Deoband fatwa Website goes offline

Kanchan Gupta / Note / May 13, 2009.

In my post of Tuesday, April 07, 2009, headlined 'Taliban in India: They are already here!', I had reproduced some of the fatwas listed at Darul Uloom Deoband's fatwa Website, wwww.darulifta-deoband.org, designed and maintained by a Muslim living in the US -- or so the site claimed. The Darul Ifta Deoband site was hyperlinked to Darul Uloom Deoband's official Website www.darululoom-deoband.com. Madarsas which are inspired by Darul Uloom Deoband, and are known as 'Deobandi madarsas', are the most prolific breeders of Taliban in Pakistan.
I have just received an e-mail alerting me that the Darul Ifta Deoband Website cannot be accessed. I tried to access it, but the browser kept on returning a 'not found' message.
It is possible that the site has been shut down for routine maintenance. But it is also possible that Darul Uloom Deoband has decided not to place its fatwas in the public domain, lest others get to know of what it has to say about women's 'place' in society, the 'duties' of a good Muslim, the 'importance' of covering a woman in a burqa before letting her step out, if at all, of her home, and other such theological issues of great importance.
Just in case the latter is true, I have decided to paste below a statement from the main Darul Uloom Deoband Website, before it 'disappears', denying that the great centre of Islamic learning ever issued a fatwa against cow slaughter. It may be recalled that 'secular' media and their patrons in India's political establishment had gone to town claiming that Darul Uloom Deoband had issued a fatwa against cow slaughter. Here goes the Darul Uloom Deoband statement:

News (Darul Uloom - Deoband)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Darul Uloom Denies the Fatwa About Cow Slaughter Published in Newspapers


Darul Uloom Deoband: 26/04/1429 H

Mufti Habibur Rahman Sahib, the head of Darul-Ifta Darul Uloom Deoband, has refused explicitly the so-called fatwa published in newspapers explaining that he had issued no such kind of Fatwa which pronounced slaughtering cow, selling and eating its meat as haram.
The Mufti Sahib declared the news published in Dainik Jagran on 26 April 2008 as baseless and false.
Making it clear, he said that a person from Muzuffarnagar (UP) had asked over the phone weather the act of those slaughtering cow secretly and eating it was Islamically lawful or unlawful. He replied him over the phone saying: "In the light of the shari'ah, eating meat of cow is permissible but people of the States where cow slaughter is banned should avoid it as slaughtering cow and eating its meat stealthily is unsuitable and wrong."
He said that the mediapersons should have rightly understood the context of my reply but they instead misinterpreted it and blamed that slaughtering cow and selling its meat was haram. They overlooked the legal prohibition to which I referred.
Actually, it is the habit of the media persons not to present news in its original context but they add to it ifs and buts on their own. This mentality of them is reflected here as well. I request them to present the news in a right way and also mention the legal prohibitions according to which it is absolutely wrong to violate the law; slaughtering cow and selling its meat is legally unlawful.

Issued by:

Office of Mohtamim

Darul Uloom Deoband.

Tremors in Bengal

Left's crucial test




Kanchan Gupta / Analysis / May 13, 2009.


On Tuesday, May 12, a day before the third and final round of voting in West Bengal where polling will take place in 11 parliamentary constituencies, as many as 10 of them with sitting Left MPs, in North and South 24 Parganas, three leading newspapers published from Kolkata highlighted three different aspects of an election that could mark a turning point in the State’s politics, overwhelmingly dominated by the CPI(M) for more than three decades.
Bartaman, the Bengali language newspaper which since its inception has struck a stridently anti-Left posture and is seen as the ‘voice’ of the Opposition in West Bengal, ran a banner headline on Tuesday’s front page, informing its readers that the “CPI(M) is all set for extensive rigging”. The story does not provide specifics of how the Marxists plan to rig the polls, but it indicates the possibility of party cadre being unleashed on voters to terrorise them. During this election Bartaman has published stories about electronic voting machines being ‘rigged’ to ensure the victory of Left candidates. In the past, this particular allegation has remained unsubstantiated. But it is a fact that potential anti-Left voters often find their names missing from the electoral rolls.
The first two rounds of polling in the State have been by and large peaceful. By West Bengal’s standards, the level of violence could be described as ‘negligible’. Hence, neither the Trinamool Congress nor its ally, the Congress, can allege that force was used to keep anti-Left voters away from polling booths. While it remains to be seen whether the final round of voting will be any different, and whether Marxist leaders and their cadre take recourse to intimidation to prevent Trinamool Congress supporters from voting, it is a fact that the CPI(M) and its allies are worried about their prospects in these crucial 11 constituencies.
In the 2004 general election, the CPI(M) had virtually wiped out the Trinamool Congress from North and South 24 Parganas, which were till then perceived as Ms Mamata Banerjee’s stronghold. Barring Ms Banerjee, all her nominees lost the election; she won with a reduced margin. The CPI(M) repeated that feat in the 2006 Assembly election.
But between 2006 and 2008, the situation has changed radically to the disadvantage of the CPI(M). The farmland-for-industry policy of the Left Front Government has met with popular resistance, most notably (and with disastrous consequences) in Singur, where Tata Motors had to abandon its small car project, and Nandigram, where land acquisition for a proposed Special Economic Zone that was to have been set up by Indonesia’s Salim Group could not proceed beyond a notice put up at the BDO’s office. Ms Banerjee has been in the forefront of the agitation against this policy. Small and marginal farmers, fearful of losing their land, their only possession, have rallied behind the Trinamool Congress’s flag.
The farmers’ agitation and their success in forcing the Government — and the all-powerful ‘Party’ — to back off has emboldened others who have been nursing a variety of grievances against local CPI(M) leaders. For a long time people, among them sympathisers of the Left, have been resentful about the high-handedness of the Marxist cadre, but felt either helpless or were scared of taking a stand. Now they feel neither helpless nor scared.
The results of last year’s panchayat elections were an indication of the simmering discontent with the Left Front Government prevailing in West Bengal’s villages boiling over, especially in the southern districts of the State. The Trinamool Congress swept the panchayat elections in what were considered as bastions of the Left Front, breaching the Marxists’ rural stronghold.
The import of the panchayat polls is being felt in this summer’s parliamentary election. The Left is facing a reversal in rural areas and, strangely, is on a stronger wicket in urban areas, which till now have voted against the CPI(M). Delimitation has resulted in large swathes of rural areas being made part of urban constituencies like Jadavpur in Kolkata.
Two years ago, this would have meant good news for the Left. Today, it means advantage Trinamool Congress. This is most palpable in North and South 24 Parganas. Hence, the deepening sense of alarm in the Left. The Trinamool Congress could notch up a sizeable tally if it performs well on Wednesday and, together with the Congress, bag upwards of 14 seats in the State.
On the other hand, if the CPI(M) is able to checkmate its political foe, it could minimise its losses. For that, the Marxists are willing to do whatever it takes. Old networks have been revived, favours are being called in and cadre have been asked to mobilise the faithful and ensure they come out and vote, notwithstanding the scorching heat.
Anandabazar Patrika, the leading Bengali language daily published from Kolkata, has played up two stories. The first is about maverick Marxist, Transport Minister and Jyoti Basu loyalist Subhas Chakraborty lashing out at Polit Bureau members who “sit in air-conditioned rooms and frame policies based on theory”, and daring them to contest elections. According to the newspaper, although Mr Chakraborty has not taken any names, his reference is to CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat and Polit Bureau members Sitaram Yechury and Brinda Karat.
The second story, which has been displayed more prominently, is about Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s sharp criticism of the Trinamool Congress and Ms Banerjee’s equally harsh rejoinder — sort of a media generated debate. The charges and counter-charges have been classified under three heads: Ideology, Muslims and Singur.
Mr Bhattacharjee: “The Opposition has no ideological mooring. It is politically bankrupt. It lacks discipline and is anti-development.”
Ms Banerjee: “He should mind his language. The Left is politically bankrupt. That is why they are maligning us.”
Mr Bhattacharjee: “They are playing dangerous politics with Muslims. This is not the culture of this State.”
Ms Banerjee: “Must we learn culture from the man who is dangerous for the people of Bengal?”
Mr Bhattacharjee: “Why should I apologise for Singur? We will set up industry there. A decision will be taken after the election.”
Ms Banerjee: “He will have to go to Singur, seek forgiveness, rub his nose in the dirt and return the land to the farmers.”
Ideology is really not an issue in this election in West Bengal. It ceased to be so long ago. Cynics would suggest that both the Left and the Trinamool Congress are politically bankrupt; the Congress was never burdened by ideology.
What is an issue is the Muslim vote, which has been the Congress’s mainstay in north Bengal and integral to the Left’s core support in south Bengal. This time, Muslims are rooting for Ms Banerjee. Comprising nearly a quarter (unofficially, a third) of the population, Muslims can play a decisive role and their vote can be the ‘game changer’. Ms Banerjee has played on Muslim insecurities, especially about land.
The Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind has added to Muslim angst by using its vast network of ulema to publicise the findings of the Sachar Committee which, ironically, show that Muslims are worse off in CPI(M)-ruled West Bengal than in Mr Narendra Modi’s Gujarat. The Jamiat has fielded a dozen odd candidates, but the real beneficiary of its relentless campaign on the Sachar Committee report is the Trinamool Congress.
Which brings us to the issue of Singur and industrialisation of West Bengal. The Telegraph’s main front page story is headlined: “Maa, mati, manush: Sounds nice but not for son who won’t farm”. The Trinamool Congress’s campaign is built around the slogan of “Maa, mati, manush” (mother, land and people), playing on the sentiments of rural Bengal. The story raises an interesting question: If West Bengal’s farmers are so attached to their land and their livelihood, why would 45.5 per cent of them dislike what they do, compared to 40 per cent nationally?
Elections are a tricky affair. Not till the last vote is counted can results be predicted with any certitude. “The people of West Bengal want to usher change,” Mr Saugata Roy, Trinamool Congress candidate for Dum Dum constituency, told me in Kolkata. “This is going to be an election for change.” He could be right. We will get to know for sure on Saturday, May 16.

