in India and have to go there once in a while for promotional activities. My friendship with Sayali has nothing to do with it."

While Malik tried to play down his affair with the former Miss India, Pakistani media has been flashing reports on their romance.

But Malik said that he was more focused on his team's next international assignment, the proposed three-nation tournament in South Africa involving Sri Lanka and the hosts next month.

The postponement of the Champions Trophy was a big blow for us. But we have to leave it behind and get ready for the next assignment.

Malik hoped his players will be ready for the challenge in South Africa.The triangular event is being planned at the request Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) which is trying to compensate for the postponement of the Champions Trophy which was supposed to take place here Sep 12-28.

There have been reports that Malik is likely to lose his captaincy following the resignation of PCB chairman Nasim Ashraf, who elevated the experienced all-rounder to the important position after the World Cup debacle last year.

Malik has been criticised for being a 'weak' captain in recent times and it is expected that he could lose the captaincy to either vice-captain Misbah-ul-Haq or senior batsman Younis Khan.But Malik said that he is not under any pressure.

"It's an honour to lead Pakistan and I am doing it to the best of my ability," he said.

India’s role in Afghanistan

2008-08-28T12:04:00.001-07:00

By Harsh V. Pant

The Tribune

Aug 28, 2008

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has just returned from Japan where he attended the G-8 summit as a special invitee, and many in the country are arguing that India deserves a permanent place in G-8 and other international institutions as India is already a major global player. Most of the challenges that the international community faces today cannot be resolved without India’s active participation.
There is some merit in this argument and many across the world are beginningto realise the importance of India in the global inter-state hierarchy. Yet, India itself has not shown that it is ready for this larger global role. After all, if India is a major global power, what is it doing about the security environment in its immediate neighbourhood?
Forget China’s rise, global climate change and the nuclear deal. All these dwarf in front of the challenge India faces in Afghanistan, which is on the brink of collapse even as New Delhi continues to dither on how to respond adequately to the rapidly changing ground realities there.
India no longer has the luxury to argue that while it is happy to help the Afghan government in its reconstruction efforts, it will not be directly engaged in security operations. The Taliban militants who blew up the Indian Embassy have sent a strong signal that India is part of the evolving security dynamic in Afghanistan despite its reluctance to take on a more active role in the military operations.
The progress towards stabilisation and development in Afghanistan is being heavily influenced by India and Pakistan, and the rivalry between them. Pakistan has always been suspicious of New Delhi and Kabul cooperating against it, and as India’s influence in Afghanistan has increased in the post-Taliban scenario, Pakistan remains stalled in its efforts to curb extremists. Pakistan’s failure to contain cross-border militancy has been a key factor behind its deteriorating relations with the Karzai government in Kabul.
Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have long been complex, with Islamabad’s military-intelligence establishment contributing to the defeat of Soviet troops before 1988; the overthrow of Soviet-backed President Muhammad Najibullah in 1992; and the capture of large areas of Afghanistan by the Taliban after 1994. Several long-standing strategic interests fuelled Pakistan’s involvement in these developments.
It has long believed that it can gain “strategic depth” against India by influencing politics in Kabul, something Islamabad felt it achieved in the 1980s and 1990s. It is keen to prevent “strategic encirclement” as a result of closer Delhi-Kabul ties. Pakistan is wary of Afghanistan (or India) exerting influence on its restive populations in border regions such as Balochistan and the North-West Frontier Province.
However, the perceived gains of the last two decades have been increasingly under threat since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001. After the terrorist attacks in the United States, President Pervez Musharraf had to choose between support for the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and its “war on terrorism”, and isolation as a backer of radical Islamic extremism. Mr Musharraf promptly signed Pakistan up as an ally of Washington. This committed Pakistan to supporting efforts to stabilise Afghanistan and to strengthen the administration of President Hamid Karzai.
However, there are considerable doubts about Islamabad’s capacity and commitment to crack down on militants. Kabul is deeply suspicious of Pakistan, on whom its security is largely dependent. Pakistan’s ISI is linked to the resurgence of the Taliban, whose leadership is thought to be operating from the tribal border regions. The rejuvenation of the Taliban has potential benefits for Pakistan in bolstering its role as a frontline state in the war against terrorism, thereby securing engagement from the United States.
The security problems in Afghanistan can be linked to the military’s continuing position as the predominant force in Pakistan, an institution that has, since the 1990s, viewed the Taliban as a means of controlling Afghanistan and undercutting India’s influence there. Having focused exclusively on the Taliban, it is struggling to abandon it now.
Meanwhile, as tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have increased, India’s relations with Afghanistan have steadily improved. Unlike Pakistan, ties between India and Afghanistan are not hampered by the existence of a contiguous, and contested, border. India’s support for the Northern Alliance (against the Pakistan-backed Taliban) in the 1990s strengthened its position in Kabul after 2001.
Many members of the Alliance are members of the government or hold influential provincial posts. New Delhi is one of Afghanistan’s top six donors, having extended a $750 million aid package and most of its aid is unconditional, directed largely at reconstruction projects as well as education and rural development. Kabul is also encouraging Indian businesses to take advantage of its low-tax regime to help develop a manufacturing hub in areas such as cement, oil and gas, electricity, and in services like hotels, banking and communications.
Mr Karzai may not be deliberately crafting a New Delhi-Kabul alliance against Islamabad, but he is certainly hoping to push Pakistan into taking his concerns more seriously. India has opened consulates in Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Kandahar and Jalalabad, in addition to its embassy in Kabul. Pakistan has accused the embassy in Kabul of spreading anti-Pakistani propaganda and views the establishment of the consulates as a way for New Delhi to improve intelligence-gathering against it.
After targeting the personnel involved in developmental projects and emboldened by India’s non-response, terrorists have now trained their guns directly at the Indian State. India must now respond with greater military engagement to support its developmental and political presence in Afghanistan. If India is to realise its aspirations of emerging as a major global actor, it must first learn to become a net provider of regional security.
This is a difficult task for India, given the wariness with which its neighbours view its capabilities. But India has a few good options given the instability that surrounds it. No major power has emerged historically without providing some measure of stability around its periphery. India should be using its growing capabilities to extend security in the region.
A stable, secure and prosperous neighbourhood is a sine qua non for the emergence of a great power. India cannot be merely seen as free-riding on the outside powers for regional stability. For all the rhetoric emanating from New Delhi about India’s rise, it remains unclear as to what India is ready to do to preserve and enhance its interests in its neighbourhood. India’s approach towards Afghanistan is a casualty of this short-sightedness, and it will cost New Delhi dear over the long-term.

The writer teaches at King’s College, London.

New phase in Pakistan

2008-08-26T13:10:00.000-07:00

The Hindu

Aug 27, 2008

While the coalition government led by the Pakistan People’s Party is unlikely to fall after the withdrawal of support by the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz Sharif), the hope that the former adversaries who joined hands to fight against the Musharraf dictatorship would work together in a sustained way to strengthen democratic institutions has collapsed.

This is not surprising given the track record of the two parties — and also their calculations about where their political interests lie at this juncture.

The PPP and PML(N) must be given credit for accomplishing the strategic objective of freeing Pakistan from the dictatorship. But they also set themselves the agenda of restoring the independence of the judiciary by reinstating all the sacked judges; diluting the powers of the presidency so as to strengthen parliamentary democracy; and working out modalities for choosing a new head of state by consensus.

The last item on the agenda has been abandoned. Although there is uncertainty over the implementation of the other two measures, it will be premature to conclude they will not be carried through.

The PPP failed to live up to the promise that it would press a parliamentary resolution calling for the restoration of the sacked judges within 24 hours of the exit of the dictator.

There are indications that the judges will be restored to their posts in phases before and after the presidential election scheduled for September 6.
The main problem seems to be PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari’s concern that Iftikhar Chaudhary, reinstated as Chief Justice, might allow the re-opening of corruption cases against politicians.

The widespread belief in Pakistan is that Mr. Zardari wants to secure himself against prosecution by acquiring presidential immunity before an unpredictable Mr. Chaudhary is back in his post. The PPP leader has declared that if he becomes President, he will function as the head of state in a parliamentary democracy. This can be taken seriously as a statement of intent but there will still be need for a constitutional amendment so that there is no scope for temptation in future. To go by the composition of the electoral college, which comprises members of the federal and provincial legislatures, Mr. Zardari should fancy his chances of winning the presidential election. With the support of smaller allies, the PPP should also be able to hold on to power at the centre. Nawaz Sharif has indicated that his party will offer ‘constructive opposition.’

There is little question that his resoluteness bordering on aggressiveness on key institutional issues has placed him in a powerful political position.

Advani goes moderate

2008-08-25T10:23:00.000-07:00

By Harish Gupta

Deccan Chronicle

Aug 25, 2008

The BJP leadership has informally conveyed to the government that it does not want to flare up passions in Jammu and Kashmir.

It also told the Centre that its protests and jail bharo agitation are not only low-key but also peaceful. Even their nationwide agitation call is, they said, not aimed at creating any disorder.

The BJP would like to consolidate its votebank which was dithering for some time.

The party lacked an emotive issue to motivate its cadres and it now feels its objective has been achieved.

The BJP has realised that any escalation in the agitation or violence would be detrimental to the party’s image and to the country.

Secondly, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr L.K. Advani, no longer wants to be portrayed as a Hindutva protagonist.

He is aware that Hindu consolidation will not give the party more allies, nor will it bring it the "majority" that the BJP is hoping for in Lok Sabha polls.

Therefore, while other party leaders are using strong language, Mr Advani is being soft.

He has also been sending signals to the government that he won’t ride the "Sankalp Rath" and that his yatra will be limited.

Land and freedom

2008-08-23T06:27:00.000-07:00

By Arundhati Roy
The Guardian
Aug 22, 2008

For the past 60 days or so, since about the end of June, the people of Kashmir have been free. Free in the most profound sense. They have shrugged off the terror of living their lives in the gun-sights of half a million heavily armed soldiers, in the most densely militarised zone in the world.

After 18 years of administering a military occupation, the Indian government's worst nightmare has come true. Having declared that the militant movement has been crushed, it is now faced with a non-violent mass protest, but not the kind it knows how to manage.

This one is nourished by people's memory of years of repression in which tens of thousands have been killed, thousands have been "disappeared", hundreds of thousands tortured, injured, and humiliated.

