The Copenhagen climate conference may be overshadowed by leaked emails showing some scientists apparently colluding to exaggerate global warming; and while the scandal does not mean that climate alarmism is unfounded, it does suggest that global warming science is less than ‘settled,’ Simon Roughneen writes for ISN Security Watch.
By Simon Roughneen for ISN Security Watch
As world leaders gather today to discuss actions to prevent and mitigate climate change, the conference could be overshadowed by hundreds of emails and files showing prominent climate scientists expressing dismay at the fact that, contrary to predictions, global temperatures have been falling since 1998.
Sometime over the past two weeks, a hacker/whistleblower released thousands of emails and related files from the University of East Anglia's Climate Reseach Unit (CRU) into cyberspace, after apparently failing at first to get these picked up by mainstream media.
Messages exchanged between scientists at the CRU and counterparts and colleagues elsewhere feature discussions in which scientists lament their inability to explain the post-1998 fall-off as a "travesty" - internecine doubt that contrasts sharply with public statements that global warming science is ‘settled.’
CRU Director Professor Phil Jones remarked in one 1999 email that he had used "Mike's Nature [magazine] trick" to "hide the decline" that inconveniently shows up after 1960 in one set of temperature records. In another, dated July 2005, to climatologist John Christy of the University of Alabama, Jones says: "As you know, I'm not political. If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences."
Missing data
Perhaps most significantly, the CRU – which is one of a handful of key climate research centers and data collectors involved in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – claims that it has “lost” some of the raw data upon which climate projections are ultimately made. This suggests incompetence at best, given the pivotal role played by the CRU and the importance of the raw data to climate research.
Their private hand-wringing contrasts not only with their public vehemence, but with recent statements by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who described anyone with doubts over the rather unsettled science as a “flat-earther.”
John Holdren is now US President Barack Obama's science advisor – and he was forced to defend a 2003 email sent to a CRU scientist, where he ridicules scientists who do not toe the climate change line.
Al Gore and the IPCC co-shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their work on publicizing global warming. Over the past weekend, Gore brushed aside the ‘climategate’ issue, telling the UK Times that the scientific consensus around climate change “continues to grow from strength to strength,” and that “the naysayers are in a sunset phase with a spectacular climax just before they subside from view.”
IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri was more circumspect, saying that the large number of contributors and rigorous peer review mechanisms adopted by the IPCC meant that any bias would be rapidly uncovered. However, while IPCC reports are written by scientists, the 20-page summary, upon which policy is made, is the work of bureaucrats and officials who attempt to summarize and explain thousands of pages of often contradictory and complex scientific writing in a short document.
However, back at the CRU, messages were exchanged discussing means to keep research findings that they did not agree with out of the IPCC reports – which are the main internationally sanctioned body of climate research from which global climate negotiations stem. In one case, Professor Jones wrote: “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
Graphic alarmism
Professor Jones has since stepped down, pending an investigation, while Pennsylvania State University has ordered an investigation into Professor Michael Mann, who participates in some of the leaked email correspondence.
Mann helped devise the notorious ‘hockey-stick’ graph, which showed global temperature running almost flat for centuries before 1900, before shooting up in the 20th century. For a number of years, the graph occupied a quasi-iconic place in global warming alarmism, despite (or because of) its omission of the “Medieval Warm Period” - when temperatures were thought to be warmer than now, with vineyards in northern England and ‘green’ areas on the now-frozen coast of Greenland - despite the relative lack of man-made carbon emissions during that period.
The graph then failed to account for the ‘Little Ice Age,’ a relatively cold period that immediately precedes the 20th century, which in turn saw cycles of warming and cooling up until 1998, when the world's temperatures flat-lined or dropped again.
When a Canadian statistician tested the system that produced the hockey stick graph, he found it to be flawed to the extent that any variety of data inputs would produce the same ‘hockey-stick’ output.
Some of the CRU emails discuss ways to prevent Steve McIntyre - the aforementioned statistician - from accessing information from the CRU under Freedom of Information requests.
Undermining Copenhagen
Since the emails have been made public, allegations have been made that the revelations are aimed at undermining the Copenhagen process, with fingers being pointed at energy exporter Russia.
US Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer dismissed calls for an investigation into the content of the emails, seeking instead a criminal inquiry into how the emails were leaked or hacked. Two scientists based the UK and Canada, meanwhile, intend to pursue the CRU for criminal fraud, saying that the scientists implicated in ‘climategate’ have gained funding and career advancement by twisting data, hiding evidence and shutting out dissenters.
One email suggests that Professor Jones accrued millions of dollars of research funding from governments, while scientists who do not believe the science is ‘settled,’ have long complained of being frozen out of the funding cycle, while claiming that government policy and ideology drives climate science, rather than the other way around.
Model dilemmas
The Copenhagen conference aims to create a global policy framework that would reduce the human impact on climate change. In sum, the science behind climate change holds that as human carbon emissions increase, global temperatures should go up. Therefore, by reducing human carbon emissions, temperatures will drop. However, temperatures have fluctuated, rather than increased, along the lines of the models used in reports.
Richard S Lindzen, professor of meteorology at Massachussets Institute of Technology, told ISN Security Watch that “models have displayed minimal skill in explaining or predicting climate. Model projections, it should be recalled, are the basis for our greenhouse concerns.”
These models have in turn been used by lawmakers to introduce new taxes and propose to restructure economies to stave off ‘catastrophic’ climate change.
Chris Horner, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism, told ISN Security Watch that “given the pivotal role played by the UEA center in the IPCC reporting process, this calls the whole IPCC into question. And this in turn raises issues about the whole Kyoto-Copenhagen process.”
Copenhagen features a wish list of targets under discussion, though not expected to produce anything concrete, due to various disagreements between countries. Developed nations are required to produce targets for cutting their emissions by 2020. According to the IPCC, carbon emissions from developed countries need to drop by 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 if the world is to limit the rise in temperature to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels – a cure based on a diagnosis drawn from IPCC climate projection models.
Emerging economies, including China, the world's single-biggest emitter, want western governments to pay huge sums to help them reduce their ‘carbon footprint’ on the one hand, and deal with climate change on the other.
While the emails do not automatically mean that Cassandra climate change scenarios are without foundation, they do add credence to the view that the science is far from ‘settled.’ The scientists implicated in the emails say as much themselves.
This undermines at least part of the premise upon which policymakers (such as Brown) and the EU are hoping to act.
Reacting to ‘climategate,’ Professor Lindzen said: “It certainly suggests that the politicians can no longer say that they are dealing with well established science. Rather they are proposing hard 'solutions' to a dubious problem.”
ISN Security Watch requested interviews and emailed questions to numerous scientists and analysts across the climate change debate spectrum. Of those contacted, only Mr Horner and Professor Lindzen agreed to be interviewed.
Simon Roughneen is an ISN Security Watch senior correspondent, currently in Southeast Asia. His website is www.simonroughneen.com.
December 07, 2009
The Trade Side of Climate Policy
International trade law presents serious obstacles to the ability of states to maintain control over non-economic values such as the environment, and with the recent revision of the EU Emission Trading Scheme, this conflict is again looming large, Nicole Ahner writes for ISN Security Watch.
By Nicole Ahner in Florence for ISN Security Watch
Europe is tightening its climate change policy and with that its pollution control legislation, leading the way toward a low carbon economy, while the rest of the globe is lagging behind in greenhouse gas emission reduction efforts.
Both developed and developing countries are facing political pressure to take action against climate change. With an unconditional 20 percent reduction commitment below 1990 levels, the EU has taken the lead.
With key developing countries such as India and China (both of which have very fast rates of emissions growth and no reduction commitments under the current protocol) it is increasingly becoming clear that tackling climate change is essential to their own survival, Roderick Abbott, former World Trade Organization (WTO) deputy director general and now senior trade advisor at the European for International Political Economy, told participants of a recent workshop on climate change and trade measures.
However, due to the pending reluctance of developing countries to put a price on carbon, and of developed countries to commit to concrete financial aid for them, the agreement of a legally binding successor treaty at the December Copenhagen Climate Change Summit is rather unlikely.
Beyond 2012
Regardless of whether the post-2012 international climate agreement is postponed or if a respective successor treaty is reached, it is likely that different commitments for different countries will persist.
According to Abbott, despite the wide spectrum of possible outcomes, it is most likely that the successor treaty will contain reduction commitments for industrialized countries, whereas emerging countries will commit only to ‘controlled’ CO2 increases.
Such a state of affairs perpetuates fears of ‘carbon leakage’ - the relocation of energy-intensive industries to jurisdictions with less strict climate change legislation. It also undermines efforts undertaken by the committed countries and gives an economic advantage to countries without reduction commitment plans, which will become more attractive to carbon-intensive producers.
