Exposure of War Crimes

Wikileaks treads where mainstream media does not and reveals evidence of war crimes in Afghanistan.

Read More

An EPW Editorial.

Progressive Step

In a significant move, political parties in Pakistan legislate on building a genuine parliamentary democracy.

An EPW Editorial

Talking and its merits

The governments of India and Pakistan owe it to their citizens to engage in talks and to act substantively.

An EPW Editorial

An unfortunate exclusion

Pakistan’s interior minister made a statement that “India was not serious about the peace process” by the manner in which the cricketers were excluded. Such a conclusion is unwarranted as it does not understand the way the league functions

The decision by franchise owning businessmen to not to pick any of the Pakistani players available in the Indian Premier League (IPL) auction for its third season was unfortunate. The IPL franchisee owners clearly did not think much of the feelings of the cricketers who entered the auction process through a circuitous route, after having invited them to the auction and then refusing to choose any of them through the bidding process. It must be heartbreaking for the Pakistani cricketers who are reigning World Twenty20 cricket champions because their humiliating non-inclusion was clearly not because of cricketing reasons. So too, for Pakistani cricket lovers who wanted to partake in the passionate entertainment that the business franchise-based Twenty20 cricket was and which made the IPL so popular across the world and especially in South Asia.

Having said that, one cannot be surprised by the pusillanimous decision by the franchise owners who were worried about visa prospects for the Pakistani cricketers and disruption in the event of a similar incident such as the terror attacks in Mumbai in November 2008. The businesspeople running the IPL franchises are bound by the rationality of profit making, asset maximisation and cost reduction and the prospect of not having players whom they pay for, in the event of any disruptive incident, was daunting for them. If the formal rationality of profit making did not guide their decision, the inclusion of Pakistani cricketers would have made sense. It would have sent a signal to disruptive forces that their actions would not affect cricketing or sporting ties and that the IPL was a celebration of cricketing talent rather than anything else.

This writer had written before that the IPL suffered from the same limitations as would any project within a market driven system. To expect anything more from a commercial enterprise is folly — and therefore to expect the IPL franchise owners to think about the potentiality of a thaw in relations between India and Pakistan by the inclusion of Pakistani cricketers within the IPL fray is unwarranted. At the same time, the reaction by Indian owners of the IPL franchises should not be read as a case of “hyper-patriotism” worked up on the standard India-Pakistan rivalry. If the owners were indeed even a little patriotic and acted according to the needs of the day in India, they would not have responded so grudgingly when the Indian home minister requested them not to hold the IPL season during parliamentary election time in the country last year, after which the IPL commissioner had to take the competition to South Africa.

And that takes us to the larger issue — when Pakistani players were first incorporated into IPL franchises, there was much hailing going on about the IPL and its “revolutionary” potential to transcend national boundaries and of course, its reliance on player talent (both off and on the field) as the sole adjudicator for his value. But as the recent incidents show, the IPL is very much bound by consideration of politics just as much as the stock market rises and falls based on political trends.

There is the insinuation that there is a conspiracy — to prevent Pakistani cricketers from showing their mettle in the IPL — enacted at the levels of government. That is absolutely not true. Since liberalisation, government has only facilitated market based structures in India and has very rarely hindered them with extraneous considerations (even if much needed). Ultimately the IPL franchise owners had a will of their own and which they exercised.

But what of public opinion in either side of the border. While it is legitimate for Pakistani cricket fans — and that would mean a substantial chunk of the population to feel disappointed, nay even angry, at what has come about their cricketers, it is clear that the reaction from the representatives of Pakistan’s government was over-the-top. Pakistan’s interior minister made a statement that “India was not serious about the peace process” by the manner in which the cricketers were excluded. Such a conclusion is unwarranted as it does not understand the way the league functions.