That kind of rage, once it finds utterance, cannot easily be tamed, rebottled and sent back to where it came from.
A sudden twist of fate, an ill-conceived move over the transfer of 100 acres of state forest land to the Amarnath Shrine Board (which manages the annual Hindu pilgrimage to a cave deep in the Kashmir Himalayas) suddenly became the equivalent of tossing a lit match into a barrel of petrol. Until 1989 the Amarnath pilgrimage used to attract about 20,000 people who travelled to the Amarnath cave over a period of about two weeks.

In 1990, when the overtly Islamist militant uprising in the valley coincided with the spread of virulent Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) in the Indian plains, the number of pilgrims began to increase exponentially. By 2008 more than 500,000 pilgrims visited the Amarnath cave, in large groups, their passage often sponsored by Indian business houses. To many people in the valley this dramatic increase in numbers was seen as an aggressive political statement by an increasingly Hindu-fundamentalist Indian state. Rightly or wrongly, the land transfer was viewed as the thin edge of the wedge. It triggered an apprehension that it was the beginning of an elaborate plan to build Israeli-style settlements, and change the demography of the valley.
Days of massive protest forced the valley to shut down completely. Within hours the protests spread from the cities to villages. Young stone pelters took to the streets and faced armed police who fired straight at them, killing several. For people as well as the government, it resurrected memories of the uprising in the early 90s.

Throughout the weeks of protest, hartal (strikes) and police firing, while the Hindutva publicity machine charged Kashmiris with committing every kind of communal excess, the 500,000 Amarnath pilgrims completed their pilgrimage, not just unhurt, but touched by the hospitality they had been shown by local people.
Eventually, taken completely by surprise at the ferocity of the response, the government revoked the land transfer. But by then the land-transfer had become what Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the most senior and also the most overtly Islamist separatist leader, called a "non-issue".
Massive protests against the revocation erupted in Jammu. There, too, the issue snowballed into something much bigger. Hindus began to raise issues of neglect and discrimination by the Indian state. (For some odd reason they blamed Kashmiris for that neglect.) The protests led to the blockading of the Jammu-Srinagar highway, the only functional road-link between Kashmir and India. Truckloads of perishable fresh fruit and valley produce began to rot.
The blockade demonstrated in no uncertain terms to people in Kashmir that they lived on sufferance, and that if they didn't behave themselves they could be put under siege, starved, deprived of essential commodities and medical supplies.
To expect matters to end there was of course absurd. Hadn't anybody noticed that in Kashmir even minor protests about civic issues like water and electricity inevitably turned into demands for azadi, freedom? To threaten them with mass starvation amounted to committing political suicide.
Not surprisingly, the voice that the government of India has tried so hard to silence in Kashmir has massed into a deafening roar. Raised in a playground of army camps, checkpoints, and bunkers, with screams from torture chambers for a soundtrack, the young generation has suddenly discovered the power of mass protest, and above all, the dignity of being able to straighten their shoulders and speak for themselves, represent themselves. For them it is nothing short of an epiphany. Not even the fear of death seems to hold them back. And once that fear has gone, of what use is the largest or second largest army in the world?
There have been mass rallies in the past, but none in recent memory that have been so sustained and widespread. The mainstream political parties of Kashmir - National Conference and People's Democratic party - appear dutifully for debates in New Delhi's TV studios, but can't muster the courage to appear on the streets of Kashmir. The armed militants who, through the worst years of repression were seen as the only ones carrying the torch of azadi forward, if they are around at all, seem content to take a back seat and let people do the fighting for a change.

The separatist leaders who do appear and speak at the rallies are not leaders so much as followers, being guided by the phenomenal spontaneous energy of a caged, enraged people that has exploded on Kashmir's streets. Day after day, hundreds of thousands of people swarm around places that hold terrible memories for them. They demolish bunkers, break through cordons of concertina wire and stare straight down the barrels of soldiers' machine guns, saying what very few in India want to hear. Hum Kya Chahtey? Azadi! (We want freedom.) And, it has to be said, in equal numbers and with equal intensity: Jeevey jeevey Pakistan. (Long live Pakistan.)
That sound reverberates through the valley like the drumbeat of steady rain on a tin roof, like the roll of thunder during an electric storm.
On August 15, India's independence day, Lal Chowk, the nerve centre of Srinagar, was taken over by thousands of people who hoisted the Pakistani flag and wished each other "happy belated independence day" (Pakistan celebrates independence on August 14) and "happy slavery day". Humour obviously, has survived India's many torture centres and Abu Ghraibs in Kashmir.
On August 16 more than 300,000 people marched to Pampore, to the village of the Hurriyat leader, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, who was shot down in cold blood five days earlier.
On the night of August 17 the police sealed the city. Streets were barricaded, thousands of armed police manned the barriers. The roads leading into Srinagar were blocked. On the morning of August 18, people began pouring into Srinagar from villages and towns across the valley. In trucks, tempos, jeeps, buses and on foot. Once again, barriers were broken and people reclaimed their city. The police were faced with a choice of either stepping aside or executing a massacre. They stepped aside. Not a single bullet was fired.
The city floated on a sea of smiles. There was ecstasy in the air. Everyone had a banner; houseboat owners, traders, students, lawyers, doctors. One said: "We are all prisoners, set us free." Another said: "Democracy without freedom is demon-crazy." Demon-crazy. That was a good one. Perhaps he was referring to the insanity that permits the world's largest democracy to administer the world's largest military occupation and continue to call itself a democracy.
There was a green flag on every lamp post, every roof, every bus stop and on the top of chinar trees. A big one fluttered outside the All India Radio building. Road signs were painted over. Rawalpindi they said. Or simply Pakistan.

It would be a mistake to assume that the public expression of affection for Pakistan automatically translates into a desire to accede to Pakistan. Some of it has to do with gratitude for the support - cynical or otherwise - for what Kashmiris see as their freedom struggle, and the Indian state sees as a terrorist campaign. It also has to do with mischief. With saying and doing what galls India most of all. (It's easy to scoff at the idea of a "freedom struggle" that wishes to distance itself from a country that is supposed to be a democracy and align itself with another that has, for the most part been ruled by military dictators. A country whose army has committed genocide in what is now Bangladesh. A country that is even now being torn apart by its own ethnic war. These are important questions, but right now perhaps it's more useful to wonder what this so-called democracy did in Kashmir to make people hate it so?)
Everywhere there were Pakistani flags, everywhere the cry Pakistan se rishta kya? La illaha illallah. (What is our bond with Pakistan? There is no god but Allah.) Azadi ka matlab kya? La illaha illallah. (What does freedom mean? There is no god but Allah.)
For somebody like myself, who is not Muslim, that interpretation of freedom is hard - if not impossible - to understand. I asked a young woman whether freedom for Kashmir would not mean less freedom for her, as a woman. She shrugged and said "What kind of freedom do we have now? The freedom to be raped by Indian soldiers?" Her reply silenced me.
Surrounded by a sea of green flags, it was impossible to doubt or ignore the deeply Islamic fervour of the uprising taking place around me. It was equally impossible to label it a vicious, terrorist jihad. For Kashmiris it was a catharsis. A historical moment in a long and complicated struggle for freedom with all the imperfections, cruelties and confusions that freedom struggles have. This one cannot by any means call itself pristine, and will always be stigmatised by, and will some day, I hope, have to account for, among other things, the brutal killings of Kashmiri Pandits in the early years of the uprising, culminating in the exodus of almost the entire Hindu community from the Kashmir valley.
As the crowd continued to swell I listened carefully to the slogans, because rhetoric often holds the key to all kinds of understanding. There were plenty of insults and humiliation for India: Ay jabiron ay zalimon, Kashmir hamara chhod do (Oh oppressors, Oh wicked ones, Get out of our Kashmir.) The slogan that cut through me like a knife and clean broke my heart was this one: Nanga bhookha Hindustan, jaan se pyaara Pakistan. (Naked, starving India, More precious than life itself - Pakistan.)
Why was it so galling, so painful to listen to this? I tried to work it out and settled on three reasons. First, because we all know that the first part of the slogan is the embarrassing and unadorned truth about India, the emerging superpower. Second, because all Indians who are not nanga or bhooka are and have been complicit in complex and historical ways with the elaborate cultural and economic systems that make Indian society so cruel, so vulgarly unequal. And third, because it was painful to listen to people who have suffered so much themselves mock others who suffer, in different ways, but no less intensely, under the same oppressor. In that slogan I saw the seeds of how easily victims can become perpetrators.
Syed Ali Shah Geelani began his address with a recitation from the Qur'an. He then said what he has said before, on hundreds of occasions. The only way for the struggle to succeed, he said, was to turn to the Qur'an for guidance. He said Islam would guide the struggle and that it was a complete social and moral code that would govern the people of a free Kashmir. He said Pakistan had been created as the home of Islam, and that that goal should never be subverted. He said just as Pakistan belonged to Kashmir, Kashmir belonged to Pakistan. He said minority communities would have full rights and their places of worship would be safe. Each point he made was applauded.
I imagined myself standing in the heart of a Hindu nationalist rally being addressed by the Bharatiya Janata party's (BJP) LK Advani. Replace the word Islam with the word Hindutva, replace the word Pakistan with Hindustan, replace the green flags with saffron ones and we would have the BJP's nightmare vision of an ideal India.
Is that what we should accept as our future? Monolithic religious states handing down a complete social and moral code, "a complete way of life"? Millions of us in India reject the Hindutva project. Our rejection springs from love, from passion, from a kind of idealism, from having enormous emotional stakes in the society in which we live. What our neighbours do, how they choose to handle their affairs does not affect our argument, it only strengthens it.
Arguments that spring from love are also fraught with danger. It is for the people of Kashmir to agree or disagree with the Islamist project (which is as contested, in equally complex ways, all over the world by Muslims, as Hindutva is contested by Hindus). Perhaps now that the threat of violence has receded and there is some space in which to debate views and air ideas, it is time for those who are part of the struggle to outline a vision for what kind of society they are fighting for. Perhaps it is time to offer people something more than martyrs, slogans and vague generalisations. Those who wish to turn to the Qur'an for guidance will no doubt find guidance there. But what of those who do not wish to do that, or for whom the Qur'an does not make place? Do the Hindus of Jammu and other minorities also have the right to self-determination? Will the hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits living in exile, many of them in terrible poverty, have the right to return? Will they be paid reparations for the terrible losses they have suffered? Or will a free Kashmir do to its minorities what India has done to Kashmiris for 61 years? What will happen to homosexuals and adulterers and blasphemers? What of thieves and lafangas and writers who do not agree with the "complete social and moral code"? Will we be put to death as we are in Saudi Arabia? Will the cycle of death, repression and bloodshed continue? History offers many models for Kashmir's thinkers and intellectuals and politicians to study. What will the Kashmir of their dreams look like? Algeria? Iran? South Africa? Switzerland? Pakistan?
At a crucial time like this, few things are more important than dreams. A lazy utopia and a flawed sense of justice will have consequences that do not bear thinking about. This is not the time for intellectual sloth or a reluctance to assess a situation clearly and honestly.
Already the spectre of partition has reared its head. Hindutva networks are alive with rumours about Hindus in the valley being attacked and forced to flee. In response, phone calls from Jammu reported that an armed Hindu militia was threatening a massacre and that Muslims from the two Hindu majority districts were preparing to flee. Memories of the bloodbath that ensued and claimed the lives of more than a million people when India and Pakistan were partitioned have come flooding back. That nightmare will haunt all of us forever.
However, none of these fears of what the future holds can justify the continued military occupation of a nation and a people. No more than the old colonial argument about how the natives were not ready for freedom justified the colonial project.
Of course there are many ways for the Indian state to continue to hold on to Kashmir. It could do what it does best. Wait. And hope the people's energy will dissipate in the absence of a concrete plan. It could try and fracture the fragile coalition that is emerging. It could extinguish this non-violent uprising and re-invite armed militancy. It could increase the number of troops from half a million to a whole million. A few strategic massacres, a couple of targeted assassinations, some disappearances and a massive round of arrests should do the trick for a few more years.
The unimaginable sums of public money that are needed to keep the military occupation of Kashmir going is money that ought by right to be spent on schools and hospitals and food for an impoverished, malnutritioned population in India. What kind of government can possibly believe that it has the right to spend it on more weapons, more concertina wire and more prisons in Kashmir?
The Indian military occupation of Kashmir makes monsters of us all. It allows Hindu chauvinists to target and victimise Muslims in India by holding them hostage to the freedom struggle being waged by Muslims in Kashmir.
India needs azadi from Kashmir just as much as - if not more than - Kashmir needs azadi from India.