Moreover, there are concerns about a severe competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace for those countries following a stringent climate change regime, since it imposes additional costs on domestic producers relative to foreign producers.
As Joost Pauwelyn, professor of International Economic Law and WTO Law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, noted, the concern about the competitiveness of American firms vis-à-vis firms in developing countries was a major reason that the US failed to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol.
Carbon ‘equalizers’
Against this backdrop, the outcome of the Copenhagen negotiations will also set the course for future climate policy options with respect to energy-intensive imports.
Whereas currently there is no legislative framework in place in any country for ‘carbon-equalizing’ measures that would subject imported goods to a tax or tariff based on the quantity of CO2 emitted in producing the good, proposals for ‘adjustment’ measures are being discussed in Europe, as well as in the US, Australia and Canada.
However, it should be noted that in aiming at leveling the carbon playing field, the inclusion of trade related provisions might be also considered for an effective implementation once a legally binding Kyoto successor is reached.
With regard to Europe, the European Commission will consider whether to establish trade measures to impose climate change-related costs on imports from countries with little or no climate policy and low energy costs, if no global agreement is reached in December 2009.
Importers could be required to acquire emission allowances corresponding to the embedded carbon in their goods. Similar proposals have been discussed in the US, as well as in Australia and in Canada. Such an extension of national greenhouse gas policy has a direct bearing on the free flow of trade across borders.
Stepping on trade toes
Abbott points out that the WTO membership of all players needs to be highlighted. He asks: “Does the fear of competitive disadvantages, the impact of carbon leakage or the ambition to convince reluctant states by means of trade restrictions to join a global agreement allow measures that are irrefutable restrictions of free trade?”
Indeed, he says, such measures have the potential to infringe upon central tenets of international trade law.
It seems very unlikely that such a measure would withstand being challenged before the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Implementing border measures against countries that have not introduced measures to combat climate change would contravene a whole host of WTO rules, particularly the GATT, international trade lawyer Gary Horlick told the workshop participants.
Although GATT allows for the unilateral imposition of trade measures in the pursuance of environmental protection under special conditions, the protection of domestic producers from foreign competition is not recognized as a legitimate policy objective under WTO law.
In order to prove the actual intention, the design, architecture and structure will need to be scrutinized. This will reveal that the envisaged trade measures, such as the extension of domestic cap-and-trade schemes, are primarily aimed at levelling the competitive playing field for domestic industries.
Political posturing?
As such, Reinhard Quick - trade policy adviser for the German Chemical Industries Association (VCI) and honorary professor for international economic law at Saarland University, Saarbrücken - asked workshop particpants whether talk of trade measures was simply political posturing in order to get an agreement in Copenhagen, or whether we could expect to see a real renaissance of unilateral trade measures.
It is difficult to predict how the adjudicating bodies of the WTO will decide the case, he said.
However, as the Indian ambassador to the WTO, Ujal Singh Bhatia, emphasized during the workshop, border adjustments are the “big monster in the room,” which would create huge problems for the WTO being in fact the final body deciding the legality of a country’s climate change legislation.
There are furthermore real concerns that the implementation of trade measures will lead to a tit-for-tat situation.
This is evident in the current draft US legislation and also in draft proposals in Australia and Canada, which point in the same direction.
In June 2009, the US House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), which calls inter alia for an economy-wide greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system and various complementary greenhouse gas reduction measures. In its Sec. 766, it provides for the implementation of an “international reserve allowance” regime. Under this scheme, importers might also have to purchase special allowances to cover the emissions associated with their imports under special conditions.
It must be noted that such a policy approach carries the risk of sparking off damaging trade wars, ultimately hindering the exports of those countries that also implement border measures.
Nicole Ahner is a research assistant at the Florence School of Regulation, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies,
European University Institute.
By Nicole Ahner in Florence for ISN Security Watch
Europe is tightening its climate change policy and with that its pollution control legislation, leading the way toward a low carbon economy, while the rest of the globe is lagging behind in greenhouse gas emission reduction efforts.
Both developed and developing countries are facing political pressure to take action against climate change. With an unconditional 20 percent reduction commitment below 1990 levels, the EU has taken the lead.
With key developing countries such as India and China (both of which have very fast rates of emissions growth and no reduction commitments under the current protocol) it is increasingly becoming clear that tackling climate change is essential to their own survival, Roderick Abbott, former World Trade Organization (WTO) deputy director general and now senior trade advisor at the European for International Political Economy, told participants of a recent workshop on climate change and trade measures.
However, due to the pending reluctance of developing countries to put a price on carbon, and of developed countries to commit to concrete financial aid for them, the agreement of a legally binding successor treaty at the December Copenhagen Climate Change Summit is rather unlikely.
Beyond 2012
Regardless of whether the post-2012 international climate agreement is postponed or if a respective successor treaty is reached, it is likely that different commitments for different countries will persist.
According to Abbott, despite the wide spectrum of possible outcomes, it is most likely that the successor treaty will contain reduction commitments for industrialized countries, whereas emerging countries will commit only to ‘controlled’ CO2 increases.
Such a state of affairs perpetuates fears of ‘carbon leakage’ - the relocation of energy-intensive industries to jurisdictions with less strict climate change legislation. It also undermines efforts undertaken by the committed countries and gives an economic advantage to countries without reduction commitment plans, which will become more attractive to carbon-intensive producers.
Moreover, there are concerns about a severe competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace for those countries following a stringent climate change regime, since it imposes additional costs on domestic producers relative to foreign producers.
As Joost Pauwelyn, professor of International Economic Law and WTO Law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, noted, the concern about the competitiveness of American firms vis-à-vis firms in developing countries was a major reason that the US failed to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol.
Carbon ‘equalizers’
Against this backdrop, the outcome of the Copenhagen negotiations will also set the course for future climate policy options with respect to energy-intensive imports.
Whereas currently there is no legislative framework in place in any country for ‘carbon-equalizing’ measures that would subject imported goods to a tax or tariff based on the quantity of CO2 emitted in producing the good, proposals for ‘adjustment’ measures are being discussed in Europe, as well as in the US, Australia and Canada.
However, it should be noted that in aiming at leveling the carbon playing field, the inclusion of trade related provisions might be also considered for an effective implementation once a legally binding Kyoto successor is reached.
With regard to Europe, the European Commission will consider whether to establish trade measures to impose climate change-related costs on imports from countries with little or no climate policy and low energy costs, if no global agreement is reached in December 2009.
Importers could be required to acquire emission allowances corresponding to the embedded carbon in their goods. Similar proposals have been discussed in the US, as well as in Australia and in Canada. Such an extension of national greenhouse gas policy has a direct bearing on the free flow of trade across borders.
Stepping on trade toes
Abbott points out that the WTO membership of all players needs to be highlighted. He asks: “Does the fear of competitive disadvantages, the impact of carbon leakage or the ambition to convince reluctant states by means of trade restrictions to join a global agreement allow measures that are irrefutable restrictions of free trade?”
Indeed, he says, such measures have the potential to infringe upon central tenets of international trade law.
It seems very unlikely that such a measure would withstand being challenged before the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Implementing border measures against countries that have not introduced measures to combat climate change would contravene a whole host of WTO rules, particularly the GATT, international trade lawyer Gary Horlick told the workshop participants.
Although GATT allows for the unilateral imposition of trade measures in the pursuance of environmental protection under special conditions, the protection of domestic producers from foreign competition is not recognized as a legitimate policy objective under WTO law.
In order to prove the actual intention, the design, architecture and structure will need to be scrutinized. This will reveal that the envisaged trade measures, such as the extension of domestic cap-and-trade schemes, are primarily aimed at levelling the competitive playing field for domestic industries.
Political posturing?
As such, Reinhard Quick - trade policy adviser for the German Chemical Industries Association (VCI) and honorary professor for international economic law at Saarland University, Saarbrücken - asked workshop particpants whether talk of trade measures was simply political posturing in order to get an agreement in Copenhagen, or whether we could expect to see a real renaissance of unilateral trade measures.
It is difficult to predict how the adjudicating bodies of the WTO will decide the case, he said.
However, as the Indian ambassador to the WTO, Ujal Singh Bhatia, emphasized during the workshop, border adjustments are the “big monster in the room,” which would create huge problems for the WTO being in fact the final body deciding the legality of a country’s climate change legislation.
There are furthermore real concerns that the implementation of trade measures will lead to a tit-for-tat situation.
This is evident in the current draft US legislation and also in draft proposals in Australia and Canada, which point in the same direction.
In June 2009, the US House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), which calls inter alia for an economy-wide greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system and various complementary greenhouse gas reduction measures. In its Sec. 766, it provides for the implementation of an “international reserve allowance” regime. Under this scheme, importers might also have to purchase special allowances to cover the emissions associated with their imports under special conditions.