Such is the heightened consciousness for cricket (both playing and spectatorship) in both countries, that the non-inclusion can be seen as a sign of bias and therefore enmity. This is precisely what both the governments, who would will for a normalisation of relations, would want to avoid. The unprecedented support given by fans from both Pakistan and India in 2004 during the bilateral Test series was there for all to see. What the governments can do is to facilitate cricketing competition between these countries in some manner. The government and the sports ministry can definitely weigh in with friendly advice to the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) to hold a bilateral series with a set of One Day, Test and Twenty20 games in the near future in India to assuage the feelings of the cricket lovers and to foster better ties between societies in the countries.

After all, the BCCI is not necessarily a corporate entity concerned only about its bottom-line.

Escobar on the Taliban (both Afghan/Pakistan versions)

Love Escobar's analysis.. 

Shocking attacks in Lahore

The attack on the Lankan cricket team members in Lahore must be the most shocking attack on sportspersons since the Munich incidents in 1972 when Israeli sportspersons were kidnapped and murdered by terrorists. What makes this incident even more gruesome is the fact that the brave Lankan team embarked upon the test tour of Pakistan as a replacement for the Indians and atleast this cricket crazy fan liked their decision, driven by the desire to watch Ajantha Mendis bowl in another meaningful test series. Sadly, the dastardly attack has resulted in the tour being cancelled and has put a permanent question mark over test cricket in Pakistan itself.

Samaraweera, the unassuming under-the-radar performer was hurt and hospitalised; Ajantha Mendis, the up and coming spinning maestro was hit by sharpnel; articulate and intelligent Kumar Sangakkara was hurt with sharpnel on his shoulder; and young debutant Tharanga Paranavitana was also hurt. So were some others from the coaching staff, from initial reports. Mahela Jayawardane and his cricket team members' band play the game with the "Surangani" spirit. They are among the most well behaved, level headed cricketers on the circuit today. It is so unfortunate that these solid performers (or for that matter any sportsman) could be targetted at all.

I find it difficult even to try to find a motive behind this. I feel that even a thought about the motives would dignify this act by the crazy bunch of monsters who carried this attack out. No one in frame of mind would want to scare away sportspersons. Such has become the order of the day in Pakistan.

From the multiple bomb attacks on Benazir Bhutto and her eventual assassination to the Marriott attacks, to the growing might of the Taliban-Pakistan-version in the west to the Mumbai attacks to this, the degradation of Pakistan's society has descended into a hastening spiral. I feel for all those liberal and modern voices in Pakistan who would want to break away from their country's shattering and shameful past since independence.

Some sane and rational voices from Pakistan

even if I dont' fully endorse what is being said in these articles; there is a lot of sense being made in these voices from Pakistan:



The above is a video featuring Prof. Tariq Amin Khan in The Real News Network.

And here is an article by Haris Gazdar in The Hindu.

Terror in Mumbai and responses

Fight against terrorism is one for the long haul, even as the perennially terror affected Mumbai citizens say, “Enough is Enough”.

The recent terror attacks in Mumbai, a city that has been subject to bomb blasts, riots and underground violence for years now, mark a qualitative difference in the scale, magnitude and the modus operandi of the operations. If bomb blasts in unsuspecting civilian areas, particularly crowded ones – suburban trains, bus stations, market places was the order of the previous attacks, this one featured a full scale urban guerilla attack, schemed and planned to precision and to invite maximum attention and exposure.

The targets chosen by the attackers revealed much about their inclinations and ideology. The symbolism of Chatrapati Sivaji Terminus – a hub for nearly every working Mumbaikar (Mumbai resident) is apparent; CST represents secular and working India, a point where people of all classes and sections confer for their daily travel purposes. The choice of the Taj, Trident-Oberoi hotels were made to ensure that foreign tourists from the United States and Britain could be targeted, while the attack in Nariman House was on Israeli citizens and Jews. Other structures of everyday Mumbai and India – Metro Cinema, Cama Hospital were targeted to make the point that India is as much the hated enemy and part of the axis that features the US, Britain and Israel.