Is Indian democracy fair to Muslims?

2008-08-21T06:20:00.000-07:00

By Nitish Sengupta

Deccan Chronicle, Aug 21, 2008

Shabana Azmi has all along been admired for her forthrightness. But by her comment in a television interview on Sunday that Indian democracy has not been fair to Indian Muslims, she has unwittingly played into the hands of Muslim fundamentalists and deserted the ranks of those who, irrespective of religious affiliation, are trying to bring the two communities together.

The example which she chose as an illustration, that she could not buy a flat in Mumbai on account of being a Muslim, is trivial and misleading, and not weighty enough to justify the conclusion she has drawn.

It is hard to believe that she could not buy a flat in Mumbai when so many other Muslims appear to have no difficulty. What one can guess is that she might have been negotiating the purchase with a Gujarati or other vegetarian owner or housing society who generally prefer to have like-minded vegetarians as neighbours, owners or tenants in their houses or apartment complexes.

A Muslim, usually being non-vegetarian by habit, would therefore not be acceptable as the owner or tenant in such places. This is a fact of life in our country, which one cannot ignore, but it does not necessarily have anything to do with the religion that one professes.

We can sympathise with Shabana Azmi, but to hold on the basis of this that Indian democracy has not been fair to Muslims is unfortunate.
India’s democracy has, in fact, taken extraordinary care to be careful of the sentiments of Muslims, and minorities in general, in sharp contrast to the situation in Pakistan.

Whenever there has been a choice between a Muslim and a non-Muslim officer for a position in the secretariat of the Union government, it is generally the Muslim officer who is selected, other things being equal.

Similarly, in politics, Muslims joining mainstream political parties have always had a fair deal. One can name at least three Muslims who have become Presidents of India since 1947.

There are always several Muslims serving as governors of states.

In the Union Cabinet as well as in state governments Muslims have always occupied important ministerial posts.

There have been cases of Muslims becoming chief ministers of states where the population is overwhelmingly Hindu. Muslims have occupied very important posts in the bureaucracy at both the Centre and at the state government level.
If, in the face of this, Shabana Azmi still blames Indian democracy for being unfair to Muslims, she is certainly not being fair in her judgment.

It is true that the percentage of Muslims in government services has not been very high. But this is on account of the fact that, at the time of Partition, most Muslims in government service migrated to Pakistan, and a considerable vacuum was created which took an entire generation to fill up. This is not the fault of Indian democracy. And the vacuum is gradually being filled up.
Another aspect which Shabana Azmi has overlooked is the fact that there is a much larger proportion of Muslims than Hindus who are self-employed, or have definite vocations in which they excel and which come to them by heredity, such as in the fields of glassware, carpentry, carpet-making, leather goods, meat production and distribution.

It is not widely known that the wooden slippers used by Hindu monks are usually made by Muslims. So also are the fans which are used reverentially before images of Hindu deities in temples across the country.

We need not talk about Bollywood, which is overwhelmingly dominated by Muslim actors, actresses and technicians, a fact which even the redoubtable Bal Thackeray has never been critical of.

The Sachar Committee report, which Shabana Azmi has cited, ignored all these facts and cited only the percentage of jobs in government services occupied by Muslims. It was, to that extent, a prejudiced report, not an objective one, and more resembling a lawyer’s statement in which the lawyer has referred to only those arguments which are in favour of the brief given to him rather than an objective and impartial statement of the situation.
Shabana Azmi should also remember that it is this same Indian democracy which has nominated her to the Upper House of Parliament. She is also unfair to all those secular-minded people who are trying their best to ensure that our democracy works on the right lines.

One should not merely harp on the Gujarat riots or the demolition of the Babri Masjid, both of which were indeed unfortunate events, but should carry on trying to strengthen the truly democratic and secular forces. It is important for Shabana Azmi to remember that her statement will not only strengthen fundamentalists among the Muslims, but will also justify the Hindu fundamentalists’ "we told you so" attitude.

--Dr Nitish Sengupta, an academic and an author, is a former Member of Parliament and a former secretary to the Government of India.

South Asia Entertainment

2008-08-19T10:52:00.000-07:00

Bollywood Introduction

Courtesy: Bollywood World

Bollywood is the name given to the Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry in India.

When combined with other Indian film industries (Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada), it is considered to be the largest in the world in terms of number of films produced, and maybe also the number of tickets sold.

The term Bollywood was created by conflating Bombay (the city now called Mumbai) and Hollywood (the famous center of the United States film industry).

Bollywood films are usually musicals. Few movies are made without at least one song-and-dance number.

Indian audiences expect full value for their money; they want songs and dances, love interest, comedy and dare-devil thrills, all mixed up in a three hour long extravaganza with intermission. Such movies are called masala movies, after the spice mixture masala. Like masala, these movies have everything. The plots are often melodramatic.

They frequently employ formulaic ingredients such as star-crossed lovers, corrupt politicians, twins separated at birth, conniving villains, angry parents, courtesans with hearts of gold, dramatic reversals of fortune, and convenient coincidences.

Pervez Musharraf's mixed legacy

2008-08-18T07:37:00.000-07:00

By Chris Morris

BBC News

August 18, 2008

For nearly a decade Pervez Musharraf was the most powerful man in Pakistan.
His resignation marks the end of an era for a country facing enormous economic and security challenges.
He will be remembered for many things.
He overthrew an elected government in a military coup. He took Pakistan to the brink of war with India, only to launch a sustained peace process a few years later.
In the aftermath of the 11 September attacks in New York and Washington he declared his full support for the United States and became a key player in the American-led war on terror.
War on terror
He was also responsible for modernising many sections of Pakistani society.
But he brooked no opposition, and weakened important state institutions. And in the end he has fallen victim to hubris, the feeling that he was indispensable and he could do no wrong.
He leaves Pakistan as a more fragile and fractured country than it was when he came to power.
"There will be a more balanced view of him in the future than there is now," argues Mushahid Hussein, a leading political supporter.
"A lot of things happened in Pakistan for the good under his watch, and I think that is something the history books will recall after some time."
"As far as democracy in Pakistan is concerned," counters Senator Enver Beg of the Pakistan People's Party, "historians will not forgive him."
"He manipulated elections, he hounded his opponents, and he became a dictator. It's not much of a legacy."
His most significant international decision was to throw in his lot with George Bush and the United States after 9/11. He abandoned the Taleban in Afghanistan and worked closely with the Americans in pursuing Islamic extremism.
In return Washington has given Pakistan more than $10bn in aid, mostly to the military, since 2001.
But many of the gains from this strategic alliance have been frittered away.
Pakistan's lawless border regions close to Afghanistan remain a sanctuary for al-Qaeda, and a new Taleban insurgency inside Pakistan has gradually been gathering strength.
Military co-operation with the Americans has also become increasingly unpopular in Pakistan. As President, Pervez Musharraf never managed to persuade a majority of his people that he was doing more than fighting someone else's war.
"He never tried to create an impression in Pakistan that we were fighting for our own country and our own good," says military analyst Talat Masood, a retired lieutenant-general.
"And because of that the Pakistan army became a client army and Pakistan became a client state in the eyes of the people. It was a major failing on his part."
On Pakistan's eastern border, relations with India have also been predictably volatile.
As army chief, Gen Musharraf launched a military adventure in Kargil in 1999, shortly before his military coup. Pakistani soldiers and Kashmiri militants infiltrated Indian territory, before pressure from the United States forced them to withdraw.
Low ebb
And then an armed attack on the Indian parliament in Delhi in 2001 prompted a rapid military build-up on both sides of the Indo-Pakistani border which brought South Asia's nuclear neighbours close to war.
But from 2004 onwards a peace process between the two countries, in which Pervez Musharraf invested a considerable amount of personal prestige, led to a ceasefire and a series of confidence building measures.
As Mr Musharraf leaves office, though, relations with India have fallen to another low ebb.
The government in Delhi is convinced that a suicide bomb attack by Islamic militants on its embassy in Kabul last month was organised under the auspices of Pakistani intelligence agents.
At home Pervez Musharraf's first few years in power seemed to promise the hope of a fresh start and a modernising agenda. He liberalised the economy and the electronic media.
He backed the empowerment of women and made efforts to improve standards in education.
He also has the distinction of leaving high office with no serious charges of corruption against him. In Pakistan, that is quite a rare event.
But in the last 18 months he clearly over-reached himself. He thought he could take on the judiciary, the parliament and anyone else who disagreed with him with no consequence.
'Overconfident'
He sacked the chief justice, imposed a state of emergency and engineered his own re-election as president.
"He was too cocksure, he was overconfident," admits Mushahid Hussein. "But the ground realities had changed."
Critics say one of the most damaging parts of his legacy is the fact that his disregard for civilian institutions has weakened the Pakistani state.
He encouraged the spread of military influence into all walks of life, and always appeared more comfortable with men in uniform.
"He didn't understand the importance of other institutions," says Talat Masood. "And he didn't understand that a country of 160 million people couldn't be ruled by just one man."
In some respects he was a victim of his own success.
The Musharraf era saw the emergence of a more assertive middle class, who were in the forefront of protests against his imposition of emergency rule.
But towards the end of his presidential career even the economic accomplishments he could claim as his own were tarnished by the sapping negativity of months of political crisis.
In July 2008 annual inflation was over 24%, while the value of the rupee fell dramatically as the long political stalemate dragged on.
"He overstayed his welcome," says Enver Beg of the PPP. "It's time for life without Musharraf, it's time to move on."