[Opeditorial article in The Pioneer, May 13, 2009.]

A monstrous experiment

Nasir Abbas Mirza
Remote madrassas in Pakistan may be turning boys into drones but then there are thousands of madrassas spread all over Pakistan’s urban centres that are producing millions of neo-drones who may not become suicide bombers but are totally unfit to live in this world. These kids need to be rescued


Take a little boy and incarcerate him in a remote madrassa. Keep him far away from the rest of the world and bar any interaction with humanity. Indoctrinate him with a distorted version of a religion and tell him that he does not belong to this world. Teach him about the fanciful world that awaits him in the heaven, and that in order to attain that he has to destroy everything that stands in his way, including his own body.

By the time he is sixteen, the child would have become a drone: an un-manned man. Instead of a lively teenager, we would have a robot in living tissue ready to detonate on remote orders.

At full steam ahead in Pakistan, this is a monstrous experiment in brainwashing and it is on a par with, if not worse than, Nazi Germany’s eugenics. They did it in the name of science; here, it is being done in the name of God and religion. On a very large scale, this is a hugely successful experiment in which nurture triumphs and nature takes a beating.

Are we really prisoners of our genes? Or are we prisoners of our parents, teachers and societies? From what we are witnessing, genetic influences are secondary to environment.

Behavioural scientists have Nobel Prize-winning research material in Pakistan. Freud, Skinner or Pavlov would have worked nights to study this. Pavlov’s dogs salivated at the sound of a bell; this young man would blow himself up at the sound of a bell — his phone bell. “Give me a child until he is seven, and I will show you the man,” goes the old Jesuit saying.

It may be sinister, the Jesuit saying, but the fact remains that nobody understands the vulnerability of a child’s brain better than priests. On the one hand, witness the vigilance of parents when they let a maulvi sahib into their house to teach the Holy Quran to their children; and, on the other hand, there are parents in the same society who ‘give’ a child to madrassa-running priests not until he is seven, but until he is 14 or 15 or forever.

‘Give’ is a generalisation. Given our attitudes towards birth control, an overabundance of young children is a natural outcome. In population growth, we are not too far behind the 6 percent population growth rate of our role model country, Saudi Arabia. There is an endless supply of young boys for madrassas. There are abducted, orphaned or abandoned young boys. Then there are parents who are too poor to bring up a child. They simply sell or donate their boys for tabligh or jihad or for any other religious duty. The religious pretence converts their dastardly act into a noble deed.

Priestly abuse of children has been going on for as long as there have been priests and children. But never has this been done in such an organised manner as is the case here in Pakistan. This abuse (aside from the pervasive sexual abuse) spells disaster. Just step out of a large city and all you would see around you are hundreds and thousands of little children — from six to thirty-six months old. Until these kids are of an age to observe the ways of their elders, they live and behave like untrained dogs. That’s the real Pakistan and no military or political leader is having sleepless nights over this.

Mismanaging the national security state has kept our governments so busy that social uplift has been low on their priorities. For sixty years we gave all our money for security and today we don’t even have that. Even in a perfect world, our leaders couldn’t have done anything about it. The job at hand is beyond their capabilities. Just take a roll call of our leaders in the last thirty years. They have been such a simple and basic lot that protocol and property left them no time for anything else.

Will this ever change or improve. No, not for another thirty years. That’s thirty years after we do the needful: that is, a drastic reduction in the number of children we produce, modern education for all on war-footing basis and to do this, schools and First World-standard teachers. So start counting once all this is in place.

From Zia to Zardari, and all others in between, no one even acknowledged that we have an overpopulation problem. Such is the fear of backlash from religious conservatives.

Here’s the equation: a population that breeds likes rats equals poverty equals despair equals cannon fodder for religious organisations and terrorist networks. Were these children better off working at motor workshops or making carpets? Perhaps the ILO or an NGO can answer this question. They seem awfully quiet on something much worse than child labour.

There’s a reason for that: in matters of faith or religious beliefs, no one dare object. All kinds of evil, illegal or inhuman practices can be given sanction if a particular religion or sect proves that it is part of its belief. You could be dying in a hospital but no one would give you a hallucinogenic drug to save your life. But, hey, you can get official approval for the use of cannabis or other hallucinogenic drugs if you prove that use of these substances is part of your religious belief. In 2006, the US Supreme Court did just that.

Our children face a frightening future not because of the Taliban (they are just a handful) but because of the ultra-conservative wave of religion that has swept this country. Remote madrassas may be turning boys into drones but then there are thousands of madrassas spread all over Pakistan’s urban centres that are producing millions of neo-drones who may not become suicide bombers but are totally unfit to live in this world. These kids need to be rescued.

Alfred Hitchcock, the great movie director who specialised in frightening people, was once driving in Switzerland when he suddenly pointed out of the car window and said, “That is the most frightening sight I have ever seen.” It was a priest in conversation with a little boy, his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

Hitchcock leaned out of the car window and shouted, “Run, little boy! Run for your life!”

The writer is a freelance columnist

(Courtesy: Daily Times, Pakistan, May 11.)

Taliban a child of CIA & ISI, says Zardari

American dollars, CIA assistance helped spawn Taliban. Why blame Pakistan's ISI alone?

Kanchan Gupta / Comment / May 11, 2009.