It must be noted that such a policy approach carries the risk of sparking off damaging trade wars, ultimately hindering the exports of those countries that also implement border measures.
Nicole Ahner is a research assistant at the Florence School of Regulation, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies,
European University Institute.
Trouble in the Sa’ada mountains
Source: The Hindu, India
Atul Aneja
Yemen, like Afghanistan, could emerge as a flashpoint, and that can have far-reaching regional and global consequences.
As fighting in the rugged Sa’ada mountains draws rapid speed, a variety of conflicting forces, internal and external, are posing a serious threat to the very survival of the Yemeni state, and to the region as a whole. This is a region that is already struggling to cope with the challenges posed by Islamic extremism and terrorism.
Given the strategic location of Yemen, which borders energy-rich Saudi Arabia to the north, Oman to the east, and significantly to the south, the Gulf of Aden — one of the principal gateways of international trade and energy transit — it is inevitable that turbulence in this country would attract serious international attention and possible intervention on a matching scale. Also in close proximity is Somalia, from where Islamic radicalism is permeating into Yemen, though it is unclear as to what extent it is influencing the insurgency in the country’s south.
Yemen is part of an ancient land. It is located on the southern edge of the vast Arabian peninsula, most of which is desert, with copious reserves of oil and gas underneath. The country has regularly witnessed spasms of violence, whenever conflicting social forces have collided with one another, before settling into periods of relative calm when rivals have agreed to share political and religious space.
The genesis of the present conflict, which has pitted the Zaydis, a sect within the folds of Shia Islam, against the regime led by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, can be easily traced to the Cold War when winds of change swept across West Asia and parts of the African continent. In 1962, a group of Egyptian-backed military officers dismantled a 1,000-year-old Imamate, but only after encountering stiff resistance in the Sa’ada region. That resistance lasted several years.
Over the years, the Zaydis continued to build their educational institutions in these mountains. In parallel fashion, Salafi institutions, linked to sections of the country’s Sunni majority, also came up — resulting in the emergence of a fine sectarian balance in the area.
However, in the light of their turbulent relationship, defined broadly by the forces of republicanism and tradition, tensions between the Zaydis and the presidency have always existed. . Though Mr. Saleh traced his ancestry to the Zaydis, the latter never accepted the President as one of its own. Its detachment has been elaborately rationalised in religious discourse. Unlike the Houthi family that currently leads the rebellion, President Saleh is not a Sayyid. This means he does not trace his ancestry to Prophet Muhammad through his grandsons Hussein and Hassan.
This absence of familial credentials has undermined the President’s legitimacy among his ilk. Consequently, when the Zaydis accused the President of being against the revivalist Believing Youth Movement in the area, it resonated powerfully within the rank and file of the community.
The war on terror was another factor that contributed significantly to the present revolt. The Zaydis were deeply offended when the President took sides with the Americans. In the aftermath of Yemen’s realignment with the Americans, the group reinforced its demand to worship in accordance with its rather unique religious traditions.
Fighting has continued since then, with several failed attempts by the government to forge a ceasefire. Abruptly, in 2008, on completion of 30 years of his rule, President Saleh declared an end to the war in Sa’ada.
But the hiatus in fighting proved short-lived and it was followed by an explosion of violence since August 11 when the Yemeni government launched a massive military operation in the area.
These attacks have coincided with a campaign in large parts of the Sunni Arab world that the Zaydis have been receiving support from Iran. Commenting on the fighting, a recent article in the Saudi- owned Al Hayat daily said: “Iran is attempting to sow discord and to destabilise the security of the countries in the region, especially in the Arab Gulf States, after having had their way in Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine.” Fears of the re-emergence of the Imamate system, this time backed by revolutionary Iran, have never been far away from recent local political perceptions. However, the jury is still out on whether Iran has indeed been providing material backing to the present revolt. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Iranian political and religious institutions have been extending ample moral support to the Zaydis.
The Society of the Seminary Teachers of Qom has already appealed to the Muslim world and the international humanitarian organisation to prevent “ethnic cleansing” in Sa’ada. “The direct interference of certain Arab regimes in the ethnic cleansing of Shia and the silence adopted by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and international human rights establishments about this atrocity leaves room for thought,” it said in a recent statement. Iran’s Parliament went on to accuse Saudi Arabia of interfering in the war. “How can the custodian of the two holy mosques of Islam bring himself to permit the killing of innocent Muslims in the forbidden months?” Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani asked, referring to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz. Saudi Arabian involvement in the war has shown itself in a rather dramatic fashion. Early in November, Saudi F-15 and Tornado jets bombed rebel positions, following the killing of an officer and the wounding of 11 others on the Saudi Arabian side of the border. The Zaydis said on their website that the Saudis had bombed some of their strongholds with phosphorous bombs. Saudi officials maintained that their planes had targeted rebels who had seized Saudi parts of an area called Jabal al-Dukhan.
The Saudis say they aim to neutralise a 10-km zone inside Yemen. They justify their intent on the ground that their control along a cross-border segment is vital in order to deny the Al-Qaeda a sanctuary in close proximity to the Saudi frontier. It is well-known in international counter-terrorism circles that Abu-Basir Nasir al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Arabian Peninsula branch of Al-Qaeda, operates from Yemen.
His presence is a reflection of the presence of Islamic extremism which has taken deep roots in the country in organisational and ideological terms. Believers in the cause of global jihad occupy a vast trans-national spread, cutting across the borders of Saudi Arabia, Yemen and permeating further south into Somalia and Sudan. It is widely suspected that jihadi operatives in Yemen are the beneficiaries of a criminal economy associated with well-entrenched gangs engaged in gun-running, drug-smuggling and human trafficking across the Sa’ada mountains.
Saudi Arabia has other reasons to worry about the Zaydi consolidation in Yemen. It fears that the group’s success in Yemen can radicalise sections of the Ismaili Shias living in the Asir province that borders Sa’ada. The Shia population is also concentrated in highly sensitive locations in Saudi Arabia, such as the oil-rich eastern provinces that border Bahrain. There is the apprehension that success in Sa’ada would have its echo right across the energy-rich countries in the Persian Gulf. Bahrain has a highly politicised majority-Shia community. Kuwait, the world’s fourth largest exporter of oil, also has a significant Shia population.
According to Al Quds Al Arabi, an Arab newspaper published from London, Saudi operations provide a glimpse of the emerging transition of political leadership that has become visible in Saudi Arabia. The daily points out that Prince Khalid bin Sultan is handling the operations along the border with Yemen. He is the son of the ailing Defence Minister and Crown Prince, Sultan bin Abdulaziz. Prince Khalid’s performance in the conflict is likely to play a role in determining his position in the royal pecking order that would emerge after King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz advances with great deliberation the process of handing over the reins of power to the generation-next.
Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, son of the aging Interior Minister Nayef bin Abdulaziz, is also in the spotlight. The Prince, who recently escaped an assassination attempt, is in charge of countering the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula operating out of Yemen.
The war in Yemen is drawing greater international attention as the fighting in the north and the insurgency in the south begins to threaten the survival of the Yemeni state. The escalation in international interest is, in turn, generating a dynamic that is energising regional players such as Iran and Saudi Arabia to deepen their entrenchment in Yemen.
In the midst of such high politics, the conflict in north Yemen is generating a humanitarian crisis on a growing scale. The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has said the world has largely ignored Yemen’s “humanitarian emergency.” It said that an appeal for $23 million to aid some 150,000 internally displaced people escaping the war in Sa’ada has resulted only in a tepid international response.
Unless fighting gives way to a serious and complex diplomatic initiative, it is likely that Yemen, like Afghanistan, will emerge as another flashpoint of a bloody and unresolved conflict. That will have far-reaching regional and global consequences.
Atul Aneja
Yemen, like Afghanistan, could emerge as a flashpoint, and that can have far-reaching regional and global consequences.
As fighting in the rugged Sa’ada mountains draws rapid speed, a variety of conflicting forces, internal and external, are posing a serious threat to the very survival of the Yemeni state, and to the region as a whole. This is a region that is already struggling to cope with the challenges posed by Islamic extremism and terrorism.
Given the strategic location of Yemen, which borders energy-rich Saudi Arabia to the north, Oman to the east, and significantly to the south, the Gulf of Aden — one of the principal gateways of international trade and energy transit — it is inevitable that turbulence in this country would attract serious international attention and possible intervention on a matching scale. Also in close proximity is Somalia, from where Islamic radicalism is permeating into Yemen, though it is unclear as to what extent it is influencing the insurgency in the country’s south.