That these attacks were carried out by terrorists acting in the name of radical Islam is very clear, from the inputs and findings of the security agencies engaged in investigating the attacks. These terrorists were brainwashed and fed on propaganda based on millenarian ideologies and religious fundamentalism which feeds on discontent in the Islamic community about the happenings in Palestine, Kashmir and other parts of the world. The viciousness of the attacks and the randomness of the murders point out to how dangerous is the propaganda that has been fed into these attackers. From all indications, most of these attackers seem to have come from Pakistan, trained by the fanaticist Lashkar-e-Toiba, it is speculated. The co-ordination and material help came from erstwhile or present state actors in the security set-up of Pakistan, it is suggested. The terrorists had used the sea route from Karachi, by hijacking a mother ship in the waters and using rubber dingies to reach Mumbai's shore, before branching off to various targets. That India's coastal security is lax is for all to see, but the security agencies' excuse is that the coastline is too large to be manned and made non-porous. We shall get to the security and policing part later.

After indiscriminate firing at CST and other public places, which killed among other civilians, three prominent police officers, the scene of action was at the hotels, where hostages were held captive by the terrorists. This in turn was greeted by a security response intent upon neutralising the terrorists and regaining control over the hotels. Admittedly, the security forces – police and later special commandos of the National Security Guard and Marine commandos were left with little choice with the scrutiny that were subjected to and they bravely went about extinguishing the threat by killing the terrorists and flushing hostages as many as were possible. But the question remains if all the steps in the counter-terrorism manual for hostage situations were followed. The terrorists took a number of people hostage in the hotels, prominently foreign tourists with British, American and Israeli nationalities and most definitely that hostage taking was intended for negotiation. The ideal strategy for the counter-terrorist forces should have been to exhaust the terrorists while engaging in negotiation and keeping avenues open for safe exit of many of the hostages, but the way things panned out, the losses were heavy as more than 100 tourists (the count is still on) died in the process even as most of the terrorists were killed in the special operations.

Why was it that the security forces had to go on the offensive from the word “go”? Was it because the administrative structure – the Maharashtra government and the Indian central government, both led by the Congress– felt that anything less than decisive action would have been a sign of weakness, an allegation about the ruling parties that has been used time and again by the rightist opposition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party? As events pan out, we would certainly come to know about this. Having said that, the unremitting hostility and fidayeen nature of the attack perhaps was part of the terrorists' gameplan. It could have been part of their calculus to engage in a protracted siege, and that the killing of their hostages would attract maximum attention, an exposure that would force the Indian public to demand immediate retribution and accept strict laws in order to minimise the risks of yet another catastrophic terrorist attack. The terrorists' game plan therefore was to force the Indian government to adopt hard-line measures, and draconian laws targeted at cutting down of civil liberties and public rights, which would invariably have focused on the minority community and revealed the fissures between them and the state and at worst, leading to increased communal violence.

That leads us to the response of the government. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pointed the needle of suspicion to Pakistan indirectly, having been convinced of the latent evidence. He also talked about stricter laws and penalties, paving the way for what the terrorists exactly had in mind. Surely, this must be playing into the hands and the intent of those who have managed this terrible saga. We all know where draconian laws such as POTA and TADA led to – repression, unfair targeting and miscarriage of justice. These laws sowed more seeds of discontent than ever before and gave a lifeline to the growth of fundamentalist and radical ideologies that mirror the terrorists' intentions and beliefs, within India itself. In other words, the government would be scoring an own goal by doing exactly what these terrorists wanted. The question then to be asked is what is to be done to prevent such attacks again?

It leads us to two aspects – strengthening the security, policing and intelligence infrastructure that can predict and nip such threats in the bud. And the other focusing on destroying the seeds that lead to the sprouting of the millenarian ideologies that are represented by such fundamentalist groups. One may ask as to how much the levers the Indian government can have against an international menace that persists in Pakistan and in west Asia under the umbrella denominations of Al Qaeda, the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Jaish-e-Mohammad and other myriad groups.