That America's CIA collaborated with Pakistan's ISI to set up the Taliban is no secret. Veteran journalist Steve Coll, in his fascinating book, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (Penguin)had laid bare details about how American 'interests' of the time were best met by handing over Afghanistan to a bunch of Isalmist goons who had studied theology (and hence the name 'Taliban') at Deobandi madarsas in Pakistan. This allowed Pakistan virtual overlordship of Afghanistan. What followed was a nightmare, leading to the spectacular 9/11 attacks in the US and sending Americans scurrying for cover: The chickens of Washington's chicanery had come home to roost.
Every time the CIA's role -- with the US Administration's approval -- in creating the monster called Taliban came up for mention in the past, it would be strenuously denied. In his testimony before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher named the Clinton Administration, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for creating the Taliban: “Let me repeat that: The Clinton Administration, along with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, created the Taliban." There was studied silence.
Addressing a conference on 'Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia', in London in March, 2001, leading US expert on South Asia said Selig Harrison who was then with the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, said the CIA worked in tandem with Pakistan to create the "monster" that is today Afghanistan's Taliban. "I warned them that we were creating a monster," Harrison said, adding, "The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan." The US provided $3 billion for building up these Islamic groups, and it accepted Pakistan's demand that they should decide how this money should be spent, Harrison said.
John Pilger wrote an interesting piece for The Guardian (September 20, 2003):
"For 17 years, Washington poured $4 billion into the pockets of some of the most brutal men on earth - with the overall aim of exhausting and ultimately destroying the Soviet Union in a futile war...
CIA director William Casey backed a plan by Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, to recruit people from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. More than 100,000 Islamic militants were trained in Pakistan between 1986 and 1992, in camps overseen by the CIA and Britain's MI6, with the British SAS trained future al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in bomb-making and other black arts. Their leaders were trained at a CIA camp in Virginia. This was called Operation Cyclone and continued long after the Soviets had withdrawn in 1989..."
Cut to last week. In an interview to NBC's David Gregory (video here), Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was blunt in telling the truth that the US has till now sought to keep out of public discourse -- that America, having helped procreate the Taliban, must share the responsibility for the threat that the monster now poses to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Here's a relevant extract from the interview:
Gregory: And is it America's war or Pakistan's war?
Zardari: It's a war of our existence. We've been fighting this war much before they attacked 9/11. They (Taliban) are kind of a cancer created by both of us, Pakistan and America and the world. We got together, we created this cancer to fight the superpower and then we went away -- rather, you went away without finding a cure for it. And now we've both come together to find a cure for it, and we're looking for one..."
US President Barack Hussein Obama should elaborate on the point made by Mr Zardari. Not that silence will amount to denial -- the Americans (and their CIA) have known to indulge in such activities around the world -- from Korea to Vietnam to Latin America. Given a chance they would do it in India, too. If Manmohan Singh gets to remain Prime Minister after May 16, this could happen sooner than later.
PS: On a lighter note, here's a delightful news story I found on the Russia Today Website:
CIA’s weapon against Taliban - Viagra!
The KGB was once notoriously known for using attractive women as ‘honey traps’ to achieve their goals. Now, as time and technology move forwards, US intelligence has found a new way of exploiting the sexual angle…Viagra.
Cash and weapons are well-tried options but in some cases they don’t tick all the boxes, particularly when trying to garner support among Afghanistan’s tribal leaders, reports The Washington Post.
The newspaper quotes Jamie Smith, a veteran of CIA covert operations in Afghanistan and now chief executive of SCG International, a private security and intelligence company, as saying: “If you give an asset $US 1,000, he'll go out and buy the shiniest junk he can find, and it will be apparent that he has suddenly come into a lot of money from someone. Even if he doesn't get killed, he becomes ineffective as an informant because everyone knows where he got it.”
Amidst the growing Taliban insurgency, CIA operatives are using a wide range of other products and services to win supporters among the locals. Pocketknives, tools, medicine and surgery, toys and school equipment, tooth extractions and travel visas are all among the gifts offered.
“Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people – whether it's building a school or handing out Viagra,” as one longtime agency operative and veteran of several Afghanistan tours commented.
The Viagra method proves to be especially effective with ageing Afghan chieftains who often have four wives, the maximum number allowed by Koran, and are eager to be at their best.

* * *

I will revert to this issue soon. Meanwhile, here are two links to articles worth reading on the Taliban:

Story of US, CIA and Taliban

The Taliban

PS:
I am thankful to Srikanth Nalla for pointing out that the story of the CIA luring Afghan informants with Viagra appeared on alternet.org three months ago. Actually someone had sent me the snippet from Russia Today and I was keeping it for appropriate use. Zardari's assertion offered the opportunity.
The alternet.org story was published under the headline "The CIA's Bizarre Plan to Win Hearts and Hard-ons in Afghanistan" and appeared on February 11, 2009.

PM’s intolerable moralising

Kanchan Gupta / Comment / May 9, 2009.

Manmohan Singh persists with his sanctimonious, self-righteous and intolerably smug pronouncements although his sententiousness increasingly rings hollow. One comment of the Prime Minister stands out for its sheer duplicity in the waffle that was billed as an exclusive interview by the Hindustan Times last week. It first pertains to India being shamed before the world on account of the riots that occurred in Gujarat in 2002.
“The image of India took a beating when the BJP tried to impose a monolithic view on the entire country. If people with extremist and bigoted views come to power, India’s image as a great, liberal, plural and secular democracy will be hurt,” Mr Singh told the newspaper. Such high falutin statements would no doubt impress those who can see nothing wrong with the Congress and a Prime Minister who has cravenly served the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty instead of performing his prime ministerial duties. Public memory being notoriously short, many would fail to recall the Congress’s innumerable sins of omission and commission. Those who came of age this general election would know even less about the Congress’s tainted past.
But since Mr Singh has chosen to raise the issue of “the image of India” taking “a beating”, it would be in order to record that the nation’s image has suffered far worse when the Congress has been in power. If the shine was lost when the BJP was in power — as the Prime Minister claims it was — it hasn’t exactly been restored with him at the helm of the UPA Government. We shall come to this later.
The violence in Gujarat was not, contrary to Mr Singh’s mumbo-jumbo, triggered by the BJP trying to “impose a monolithic view on the entire country”. That’s nothing but a crass attempt to re-write history, something in which the Congress excels, along with its admirers in the Left. The riots followed the torching of two bogeys of the Sabarmati Express, in which Hindu pilgrims were travelling, by a Muslim mob at Godhra on February 27, 2002. In the blaze 58 people were killed — 23 men, 15 women and 20 children. According to a statement made by Mr Singh’s Government in the Rajya Sabha, 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus died in the subsequent rioting; 223 people were reported ‘missing’ and 2,548 sustained injuries. Clearly this wasn’t about the BJP “imposing a monolithic view on the entire country”.
If India’s image “took a beating”, as Mr Singh says it did, it was on account of the lies that were forged in the laboratory of neo-Goebbelsian propaganda owned by Teesta Setalvad and publicised as facts by the Congress and its drum-beaters in the media. Horror stories of murder, rape and pillage were put out that have now been found to be untrue. The report of the Special Investigation Team, set up by the Supreme Court, details instances of these lies. The Prime Minister has surely read the report, which, among other things, mentions how identical statements were prepared by Teesta Setalvad and ‘eyewitnesses’ were bullied into signing them. If India stands shamed, it is on account of amoral politicians and crafty activists slyly suppressing facts and manufacturing lies.
And, if the post-Godhra violence, in which both Muslims and Hindus died, resulted in India’s image taking a beating, then the nation’s image was tarnished beyond repair by the numerous riots since 1947 that resulted in thousands of deaths in States ruled by the Congress. We could go back to the distant past and recall the several riots that occurred in Gujarat when the Congress was in power and in which the death toll surpassed that of 2002.
Or we could go back to 1989 when the Congress Government in Bihar did nothing to quell the Bhagalpur riots in which, according to official figures, 1,070 people were killed and 524 injured. For the benefit of Mr Singh, it should also be recalled that 11,500 houses were destroyed, displacing 48,000 people, in those riots that couldn’t have enhanced, by his own logic, India’s image. Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav, who subsequently came to power in Bihar, did nothing to prosecute the guilty or follow-up on eyewitness accounts; that task has now been taken up by the JD(U)-BJP Government. Mr Yadav, as we all know, is a senior Cabinet colleague of Mr Singh. Interestingly, participating in a parliamentary debate soon after the Bhagalpur riots, Mr Yadav had squarely blamed the Congress for the terrible blood-letting. “It is the Congress that has engineered most of the riots,” he had thundered. Of course, he wouldn’t recall that speech today.
We could also recall the Nellie massacre of February 18, 1983 in which 2,191 men, women and children, some of them suckling infants, were slain in cold blood. Doubts still persist about the actual death toll; survivors insist at least 5,000 people perished in that pre-dawn slaughter. That carnage could have been averted had Mrs Indira Gandhi, of whom Mr Singh no doubt cherishes fond memories, not insisted upon holding a bogus Assembly election amid the anti-foreigners’ agitation because she wanted the incumbent Congress Government in Assam to continue to remain in power. Nellie could not have given India a good name.
Mr Singh feigns amnesia, but he needs to be told that India did not quite come out smelling of roses after the 1984 pogrom in which more than 4,000 Sikhs were brutally murdered by Congress hoodlums led by those whom the party now lists as its ‘leaders’ and rewards them with tickets to contest parliamentary elections. Twenty-five years later, the victims still wait for justice. As do those who survived the Maliana massacre. Surely Mr Singh has heard of it?
And what about India’s image taking a beating because its Prime Minister brazenly defends the decision to exonerate a wanted Italian fugitive, Ottavio Quattrocchi, who has looted this country? When the story broke, the Prime Minister’s Office pretended that it had no knowledge of the CBI asking Interpol to remove the Red Corner Notice against Quattrocchi. But the vigour with which he now defends that decision suggests he couldn't have been unaware of it. “The Quattrocchi case was an embarrassment for the Government of India,” Mr Singh says, adding, it did “not show the Indian legal system in good light”. No, Prime Minister, the decision of your Government to let Quattrocchi walk free with his ill-gotten wealth is an embarrassment for India; it does not show you and your Government in a “good light”, nor does it do wonders for the image of India.
More importantly, the Prime Minister’s timid acquiescence to the subversion of the criminal justice system and abuse of power can only fetch contempt and ridicule for India. With such a person in office, everything is possible — from fixing telecom policy to milking the exchequer; from being dictated foreign policy to letting terrorists have a free run of the country. It makes us look like a banana republic.
Yet Mr Singh waxes eloquent on India’s image!