Browbeating India

2008-08-15T06:38:00.000-07:00

The Telegraph

August 15 , 2008

It is no longer a routine allegation posted by New Delhi. The American administration too is convinced of the genuineness of the complaint: the recent attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, resulting in heavy casualties, was masterminded by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.

Goerge W. Bush, reports suggest, is infuriated no end.

It is touch-and-go for the 123 Agreement, the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group and the American Congress are yet to put their seal of approval on it — he does not want any distractions at this delicate moment.

The president of the United States of America did not allow grass to grow under his feet. He lifted his telephone and gave the prime minister of Pakistan a severe dressing down.

Who, George W. Bush demanded, was in charge of the ISI? This was his way of telling off the Pakistanis: their prime minister was a nincompoop, they must, pronto, tighten up their affairs, or else...
All this is lovely stuff for the Indian media and for the average Indian citizen long habituated to treat Pakistan as Enemy Number One.

It is also some anodyne for the agony caused by the cruel killing and maiming of compatriots. But kindly detach your mind from the narrow groove of subjectivity and patriotic emotions.

Think how a sensitive, rational-minded Pakistani is bound to react to the American president’s outburst.

Pakistan is formally a sovereign, independent country. It is a member of the United Nations, enjoying equal status with all other member-countries. And yet the head of government of another country — never mind if that country happens to be the world’s most powerful — considers it his prerogative to treat Pakistan’s prime minister as a lowly menial whom he can call to account at all hours. Has not the Pakistani citizen the right to explode in anger?
Imagine an analogous situation. What could happen were President Bush to pick up his telephone and convey to our prime minister his sense of deep dissatisfaction with the way the latter was managing the country’s affairs?

New Delhi has a no-good Research and Analysis Wing, its finance minister has goofed up the management of the economy, and inflation is running high, and how dare India’s minister for external affairs take a trip to Iran and try to get chummy with those nuke-loving b———?
Were the occupant of the White House to venture into such tomfoolery, India would no doubt witness a mass upsurge, protest rallies would be held across the country, and even our extra-docile media would write one or two blistering editorial articles informing the world’s mightiest power where to get off.

But because it is Pakistan’s prime minister who is at the receiving end, we choose to keep quiet. We not only keep mum, but we also consider it to be an occasion for celebration. And the Pakistanis themselves, while they might burn up inside, can do little at the moment.

They are, by now, a wiser lot, they know that the US is in effective control of their country. Pakistan has been a strategic partner of the US since the early Fifties.

It has been, in the course of the past half a century, sucked so much into the American orbit that its rulers — even if they are elected by popular vote — rule by the grace of the US administration. In any number of instances in the not-too-distant past, the person named as prime minister of the country — or finance minister, or army chief — had to be first cleared with Foggy Bottom bureaucrats.

The Americans therefore feel it altogether in order that in case things go wrong here and there with Pakistan’s defence or security set-up, they have the right to step in. While some amongst the new generation of the Pakistani middle class may get restless, the country’s politicians of diverse hues have been so conditioned that they would not even bother to think about it.

Can one be at all sure that Pakistan today is not the advance mirror image of what India is going to be tomorrow? Once the 123 Agreement becomes operational, it would be a new learning curve for Indians too.

The chief negotiator of the nuclear deal on behalf of the US has already gone on record: there is no scope for ambiguity, the 123 Agreement is in harmony with the Hyde Act. The act does not beat about the bush; if India hopes to obtain the advantages enumerated in the agreement, this country’s foreign policy would have to conform to the overall strategic interests of the US. India might even have to send combat troops to a territory — any territory — the Americans have chosen to invade, and fight side by side with the invaders.
Or have coming events already started to cast their shadow? With the recent series of incendiary devices exploding in different cities — and unearthing of some devices which did not explode — things have started moving fast. At the recent SAARC meeting in Colombo, India’s prime minister declaimed in a stentorian voice that terrorism is the greatest danger facing the south Asian countries, it is time to form a united front against terror. He could not be more wrong. It is poverty, illiteracy and social inequalities that pose the acutest challenge to these countries. You have to dig only a little bit deep. Hunger and social injustice breed hatred and discontent, these, in turn, induce disgruntled elements to give vent to their emotions through occasional acts of terror — and to encourage others to follow their lead. Each poor country had, and has, its own particular problems. What is, however, currently taking place is an attempt to browbeat countries such as India to adopt the official American agenda of fighting terrorism as their own and to reckon the perceived enemy of the US as their own enemy.

Once crushing terrorism is defined as the holiest of holy duties, it is fortuitously good business for ruling politicians. It takes the mind of ordinary men and women from the graver issues of life such as poverty, mass unemployment, skyrocketing prices, and all that. There are other pay-offs as well. The recent surge of terrorist violence has enabled the authorities in New Delhi to resuscitate their pet theme of having a Federal Investigation Agency in the image of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the US. The Centre already has a national security advisor, a National Security Council, a Central Bureau of Investigation and an Intelligence Branch, apart from several police agencies, established in direct contravention of the provisions of the Constitution, including the Central Reserve Police and the Industrial Reserve Police Force.

However, the urge to further centralize power is insatiable. Such concentration of authority would amount little, in concrete terms, towards increasing the effectiveness of the security system. For a huge country like India, ensuring blanket security for every nook and corner is an impossibility. The technology of terror has gone global along with everything else. There are enough groups of alienated people in different parts of the country, they could easily get hold of state-of-the-art technology, cause mayhem in some random spots and escape undetected. The official army of terrorist-hunters will grow a little wiser after every event.
Such accretion of fresh wisdom will, however, be of little avail. Terror will find other targets, other strategies, other devices, and the country could exhaust its entire national income trying to develop countervailing instruments to quash terrorism. There are infinitely better ways of utilizing the meagre resources of a still-very-poor-country, and which, in the long run, will be able to take care of terror at its roots.

Nato and Taliban

2008-08-12T10:23:00.000-07:00

Outlook Afghanistan

Aug 12, 2008

Afghanistan continues to remain the focus of the war on terror however inadequate attention is paid to it.

The hubs of insurgent activities remain intact.

Since their ouster in November 2001, the Taliban have maintained their ability to strike against the government and its foreign allies.

This retention of capabilities is rooted in the key areas of hotbeds of resurgent Taliban. These areas have also provided pretext for opium smuggling, which is a source of funding for Taliban insurgents, Al Qaeda terrorists and criminal gangs operating along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Reports say that recently Canadian soldiers appear to have caught the Taliban off guard in a large multinational operation through the western edge of Kandahar province where insurgents have usually felt relatively safe.

According to reports, in a secret mission that began last week, Canadians joined forces with American, British and Afghan soldiers to drive into the lawless Maiwand district, a centre of Afghanistan's illicit opium industry.

Insurgents have been using the Maiwand district, which lies between Canadian troops in Kandahar province and British troops in Helmand province, as a staging area where they store weapons and manufacture explosive devices to attack coalition troops. The operation is focused on Band-e-Timor, in the Maiwand region. According to military officials they have so far seized large quantities of bomb-making equipment and drugs.

Canadian Maj. Fraser Auld was reported to have said "Narcotics, weapons, all the paraphernalia you would associate with insurgents, we did find out there.” Needless to say, international and Afghan security forces should attempt to act proactively by discovering the strategic areas, which serve as planning and operation hub for the Taliban militants and brutal insurgents. It appears down-to-earth to say that the Taliban continues to operate with little difficulty because they are well au fait with some key points inside the country to launch their activities and strike the forces operating on the ground.

It appears that in addition to the bitter fact that the Taliban militants are able to maintain support bases in the lawless tribal areas along the border, they also make the most of incubating strategic locations in south and southeastern provinces to create nuisance for international forces. Due to ineffective strategy on the part of international forces, their operation now is in disarray. A countrywide map of the hotbeds of insurgent activity shows a daunting array of strengthened groups of militants with high motives.

The strength and organized activities continue to pose formidable challenges to counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations, which have been unable to identify and target the countrywide hotbeds of insurgent activities.

Questions K2 asks

2008-08-10T05:27:00.000-07:00

The Telegraph

August 10 , 2008

Mount Everest grabs the media attention, but K2 draws the fearless mountaineer.

Its lonely eminence in the remote Karakoram hides the fact that it is the most difficult mountain to climb.

The weather is notoriously unpredictable, the routes are dangerously exposed and prone to avalanches.

Three certain facts demonstrate why, among mountaineers, K2 is often called “the killer mountain’’.

It was first climbed by an Italian expedition in July 1954, when Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli summitted.

For the second ascent, the world had to wait till August 1977 when a Japanese expedition put seven climbers on the peak. While more than 300 people climb Everest every year, only about 280 people have been on top of K2.

Statistics show that for every three people who make it to the top of K2, one dies in the attempt. Thus, it is not surprising that last week the mountain revealed its savagery again while taking the lives of 11 climbers.
One principal factor behind the disaster was obviously adverse conditions, since at least nine of the climbers died after an icefall at 8,200 metres swept away the fixed ropes near a snow gully called the Bottleneck.

There is evidence, however, that human error or negligence may have played a part. One of the survivors, Wilco van Roojien, has alleged that the route to the upper reaches had been badly prepared with the fixed ropes wrongly strung up.

Many critical hours were lost in moving these ropes. This meant that those who made it to the summit did so at night. Descent became more difficult, and that is when disaster struck.

There is one other reason that must be considered. On this day, at least 22 climbers ascended K2; this gives some indication of the number of people who were on that mountain.