Yemen is part of an ancient land. It is located on the southern edge of the vast Arabian peninsula, most of which is desert, with copious reserves of oil and gas underneath. The country has regularly witnessed spasms of violence, whenever conflicting social forces have collided with one another, before settling into periods of relative calm when rivals have agreed to share political and religious space.
The genesis of the present conflict, which has pitted the Zaydis, a sect within the folds of Shia Islam, against the regime led by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, can be easily traced to the Cold War when winds of change swept across West Asia and parts of the African continent. In 1962, a group of Egyptian-backed military officers dismantled a 1,000-year-old Imamate, but only after encountering stiff resistance in the Sa’ada region. That resistance lasted several years.
Over the years, the Zaydis continued to build their educational institutions in these mountains. In parallel fashion, Salafi institutions, linked to sections of the country’s Sunni majority, also came up — resulting in the emergence of a fine sectarian balance in the area.
However, in the light of their turbulent relationship, defined broadly by the forces of republicanism and tradition, tensions between the Zaydis and the presidency have always existed. . Though Mr. Saleh traced his ancestry to the Zaydis, the latter never accepted the President as one of its own. Its detachment has been elaborately rationalised in religious discourse. Unlike the Houthi family that currently leads the rebellion, President Saleh is not a Sayyid. This means he does not trace his ancestry to Prophet Muhammad through his grandsons Hussein and Hassan.
This absence of familial credentials has undermined the President’s legitimacy among his ilk. Consequently, when the Zaydis accused the President of being against the revivalist Believing Youth Movement in the area, it resonated powerfully within the rank and file of the community.
The war on terror was another factor that contributed significantly to the present revolt. The Zaydis were deeply offended when the President took sides with the Americans. In the aftermath of Yemen’s realignment with the Americans, the group reinforced its demand to worship in accordance with its rather unique religious traditions.
Fighting has continued since then, with several failed attempts by the government to forge a ceasefire. Abruptly, in 2008, on completion of 30 years of his rule, President Saleh declared an end to the war in Sa’ada.
But the hiatus in fighting proved short-lived and it was followed by an explosion of violence since August 11 when the Yemeni government launched a massive military operation in the area.
These attacks have coincided with a campaign in large parts of the Sunni Arab world that the Zaydis have been receiving support from Iran. Commenting on the fighting, a recent article in the Saudi- owned Al Hayat daily said: “Iran is attempting to sow discord and to destabilise the security of the countries in the region, especially in the Arab Gulf States, after having had their way in Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine.” Fears of the re-emergence of the Imamate system, this time backed by revolutionary Iran, have never been far away from recent local political perceptions. However, the jury is still out on whether Iran has indeed been providing material backing to the present revolt. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Iranian political and religious institutions have been extending ample moral support to the Zaydis.
The Society of the Seminary Teachers of Qom has already appealed to the Muslim world and the international humanitarian organisation to prevent “ethnic cleansing” in Sa’ada. “The direct interference of certain Arab regimes in the ethnic cleansing of Shia and the silence adopted by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and international human rights establishments about this atrocity leaves room for thought,” it said in a recent statement. Iran’s Parliament went on to accuse Saudi Arabia of interfering in the war. “How can the custodian of the two holy mosques of Islam bring himself to permit the killing of innocent Muslims in the forbidden months?” Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani asked, referring to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz. Saudi Arabian involvement in the war has shown itself in a rather dramatic fashion. Early in November, Saudi F-15 and Tornado jets bombed rebel positions, following the killing of an officer and the wounding of 11 others on the Saudi Arabian side of the border. The Zaydis said on their website that the Saudis had bombed some of their strongholds with phosphorous bombs. Saudi officials maintained that their planes had targeted rebels who had seized Saudi parts of an area called Jabal al-Dukhan.
The Saudis say they aim to neutralise a 10-km zone inside Yemen. They justify their intent on the ground that their control along a cross-border segment is vital in order to deny the Al-Qaeda a sanctuary in close proximity to the Saudi frontier. It is well-known in international counter-terrorism circles that Abu-Basir Nasir al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Arabian Peninsula branch of Al-Qaeda, operates from Yemen.
His presence is a reflection of the presence of Islamic extremism which has taken deep roots in the country in organisational and ideological terms. Believers in the cause of global jihad occupy a vast trans-national spread, cutting across the borders of Saudi Arabia, Yemen and permeating further south into Somalia and Sudan. It is widely suspected that jihadi operatives in Yemen are the beneficiaries of a criminal economy associated with well-entrenched gangs engaged in gun-running, drug-smuggling and human trafficking across the Sa’ada mountains.
Saudi Arabia has other reasons to worry about the Zaydi consolidation in Yemen. It fears that the group’s success in Yemen can radicalise sections of the Ismaili Shias living in the Asir province that borders Sa’ada. The Shia population is also concentrated in highly sensitive locations in Saudi Arabia, such as the oil-rich eastern provinces that border Bahrain. There is the apprehension that success in Sa’ada would have its echo right across the energy-rich countries in the Persian Gulf. Bahrain has a highly politicised majority-Shia community. Kuwait, the world’s fourth largest exporter of oil, also has a significant Shia population.
According to Al Quds Al Arabi, an Arab newspaper published from London, Saudi operations provide a glimpse of the emerging transition of political leadership that has become visible in Saudi Arabia. The daily points out that Prince Khalid bin Sultan is handling the operations along the border with Yemen. He is the son of the ailing Defence Minister and Crown Prince, Sultan bin Abdulaziz. Prince Khalid’s performance in the conflict is likely to play a role in determining his position in the royal pecking order that would emerge after King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz advances with great deliberation the process of handing over the reins of power to the generation-next.
Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, son of the aging Interior Minister Nayef bin Abdulaziz, is also in the spotlight. The Prince, who recently escaped an assassination attempt, is in charge of countering the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula operating out of Yemen.
The war in Yemen is drawing greater international attention as the fighting in the north and the insurgency in the south begins to threaten the survival of the Yemeni state. The escalation in international interest is, in turn, generating a dynamic that is energising regional players such as Iran and Saudi Arabia to deepen their entrenchment in Yemen.
In the midst of such high politics, the conflict in north Yemen is generating a humanitarian crisis on a growing scale. The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has said the world has largely ignored Yemen’s “humanitarian emergency.” It said that an appeal for $23 million to aid some 150,000 internally displaced people escaping the war in Sa’ada has resulted only in a tepid international response.
Unless fighting gives way to a serious and complex diplomatic initiative, it is likely that Yemen, like Afghanistan, will emerge as another flashpoint of a bloody and unresolved conflict. That will have far-reaching regional and global consequences.
Tamils meet in Switzerland: Minimum of understanding / Minimising the understanding
Source: South Asia Analysis Group
Guest column by Ravi Sundaralingam
(The views expressed are his own)
Amid the election fever in Sri Lanka, some leaders of Tamils met in Switzerland, and the communiqué put out by the Tamil Information Centre London on their behalf read nothing of substance. This can only raise the level of intrigue of the purpose and those who organised it.
At first sight, seeing many Tamils calling themselves leaders of dead militant groups, some with members less than the attendees, can be an encouraging sign. Instead of killing each other or outsmart one another with their incapacities, it seems the shadowy powers behind the scene were persuasive enough for the attendees to shelve their over-inflated egos a while, at least until someone else tell them what to do. They know those egos are only for show within the communities than an expression of power outside. Those familiar with the Tamil militant struggle or the Tamil-on-Tamil violence among Expatriate communities understand what we are on about. Obviously the LTTE was an exception, in that it was also willing take on the outside powers, consistently. If this aspect were to be commended as an achievement then Tamil speaking communities should thank those shadowy powers and secretive wheeler dealers for their effort.
Then that is where we take leave of them, referring back to our past experiences with the LTTE. It also participated in many ‘talks’, ‘understandings’, and ‘agreements’, all very secretive with absolutely no information were shared with its own members, let alone the people, keeping the issue neatly off the agenda of the West, so that the ethnic cleansing of the Tamils could go on.
As for the LTTE, this secretive behaviour along with their socio-military/regional/international policies, and terrorist acts was also a chasm, which was complete when they lead their own to a cul de sac where they perished, and the final culling of the Tamils was declared a victory against terrorism.
The cloak and dagger stuff, a culture developed and encouraged by the International Community, including India, during the militant-phase, talking and deciding about a people and their rights without any consultations with them, while repetitively uttering the word ‘democracy’ as some sort of mantra to cheat the poor and feeble, raises many questions just as it gives an impression to solve a single issue; persuading many Tamil ‘leaders’ to meet.
To their credit participants had understood, but didn’t promise, they “should not kill each other”, and accepted they had “separate agendas”. Even with our positive attitude towards such efforts we find it almost impossible to interpret the statement in any other way.
Beside the public consultations we notice, absence of an agenda, common political understanding or future program, and absence of others who fundamentally disagreed the Sri Lankan state. Instead, we see the domination of a tendency that denied any discussion about the plight of the Tamil speaking people in real historical terms.