Has Musharraf fled Pakistan?

Comment / Kanchan Gupta / May 7, 2009.

When Gen Pervez Musharraf resigned from his post as President of Pakistan on August 18, 2008, there was speculation that he would seek asylum in a Western country, most possibly the US. Another version had it that the Saudi monarch had arranged for him to shift to a palatial building in either Jeddah or Riyadh. Yet another story said that the Sheikh of Dubai had made arrangements to ‘receive’ him. But nothing like that happened. Gen Musharraf, a cigar-smoking, fun-loving man stayed put in Army House, Rawalpindi, making occasional appearances in public to hold forth, in his pompous style, on internal and external issues. He visited India for the India Today conclave and quite frankly made a fool of himself by talking utter rubbish.
On April 19 this year, when Pakistan began showing signs of crumbling before the Taliban’s onslaught, Gen Musharraf left for a ‘private visit’ to Saudi Arabia. From there he left for a ‘lecture tour’ of Europe, and hasn’t been heard of since then.
It would appear that Gen Musharraf was worried about the Taliban getting him. Which is ironical, considering that he contributed in no small measure to the growth of the Taliban in Pakistan and collaborated with the Taliban in Afghanistan to try and topple the Karzai regime. A recent story in the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn, elaborates on this point.
On Thursday, May 7, PTI put out an interesting report datelined Islamabad. It is reproduced here:

Musharraf unlikely to return to Pak in the near future

PTI/Islamabad
As Pakistan is gripped by a volatile situation following a crackdown on Taliban, question marks hang over whether former President Pervez Musharraf, on a trip to Europe, will return back home or not.
Musharraf is not expected to return to Pakistan from a foreign lecture tour in the near future, said his close aide Maj Gen (retired) Rashid Qureshi.
Qureshi, a former spokesman of Musharraf, confirmed that the former President would stay abroad for a longer period of time but had no information on when he would return home. "I have no idea how long the former President will stay abroad. Though I am still in touch with him, (I) have no exact idea on this count," Qureshi told The News daily. Musharraf, who survived two assassination attempts, is believed to be on the hit list of several militant groups. There has been considerable speculation in political circles about him leaving Pakistan for an unspecified period of time.
Sheharyar, another aide of the former military ruler, said Musharraf is currently in London and would be travelling to the US from there. Musharraf would then travel back to Europe, he said. On Tuesday, a three-member judicial review board of the Lahore High Court had ordered the release of two JuD leaders – Amir Hamza and Mufti Abdur Rehman – and extended the detention of Saeed and Ahmed by 60 days.
In the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks, the UN Security Council had declared JuD a front for a terror outfit.
JuD leaders were placed under house arrest on December 12 last year under the Maintenance of Public Order ordinance, which allows a person to be held for up to 90 days. The review board has subsequently extended Saeed's detention twice.

Asif Ali Zardari is Barack Hussein Obama's blue-eyed boy as Hamid Karzai falls from grace

It pays to let Taliban and Al Qaeda flourish. Or else Hamid Karzai would not have fallen from grace with the Americans!



Comment by Kanchan Gupta / May 6, 2009.

In a story headlined "OBAMA'S WAR: A New Approach to Karzai -- Administration Is Keeping Ally at Arm's Length; Skepticism of Afghan Leader Shapes Policy", filed by Rajeev Chandrasekaran, Tuesday's Washington Post makes a couple of interesting points:

Today, as the two leaders meet in the White House, that skepticism drives the administration's evolving policy toward Afghanistan and the battle against Taliban insurgents, a conflict whose outcome will in part define Obama's presidency.
In assessing the nearly eight-year struggle from Washington, senior members of Obama's national security team say Karzai has not done enough to address the grave challenges facing his nation. They deem him to be a mercurial and vacillating chieftain who has tolerated corruption and failed to project his authority beyond the gates of Kabul.
"On all fronts," said a senior U.S. official, "Hamid Karzai has plateaued as a leader."

These need to be taken note of along with the great faith that US President Barack Hussein Obama has placed in Pakistan's dissolute President Azif Ali Zardari and rewarded him for allowing Pakistan to descend into chaos and the Taliban to occupy vast tracts of land where they have let loose a reign of terror in the name of enforcing shari'ah. Zardari's prize: $ 7.5 billion in American aid. The money could also be candyfloss to keep Zardari happy as the Americans plot with former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif whose PML (N) could join the Pakistani Federal Government with him as the Prime Minister.
It is interesting to note that while Obama is 'reaching out' to Pakistan and appeasing those who are responsible for the rapid march of the Taliban, he has been slyly introducing measures that can only be described as anti-India.

Fleeing Swatis describe horrific scenes

Tens of thousands of people are fleeing Swat Valley, escaping the horrors inflicted by the Taliban who have been enforcing 'true Islam' in areas taken over by them with the help of the gun and terror.

The joyless world, bleak and dark, created by these erstwhile students of Deobandi madarsas, is what is upheld as the cherished desire of those who believe in radical Islam's slogan, "Democracy is the problem. Islam is the solution!" Here is a report filed by AFP from Peshawar:

PESHAWAR: Shop owner Saeed Khan has already buried one child killed in fighting between the Taliban and government forces in northwest Pakistan. He cannot bear to lose another.
So the 50-year-old bundled his wife, son and daughter onto a bus in the Taliban-infested town of Mingora in the Swat valley and hurried to the city of Peshawar, hoping for a future free from further bloodshed.
‘I lost my son, who was a police officer in Swat, in a suicide attack in Mingora early this year. I buried him in front of my house,’ Khan told AFP, tears rolling down his cheeks.
‘I don’t want to dig graves for my daughter and son in Mingora. That is why I left the area... His death broke me. Tell me where should I go and from whom should I seek justice?’
Local officials say more than 40,000 men, women and children have packed up and fled Mingora since Tuesday, fearing that Pakistan’s military could unleash a fresh ground and air assault against Taliban fighters.
The bedraggled refugees, some leading goats and cattle through the streets, are seeking safety for their loved ones, as the Taliban claimed to control 90 per cent of the former ski resort and tourist getaway, once favoured by Westerners.
‘I am immediately leaving the city with my wife, mother and four kids,’ said taxi driver Ali Rehman, 46.
‘I don’t really know my destination and destiny. My family and I need protection.’
At the bus stop in Peshawar — the capital of the North West Frontier Province — exhausted and anxious people told stories of horror as they poured out of vehicles carrying old bags, blankets and bundles of clothes.
Zarina Begum, 40, pleaded for help as she staggered off a bus.
‘A mortar hit my house and as a result, I lost one of my eyes. Please take me to hospital, I want medical treatment,’ Zarina begged.
‘They (Taliban) killed my husband, they slit his throat after accusing him of spying... I escaped Swat because I don’t want my son to be killed under the same circumstances. I don’t want to receive his decapitated body.’
The government had hoped that a peace deal agree in February would placate hardliners trying to impose a repressive brand of Islam, but instead the deal appears to be in tatters.
Clashes have flared in recent days throughout Swat, where wealthy Pakistanis and foreigners used to enjoy the breathtaking mountain scenery from plush hilltop hideaways, or cruise down the ski slopes.
Now, gunfire rings out in Mingora, where armed Taliban patrol the streets.
‘I’m really scared of going to Swat. Whenever I see Taliban, they look like vampires,’ said 25-year-old shop keeper Salman Mujtaba, who lost family members in a suicide attack near Mingora.
‘I will never ever go back to Swat. It has lost its beauty.’