There are far too many people trying to conquer the high-altitude peaks, and not all of them are trained mountaineers.

Mountaineering has become a commercialized sport in which people pay money to a company to put them on top of Everest, K2 or Kanchanjungha.

In 1978, there was shock and consternation when two expeditions were allowed on K2. By 1986, it had increased to nine. Since then, the numbers have grown. Too many people on the slopes above 8,000 metres exposes climbers to risk at a height where the margin of error is very small.
The disaster will stoke controversy regarding tactic and ethics of climbing in the death zone. Should climbers go without ropes, Alpine-style or should they lay siege upon the mountain? Should climbers use easier routes of descent when they are available?

What obligations do climbers of one expedition have towards members of another? Should the number of expeditions be restricted? These are some of the issues that mountaineers have been discussing.

The death of 11 of their peers gives a new urgency to their deliberations.

For a food-secure South Asia

2008-08-07T11:30:00.000-07:00

The Hindu

Aug 07, 2008

The Colombo statement on food security, adopted by the leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) at the 15th summit, brings into focus one of the basic issues confronting the peoples of the region.

For this laudable initiative that could make a difference to the region, described by the World Bank as home to 40 per cent of the world’s poor, SAARC has to incorporate time-tested approaches, also taking into account ground realities.

That the regional grouping has remained a laggard in this crucial area is evident from the fact that the SAARC Food Security Reserve, agreed upon in August 1988 and renamed the SAARC Food Bank in 2007, is yet to become fully operational.

Recent experience shows that, in times of emergency, the bilateral mode of cooperation has prevailed over regional cooperation. For instance, member-states such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh gained from India’s supplies to tide over shortages in the past two years.

Effectively transforming a string of bilateral arrangements into a regional framework is the essential first step. As things stand, there is little to foretell an early switchover from the bilateral to the multilateral mode in the near-term. The systemic changes that are reshaping the agricultural sectors in all the member-states lend urgency to operationalising the Food Bank.
In addition to the short-term concern over the food crisis, there is the larger question of redefining the scope of food security and making it contemporary.

In the two decades since 1988, the definition of food security has widened to include components such as availability, stability, accessibility, and nutritional content. Yet, the Colombo statement continues to emphasise only the quantitative aspects of food security or raising production levels, a focus reminiscent of the 1970s. One common affliction of South Asian countries is malnutrition. Addressing the nutritional aspect of food security is the more important long-term challenge for South Asia.

There is a lot to share within the region in terms of the experiences of individual countries in this area. Moreover, given South Asia’s agrarian base, the ongoing economic changes have serious consequences for livelihoods.

The similarities provide the scope for SAARC nations to adopt common solutions. One charge against SAARC is that it is slow to act. Last year, the group said that it had moved to the implementation stage. The time has now come to deliver on its decades-old promises to its peoples. Food security is a good starting point.

Indo-US nuclear deal

2008-08-04T12:15:00.000-07:00

Daily DAWN

August 04, 2008

THE landmark Indo-US nuclear deal has edged yet another step closer to fruition.

On Friday, governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) approved a key nuclear safeguards agreement that will open 14 of India’s 22 declared nuclear reactors to non-proliferation inspections.

The next step is to secure a waiver from the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) which bans exports of nuclear fuel and technology to nuclear weapons states that have not signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).

After that the US Congress is expected to ratify the deal later this year which will allow the US to export nuclear fuel and technology to India, reversing three decades of Indian isolation. The deal is controversial in Pakistan because it is India-specific.

Speaking to an audience in Washington, Prime Minister Gilani demanded a similar nuclear status for Pakistan.

However, no such equal status is forthcoming from the US. When President Bush visited Pakistan in 2006, he made it clear that the US found Pakistan and India to be different countries with different needs and histories that are kept in view by American strategy.

What are those differences? Bluntly put, suspicions of nuclear proliferation. Nicholas Burns, the US diplomat who is one of the architects of the Indo-US deal, has recently spoken about “India’s trust” and “credibility” because it has not proliferated nuclear technology as Pakistan is believed to have.

The Indo-US deal has alarmed Pakistan because it draws together countries that have long been mutually suspicious of each other in a bid to offset China’s growing regional power.

Also, in a world where energy woes are set to grow, the deal will greatly improve India’s energy security. Currently nuclear power supplies about three per cent of India’s electricity.

By 2050, nuclear power is expected to provide 25 per cent of the country’s electricity, reducing its dependence on imported hydrocarbon fuels.India-centric hawks in Pakistan’s establishment are concerned by the government’s apparent caving in to US pressure to not resist the deal, arguing that the deal jeopardises Pakistan’s long-term security.

The pragmatists recognise that the deal is a seismic shift in the power equation in South Asia. Pakistanis long used to seeing a binary, zero-sum game between India and Pakistan have to adjust to the reality of US realignments in the neighbourhood as India and China hurtle towards the status of economic powers.

Changes in the status quo always worry states, especially those whose policies are reflexive, reactionary and eschew creative strategic thinking. One only hopes that our strategists will not succumb to grandiose notions of great power status for Pakistan and use the deal to trigger off a nuclear arms race in South Asia.

What should be more worrying are the negative implications the agreement may have for global nuclear disarmament.

An action-oriented SAARC

2008-08-03T11:19:00.000-07:00

Daily News

Aug 2, 2008

The 15th SAARC Summit of Heads of State and Government in South Asia starting in Colombo today marks a significant milestone for the region.
The Summit is being held at a critical juncture for the whole of South Asia, which, along with other developing countries is facing myriad challenges.
It is being held under an appropriate theme: Partnership for the Growth of Our People.
The theme is apt when considering that South Asia is one of the most populous regions in the world, with around 25 per cent of the global population. It is also among the poorest.
Thus poverty alleviation has become one of the key challenges facing South Asia and the eight leaders are expected to dwell on this issue. In this instance, the eight-nation SAARC bloc is aligned with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.
It is therefore appropriate that this Summit will focus on food security as one of the main items on the agenda.

The entire world is facing a food crisis of unprecedented proportions but the Third World has been the hardest hit.
The recent rice crisis seems to have ended at least for the moment yet prices of many commodities still remain high, affecting the poor.

The proposal to set up a SAARC Food Bank is indeed timely.
Many argue that development could be a long term answer for poverty and hunger. The equitable distribution of resources is a must.
Thus the proposed SAARC Development Fund, due to be taken up at the Summit, will be a major boon for South Asian countries which will be able to help each other without necessarily looking for Western aid which often comes with various strings attached.
The Fund is starting with a modest amount by international aid standards, but it is expected to grow in the coming years.
The Colombo Summit will also be remembered for taking firm action against terrorism, which affects almost all countries in the region. India is just emerging from a spate of bomb blasts in a couple of cities.
In fact, five South Asian countries figure prominently in a worldwide ‘terror list’ released yesterday. The Colombo Summit will consider a regional framework for tackling terrorism, a welcome move.
The energy and water crises, two other issues facing the region, will also be taken up at the Summit. The unprecedented rise in world oil process has heavily impacted South Asian countries, most of which are net oil importers.
South Asia must evolve a joint mechanism to research and develop viable alternative and renewable sources of energy even as they search for oil and other fossil fuels. It is also pertinent to note that SAARC will work on improving public transport, which is one way of luring private motorists to give up their cars.
South Asia cannot ignore another phenomenon gripping the world: Climate change. South Asia may not be contributing heavily, but climate change and global warming are already having a telling effect on the region including unexpected rainfall and droughts and rising sea and temperature levels. South Asia must collectively urge industrialised nations to cut their emissions while doing their bit to save the planet.
As this year’s theme implies, South Asia must not forget the people. SAARC is still a long way off from being an EU-like borderless region which it must aspire to become. Entirely visa-free travel is still not possible within SAARC and even if that were to become a possibility, there are border arrangements that hinder such travel. In the long run, SAARC should strive to resolve these issues.
In the meantime, it must encourage cheaper intra-region travel by air and sea. For example, the commencement of flights to Sri Lanka by a Bangladeshi carrier will strengthen transport links in South Asia. The proposed rail link that will eventually link Colombo with Shanghai should also be given priority.
This Summit will give the people of South Asia an opportunity to hear their leaders’ views on these and other issues concerning the region. They are waiting anxiously to see the progress SAARC is making towards forging a common South Asian identity.
Sri Lanka, which will hold the SAARC Chair for the coming year, is ideally positioned to make a strong start in this direction. As the leaders have promised, SAARC should become an action-oriented entity that strives for prosperity and peace in South Asia with each passing year.

Pursuing the détente

2008-08-02T09:21:00.000-07:00

Daily DAWN

August 02, 2008

LET us hope Yousuf Raza Gilani and Dr Manmohan Singh will be able to achieve what their foreign ministers hope they will be able to when they meet in Colombo today.

The first high-level contact in 15 months between the two countries takes place against a background vitiated by several unsavoury developments. They include the clashes across the LoC in Kashmir, the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul and a string of bomb blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad. Indian officials have blamed Pakistan for the clashes in Kashmir, held “elements” within the Pakistani establishment responsible for the bombing of the Indian mission in Kabul and said the peace process was “under stress”.

Meeting on the sidelines of the Saarc foreign ministers’ conference in the Sri Lankan capital, Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Pranab Mukherjee said on Thursday that the two prime ministers would come out with “a comprehensive statement” on the issue. While the Indian foreign minister’s attitude was marked by restraint, Qureshi sounded upbeat and said the two prime ministers would “clear the air”.It remains to be seen whether the two prime ministers will succeed in clearing the air.

On the whole, in spite of the unfortunate incidents and the resultant misunderstanding, there is nothing to indicate that either side is willing to abandon the normalisation process. The task before them is to pursue the “composite dialogue” with sincerity and dedication and not let what Qureshi called “minor incidents” overshadow the larger aim. As he told a questioner, Pakistan’s overall contribution to the war on terror should not be overlooked, for Islamabad has nabbed no less than 600 known terrorists.

Virtually all Saarc nations are grappling with the menace of terrorism on their soil, only the intensity of it has varied from country to country. Pakistan’s task is greater, because terrorists are operating on both sides of the Durand Line, and that not only increases Pakistan’s responsibility, Islamabad gets the flak for “not doing enough”, even though Pakistan has deployed 100,000 troops and has suffered thousands of military and civilian casualties. What is missing is mutual trust in the fight against the common enemy.

Pakistan and India have come a long way since the composite dialogue began in February 2004. In fact, some of the confidence-building measures taken by them could not have been visualised even by the most optimistic among us. At their last meeting in New Delhi, the two foreign secretaries, in spite of the barbs exchanged, agreed on more Kashmir-specific CBMs.