All attendees had renounced or denied their past association with the campaign for a separate Tamil state. Their reiterated argument is, just as it was when the LTTE was dominant, is about ‘reality’ and “the need to work along the powerful”.
This feudal wisdom, which was absent at least among the Sinhala communities until four decades ago, is now the most prevalent theme, as all the social and civic structures in Sri Lanka are militarised for the purpose of the government in power. This can be ‘argued’ as a progress if it were done on behalf of a state, instead of the ruling party or family. This regression into modern feudalism necessitate similar responses from the under links, the communities and their alleged leaders, thus the confusion between the state and the government is perpetuated.
The attendees could have clarified this situation a little by coming to a common understanding to abandon the terms Tamileelam or Eelam from their party labels. How can any group working with the Sri Lankan state hold on to these terms is a mystery, beyond comprehension. Having endured the LTTE and lived off them for political philosophy of sort, they could have taken the opportunity to make their own political demarcation, by dropping these bogus labels.
Sinhala government’s demand that they dropped these, made good sense on the ground of loyalty to the state, and to good taste to their definitions.
And it is indeed strange, when all attendees had already agreed in their relationship with the Sri Lankan state, they had to come a long way, into the winter months in Switzerland, to let each other know they existed.
At least they could have listened to the inner calls, the chance to ‘make money’, and uttered a few words about the war devastated and state deprived economies in the North, East and Central provinces and any effort to improve them should abide by some principles, even if couldn’t agree on those principles.
If this is far reaching, they could have agreed how they could approach the impending election, not in terms of candidates, but about the scope of democracy within the system.
Those forever speculate on the role of India and China and the past mistakes by the LTTE could not see an opportunity to put the records straight, for a different relationship with India, and even China. Again, everyone of them will probably tell that they are ‘speaking’ to ‘India’, in secret.
The meeting of similar minds may have been part of a program of someone else. But more than their intentions, the results are spelt out by consequences and their perceptions. For an outsider, it was a project browbeaten into nothing by the confusion between loyalty to a government and a state. And, it was also a missed opportunity to gain some political credibility by the so called alternatives to the LTTE, who turned out in Switzerland only to make “Mahinda Chinthanaya” look as it were the real alternative.
If wiping out the LTTE, having used them to wipe out the entire Tamil leadership was a program, then this meeting, may be unintentionally, in a small way was part of it to ensure the ethnic issues didn’t dominate the presidential election.
This gives ground to the speculation that there must be a deal about these issues with the Sinhala political and military chiefs before the okaying end of the LTTE. It made sense, only if you believed the powers actually cared about the status of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Because, the rationale starts with the question, “why would the International Community create a political vacuum for the Tamils, deplete their stay on the ground, and make them a defeated people?” Once again, deals or no deals all what we have is secrecy and intrigue.
Have they been aware of their opposition to the hijacking of votes by the LTTE, urging a boycott or support a candidate. Thus, should have been willing to reach an understanding to desist from declaring support for any candidate or putting up a stoking-horse only to declare a preference in the end. Instead, they would have agreed to spell out their ideal candidate, who would address a list of issues, which they agreed in the meeting.
Failing all these, they could have at least set up a ‘team’ to investigate and compile a list of immediate issues and, the principles that defined them for the benefit of such a meeting in the future.
Unfortunately, every possibility raised by us were far removed from the attendees, as they spent a weekend in Switzerland and flew back for further instructions.
Democracy, state and government
The misrepresentation of a state and its government and their authorities is one of the fundamental political problem in the developing world. The problem is as organic as the corruption that plague the lives of the billions, and as relevant as the poverty itself.
In advanced nations civic institutions are the basic structures of a society. But, what are these civic institutions? Are they the family, community, socio-political / economical / religious institutions?
The clans and extended families existed only for socio-psychological continuities than socio-economic advancements. The cyclic relationship between the individual, family, community and state are the result of the historical struggles for the betterment of the terms and conditions of the economic and social relations for the communities and individuals for their being. The main engine providing the motive force has always been the economical development and the accumulation of the surplus capital. Even the domain in which these activities take place has evolved from a nation to region and, now to a global scale. As the area of the domain increases, so is the tension on the cyclic-relationship, changing the nature and the structure of these institutions.
Therefore, the concept of a family has very little economical value for the individual, unless it is wealthy. The expectations of their lives and welfare are so high, it would be almost impossible for an ordinary family or clan to provide for them. In fact, there are even predictions of end to the nucleus family. As traditional institutions, such as family and community fade out of this relationship the dynamics between the individual and the state become strenuous yet, stronger through newly found common socio-political institutions. It could be a single issue campaign group or an NGO to work abroad or a psycho-cultural sect, but they all link the individual to the state at various connection points, which may be outside the geographical nation-state.
Therefore, even within the stranglehold of a capitalist corporate state structure, individuals and ‘communities’ still see ‘sense’ to transfer their sovereignties into common currencies.
In fact, the transformation of this process is so deep, it would be impossible seek meaning of an individual or community without shared sovereignty. This is true even for those immigrants who claim to hold on to their ‘values’ and wage a war against their respective states.
It is therefore possible in the advanced states to construct sovereignty of an individual and community within a framework of human-rights.
The conditions in the underdeveloped societies are opposite. Without the support of the dominant clan or extended families an individual or a community cannot move forward. Therefore, the expectations and the notion of a state are severely limited in scope and practice. It is not so strange for a serious commentator to say, even for the oversimplification, “Pakistani army is primarily fighting against the Massud’s clan in Warristan” when there is a full scale war on a people or to know that the voting in Afghanistan are decided by clan elders, who impose hefty fines if directions are not followed by members. Or in India, many more communities want to be recognised as scheduled-casts to access state quotas or the LTTE was controlled by the Valluvettithuari-fisher folks and, the new feudal lords in Sri Lanka, the Rajapackse family are Govigamma, but need the backing of the Sinhala Parava communities.
Under such conditions sovereignty and authority of a state are easily misrepresented, and those in control of the tools of power deliberately focus their arguments on authority of the government than the sovereignty of the individual or communities. As heads of clans or ‘families’, when individuals take control of a state they translate their communal models as the norm of the state and the government.
Having accessed the powers of the state through feudal means it would be impossible for them not to use its powers to ‘better themselves’, in the process institutionalising the casts, corruptions, discriminations and whole lot more. It is no surprise then, the development of a sense of common sovereignty, and collective responsibilities are severely undermined. Therefore, what is intended and what happens are two different things as the majority chase the dream of social advancement through an enforced “feudal-democracy”, in essence a parliamentary dictatorship, which clearly cannot suit the purpose.
What to do?
There are desires, and beside them are the realities conditioned by socio-economic tendencies. The struggle for those who want to truly lead their people is to bridge the gap between them. As for us, firstly, we see the terms ‘leadership’ or ‘leader’ utterly meaningless in the context of the Tamil speaking communities at present, and secondly as Expatriates, see our limitations. Therefore, our the main objective is to engender a process of ‘thinking’ rather being ‘right’, which has been drained out of the socio-political system.
In this respect, we hope the attendees of such future meetings would realise,
i. Tamil or Sinhala speaking communities, living outside the Western province and the wet zone, have similar economic conditions.
ii. The consequences of those are accentuated by ethnic differences, which in turn are exploited by bigots and opportunists.
iii. Sri Lanka is a failed state where the militarization of all of its civic and social institutions in support of the ruling party of the day is complete, and the National minorities aren’t even recognised as part of the structure.
iv. This process has wiped out any chance of social or political democracy without serious economic development.
v. Tamil speaking communities have specific issues with the state, which is now completely in the hands of the Sinhala majority.
vi. India as a determining power of the region, and can play a constructive role to upgrade the economies of the people, particularly in the Dry zones of Sri Lanka.
vii. Any such development program can be linked to the security of the region in which Tamil Nadu can play a role, departing from its partisan historical past.
Can all this observations be part of any program?
We suggest two ideas that could have far reaching consequences to the underdevelopment and thereby, to the ethnic problem in Sri Lanka, which need not copy any Indian model. Concept of these can be discussed on another opportunity.
1. The regions of North, East and adjoining districts should be declared a demilitarised Special Environmental and Economic Zones (SEEZ).
2. A special regional development agency, South Asian Regional Economical and Development Agency (SAREDA) is created to oversee the projects within a regional context, especially for the southern tip of the Subcontinent.
(The writer is a London based expatriate Sri Lankan Tamil and the The Academic Secretary of ASATiC. He can be reached at E-Mail:- academic.secretary@gmail.com)
Guest column by Ravi Sundaralingam
(The views expressed are his own)
Amid the election fever in Sri Lanka, some leaders of Tamils met in Switzerland, and the communiqué put out by the Tamil Information Centre London on their behalf read nothing of substance. This can only raise the level of intrigue of the purpose and those who organised it.