Barbarians at barbarians' doorstep

'No wonder that others consider Muslims barbarians'
By Humayun Gauhar
The Nation (Pakistan)
May 3, 2009


While divorce is the absolute and undisputed Islamic right of a woman, last month in Ghotki, Sindh, which is not under Taliban control, a jirga ordered that the ears, lips and nose of a woman and her parents to be cut off for demanding divorce on grounds of torture by her husband. Such punishment is completely, totally and utterly un-Islamic and no less horrendous than what the Taliban mete out. Where is the State? Where is the famous independent judiciary? Where are the human rights activists? Where are the lawyers? Where is the media? Where is the civil society? Where are the religious scholars?
Last month in a place called Kala Dhaka, NWFP, also not under Taliban control, a couple was shot dead on the orders of a jirga for the 'sin' of eloping. Is this punishment any less horrendous than what the Taliban mete out? To get married by choice is also the absolute Islamic right of any adult man or woman and no one can stop it, including parents. An English language newspaper reported on its front page: "The jirga was held on the intervention of the political administration to review its order of killing Alia Bibi and Azeemul Haq, but it upheld its decision and they were shot dead." Political Tehsildar Jamshed Khan told: 'I regret the killing, but what can I do. There is no other law except the jirga system in this area'." No other law? After 62 years? Where's sovereignty? Where is the State? Where is the newly independent judiciary and the rest of the shebang? Why have they not been able to end such barbaric practices? Because jirgas and panchayats have been made part of the system. Parliament should have struck this down for being un-Islamic but it seems that un-Islamic customs take precedence over Islam in this Islamic Republic of ours. It's legalised barbarity is no less than some of the barbaric practices of the Taliban that have been legalised in Swat and Malakand. We don't realise that while the jirgas and panchayats maintain the iniquitous status quo through barbarity, these Taliban too have a limited or no understanding of Islam and use religion as a tool for achieving power. Are we ashamed of tolerating such barbaric practices in the name of custom and for spoiling the name of Islam? No wonder that others consider Muslims barbarians.
Legalised barbarity in our rural and tribal areas has been ignored by us, the privileged, because it never touched us. But now that we imagine that Taliban barbarity might soon arrive at our doorsteps we are going hysterical. You think that such people can change society? All we can do is moan in drawing rooms and groan in seminars, columns, television and blogs wondering why our country is going to hell in a hand basket. We raise all sorts of issues but never our class's barbarity. It's because we are still mentally colonised.

No blank cheque for Pakistan; US Congress adds strings to trebled American aid

Comment / Analysis / May 5, 2009

So, for all the bluff and bluster of his Administration, US President Barack Hussein Obama, who wants to treble American military and civilian aid to Pakistan as a ‘reward’ for Washington’s ‘frontline ally’ in the war on terror, has not been able to have his way. He wanted to write out a $ 1.5 billion cheque without any strings attached; lawmakers on the Hill said nothing doing. His Administration argued that tying down American aid to Pakistan delivering on its many (all unkept) promises of taking on the Taliban and Al Qaeda would rob the President of “flexibility”! What they meant was Mr Obama would not be able to hand out money for nothing. Well, he can’t. And there’s no dole waiting for Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has he reaches Washington, DC, for what is bound to be no more than yet another photo-op.

A PTI report provides interesting details of the conditionalities being attached to the new aid package:

Lalit K Jha
Washington

The Kerry-Lugar Bill, which triples the United States' civilian aid to Pakistan to $ 1.5 billion per annum for next five years, does not offer a blank check to Islamabad, as was being sought by the establishment in the nuclear-armed country.
The Bill, introduced in the US Senate on Monday, May 4, subjects US security assistance to a "certification" that the Pakistani government is using the money to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda. An identical Bill has already been introduced in the House of Representatives.
"While our Bill envisions sustained economic and political cooperation with Pakistan, it is not a blank check. It expects that the military institutions in Pakistan will turn their attention to the extremist dangers within Pakistan's borders," Republican Senator Richard Lugar said on the Senate Floor while introducing the Bill.
A Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lugar said the Bill calls for tangible progress in governance, including an independent judiciary, greater accountability by the Federal Government, respect for human rights, and civilian control of the levers of power, including the military and the intelligence agencies.
Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator John Kerry is other co-sponsor of the bill, which has the backing of the Obama Administration.
"Once money begins to flow, the Administration must report every six months on how the money is spent and what impact it is having," Lugar said. "In addition, the Bill provides that before the Administration spends more than half of the $ 1.5 billion authorised in any fiscal year, it must certify that the assistance provided to that date is making substantial progress toward the principal objectives contained in the Administration's strategy report," he said.
"We also have asked the Government Accountability Office to review annually the Administration's progress on stated goals. To ensure that sufficient resources will be available to oversee our programmes in Pakistan, we authorise $ 20 million each year for audits and programe reviews by the Inspectors-General of the State Department, USAID, and other relevant agencies," the Senator said.
Under Kerry-Lugar, economic assistance is no longer the poor cousin to military aid. Rather than locking in a level of such aid which might not be in line with rapidly- changing Pakistani capabilities and commitment, the bill leaves the level of security aid to be determined on a year-by-year basis.
It conditions military assistance on certification that the Pakistani security forces are making concerted efforts to prevent Al Qaeda and associated terrorist groups from operating in the territory of Pakistan, making concerted efforts to prevent the Taliban from using the territory of Pakistan as a sanctuary from which to launch attacks within Afghanistan; and are not materially interfering in the political or judicial processes of Pakistan.

Left with no option, on Tuesday the White House said US President Barack Hussein Obama supports the lawmakers' calls for accountability measures for the American aid to Pakistan. "The President supports the building in of accountability measures to ensure that we're making progress, and that if progress isn't made, then we'll readjust our strategy," the White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said at his daily Press briefing yesterday.
"He said that in ordering and conducting the review of our strategy in this region, and in the delivery of that review just a little while ago," he said, referring to the statements made by Obama that "there shouldn't and there wouldn't be blank cheques".
Obama would be meeting Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, at the White House on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, according to the US Chairman of Joint Chief of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, the US has invested about $ 100 million in helping Pakistan secure its nuclear weapons!

The US Administration is either frightfully naïve or utterly stupid!

Blame Maobadis for mess in Nepal

Prachanda’s folly, not Nepal’s

Kanchan Gupta

Left to himself, it is possible that Mr Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, the Maoist Prime Minister of Nepal who walked out of his office on Monday, would not have precipitated a political crisis by locking horns with the Army chief, Gen Rukmangad Katawal. If blame must be apportioned, most of it should be shared by Mr Dahal’s comrades in the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). For, it is the Maobadis outside the Government, nearly all of them impulsively intolerant of the democratic process, who pushed Mr Dahal into taking a position from where he could not retreat without being seen to have suffered a humiliating defeat.

The crisis that reached flashpoint on Monday has long been in making. The Maoists have never been comfortable with Nepal’s Army, their principal enemy during the bloody insurrection that ultimately led to the passage of Singha Durbar into the annals of history. The demise of the 240-year-old monarchy, founded in 1768 by Prithvi Narayan Shah who forged warring fiefdoms into a unified kingdom, was a logical, if undesirable, conclusion of relentless political strife and disruptive social discord.

King Gyanendra’s unceremonious eviction from Narayanhity Palace, which has been converted into a national museum and where relics now gather dust, should have marked a rupture with the past. But the Maobadis did not quite see it that way. Nor did their participation in the Constituent Assembly election, which, contrary to the expectations of the Maobadis, did not fetch them a parliamentary majority, and subsequently forming a Government with the Communist Party of Nepal (UML) rid them of their insecurities, primarily their fear of the Army seizing power sooner or later and reinstating the dethroned King.

To prevent such an eventuality, the Maobadis insisted that 19,000 demobbed members of their ‘People’s Liberation Army’ should be absorbed in the Nepal Army. That would be the first step towards converting the Army into a loyalist force, to be used for perpetuating Maoist rule and eventually converting Nepal into a Maoist state. But Gen Katawal refused to play ball with the Maobadis; whatever his personal predilection — he is believed to be close to King Gyanendra — even his detractors would concede that he is a professional soldier whose primary loyalty is to Nepal.

While accepting the supremacy of the civilian Government, he firmly rebuffed all attempts to undermine the Army and pack it with yesterday’s guerrillas steeped in Maoist ideology and scornful of an established command and control structure. To browbeat Gen Katawal, Mr Dahal used his powers as Prime Minister to forcibly retire eight senior Generals perceived to be close to the Army chief. That order was rendered ineffective by Gen Katawal who sought judicial intervention.

Meanwhile, the Maobadis, increasingly restless, took to taunting Mr Dahal for not being able to promote his party’s interests — serving Nepal’s interests was of no importance to them; they wanted him to act or quit. And so push came to shove with Mr Dahal trying to sack Gen Katawal; the Army chief refusing to accept marching orders; and, finally, President Ram Baran Yadav, a veteran politician in the traditional mould, stepping in and using his powers as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief to rescind the Prime Minister’s impetuous firman. By then, of course, the Government headed by Mr Dahal had lost its majority with the CPN (UML) pulling out of what was clearly an uneasy alliance between two parties with little in common apart from their hostility to the monarchy.

But if Mr Dahal, notwithstanding his maudlin declaration that he was resigning to “create a positive environment, to save democracy, nationalism and the peace process”, thought that his dramatic exit would cause sufficient political disarray and popular outrage to force the President to let him have his way, he was utterly wrong. If he acted on advice, it was entirely misplaced; if he allowed his comrades to get the better of him, then he is likely to suffer loss of stature in the ranks. Neither is a happy prospect.