Yet more has to be done. Saarc has not been able to turn itself into a vibrant regional grouping because its two major members, Pakistan and India, have not demonstrated the amity needed to make such a grouping a success.

Arrest this negative trend

2008-07-31T07:58:00.000-07:00

The Hindu

July 31, 2008

India and Pakistan have wisely decided not to make too much of the flare-up on the Line of Control, although they have put out contradictory versions of the incident.

In allowing the problem to be sorted out at the battalion commander level, the two sides signalled that they wished to treat it as a disturbance in a confined area.

The Directors General of Military Operations of the two armies have also been in touch on a hotline in an effort to keep the situation under cont rol. That said, there is clearly a need for Islamabad and New Delhi to put in greater efforts to arrest this negative trend.

A ceasefire that has held quite well for over four years has been allegedly violated on at least 19 occasions since January 2008.

In Islamabad’s version, the clashes occurred mainly because Indian army units have built new forward observation posts in a display of aggressive intent. If this is the case, a clear demarcation of positions held at the time the ceasefire was instituted could reduce the chances of intentions being misconstrued.

According to New Delhi, on most occasions Pakistani troops opened fire to facilitate infiltration by militant groups.

This version needs to be treated as credible because there were provocative actions of this sort on a fairly regular basis before the ceasefire was put in place.

A few months ago, there was even a case of mistaken identity: Pakistani soldiers were killed by a militant group driven back from the Indian side.
There appears to be a link between the increase in the number of ceasefire violations and the transition to civilian rule.

During its four months of existence, the federal government led by the Pakistan People’s Party has slipped up on more than one front. It cannot credibly claim that it is powerless to act against militant groups.

Much evidence has accumulated over the years that these groups raise funds, recruit personnel, and train them in parts of Pakistan patrolled by police forces and not the army.

The federal and provincial governments can certainly produce better results if they put their minds to it.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was reminded of his responsibilities when the White House issued a fact sheet after his meeting with President George W. Bush.

The communique emphasised Pakistan’s obligation to protect its neighbours. In a significant departure from past practice, the fact sheet did not specify Afghanistan as the neighbour that needs to be protected.

India and Pakistan must give the highest importance to maintaining and building on détente — and must do this directly and bilaterally, without any intermediation.

Nations’ right to self-determination

2008-07-28T06:51:00.000-07:00

By Manzoor Chandio
Written on July 28, 2008

1. All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

2. All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international economic co-operation, based upon the principle of mutual benefit, and international law. In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.

3. The States Parties to the present Covenant, including those having responsibility for the administration of Non-Self-Governing and Trust Territories, shall promote the realization of the right of self-determination, and shall respect that right, in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.

--The United Nations’ International Covenant On Civil And Political Rights

MANY people wish that Pakistan’s best course for the future is democracy, provincial autonomy and control of resources by people who own them. This demand is often repeated in each seminar and conference by all and sundry.
They forget that provincial autonomy was envisaged in the Pakistan Resolution in 1940, democracy was promised by Quiad-i-Azam in 1947 and the control of resources by abolishing the Concurrent List in 1973. But this did not happen.
These concepts may have been effective immediately after the partition, but they are now nothing more than a huge drag.
Federal parties like the PPP and the PML-N may think this is still a pipe dream. Implementation of these systems now seems to be a dream gone sore.
But nationalists from smaller provinces say now this is 21st century and ideas of provincial autonomy and decentralization promised in 20th century have become irrelevant.
Now there is talk that the problem of Baloch people is not provincial autonomy or share in natural resources and constitutional rights in the framework of Pakistan, but the right to self-determination and self-rule. They think ongoing struggle is liberation movement against the state slavery.
Over the years questions have been asked whether the integrity of the federation of Pakistan is in jeopardy over the growing disparity between the federating units and to what extent do the people from provinces other than Punjab have disliking for the over-centralised federal set-up.
The people of the smaller provinces are calling names for many of their woes and appalling inequalities within and between the provinces.
Ironically, there is an air of insouciance in Punjab because of its sheer size and military might.
There is a common perception in Pakistan that the country is some 200 years back of the West. In Sindh, it is believed that the province’s rural hinterland is some 50 years back of Punjab.
Both perceptions might be true in the sense that Pakistan has not yet developed as the first-class modern institutions to be included in the list of developed countries.
It still imports aeroplans, automobiles, computers and many military and non-military equipment and gadgets.
The rural hinterland of Sindh still can not produce electric fans and motors which are brought from Gujarat and Gujranwala, sport kits from Sialkot, cutlery buts from Wazirabad and fabric from Faisalabad.
Thousand of tube-wells and water pumps installed across Sindh are also brought from Punjab. The entire country depends on agricultural implements like land levelers, ploughs, thrashers made in Punjab.
Even the tractors engines are first brought to Karachi then transported to Lahore and after being assembled there marketed in the country. Many daily use things like soaps and toothpaste are produced in Punjab and marketed in Sindh.
It is a big tragedy Sindh even can not produce electric buttons which are house-made items in Punjab. With the industrialization of central Punjab, millions of Punjabis have changed their mode of production from agriculture to industry.
While Sindhis are still associated with the centuries old mode of production—the agriculture.
In the armed forces, Punjabis have acquainted themselves with the nuclear bomb making to fly F-16 and operate the most frigates. While Sindhis have still to make DIGs and IGs.
Why Punjab is 50 years ahead of Sindh? There are many theories being discussed among the new emerging educated class in Sindh.
A look at the federation’s employing intuitions shows how most of the bodies are out of bounds for people from the two provinces.
The Pakistan Army, which also enjoys considerable influence in the decision-making, has earned the preferred nomenclature in the two provinces as the Punjab Army because it does not have proportional representation from all ethnic groups.
Many eyebrows are being raised on Dr Ayesha Siddiqa’s book ‘the Military Inc.’ that how nine per cent of Pakistan’s population controls unprecedented share in the national economy.
But she did not elaborate that Sindhis and the Baloch, whose combined representation in Pakistan's military is very low, have not stakes in the Pakistan Military Inc., the country’s biggest corporate conglomerate.
The two nations have no representation in the Frontier Works Organisation, (the largest construction company), the National Logistic Cell (the largest transport company), DHAs (one of the Pakistan’s largest land owners) and airlines, bakeries, cinemas and gas stations that had been set up by the armed forces.
Factories, industries and firms established by military subsidiaries—the Fauji Foundation, Bahria Foundation and Shaheen Foundation –virtually remain out of bounds for Sindhis and Baloch.
If we look at the Pakistan civil services, only one province rules the roost.
The Senate of Pakistan was told in 2006 that Punjab occupies 116 out of total 179 secretary-level posts in federal government departments. The NWFP stood second with 31 high-ranking officers, Sindh has 19 officers and Balochistan has the lowest representation in civil bureaucracy with only one secretary and two joint secretaries.
In Sindh police, purely a provincial subject, thousands of officials are recruited from Punjab. It is being argued that any Pakistani from any part of the country can work anywhere. If so is the argument then how many Sindhis and the Baloch had been inducted in the Punjab police? There is an army of jobless youth in the two provinces. Will the Punjab government give them jobs as a token of harmony and to prove that Punjab is also a part of Pakistan?
The Pakistan Cricket Board has yet to select any Sindhi or Baloch in the national cricket team. Isn't there a single youth in Sindh and Balochistan who can run in the ground at the speed of ball?
The Pakistan Hockey Federation has been made an exclusive sport of youth from Punjab. There is not a single Sindhi or Baloch player in the hockey team which happens to be the national sport of the country.
At present, statistics paint a dismal picture of the representation of Sindhis and the Baloch in the Foreign Office and diplomatic machines abroad. Sindh being the province which in the past had produced great statesmen, diplomats and constitutionalists like Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Hafeez Pirzado can not have diplomats of lower grade if we do not talk about ambassadors, first secretaries and attaché.
The world has entered a paradigm in which the ideas of human capital are being given priority over all other theories. But here in this country people are still being pushed against the wall and deprived their equal rights.
Now the question is being raised: Is this country an exclusive domain of one province or one group of people in which others have no equal say?

manzoorchandio@hotmail.com

Functioning Paradox

2008-07-27T11:32:00.000-07:00

The Telegraph

July 27 , 2008

Pens dipped in vitriol have described the terrible blot perpetrated by the attempt to bribe members of parliament during the trust vote in the Lok Sabha.

That such an episode revealed the most seedy aspects of India’s political life goes without saying. What is worse is that it was allowed to happen within the hallowed portals of parliament. No one has yet answered the question as to how a group of members of parliament entered the house with bags containing large amounts of money. It is necessary to segregate what happened within parliament from what happened outside it.

They are related — and both deserve to be condemned — but they need to be discussed separately.

It is difficult to believe that senior leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party, like L.K. Advani, were unaware that MPs belonging to the BJP would be making such an exhibition in the Lok Sabha. Yet such a thing occurred.

This shows one of two things. One, that even veteran parliamentarians like Mr Advani have lost all respect for basic parliamentary conventions and decorum. They are willing to go along with anything so long as a few points can be score against the government and the latter embarrassed.

The other is that they are unable to control their party’s MPs and to educate them in the codes of parliamentary behaviour.
Outside the Lok Sabha was carried out the botched attempt to bribe MPs.

The debate about whether the attempt was actually made or was in fact a plant to disrupt proceedings in parliament hides two very important things. One is the almost universal acceptance that Indian politicians are quite capable of giving and receiving bribes.

In fact, the general feeling is that they are capable of far worse. The other is the role that money has come to play in the political life of the country.

There exist far too many instances of this to make a list. The role of money extends from funding political parties, planting questions in parliament to buying MPs and even eliminating political rivals through hired killers.

There is a consensus of condemnation, but no agreement on how this pernicious influence can be reduced and removed. Like many other blots, this remains a feature of Indian democracy. Unless this problem is addressed, attempts at bribing MPs will continue to recur.
The deepening of democracy is bringing within the ambit of political life large groups of people who are ignorant about the Westminster style of politics and governance.

The deepening is the strength and pride of India’s democracy; and the violation of the Westminster codes of conduct the weakness and shame of Indian democracy.

This is the great paradox of the Indian polity. To only curse what happened without noting the paradox is to notice just the surface ripples without taking cognizance of the deep currents that are moving Indian politics.