Pakistan is also bearing the brunt of the regular terrorist violence (the recent Marriot Hotel attacks in Karachi were very much the precursor to the incidents in Mumbai), which was the consequence of years of patronage to radical Islamic and fundamentalist sections by the Pakistani ruling classes and establishment. There is an elected government in Pakistan today, after perhaps the most free and fair elections in the country after decades. There is greater pressure from the international community which sees Pakistan as the wellspring of terrorist violence with the presence of fundamentalist groups in north-west Pakistan (in Waziristan) and the sprinkling of terror camps all across the country, which were responsible for many a catastrophic event such as the Lal Masjid incident, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and most recently, the Marriot bombings. There is great hatred for these groups among the Pakistani public themselves, who have become tired of the years of patronage provided by the ruling establishment under the control of the Army and that explains the resounding defeat of Pervez Musharraf's supporters in the recent elections.

It is a ripe enough moment for the Indian government to engage with the democratically elected government in Pakistan, with added impetus from the international community to purge the radical, fundamentalist and crazy elements that are entrenched in its security apparatus – in the ISI and in the Army. The Indian government can now force the new Pakistani government to act immediately and tough against the radical outfits such as the LeT and JeM which operate under various names impudently, as the gaze of the international eye is fixed firmly upon Pakistan.

At the same time, domestically, Indians should repudiate the very basis that forms the ideological thrust of the radical jihadis – that the Indian state and its citizens are the enemy of people of their basic faith and that the Indian state is an appendage of the imperial world. The re-affirming of the secular nature of India's democracy and the strengthening of the edifices of welfare democracy will serve as a strong answer to any fundamentalist questioning of the partiality of the Indian state. The solidarity of the Indian state toward anti-imperialism will break the backbone of any reasoning that ties up the Indian state within the imperial axis. That means that the Indian state should repudiate any intention that serves imperial interests in south, west and central Asia; meaning that the occupation of Iraq and Palestine should be unequivocally condemned and India should desist from acting for imperial interests in Afghanistan where discontent against NATO bombing and American actions is very high.

As for the short-term and immediate ways of handling the menace, there are enough ways of intercepting and quelling plans for sabotage and terrorism. From surveillance of financial transactions, creation of a central co-ordination body against terrorism, extensive databases about sleeper cells of terrorist outfits operating in the country, effective penetration and neutralisation techniques, better border security, there are quite a few security avenues available for such action.

The people of Mumbai in the meantime have had enough. Bomb blasts in 1993 following religious riots, a long spell of underground violence which took years for the police to control and eradicate, blasts in the Ghatkopar suburb and more blasts near the Gateway of India in 2003, the serial bomb blasts in trains in 2006 and now these attacks in November 2008; all of them have been conducted to destroy the spine of India's most populous city. More than any other, these attacks stand out. The people of Mumbai showed resilience in returning back to their quotidian lives, rejecting attempts to foment communal divides and more violence in the past. But this time around, the wounds have scarred them enough to make them fear about the unknown. Mumbai was not back to normality after the sieges.

Traffic was still loose on the normally busy streets and many offices were still shut. Anger is slowly engulfing the public, who have chosen to blame the broad polity for their travails. There is also enough anger against Pakistan for being the source of this recent menace and it is clear that any lowering of commitment toward ensuring justice for those affected by these incidents by both the Indian and Pakistani governments will not go down passively with the people of the city.

Regional exclusivist and chauvinist groups such as the MNS and the Shiv Sena have already held Mumbai to ransom with violent acts against north Indian citizens of the city. The ruling parties have been no better in fanning the waves of chauvinism. That security personnel drawn from all parts of India led from the front in sanitising the city's terror affected locations from marauding terrorists, is a slap in the face of these chauvinists. The popular sentiment among the citizens of Mumbai is a sense of gratitude for the bravery of the security persons who risked their lives in ending the sieges and a sense of angst and anger against the failed right wing politics in the city. There would be no non-chalant return to the quotidian for the average Mumbaikar anymore, but the determination remains to dispel any attempts to destroy the fabric of this remarkable “Maximum City”. One sincerely hopes that this continues to remain the case, for that would be a fitting reply to those terrorists and their ideology of fanaticism.