Instead of allowing the political crisis to deepen, Mr Yadav has acted swiftly and in a commendable manner. He has asked the other political parties to form a Government by Saturday, and they have responded with near unanimity. By Tuesday evening, 21 parties, which have collaborated in the past, had decided to form a ‘national’ Government under the leadership of the CPN (UML). Together, these parties, including the Nepali Congress, the Terai Madhes Democratic Party, the Sadbhavna Party and the Rashtriya Prajatantra Party, have 280 MPs in the 601-member Constituent Assembly. Sensing an opportunity, most of the 53 MPs of the Madhesi People’s Rights Forum are believed to have expressed their desire to join the Government — in true South Asian style, they are willing to split the parent organisation if it does not endorse participation in the new Government.

The Maobadis, presumably, did not factor in ‘horse-trading’, the key to political stability in this part of the world when parliamentary majority eludes any single party or alliance. Presumably they also realise that there is no percentage in crying foul at this stage, not least because the anticipated street protests have not quite materialised. Whether that precludes political violence cannot be said with any certitude. That could follow once the implications of loss of power have sunk in. The CPN (UML), in a grand gesture, has said that Maoist cooperation is “necessary for permanent peace”, but only the naïve will read a deep political message in this.

If the remarkably quick response of the political parties to the crisis precipitated by Mr Dahal is worthy of praise, so is the overwhelming rejection of the Maobadis’ attempt to rouse public passions by slyly suggesting that India caused the problem by ‘interfering’ in Nepal’s internal affairs. Despite stories being planted to the effect that India’s Ambassador tried to persuade Mr Dahal into abandoning his plan to sack Gen Katawal, there has been little or no demonstration of anti-India sentiments.

On the contrary, Kathmandu’s intellectuals have come forward to forthrightly reject all such suggestions of ‘interference’ by India and pointed out that it was Mr Dahal who had recently “summoned” the Ambassadors of eight countries to seek their support for his move to sack the Army chief. But none of them was willing to endorse his action. According to noted civil society activist and Constituent Assembly member Nilamber Acharya, “Prachanda (Mr Dahal) himself met India’s Ambassador Rakesh Sood half-a-dozen times in connection with the issue of Army chief and when he did not get a favourable response, he is talking about foreign intervention, which is ridiculous.”

Yet Mr Dahal and the Maobadis are not entirely friendless, at least in India. The people and politicians of Nepal may scoff at the suggestion of “foreign intervention”, but Mr Sitaram Yechury has been prompt in warning India that it should steer clear of interfering in Nepal’s affairs. It’s not easy to reconcile yourself to the fact that you no longer have access to the corridors of power — neither in New Delhi, nor in Kathmandu.

The Pioneer | EDIT Page Main Article | Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Is there a China angle to Nepal turmoil?

Update / Tuesday, May 5, 2009.

US-based security analyses agency Stratfor has this to say about the political events in Nepal over the past 72 hours:

"As this crisis in Nepal is unfolding, India is already extremely consumed with many other issues, which include but are not limited to the ongoing general elections, the implications of Pakistan potentially breaking under pressure from its jihadist insurgency and issues in managing Tamil opposition over the Sri Lankan Army's final push against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.”
"China is more interested in preventing India from monopolising foreign influence in Kathmandu, while New Delhi would rather have Beijing stay out of India's perceived sphere of influence."
The political turmoil in Nepal came only a few days before Prachanda was scheduled to make an official trip to Beijing. Although Nepal, particularly when under the control of the royalists, has historically been close to India, the Chinese have been working on enlarging their footprint in the Himalayan country by building up a relationship with Nepal's new Maoist-dominated Government.
It is quite interesting, then, that Prachanda had chosen Gen Kul Bahadur Khadka, to assume the position of Army chief, who is known to have a pro-China stance.
Prachanda had threatened to scrap the India-Nepal Treaty and replace it with a China-Nepal treaty during the Maoist leader's scheduled visit to China, revealing his intent to play on Indo-Chinese competition in Nepal to strengthen the Maoists' political clout.

Piqued Prachanda resigns, accuses India of 'interference'

Confrontation with Army chief ends in political crisis; India says it is Nepal's internal affair

Nepal's Maoist Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known by his nom de guerre 'Prachanda', resigned from office on Monday May 4, 2009. The immediate 'provocation' was President Ram Baran Yadav's intervention to rescind the Prime Minister's impetuous firman sacking Army chief Gen Rukmangad Katawal. Earlier, two allies of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)-led regime, including the Communist Party of Nepal (UML) had pulled out of the Government to protest Prachanda's unilateral action. By the time Prachanda resigned, his Government had lost its parliamentary majority.

In the 601-member Constituent Assembly, elected through direct and proportional representation, the parliamentary strength of the main parties is as follows:

CPN (Maoists): 238
Nepali Congress: 112
CPN (UML): 108
Madhesi People's Rights Forum: 53
Terai Madhes Democratic Party: 21
Sadhbhavna Party: 9

Among the reasons Prachanda cited was 'international interference', and said, "such interference is not acceptable to us". He was darkly hinting at India, whose Ambassador is said to have counselled him against proceeding on a collision course by taking on the Army chief. Prachanda's deputy, Baburam Bhattarai, was less circumspect. In an interview to a television channel, he accused India of being "directly responsible for stalling the dismissal of Katawal" and "instigating the President to go against the Constitution". On both counts he is absolutely wrong. Both Prachanda and Bhattarai were obviously trying to generate anti-India hysteria and thus make political capital out of a crisis precipitated by the Maobadis who clearly have no appetite for the democratic process.

India's Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee refuted the charge in a statement issued on Monday evening: "What is happening in Nepal is internal to Nepal. We wish Nepal well in its transition to a fully democratic polity and would hope the present crisis is resolved in a manner that contributes to the early conclusion of the peace process."

Interestingly, though, Kathmandu's intelligentsia, which in the past has not hesitated to blame India for Nepal's problems, has refused to accept the Maobadi claim of 'Indian interference'. Shirish B Pradhan, PTI's correspondent in Kathmandu, filed this report on Tuesday, May 6:

Politicians, analysts reject Indian intervention theory

Shirish B Pradhan
Kathmandu

Opposition politicians and independent analysts in Nepal have rejected the Maoist Government's charge of Indian intervention in the country's internal affairs, terming it as "lack of political wisdom".
According to political analysts, the blame game by the Maoists displays a long prevalent tendency in the country to blame foreign countries, including India, for troubles in Nepal.
"This shows lack of political wisdom on the part of the Maoist leadership," said senior lawyer Dinesh Tripathi, adding, "there has been a tendency of blaming the neighbouring country for every rise and fall of governments in the past".
During his address to the nation while quitting Government, Prime Minister Prachanda blamed foreign powers for the trouble in the country, pointing indirectly towards India. “I will better quit power than to bow to foreign powers to remain in the office,” he said.
The Maoists' number two leader Baburam Bhattarai said that "India did a blunder" by supporting the Army and the President in their “unconstitutional acts”.
Nepali Congress' chief whip in the Constituent Assembly, Laxman Ghimire, said the Maoists had themselves sought foreign support for their move to sack the Army chief.
Prachanda had recently summoned ambassadors of eight countries to seek support for his move to sack the army chief. "But when they did not endorse his idea, he made a hue and cry over foreign intervention in the affairs of the country," Ghimire said.
Civil society leader and Constituent Assembly member Nilamber Acharya said the Maoists have themselves chosen the path of confrontation by sacking the army chief unilaterally, and the Prime Minister was falsely accusing foreign and internal forces for toppling his Government.
"Prachanda himself met Indian Ambassador Rakesh Sood for half-a-dozen times in connection with the issue of Army chief and when he did not get a favourable response he is talking about foreign intervention, which is ridiculous," he said.

US glosses over Pakistani terror

Obama's blue-eyed Zardari can do no wrong!

Kanchan Gupta

The US State Department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism 2008, which was released last Thursday, serves as both a compendium of terrorist activities around the world as well as an indicator of the prevalent thinking in Washington’s foreign policy establishment. While those in India who constantly look up to the US for succour, support and sympathy as a substitute to fighting terrorism on our terms and in a meaningful manner will no doubt seize upon this year’s Country Reports to proclaim how America has accepted that “in 2008, India ranked among the world’s most terrorism-afflicted countries” — as if we needed the Americans to tell us this simple fact, a truth that would have been controverted had the State Department not made a passing mention of it — a full reading of the document will reveal that we need not be distracted by such hoopla to which the English-speaking middle classes are given.