Political stasis in Nepal

2008-07-25T06:07:00.000-07:00

The Hindu

July 25, 2008

Under normal circumstances, the election of Ram Baran Yadav, a Madhesi, as the first President of the Republic of Nepal should have been an occasion for celebration.

That a member of a marginalised community was elected as the constitutional head of state would have been a fitting tribute to the inclusive nature of the struggle the Nepali people have waged for their democratic rights.

Yet the manner in which the Nepali Congress (NC), the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), and the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) banded together to thwart the candidature of Ram Raja Prasad Singh, the Maoist nominee for President, is likely to have serious consequences for the political stability of the young republic.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), the single largest party in the Constituent Assembly, has declared that it is no longer interested in forming the government.

Its reasoning is that if the NC-UML-MJF combination was able to get Mr. Yadav of the NC elected President and Parmanand Jha of the MJF Vice-President, nothing will stop them from choosing a Prime Minister from their own ranks.

Even if the Maoist leader, Prachanda, were to become Prime Minister, the three-party alignment will ensure that he will serve on their sufferance. This means Girija Prasad Koirala — the man who led his party to defeat in the Constituent Assembly elections and has submitted his resignation as Prime Minister to the new President — could re-emerge as Prime Minister. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Politics in Nepal would not have come to such a pass had the NC and the CPN (UML) been more gracious in defeat and the Maoists more magnanimous in victory.

To be fair to the former rebels, they dropped their initial insistence on holding both the presidency and the prime ministership; and declared that they were prepared to support any presidential candidate other than Mr. Koirala or Madhav Kumar Nepal of the UML. But these two parties refused to nominate a second leader from their own ranks, thus prolonging the stasis that has set in since mid-April, when the CA results were declared.

It was only when the Maoists nominated Mr. Singh that the NC and the UML leapt in with Madhesi nominees of their own. The Maoists had proposed splitting the four top constitutional posts equally among Nepal’s hill, plains, tribal, and female population.

By offering the vice-presidency to the MJF, the NC managed to wreck the Madhesi outfit’s compact with the Maoists.

Forming a government without Maoist participation will be undemocratic as well as extraordinarily unwise: it will stand the verdict of the Constituent Assembly elections on its head and jeopardise the whole democratic exercise.

US lauds India for N-deal

2008-07-24T05:20:00.000-07:00

THE TIMES OF INDIA

July 24, 2008

SINGAPORE: The US has congratulated the UPA government, which won the trust vote in the Lok Sabha, for its "deep resolve" to go ahead with the historic Indo-US civilian nuclear deal. US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on Wednesday night met Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma on the sidelines of ASEAN ministerial meet here.

The leaders had a "very good" meeting during which Rice appreciated India's "resolve to go ahead with the historic nuclear deal", highly-placed sources said. They discussed the "entire gamut of issues" relating to the deal and the two leaders will again meet later today, the sources said.

Sharma is heading the Indian delegation to the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) of which New Delhi is a dialogue partner. During the ASEAN-India Ministerial Meeting attended by Sharma, the regional grouping said they welcomed the Indo-US agreement which would ensure energy security for India and hoped the countries would be able to conclude the pact soon.

After the government won the confidence motion on Tuesday night, the US had said it will work with Indian government to expedite the processes at IAEA and 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) for an exemption for nuclear commerce.

Joining hands for peace

2008-07-22T08:07:00.000-07:00

By Rajmohan Gandhi
Daily DAWN, July 22, 2008

MANY in India have been troubled over the charge publicly levelled by a senior official that Pakistan’s agencies planned the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, and over suggestions that Indian agencies should consider retaliating in like fashion against locations in Pakistan where hits against Indian targets are allegedly planned.

If New Delhi had found evidence of the ISI’s role in the destructive act in Kabul, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee should have confronted their Pakistani counterparts with it.

If the evidence was confirmed, the Indian premier should have solemnly presented it to the Pakistani and Indian peoples, and to the world.

Given the power and secrecy of the subcontinent’s intelligence agencies, anything, it is true, can occur. Yet if extremist pro-Taliban groups in Afghanistan and in Pakistan’s tribal areas have on numberless occasions targeted Pakistani leaders and its security forces for supporting the US-led war on terror, the Indian embassy in Kabul would also be a natural target for them.

Apart from the fact that Indian backing for the war against terror has been unambiguous and well known, India’s role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan’s infrastructure also invites the Taliban’s hostility.

Therefore assertions in New Delhi (or Kabul) that a Pakistani agency rather than one of Afghanistan’s Taliban-related extremist groups attacked the embassy have to be backed by solid evidence.

And if the ISI or sections of it are indeed in cahoots with the Taliban, it is the people of Pakistan who should worry the most and devise steps necessary to break the unholy alliance. In the struggle against the threats of extremism and terrorism, the people of Pakistan are the Indian people’s natural partners, and a key constituency for Indian leaders perturbed by the threats.In fact the Kabul incident should trigger a much-needed partnership between the people of Pakistan and the people of India.

Pakistanis should demand from Islamabad the truth about the charge that an intelligence agency was involved, and Indians should likewise ask New Delhi how its agencies quickly reached the conclusion that not pro-Taliban extremists but the ISI was responsible.People on both sides of the India-Pakistan border (and on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border) have the right to know the facts about the embassy bombing, for their security is at stake. And if security agencies are engaged in dirty work or in disinformation, then the peoples of Pakistan and India must jointly take up the daunting yet inescapable task of putting the agencies in their place.To take our countries back from the agencies may well be the need of the hour.

Ministers are our servants, and the agencies our servants’ mazdoors. Of course servants too are always entitled to respect, and to appreciation when they do their job well. I for one refuse to endorse the assessment of some of India’s Pakistan-watchers that elected leaders will prove worse than the military in dealing with extremism.

The late Bhutto’s powerfully articulated rejection of extremism is a strong legacy that is shared, as far as I can see, across the spectrum of mainline Pakistani politics, by PML and ANP leaders as by the PPP.

However, for figuring out effective ways of addressing grievances and defeating extremism and terrorism these politicians may need to consult more closely with one another across party, provincial and ethnic divides, and also with military and security experts.Perhaps intellectuals on both sides of the Pak-India border should prepare an updated manifesto for the subcontinent.

Some items on such a manifesto are obvious: mutual respect, including unreserved respect for the other nation’s independence; an equally unequivocal rejection of violence, whether direct or indirect, open or concealed, for solving internal, bilateral or international disputes; a clear rejection of the clash-of-civilisations theory; a solution for Kashmir acceptable to Kashmiris and to India and Pakistan; and a commitment to minority rights in both countries.

Also critical to such a manifesto, yet not so obvious in our dazzlingly globalised world, is a commitment to search for subcontinental and regional solutions instead of looking to global powers or a superpower for interventions.

The US and China are formidable countries, and both India and Pakistan have tried to build relationships with them. Given the history of India-Pakistan mistrust, such relationships have seemed attractive.Yet geography is stronger than history.

Oceans and mountains remain large impediments even in the 21st century. For years India and Pakistan have tried to involve distant powers in their dealings with each other, with poor results. It is time to put the subcontinent first. Whether we like it or not, geography mandates coexistence. We can decide to enjoy what cannot be helped and seek to profit from it.This does not mean that Pakistan should give up on its China links, or that India should turn its back on Afghanistan or on India-US relations.

What it does mean is that India-Afghanistan or India-US links should not grow at Pakistan’s expense, or Pakistan-China links at India’s cost. It also means that our peoples should be vigilant against inviting external conflicts to the soil of the subcontinent.We should acknowledge, in both India and Pakistan, not only the divisive roles of the agencies but also the hegemonic character of our societies.

The arrogance of the high-born, the high-placed and the man with the stick is known to both countries. While Pakistan may not formally accept caste hierarchies the way India continues to do (despite progressive laws and the emerging political power of the so-called lower or ‘untouchable’ castes), Pakistani society seems to tolerate armed elites and private jails.In India and Pakistan alike, muscle-power or gun-power is celebrated in posters and movies. In real-life interactions between the citizen and the policeman or the government functionary, the citizen usually comes off second best in both countries.

Correcting this equation, and honouring the listening policeman or politician rather than the macho one, has to be part of our subcontinental manifesto.

If despite disasters and misgovernance our economies have grown, the credit should above all go to the subcontinent’s hard-working and enterprising people. Our countries are on the move because of what our ‘common’ people grow, create, repair or remit, and the millions of vehicles they skilfully drive on hazardous roads.Should we be betting on the subcontinent’s civil society, on the sanity and energy of our peoples?

Though not permanent, hates and fears can after all continue for long, especially when politicians feed those fears and hates instead of working on education and healthcare. Still it may be a good idea to bet on our peoples and on their willingness to become partners. Better to bet thus and lose than concede that mutual destruction is the subcontinent’s destiny.

The writer is research professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Politics should not derail peace process: Advani

2008-07-21T06:51:00.000-07:00

By Jawed Naqvi

Daily DAWN

NEW DELHI, July 20: Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir met Indian opposition leader Lal Kishan Advani on Sunday ahead of a two-day dialogue on confidence-building measures (CBMs) with his Indian counterpart Shivshankar Menon.

Mr Advani briefed Mr Bashir about a consensus among Indian parties “for the objective of achieving peace” with Pakistan and said domestic political situations in either country should not be allowed to interfere with the process.

According to a statement by the Pakistan High Commission, Mr Advani also assured the foreign secretary of his party’s full support to the current peace process in “letter and spirit”.

The Pakistani statement did not mention two separate meetings Mr Bashir had with representatives of Kashmiri resistance during which Islamabad’s approach to their struggle came in for critical comment.Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq was invited first to meet Mr Bashir with two other Kashmiri leaders at the high commission.

The Mirwaiz said he told Mr Bashir that CBM talks were welcome as long as they did not slow down the political resolution of the Kashmir issue.

He reminded the Pakistani official that the recent discovery of mass graves at a former campsite used by the Indian army pointed to sinister happenings in the Valley.

Unidentified people were buried there in hundreds.He said there were 200 other campsites across Jammu and Kashmir that needed to be inspected. An estimated 10,000 people have been declared missing in the state. The European Union is taking interest in the matter, the Mirwaiz said.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had promised zero tolerance for human rights abuse in Kashmir. “There has been no follow-up on any of the promises.”

On the other hand, the Mirwaiz said, Pakistan had shown weakness by not pressing its own point of view on the matter while of late it had readilyaccepted everything India wanted to discuss in the talks.Mr Bashir however said Pakistan was following up all the issues under the composite dialogue.