At first sight, seeing many Tamils calling themselves leaders of dead militant groups, some with members less than the attendees, can be an encouraging sign. Instead of killing each other or outsmart one another with their incapacities, it seems the shadowy powers behind the scene were persuasive enough for the attendees to shelve their over-inflated egos a while, at least until someone else tell them what to do. They know those egos are only for show within the communities than an expression of power outside. Those familiar with the Tamil militant struggle or the Tamil-on-Tamil violence among Expatriate communities understand what we are on about. Obviously the LTTE was an exception, in that it was also willing take on the outside powers, consistently. If this aspect were to be commended as an achievement then Tamil speaking communities should thank those shadowy powers and secretive wheeler dealers for their effort.
Then that is where we take leave of them, referring back to our past experiences with the LTTE. It also participated in many ‘talks’, ‘understandings’, and ‘agreements’, all very secretive with absolutely no information were shared with its own members, let alone the people, keeping the issue neatly off the agenda of the West, so that the ethnic cleansing of the Tamils could go on.
As for the LTTE, this secretive behaviour along with their socio-military/regional/international policies, and terrorist acts was also a chasm, which was complete when they lead their own to a cul de sac where they perished, and the final culling of the Tamils was declared a victory against terrorism.
The cloak and dagger stuff, a culture developed and encouraged by the International Community, including India, during the militant-phase, talking and deciding about a people and their rights without any consultations with them, while repetitively uttering the word ‘democracy’ as some sort of mantra to cheat the poor and feeble, raises many questions just as it gives an impression to solve a single issue; persuading many Tamil ‘leaders’ to meet.
To their credit participants had understood, but didn’t promise, they “should not kill each other”, and accepted they had “separate agendas”. Even with our positive attitude towards such efforts we find it almost impossible to interpret the statement in any other way.
Beside the public consultations we notice, absence of an agenda, common political understanding or future program, and absence of others who fundamentally disagreed the Sri Lankan state. Instead, we see the domination of a tendency that denied any discussion about the plight of the Tamil speaking people in real historical terms.
All attendees had renounced or denied their past association with the campaign for a separate Tamil state. Their reiterated argument is, just as it was when the LTTE was dominant, is about ‘reality’ and “the need to work along the powerful”.
This feudal wisdom, which was absent at least among the Sinhala communities until four decades ago, is now the most prevalent theme, as all the social and civic structures in Sri Lanka are militarised for the purpose of the government in power. This can be ‘argued’ as a progress if it were done on behalf of a state, instead of the ruling party or family. This regression into modern feudalism necessitate similar responses from the under links, the communities and their alleged leaders, thus the confusion between the state and the government is perpetuated.
The attendees could have clarified this situation a little by coming to a common understanding to abandon the terms Tamileelam or Eelam from their party labels. How can any group working with the Sri Lankan state hold on to these terms is a mystery, beyond comprehension. Having endured the LTTE and lived off them for political philosophy of sort, they could have taken the opportunity to make their own political demarcation, by dropping these bogus labels.
Sinhala government’s demand that they dropped these, made good sense on the ground of loyalty to the state, and to good taste to their definitions.
And it is indeed strange, when all attendees had already agreed in their relationship with the Sri Lankan state, they had to come a long way, into the winter months in Switzerland, to let each other know they existed.
At least they could have listened to the inner calls, the chance to ‘make money’, and uttered a few words about the war devastated and state deprived economies in the North, East and Central provinces and any effort to improve them should abide by some principles, even if couldn’t agree on those principles.
If this is far reaching, they could have agreed how they could approach the impending election, not in terms of candidates, but about the scope of democracy within the system.
Those forever speculate on the role of India and China and the past mistakes by the LTTE could not see an opportunity to put the records straight, for a different relationship with India, and even China. Again, everyone of them will probably tell that they are ‘speaking’ to ‘India’, in secret.
The meeting of similar minds may have been part of a program of someone else. But more than their intentions, the results are spelt out by consequences and their perceptions. For an outsider, it was a project browbeaten into nothing by the confusion between loyalty to a government and a state. And, it was also a missed opportunity to gain some political credibility by the so called alternatives to the LTTE, who turned out in Switzerland only to make “Mahinda Chinthanaya” look as it were the real alternative.
If wiping out the LTTE, having used them to wipe out the entire Tamil leadership was a program, then this meeting, may be unintentionally, in a small way was part of it to ensure the ethnic issues didn’t dominate the presidential election.
This gives ground to the speculation that there must be a deal about these issues with the Sinhala political and military chiefs before the okaying end of the LTTE. It made sense, only if you believed the powers actually cared about the status of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Because, the rationale starts with the question, “why would the International Community create a political vacuum for the Tamils, deplete their stay on the ground, and make them a defeated people?” Once again, deals or no deals all what we have is secrecy and intrigue.
Have they been aware of their opposition to the hijacking of votes by the LTTE, urging a boycott or support a candidate. Thus, should have been willing to reach an understanding to desist from declaring support for any candidate or putting up a stoking-horse only to declare a preference in the end. Instead, they would have agreed to spell out their ideal candidate, who would address a list of issues, which they agreed in the meeting.
Failing all these, they could have at least set up a ‘team’ to investigate and compile a list of immediate issues and, the principles that defined them for the benefit of such a meeting in the future.
Unfortunately, every possibility raised by us were far removed from the attendees, as they spent a weekend in Switzerland and flew back for further instructions.
Democracy, state and government
The misrepresentation of a state and its government and their authorities is one of the fundamental political problem in the developing world. The problem is as organic as the corruption that plague the lives of the billions, and as relevant as the poverty itself.
In advanced nations civic institutions are the basic structures of a society. But, what are these civic institutions? Are they the family, community, socio-political / economical / religious institutions?
The clans and extended families existed only for socio-psychological continuities than socio-economic advancements. The cyclic relationship between the individual, family, community and state are the result of the historical struggles for the betterment of the terms and conditions of the economic and social relations for the communities and individuals for their being. The main engine providing the motive force has always been the economical development and the accumulation of the surplus capital. Even the domain in which these activities take place has evolved from a nation to region and, now to a global scale. As the area of the domain increases, so is the tension on the cyclic-relationship, changing the nature and the structure of these institutions.
Therefore, the concept of a family has very little economical value for the individual, unless it is wealthy. The expectations of their lives and welfare are so high, it would be almost impossible for an ordinary family or clan to provide for them. In fact, there are even predictions of end to the nucleus family. As traditional institutions, such as family and community fade out of this relationship the dynamics between the individual and the state become strenuous yet, stronger through newly found common socio-political institutions. It could be a single issue campaign group or an NGO to work abroad or a psycho-cultural sect, but they all link the individual to the state at various connection points, which may be outside the geographical nation-state.
Therefore, even within the stranglehold of a capitalist corporate state structure, individuals and ‘communities’ still see ‘sense’ to transfer their sovereignties into common currencies.
In fact, the transformation of this process is so deep, it would be impossible seek meaning of an individual or community without shared sovereignty. This is true even for those immigrants who claim to hold on to their ‘values’ and wage a war against their respective states.
It is therefore possible in the advanced states to construct sovereignty of an individual and community within a framework of human-rights.
The conditions in the underdeveloped societies are opposite. Without the support of the dominant clan or extended families an individual or a community cannot move forward. Therefore, the expectations and the notion of a state are severely limited in scope and practice. It is not so strange for a serious commentator to say, even for the oversimplification, “Pakistani army is primarily fighting against the Massud’s clan in Warristan” when there is a full scale war on a people or to know that the voting in Afghanistan are decided by clan elders, who impose hefty fines if directions are not followed by members. Or in India, many more communities want to be recognised as scheduled-casts to access state quotas or the LTTE was controlled by the Valluvettithuari-fisher folks and, the new feudal lords in Sri Lanka, the Rajapackse family are Govigamma, but need the backing of the Sinhala Parava communities.
Under such conditions sovereignty and authority of a state are easily misrepresented, and those in control of the tools of power deliberately focus their arguments on authority of the government than the sovereignty of the individual or communities. As heads of clans or ‘families’, when individuals take control of a state they translate their communal models as the norm of the state and the government.
Having accessed the powers of the state through feudal means it would be impossible for them not to use its powers to ‘better themselves’, in the process institutionalising the casts, corruptions, discriminations and whole lot more. It is no surprise then, the development of a sense of common sovereignty, and collective responsibilities are severely undermined. Therefore, what is intended and what happens are two different things as the majority chase the dream of social advancement through an enforced “feudal-democracy”, in essence a parliamentary dictatorship, which clearly cannot suit the purpose.