President Barack Hussein Obama’s Administration may have found it pertinent to record India’s “pivotal moment that is now called ‘26/11’ (our very own scaled down version of ‘9/11’)”, but it has shown no inclination towards placing on record how last November’s multiple fidayeen attacks on high profile targets in Mumbai conclusively exposed Pakistan’s role in promoting cross-border terrorism. This is what the Country Reports has to say on India’s ‘pivotal moment’: “Terrorists struck at a variety of locations in Mumbai on November 26, killing at least 183 people, including 22 foreigners, six of whom were Americans and 14 members of the police and security forces. Over 300 more were injured. The attacks in Mumbai targeted places frequented by foreigners and wealthy Indians. The attackers entered Mumbai from the sea and attacked people in two hotels, a Jewish centre, the main train station, and additional locations ... The terrorists appeared to have been well-trained and took advantage of technology, such as Global Positioning System trackers.”

There’s no mention of where the attackers came from, no assertion of Pakistani complicity, not even the most casual reference to the manner in which the Pakistani Government mocked at overwhelming evidence about the nationality of the fidayeen, their ‘handlers’ and those who trained them in guerrilla warfare. Ten men held an entire city to ransom for 62 hours, killed 183 people and fiercely fought back crack commando units. Yet, the Obama Administration is of the view that Mohammad Ajmal Mohammad Amir Kasab and his fellow marauders “appeared to have been well-trained”. The implicit doubt is not without purpose.

Way down in the chapter titled ‘South and Central Asia Overview’, the Country Reports says, “Despite an increased number of infiltrations across the Line of Control, Pakistan-India relations were improving, with trade opened for the first time in over 60 years, until they were significantly set back by the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November. These attacks were attributed to the (Pakistan-based) Kashmir terrorist group Laskhar-e-Tayyeba, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation, and to its fundraising subsidiary, the Jamaat ud-Dawah, which the Government of Pakistan banned after the UN Security Council listed the group and certain named individuals in the 1267 Sanctions Committee.” So, Pakistan gets a pat for taking prompt action against Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, a “Kashmir terrorist group” to which the Mumbai attack has been merely “attributed”.

The report then points out how despite “allegations of involvement by the LeT and JuD in the Mumbai attacks”, Pakistani “officials (have) pledged to prosecute all individuals in Pakistan found to be involved in the Mumbai attacks and offered to share intelligence regarding the attacks with the Government of India”. No less a person than President Asif Ali Zardari has said “non-state actors (terrorists) were operating on Pakistani soil and noted his own wife (Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto assassinated on December 27, 2007) had been a victim of terrorism”. What, then, is India complaining about? In a suggestive apportioning of blame, the Country Reports adds: “The composite dialogue between Pakistan and India was frozen by the Indian Government in December ... contributing to heightened tension between the two Governments.” Never mind the terrible waste of innocent lives, New Delhi should have continued with devising ‘confidence-building measures’ to bolster the dissolute Zardari regime in Islamabad.

Pakistan after all, as the Country Reports makes out, is a ‘victim’ and not the perpetrator of terrorism, or, as Mr Gordon Brown, the trans-Atlantic ally of Mr Obama, has recently described it, the “crucible for global terrorism” and the “breeding ground for international terrorists”. To drive home this point, the chapter titled ‘South and Central Asia Overview’ begins with a quote of, hold your breath, Mr Zardari: “We are fighting the menace and we will continue to fight... This is the fight for the peace of the world...” Hopefully next year’s Country Reports will record the fact that among the means adopted by Mr Zardari to “fight for the peace of the world” was to meekly capitulate to the Taliban. For the moment, the Obama Administration is gratified that “Pakistani security services (have) cooperated with the United States and other nations to fight terrorism within Pakistan and abroad. Hundreds of suspected Al Qaeda operatives have been killed or captured by Pakistani authorities since September 2001. Pakistan (has) continued to pursue Al Qaeda and its allies through nationwide police action and military operations in the FATA and elsewhere.” The most expensive lobbying firm in Washington, DC, could not have done a better job of whitewashing Pakistan’s sins of omission and commission.

Ironically, the publication of this year’s Country Reports with its cockamamie tale of Pakistani valour in the face of jihadi aggression coincided with a revealing Fox News report. America’s top military commander David Petraeus, according to this report, has told lawmakers on Capitol Hill, currently debating billions of dollars in fresh American aid to Pakistan, that he is “looking for concrete action by the Pakistani Government to destroy the Taliban in the next two weeks before Washington determines the next course of action ... The Pakistanis have run out of excuses”. In what appears to be a reference to the alleged ‘crackdown’ on the Taliban in Buner, Gen Petraeus, who heads the US’s Central Command, is believed to have commented wearily that “we’ve heard it all before from the Pakistanis”.

Given the tone and tenor, not to mention the contents of this year’s Country Reports, it could well be said, “We’ve heard it all before from the Americans.”


[You can read the full Country Reports on Terrorism 2008 here.]


[My friend Prof Barry Rubin, who is director of the Gloria Center in Jerusalem, among the foremost commentators on West Asian affairs and author of several books, including a biography of Yasser Arafat, has analysed the Country Reports section on Israel related issues. His analysis provides a unique perspective.]

UPDATE

Obviously embarrassed by the Fox News story, the US State Department put out a statement through its acting spokesperson who said, "[There has been] a positive last couple of days in terms of Pakistan taking action against these militants. [B]ut we’re under no illusions. It’s going to take more than two days' worth of actions. It’s going to take consistent, determined, and forceful action. And Pakistan seems committed to that, and we’re willing to be as helpful as we can in terms of dealing with the militants."

The world's still funny!

Two stories from last week that tickled me pink. It's nice to know that the world's not turned into a frightfully boring place, notwithstanding pompous and pretentious Barack Hussein Obama, the utterly banal general election campaign in India where nobody is talking issues that matter, the onward march of the Taliban which believes that the world should be a joyless place where women are flogged for the pleasure of men in beards, and the swine flu that is fast replacing the bird flu scare.


WHO to stop using term 'swine flu' to protect pigs

By FRANK JORDANS
GENEVA (AP)

The World Health Organization announced Thursday it will would stop using the term "swine flu" to avoid confusion over the danger posed by pigs. The policy shift came a day after Egypt began slaughtering thousands of pigs in a misguided effort to prevent
swine flu.
WHO spokesman Dick Thompson said the agriculture industry and the U.N. food agency had expressed concerns that the term "swine flu" was misleading consumers and needlessly causing countries to ban pork products and order the slaughter of pigs. "Rather than calling this swine flu ... we're going to stick with the technical scientific name H1N1 influenza A," Thompson said.
Egypt began slaughtering its roughly 300,000 pigs Wednesday even though experts said swine flu is not linked to pigs and not spread by eating pork. Angry farmers had protected the Government decree.



Kenya leader's wife says she supports sex strike

By TOM ODULA
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP)

The wife of Kenya's prime minister says she will join thousands of women in a weeklong sex strike to protest divisions between her husband and the country's president. Members of the Women's Development Organization say Prime Minister Raila Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki are squabbling with protocol and precedence instead of ending corruption and poverty.
The women have vowed to abstain as a demonstration against the rifts.
Ida Odinga told journalists Thursday that she supported the boycott, which began Wednesday, and would "definitely" participate.
Odinga and Kibaki are locked into an uneasy coalition by an agreement that ended weeks of postelection violence last year. It was not clear whether the president's wife was participating in the boycott.

Age no bar in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia's religious police, or mutaween, officially known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Suppression of Vice, prevented young girls from escaping from a school building that had caught fire. Reason: They were "not properly attired". The screaming, frightened girls were pushed back into the blaze, to die. Fifteen of them perished. At least this 8-year-old was spared a life of misery and pain.
8-year-old Saudi girl divorces 50-year-old husband

By HADEEL AL-SHALCHI
CAIRO (AP)