He said greater trade across the LoC would benefit the people of the state.JKLF leader Yasin Malik told Dawn that in his meeting with Mr Bashir he had emphasised the need to accelerate the political resolution of the Kashmir issue, lest people begin to lose faith in the CBMs.

“I told him that we welcome the CBMs. But there should also be progress on the resolution of the political issue.”As the foreign secretaries prepared to resume their composite dialogue here on Monday, analysts said recent attacks on Indian targets in Kashmir and Afghanistan by suspected militants coupled with political turbulence in both countries were expected to shadow the talks.

At least 10 security personnel were killed and many injured in a landmine blast on Srinagar-Baramulla road on Saturday, a day ahead of Mr Bashir’s arrival here.

Earlier, India’s National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan had blamed the ISI for a devastating suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul.It is inevitable that Mr Bashir and Mr Menon would discuss these incidents together with their structured dialogue on Kashmir, cross-border terrorism and CBMs.

The two-day talks on July 21 and 22 will coincide with a crucial trust vote in the Indian parliament in which the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh looks vulnerable before a combined force of the opposition in a row over a nuclear deal with the United States.

If he survives, a meeting between the prime ministers of the two countries due next month in Colombo would assume centre-stage.

On Friday in Islamabad a working group on LoC raised some of the issues expected to be taken up during the composite dialogue.

On the other hand, Press Trust of India said on Saturday that India could emerge as Pakistan’s second largest trading partner after China owing to measures announced by Islamabad to boost bilateral trade, including the import of diesel and fuel oil from India.

India and the IAEA

2008-07-20T08:10:00.000-07:00

By Prabir Purkayastha

The Hindu, July 14, 2008

Various commentators have argued that the draft IAEA Safeguards Agreement gives India considerable leeway, denied it under the Hyde Act, in taking corrective action in case fuel supplies are interrupted.

To be fair, unlike government spokespersons, some of these analysts concede that all imported reactors will remain permanently under safeguards. But one of the claims adduced by these non-official defenders in support of the Agreement is that India can unilaterally withdra w from IAEA safeguards its indigenous reactors that are made subject to the Agreement, provided all the imported fuel is taken out.
This curious conclusion flows from a wholly untenable reading of Article 29 of the Agreement, which states: “The termination of safeguards on items subject to this Agreement shall be implemented taking into account the provisions of GOV/1621 (20 August 1973).”

Since the latter is a restricted document of the IAEA’s Board of Governors, these non-official analysts have speculated that with respect to termination of safeguards, the import of GOV/1621 into Article 29 has let non-supplied facilities off the hook, by requiring them to be under safeguards only as long as they use imported fuel! From this, they have jumped to the conclusion that therefore for such indigenous facilities, India does not even need to invoke its preambular ‘right’ to take “corrective measures.”
Nowhere does GOV/1621 provide the remotest sanction for any such interpretation. I happen to have the text of this restricted 1973 document.

It originated from the urging of “a substantial number of Governors … that there should be a greater degree of standardisation than in the past with respect to the duration and termination of such agreements as may henceforth be concluded under the Agency’s Safeguards System … for the application of safeguards in connection with nuclear material, equipment, facilities or non-nuclear material supplied to States by third parties.”
Two concepts are clearly laid out in the IAEA document for these future agreements: (a) “the duration of the agreement should be related to the period of actual use of the items in the recipient State”; and (b) “the provisions for terminating the agreement should be formulated in such a way that the rights and obligations of the parties continue to apply in connection with supplied nuclear material and with special fissionable material produced, processed or used in or in connection with supplied nuclear material, equipment, facilities or non-nuclear material, until such time as the Agency has terminated the application of safeguards thereto...”
Further, by way of exposition of these concepts, the Annex to the document makes it clear that after termination, “the rights and obligations of the parties, as provided for in the agreement, would continue to apply in connection with any supplied material or items and with any special fissionable material produced, processed or used in or in connection with any supplied material or items which have been included in the inventory, until such material or items had been removed from the inventory” (emphasis added). The only way such “items or non-nuclear material could be removed from the purview of the agreement” is “if they had been consumed, were no longer usable for any nuclear activity relevant from the point of view of safeguards, or had become practically irrecoverable.”
GOV/1621 ensures that all such materials “would be subject to safeguards until the Agency had terminated safeguards on that special fissionable and nuclear material in accordance with the provisions of the Agency’s Safeguards System. Thus, the actual termination of the operation of the provisions of the Agreement would take place only when everything had been removed from the inventory” (emphasis added).
The effect of GOV/1621, therefore, is to tighten and make more restrictive the application of IAEA safeguards to all supplied nuclear material, facilities, and items. But it is wholly fanciful to say that it empowers or even allows India to take non-supplied facilities made subject to the Agreement out of safeguards, if they no longer use supplied fuel.
For indigenous nuclear facilities that have been built without supplies from any third party, we have to consider two additional Articles of the Agreement. One is that “items” for safeguards are governed by Article 11(a), which defines items to include: “any facility listed in the Annex to this Agreement, as notified by India.” The second is Article 32, which explicitly states: “Safeguards shall be terminated on a facility listed in the Annex after India and the Agency have jointly determined that the facility is no longer usable for any nuclear activity relevant from the point of view of safeguards” (emphasis added).
If we accept that Article 32 will come into play for taking facilities out of safeguards, there are three conditions that need to be fulfilled. First, both parties — India and the IAEA — need to agree to this; it is not a unilateral decision for India to make. Secondly, the facility must no longer be usable for any nuclear activity. Any facility that produces nuclear energy is obviously usable for nuclear activity. Lastly, the facility must be “relevant from the point of view of safeguards.” Any facility offered by India under Article 14 for safeguards continues to be relevant for safeguards. The issue of imported fuel is extraneous to any of these considerations.
Under the separation plan, India is offering several facilities for safeguards — not just reactors, but also heavy water plants, research and storage facilities. All these will be under safeguards if they are included in the Annex by India and will be governed by the Articles of the Agreement. Linking import of fuel with the duration of the safeguards on facilities is not relevant here. Research facilities, for example, do not even import fuel. Is it then possible that once we have offered them for safeguards, we can take them out any time we want?
Let us take the next contention that once corrective measures figure in the Agreement, it does not matter whether they are in the preamble or in the operative part of the Agreement. The issue is not whether the preamble is a part of an agreement or a treaty. The issue here is whether the scope of termination of safeguards, as defined in Articles 29-32, can be overridden by India having recourse to unspecified “corrective measures” mentioned in the preamble. Clearly, such a reading will be fanciful; else the operative part of the agreement will be rendered a nullity.
It is well established in international law that a preamble can be used to give a treaty context and help interpret its clauses. However, in no case can a preamble override explicit provisions in Articles of a treaty or be used to create new rights or obligations. If this were so, the Non-Proliferation Treaty would have led decades ago to nuclear disarmament, as this objective is set out in the preamble! It has not happened because Article 6 of the NPT merely asks the nuclear weapons states to negotiate disarmament in good faith. The operative part lacks the teeth to implement the lofty objective the preamble sets out.
The issue of fuel supply assurances and strategic fuel reserves is of little consequence in this Safeguards Agreement. The IAEA is not a body that deals with either. The preamble merely notes that the “essential basis” of India’s concurrence to the acceptance of IAEA safeguards is the conclusion of international arrangements for reliable and uninterrupted fuel supplies and support for building strategic fuel reserves. Whatever may be the basis of a country entering into an international agreement, the articles of the treaty do not get voided simply because this basis is no longer valid. The withdrawal and termination clauses govern the actual withdrawal or termination. It is pretty much like marriage: love may be the basis of a marriage but the demise of love for one party is not a sufficient legal ground for divorce.
Asked whether India could ever withdraw its reactors from safeguards, Dr R.B. Grover of the Department of Atomic Energy claimed (in a press conference on July 12) that India could first claim a material breach under Article 52(c) of the Agreement and then take whatever action it wanted under “the combination of [Articles] 29, 30(f), 10, 4, and the preamble.” Again, while Article 29 covers both facilities and material for the duration of safeguards for facilities, we have to read this provision along with Article 32. As explained earlier, Article 32 is quite explicit that once any facility is offered for safeguards, they will continue to apply in perpetuity. Article 30(f) is very much part of Article 30, which specifically pertains only to material. To claim specific rights over facilities using an Article that pertains to material will not help India in any way.
It is not in India’s interest to keep the provisions of the Agreement vague. The dispute settlement body in the IAEA is not a neutral umpire — it is the agency’s Board of Governors. Here, politics is the dominant issue in interpretation — not legalese. As the Iran case shows, despite that country having a legal right to the full nuclear fuel cycle, the IAEA Board of Governors referred it to the United Nations Security Council for sanctions at the insistence of the United States. The majority, including the Government of India, fell in line with the U.S., not because they were convinced of its legal case but because of its sheer muscle power.
Therefore to believe that the vague term “corrective measures” included in the preamble of the Safeguards Agreement will help India later to put on the term whatever interpretation it wishes to will simply not wash. If it comes to the crunch, the Hyde Act provisions will prevail. This is what is inbuilt in the India-IAEA Agreement, the government’s spin notwithstanding.

(Prabir Purkayastha is a founding member of the Delhi Science Forum and an analyst on nuclear disarmament and energy issues.)

South Asian Economic Union

2008-07-18T12:58:00.000-07:00

By Manzoor Chandio
Updated on July 20, 2008

THERE is a great potential for bilateral trade among South Asian nations especially India and Pakistan and it will be unrealistic to lose sight of the larger picture.
If take a journey through South Asian history, this is the region where men built some of the world's first planned cities along the Indus and Sarasvati rivers, created one of the world's first written languages (the Indus script), grew cotton and made cloth from it.
There was a significant enterprising community that exported Indus-made products the world over.
"Just as American culture is currently exported, along with goods and media, so too were the seals, pottery style, script of the Indus valley spread among the local settlements," says Indian historian Shanti Menon.
The problem is that inheritors of this great civilization are now divided on narrow communal lines.
South Asia was the first region to win independence from colonial servitude but it still lags behind many others due to a limited vision.
It is time to see why people in Pakistan have lagged behind educationally, culturally and economically when we compare them with others in South Asia.
If we look at the turn of events since the decolonization of South Asia, Pakistan mainly under military dictatorships has not developed despite having a lot of resources.
There is no doubt that this country can progress in the larger South Asian family if it takes sincere efforts for a South Asian economic union and settles all issues through a dialogue.

manzoorchandio@hotmail.com