Verdict against Autocracy

Editorial written for Economic and Political Weekly

Voters in Pakistan have rejected the forces of autocracy, but will Washington and the military acquiesce?

Real News Network Videos featuring commentaries on the Pakistan election:

The Pakistani electorate has given a decisive verdict against the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam) – PML(Q) – the party which supported president Pervez Musharraf and his duplicitous rule. Although the overall mandate for the national assembly is fractured with no party winning an absolute majority, the emergence of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) as the single largest party and the marginalisation of Musharraf’s supporters is the telling story of the elections.

It was widely expected that with a sympathy wave after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the PPP would win a large number of seats, perhaps close to a majority. But, boosted by a strong showing in Punjab province, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) – PML(N) – led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was able to notch up 66 seats, not much behind the 88 won by the PPP. The manner in which the PML(Q) lost, with several of its prominent leaders, such as former prime minister Chaudhury Shujaat Hussain, biting the dust revealed the resentment against Musharraf’s rule. Another aspect of the verdict was the comprehensive rejection of extremist religious forces with secular parties such as the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) and the Awami National Party (ANP) winning a substantial number of seats.

The elections were held against the backdrop of militant violence and voting had been postponed after the assassination of Bhutto. A positive aspect was the non-interference from the military following a professional order by the chief of army staff, Ashfaq Kayani. By delivering a verdict against both pro-Musharraf forces as well as the radical religious right, the Pakistani people have taken forward the surge of democratic activity and activism that began with the movement for the reinstatement of chief justice Iftikhar Choudhury. Musharraf was “re-elected” to the post of president by the legislature in October 2007 by invoking an amendment to the Constitution. This election was later validated by a pliant judiciary after the incumbent chief justice and other judges were removed during a declared emergency.

Hanging in the balance now is the president’s future, as Nawaz Sharif has called for his impeachment and also for the reinstatement of the ousted members of the judiciary. The PPP led by Bhutto’s husband, Asif Zardari has remained non-committal but the overall electoral verdict necessitates an understanding between the PPP and the PML(N), which means that these issues will have to be discussed by the two parties. A two-thirds majority is required to impeach Musharraf, to realise which the PPP-PML(N) combine would have to seek support from other smaller parties.

At the end of the week talks were under way between these parties and the ANP, and from all indications it is now a matter of not if but when Musharraf will be eased out of power. In the past, democratic rule in Pakistan has seen the tenures of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto marred by corruption and politics of clientalism and patronage. The resultant instability had given the powerful military an excuse to intervene in politics. Ever since Musharraf’s coup in 1998, constitutional rules have been re-written or bent to prolong his presidency, helped particularly by the writ of the military in Pakistan. A big question is if the current position of the military under Kayani to stay out of politics will continue. Entrenched as the military is in all areas of Pakistani economy and society, outsiders can only hope democracy and civilian rule will be strong enough to keep out the men in uniform.

Another important imponderable is the role that will be played by the west, particularly the United States, which has always meddled in the internal affairs of Pakistan. The US had considered Musharraf an ally and had hoped to continue its relationship with a troika of Musharraf, Kayani and the next prime minister in order to prosecute the so-called war on terror with Pakistan’s help. With the high weightage provided in the mandate to anti-Musharraf forces, such an arrangement now seems difficult to sustain.

Apart from extremism in regions such as Waziristan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and violence in the main cities, Pakistan is also faced with economic troubles with high prices of essential items and shortages of important commodities. The previous government had built growth on privatisation, overseas remittances and US aid. Both the PPP and PML(N) are expected to adopt centrist policies but the question is if the post-election alliance will be able to address the pressing economic issues of the day and prevent instability. The next government’s ability to honour the mandate will ultimately depend upon whether the democratic environment created in the elections can remain free from yet another spell of military interference and US influence.