An 8-year-old Saudi girl has divorced her middle-aged husband after her father forced her to marry him last year in exchange for about $13,000, her lawyer said Thursday. Saudi Arabia has come under increasing criticism at home and abroad for permitting child marriages.
The United States, a close ally of the conservative Muslim kingdom, has called child marriage a "clear and unacceptable" violation of human rights. The girl was allowed to divorce the 50-year-old man who she married in August after an out-of-court settlement had been reached in the case, said her lawyer, Abdulla al-Jeteli. The exact date of the divorce was not immediately known.
A court in the central Oneiza region previously rejected a request by the girl's mother for a divorce and ruled that the girl would have to wait until she reached puberty to file a petition then.
There are no laws in Saudi Arabia defining the minimum age for marriage. Though a woman's consent is legally required, some marriage officials don't seek it.
But there has been a push by Saudi human rights groups to define the age of marriage and put an end to the phenomenon. One Saudi human rights activist Sohaila Zain al-Abdeen was optimistic that the girl's divorce would help efforts to get a law passed enforcing a minimum marriage age of 18.
"Unfortunately, some fathers trade their daughters," she told The Associated Press. "They are weak people who are sometimes in need of money and forget their roles as parents." It was not clear if the man received money for the divorce settlement. The man had given
the girl's father 50,000 riyals, or about $13,350, as a marriage gift in return for his daughter, the lawyer said.
The 8-year-old girl's marriage was not the only one in the kingdom to receive attention in recent months. Saudi newspapers have highlighted several cases in which young girls were married off to much older men or young boys including a 15-year-old girl whose father, a death-row inmate, married her off to a cell mate.
Saudi Arabia's conservative Muslim clergy have opposed the drive to end child marriages. In January, the kingdom's most senior cleric said it was permissible for 10-year-old girls to marry and those who believe they are too young are doing the girls an injustice. But some in the government appear to support the movement to set a minimum age for marriage. The kingdom's new justice minister was quoted in mid-April as saying the government was doing a study on underage marriage that would include regulations.
There are no statistics to show how many marriages involving children are performed in Saudi Arabia every year. Activists say the girls are given away in return for hefty marriage gifts or as a result of long-standing custom in which a father promises his infant daughters and sons to cousins out of a belief that marriage will protect them from illicit relationships.
And here's another good news story:

In April, a Yemeni girl, age 8, was granted a divorce from her 28-year-old husband who abused her physically and sexually, after she sued her father and spouse. That was the first time a girl had petitioned Yemen’s courts for such a thing. Some groups estimate that as many as 50 percent of Yemeni marriages involve children.

An anonymous donor from the Emirates gave the girl, Nojoud, enough money to pay her way out of the marriage. Shariah law actually called for her abusive husband to be awarded, not prosecuted. But for Nojoud, that was a small price to pay for her freedom.

Footloose in Kolkata

Column: Coffee Break | Sunday | April 26

North vs South in Kolkata

Kanchan Gupta

There’s a north-south divide in Kolkata which runs deep beneath any apparent bonhomie between residents of Jorasanko and Jadavpur. The Bengalis of north Kolkata see themselves as culturally superior to those who live in the southern quarters of the city who, in turn, disdainfully scoff: Culture? Hah! There used to be a popular perception south of Ballygunge, not entirely ungrounded in facts which now belong to the realm of history, that the north was all about dissolute babus and their lonely bibis, sort of a real life version of Bimal Mitra’s Saheb Bibi Golam. “Oraa paayra oraai, baaiji naachaaye…” went a line in a Bengali film song, luridly suggesting that the babus spent their days racing pigeons and their nights frolicking with nautch girls.

The north was where the zamindars set up home, absentee landlords who became Bengal’s compradour bourgeoisie and acquired enormous wealth between mid-19th and early-20th centuries. Ships laden with salt would reach Kolkata where they would be handled by Bengal Docking Co, the salt would be traded by Bengal Salt Co, and a share of the profits would go to Carr Tagore & Co which promoted and managed various joint stock companies. There were hints of scandals involving illicit trade in opium; many of the babus were cheated out of their home and hearth by their conniving British business partners. Others made a pile of money and built gorgeous neo-Victorian houses (the accompanying photograph is of one such house which is now a crumbling relic of times gone by); their sons squandered their inherited wealth on, as the cliché goes, wine, women and music. Rabindranath Tagore was a rare exception.

Actually there was not much of south Kolkata till partition happened and Hindu refugees from ‘East Bengal’, which became East Pakistan and is now Bangladesh, trooped into Job Charnock’s city. They set up home (tiled roofs, marsh reed mats held up by bamboos serving as walls, earthen floors — a far cry from the splendid buildings of the north) in Dhakuria, Jadavpur, Bagha Jatin and other such mosquito-infested colonies. They spoke in East Bengal’s dialect, had a fetish for eelish (hilsa) which they cooked in a mustard sauce and rooted for East Bengal Club during football season.

The ‘Ghotis’ of north were scornful of the ‘Baangaals’ of south whom they considered as no better than uncouth peasants. They spoke in Baangla, as opposed to Baangaal, insisted nothing could be tastier than chingri (prawns) cooked in a sweetish curry, and went into mourning every time Mohun Bagan Sporting was routed by East Bengal Club, which would be quite often. Enraged by the supercilious attitude of the Ghotis, the Baangaals would take vicarious pleasure in pointing out that luchi (puri) was pronounced as nuchi, lau (lauki) as nau and lebu (lime) as nebu in the fashionable houses north of Chowringhee, which is pronounced as Chowrongi. There were other crudities in the Baangla spoken in the north which Baangaals in the south described as “chhoto loker bhaasha” (language of the lower classes).

The Baangaals were dirt poor but valued education; unlike the conservatives in the north, they were liberal in their social practices and radical in their political views. During the turbulent Sixties and Seventies they emerged as the urban backbone of the Left movement. While Calcutta University suffered precipitous decline in academic standards, Jadavpur University became the hub of exciting studies (it was the first in India to set up a department of comparative literature; its engineering and science graduates are still a prized catch for Western universities). When Naxalbari happened, the north became the battleground between Congress hoodlums and Charu Mazumdar’s guerrillas. In the south, it was Left versus Left, a fight for domination between Marx and Mao. The disinheritance of West Bengal, first by Jawaharlal Nehru and then by Mrs Indira Gandhi who, between them, ruined the State’s industrial economy through hare-brained schemes like the freight equalisation policy, hit the working class of the south the most.

All this, of course, now belongs to the past. Over the years there has been migration from the north to the south with families running out of living space. The houses with tiled roofs and marsh reed walls first gave way to pucca dwellings; these have now made way for high-rise buildings. In the early-1980s, Jadavpur was dark and dingy, its narrow roads clogged with traffic and its gutters overflowing with sewage. In the past decade or so, it has had an image makeover and is almost unrecognisable now. There are glittering retail showrooms, malls, gyms and restaurants that list ‘continental’ fare on their menu cards. Nine years ago we had gone for dinner to a friend’s house at Kalibari Lane near 8B bus stand in Jadavpore. They had served a delightfully mean tel koi and similar fabulous dishes that Bangals alone can cook. Last Wednesday I had dinner with them. There was chicken roast (no, not tandoori chicken), grilled ribs and sauteed vegetables on the table.

A strange patois, which Bengalis insist is Hindi but sounds nothing like Hindi, has replaced both Ghoti and Bangal dialects. Aabaar dekha hobey (We will meet again, the standard parting line) is rarely heard. Instead, Bengalis now say, “Pheer milengey”, gratuitously adding, “Theek hai”. Children speak in Cartoon Network English with their parents, and there’s a strange, inexplicable collective rejection of Bangla culture and identity. There is no more any north or south, it’s a new Calcutta which has said goodbye to the city which you either loved or loathed, but could not be indifferent to. There’s a lot of money going around and a dissolute lifestyle is no longer the preserve of the north.

But memories remain. And those have been revived by Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, West Bengal’s Chief Minister who is given to talking too much and often needlessly so. He is from north Kolkata but his political base is in the south — he represents Jadavpur Assembly constituency. At a recent gathering of Bengali intellectuals at Sovabazar Raj Bari, he made sly, disparaging remarks about the Bengalis of south Kolkata, which the media dutifully played up. The Bangals are now hopping mad. What he really said is far removed from what he is alleged to have said; with everybody playing Chinese whispers, the original comment, offensive by itself, has been distorted into an abusive comment. The CPI(M) is now desperately trying to mollify Bangals incandescent with rage.

“These Ghotis will never change,” my Bangal friend says while helping himself to another portion of chicken roast and reaching out for the jar of Colman’s mustard (no, not the one that is packaged in India).

[I have received an interesting e-mail from a reader in Cambridge after the publication of my column, 'North vs South in Kolkata'. The e-mail reads:

"Your article on Kolkata’s Bengalis was most intersting. I am from Prayag Raj (Allahabad), settled in Cambridge(UK). We had a zamindari in Barisal, East Bengal, for the last seven generations. Being Hindus we lost all our property and land in 'Rair Kathi', Barisal. My late father nearly got killed by the murderous Bihari and Bengali Muslims.

I can speak Bengali. My father spoke fluently in Bengali and wrote in Bengali script. I have many Bengali friends in my Baikabagh Mohalla in Allahabad and here in Cambridge. We find the Pioneer to be the only English newspaper which has not sold i's soul to pseudo-secular UPA establishment.

I am a retired Accountant.

Kind regards.

Hriday Narain Pandey."

On my recent visit to Nandigram in West Bengal, I learned that Andrew Yule & Co had the zamindari of Midnapore. Was it zamindari or were Andrew Yule & Co the managing agents for a zamindar who acquired Midnapore under the Permanent Settlement Act? Does anybody have any further information on this?]