What to do?
There are desires, and beside them are the realities conditioned by socio-economic tendencies. The struggle for those who want to truly lead their people is to bridge the gap between them. As for us, firstly, we see the terms ‘leadership’ or ‘leader’ utterly meaningless in the context of the Tamil speaking communities at present, and secondly as Expatriates, see our limitations. Therefore, our the main objective is to engender a process of ‘thinking’ rather being ‘right’, which has been drained out of the socio-political system.
In this respect, we hope the attendees of such future meetings would realise,
i. Tamil or Sinhala speaking communities, living outside the Western province and the wet zone, have similar economic conditions.
ii. The consequences of those are accentuated by ethnic differences, which in turn are exploited by bigots and opportunists.
iii. Sri Lanka is a failed state where the militarization of all of its civic and social institutions in support of the ruling party of the day is complete, and the National minorities aren’t even recognised as part of the structure.
iv. This process has wiped out any chance of social or political democracy without serious economic development.
v. Tamil speaking communities have specific issues with the state, which is now completely in the hands of the Sinhala majority.
vi. India as a determining power of the region, and can play a constructive role to upgrade the economies of the people, particularly in the Dry zones of Sri Lanka.
vii. Any such development program can be linked to the security of the region in which Tamil Nadu can play a role, departing from its partisan historical past.
Can all this observations be part of any program?
We suggest two ideas that could have far reaching consequences to the underdevelopment and thereby, to the ethnic problem in Sri Lanka, which need not copy any Indian model. Concept of these can be discussed on another opportunity.
1. The regions of North, East and adjoining districts should be declared a demilitarised Special Environmental and Economic Zones (SEEZ).
2. A special regional development agency, South Asian Regional Economical and Development Agency (SAREDA) is created to oversee the projects within a regional context, especially for the southern tip of the Subcontinent.
(The writer is a London based expatriate Sri Lankan Tamil and the The Academic Secretary of ASATiC. He can be reached at E-Mail:- academic.secretary@gmail.com)
Russia is a trusted ally
Ilya Kramnik
http://www.dailypioneer.com/220838/Russia-is-a-trusted-ally.html
When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Dmitry Medvedev meet in Moscow, they will reaffirm the tried and tested ties between India and Russia. A new military technical cooperation programme for the next 10 years will set the tone for future bilateral relations
Russia and India intend to sign a new military technical cooperation programme for 2010-2020. The agreement is expected to be signed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev when they meet today (Monday) in Moscow. The programme itself will become a worthy follow-up to 50 years of military cooperation.
Deliveries of Soviet arms to India began in 1962, during the first conflict betweenIndia and China. The Soviet Union was already providing India with substantive economic aid at that time, and arms supplies came as a natural continuation of Soviet policy, especially in view of increasingly sour relations between Moscow and Beijing.
After a time, the supply of arms was supplemented with their licenced production. The first to be produced were MiG-21FL fighter planes, whose production began in 1966. Soon India became the Soviet Union’s main partner in military technical affairs. It was taking delivery of a wide range of military equipment and weapons — from small arms and lightly armored vehicles to submarines and combat planes.
Towards the late-1970s, three-quarters of India’s requirements in arms for land forces were met by the Soviet Union or by licenced production. Similar figures were soon reached for the Air Force.
Unlike many other Soviet partners, India received state-of-the-art arms from the Soviet Union, on a par with Warsaw Pact members. The 1971 war between India and Pakistan, during which the Soviet Union supported India diplomatically and with a squadron of warships in the Bengal Gulf for demonstration purposes and to watch any possible activity by US naval forces, ultimately sealed the partnership between the Soviet Union and India.
Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, relations between the two countries hit a low point: Deliveries, including military deliveries, were upset, causing problems in supplying Indian armed forces and complicating the manufacture of licenced products (MiG-27 planes, T-72 tanks, etc,). Cooperation had to be organised from scratch. In 1993, Russia and India signed a new treaty of friendship and cooperation, as well as a number of bilateral agreements regulating arms supplies among other things. A programme for military technical cooperation between Russia and India followed the treaty and is still in effect.
A point to note: India prefers technology to finished products and likes to organise its own production. But its munitions industry is not yet fully independent, and India still has to go to foreign partners, Russia first, for the latest developments.
Among the current types of arms produced in India under Russian licences and with Russian help, are: T-90 tanks, Su-30MKI fighters, Brahmos antiship missiles and other systems. Already, the Su-30MKI is the most common fighter in the Indian Air Force, and will account for the bulk of the aircraft fleet towards the end of the next decade.
The Brahmos project deserves further mention. Developed from Soviet blueprints for the Onyx/Yakhont antiship cruise missile, it became one of the most successful undertakings by Russia and India in armaments. Current deliveries include sea- and surface-launched supersonic missiles. Air-launched missiles are expected to be supplied shortly. In addition, the Brahmos has been used to develop a new and hypersonic missile, which is to be adopted as standard in the next decade.
Russia and India are also engaged in other joint development projects — for example, a fifth generation fighter, which is to join the air forces of the two countries in the next decade. Another major project may be a tender to supply 126 light fighter planes for the Indian Air Force. Russia has tendered its MiG-35 fighter plane, and has a good chance to win the bid.
The aircraft which impressed Indian specialists at many air shows and during tests, is a fundamentally new development based on the well-known MiG-29 platform. It has advanced flying characteristics, especially maneuverability, which is achieved by thrust-vectored engines, competitive avionics, and a lower price than American rival models.
Another factor in favour of the MiG-35 is that the Indian Air Force is already using MiG-29s. Also, MiG-29KUBs were ordered for Indian naval aviation, and the country is building an infrastructure to maintain and repair aircraft of this type, which will make the mastery and operation of a technically similar plane easier.
India also continues to buy finished products. One of the largest projects in this respect is a contract to upgrade and deliver to the Indian Navy the aircraft carrier Vikramaditya, the former Russian heavy air-capable cruiser Admiral Gorshkov. The ship, built in the 1980s and withdrawn from service for economic reasons less than five years after it was commissioned, is currently undergoing a major refit at the shipyard in Severodvinsk. The former cruiser, designed to carry vertical take-off and landing aircraft and helicopters, is being reconfigured with a through flight deck plus a ski jump ramp at the bow. The upgraded MiG-29K deck-based fighter will be the main aircraft of the renovated ship. The same type of aircraft will be used on the planned Indian aircraft carrier ADV whose blueprints have been prepared with Russian specialists. The ship is to join the navy in the middle of the next decade.
Apart from technical cooperation, Russia and India have exchange experience in training armed forces during joint drills and exercises involving naval, air and ground forces. The Indra-2007 exercise stands out in this respect. Russia also trains large numbers of Indian officers.
The Indian market is one of the most attractive and at the same time one of the most challenging for arms manufacturers vying with one another. In this market, Russian weapons must prove their operability and serviceability and be able to compete with the best American and European equipment. Russian contract proposals must be no less profitable than those offered by the Western world. Of course, Russia is unlikely to get three-quarters of all orders put out for bid from the Indian armed forces as the Soviet Union once did, but Russian developers and manufacturers will never give up such a promising market. At the same time, India itself will not part with a tried and tested partner, as is clear from its intention to sign a forward-looking programme of military technical cooperation.
-The writer is a military affairs columnist based in Moscow.
http://www.dailypioneer.com/220838/Russia-is-a-trusted-ally.html
When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Dmitry Medvedev meet in Moscow, they will reaffirm the tried and tested ties between India and Russia. A new military technical cooperation programme for the next 10 years will set the tone for future bilateral relations
Russia and India intend to sign a new military technical cooperation programme for 2010-2020. The agreement is expected to be signed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev when they meet today (Monday) in Moscow. The programme itself will become a worthy follow-up to 50 years of military cooperation.
Deliveries of Soviet arms to India began in 1962, during the first conflict betweenIndia and China. The Soviet Union was already providing India with substantive economic aid at that time, and arms supplies came as a natural continuation of Soviet policy, especially in view of increasingly sour relations between Moscow and Beijing.
After a time, the supply of arms was supplemented with their licenced production. The first to be produced were MiG-21FL fighter planes, whose production began in 1966. Soon India became the Soviet Union’s main partner in military technical affairs. It was taking delivery of a wide range of military equipment and weapons — from small arms and lightly armored vehicles to submarines and combat planes.
Towards the late-1970s, three-quarters of India’s requirements in arms for land forces were met by the Soviet Union or by licenced production. Similar figures were soon reached for the Air Force.
Unlike many other Soviet partners, India received state-of-the-art arms from the Soviet Union, on a par with Warsaw Pact members. The 1971 war between India and Pakistan, during which the Soviet Union supported India diplomatically and with a squadron of warships in the Bengal Gulf for demonstration purposes and to watch any possible activity by US naval forces, ultimately sealed the partnership between the Soviet Union and India.
Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, relations between the two countries hit a low point: Deliveries, including military deliveries, were upset, causing problems in supplying Indian armed forces and complicating the manufacture of licenced products (MiG-27 planes, T-72 tanks, etc,). Cooperation had to be organised from scratch. In 1993, Russia and India signed a new treaty of friendship and cooperation, as well as a number of bilateral agreements regulating arms supplies among other things. A programme for military technical cooperation between Russia and India followed the treaty and is still in effect.
A point to note: India prefers technology to finished products and likes to organise its own production. But its munitions industry is not yet fully independent, and India still has to go to foreign partners, Russia first, for the latest developments.
Among the current types of arms produced in India under Russian licences and with Russian help, are: T-90 tanks, Su-30MKI fighters, Brahmos antiship missiles and other systems. Already, the Su-30MKI is the most common fighter in the Indian Air Force, and will account for the bulk of the aircraft fleet towards the end of the next decade.
The Brahmos project deserves further mention. Developed from Soviet blueprints for the Onyx/Yakhont antiship cruise missile, it became one of the most successful undertakings by Russia and India in armaments. Current deliveries include sea- and surface-launched supersonic missiles. Air-launched missiles are expected to be supplied shortly. In addition, the Brahmos has been used to develop a new and hypersonic missile, which is to be adopted as standard in the next decade.
Russia and India are also engaged in other joint development projects — for example, a fifth generation fighter, which is to join the air forces of the two countries in the next decade. Another major project may be a tender to supply 126 light fighter planes for the Indian Air Force. Russia has tendered its MiG-35 fighter plane, and has a good chance to win the bid.
The aircraft which impressed Indian specialists at many air shows and during tests, is a fundamentally new development based on the well-known MiG-29 platform. It has advanced flying characteristics, especially maneuverability, which is achieved by thrust-vectored engines, competitive avionics, and a lower price than American rival models.
Another factor in favour of the MiG-35 is that the Indian Air Force is already using MiG-29s. Also, MiG-29KUBs were ordered for Indian naval aviation, and the country is building an infrastructure to maintain and repair aircraft of this type, which will make the mastery and operation of a technically similar plane easier.
India also continues to buy finished products. One of the largest projects in this respect is a contract to upgrade and deliver to the Indian Navy the aircraft carrier Vikramaditya, the former Russian heavy air-capable cruiser Admiral Gorshkov. The ship, built in the 1980s and withdrawn from service for economic reasons less than five years after it was commissioned, is currently undergoing a major refit at the shipyard in Severodvinsk. The former cruiser, designed to carry vertical take-off and landing aircraft and helicopters, is being reconfigured with a through flight deck plus a ski jump ramp at the bow. The upgraded MiG-29K deck-based fighter will be the main aircraft of the renovated ship. The same type of aircraft will be used on the planned Indian aircraft carrier ADV whose blueprints have been prepared with Russian specialists. The ship is to join the navy in the middle of the next decade.
Apart from technical cooperation, Russia and India have exchange experience in training armed forces during joint drills and exercises involving naval, air and ground forces. The Indra-2007 exercise stands out in this respect. Russia also trains large numbers of Indian officers.
The Indian market is one of the most attractive and at the same time one of the most challenging for arms manufacturers vying with one another. In this market, Russian weapons must prove their operability and serviceability and be able to compete with the best American and European equipment. Russian contract proposals must be no less profitable than those offered by the Western world. Of course, Russia is unlikely to get three-quarters of all orders put out for bid from the Indian armed forces as the Soviet Union once did, but Russian developers and manufacturers will never give up such a promising market. At the same time, India itself will not part with a tried and tested partner, as is clear from its intention to sign a forward-looking programme of military technical cooperation.
-The writer is a military affairs columnist based in Moscow.
HEADLEY'S ROLE IN MUMBAI 26/11 CONSPIRACY & HIS PAKISTANI HANDLERS
B.RAMAN
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) filed before a Federal court in Chicago on December 7,2009, a Criminal Information Report charging David Coleman Headley previously known as Daood Gilani, a US national of Pakistani origin normally resident in Chicago, on 12 counts. Six of these counts related to participating in a conspiracy to bomb public places in India, murder and maim persons in India and Denmark, providing material support to foreign terrorist plots and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). The remaining six counts related to participating in a conspiracy to aid and abet the murder of US citizens in India. This refers to the massacre of six US nationals by the LET in Mumbai during the terrorist strike of 26/11 last year.
2. It is learnt that it has been called a Criminal Information Report and not yet an indictment because the charges relating to India are largely based on voluntary admissions made by him during his interrogation after he was arrested by the FBI on October 3,2009, on a charge of conspiring with Pakistan-based elements to carry out a terrorist attack in Copenhagen against a Danish journal which had published caricatures of Prophet Mohammad in 2005. The FBI had originally filed a criminal affidavit giving details of evidence collected on the basis of technical intelligence which justified his arrest and interrogation. Subsequently, they submitted to the court in a sealed cover information obtained during his initial interrogation to justify his continued custody. This sealed cover has now been opened and its contents incorporated in the Criminal Information Report.
3. The FBI has described the investigation against Headley as still active. A formal indictment would follow after the investigations into his disclosures in India and Pakistan. The National Investigation Agency of the Government of India has already started an investigation into his activities in India during his periodic visits, but no arrests would appear to have been made as yet during this investigation. Rahul Bhatt, the film world personality and son of Mahesh Bhatt, film producer/director, who was the only Indian whose name had figured in the E-mails exchanged by Headley with his Pakistani handlers, could be a material witness during the investigation and prosecution in the US as well as India. The Criminal Information Report against Headley, however, does not refer to Rahul.
4. The FBI has also filed a separate Criminal Information Report on two counts in the same court on December 7,2009, against Major (retd) Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, a Pakistani citizen based in Pakistan. The two counts relate to conspiring to attack the Danish newspaper and its employees. The Criminal Information Report against the retired Pakistani Major does not refer to Mumbai 26/11. In the affidavit filed earlier by the FBI against Headley, there were references to two handlers of Headley in Pakistan--- a person referred to as Individual A and an LET office-bearer referred to as LET member A. Headley was allegedly in touch with Individual A in connection with the Copenhagen conspiracy and with LET member A in connection with the Indian and Copenhagen conspiracies. Individual A appeared in the earlier affidavit as an associate of Ilyas Kashmiri of the 313 Brigade. He had introduced Headley to Ilyas Kashmiri and was acting as a cut-out between the two.
5. The earlier affidavits had not identified Individual A and the LET member A. The Criminal Information Report filed on December 7 has identified Individual A as Major (retd) Abdur Rehman. While the Report does not say anything about the arrest of the Major, media reports have said that he has been arrested by the Pakistani authorities at the request of the FBI. For reasons which are not clear, no Criminal Information Report has been filed against Ilyas, who seemed to have initiated the conspiracy relating to Copenhagen. The FBI has not yet named the LET handler of Headley called LET member A.
6.A careful reading of the earlier affidavits, the criminal information reports filed on December 7 and the media reports in the US and Canada would indicate that Headley played a role in two conspiracies unrelated to each other. The first conspiracy was initiated by the LET in 2006 for the terrorist strike in Mumbai. In this connection, he visited India five times spending long periods to reccee the targets ultimately attacked by the LET, including the two hotels, the railway terminus and the Jewish centre, took video photographs and then carried them to Pakistan. The details of his participation in the Mumbai 26/11 related conspiracy are as follows:
2005: The LET, of which he had become a member, asked him to "travel to India to perform surveillance."
Feb. 2006: He changed his name from his original "Daood Gilani" in order to "present himself in India as an American who was neither Muslim nor Pakistani."
June 2006: Obtained permission from friend and businessman, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, to open an ostensible consultancy franchise in India. Rana is a Canadian national of Pakistani origin living in Chicago, who was running an immigration consultancy service.
Sept. 2006: Visited India for several weeks, then Pakistan.
Feb. 2007: Visited India for several weeks, then Pakistan.
Sept. 2007: Visited India for several weeks, then Pakistan.
April 2008: Visited India for several week, making a surveillance video as he took a boat ride through the Mumbai harbour.
July 2008: Visited India for several weeks, then Pakistan.
7. The FBI's Criminal Information Report does not refer to any Indian visit by Headley in November,2008. There is also no reference to any role of his in connection with the July 2006 explosions in some suburban trains of Mumbai.
8. The second conspiracy related to the planned terrorist attack in Copenhagen for which Headley had visited Copenhagen earlier this year on behalf of Ilyas Kashmiri and Major Abdur Rehman. It is known that Ilyas heads the so-called 313 Brigade based in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas. Maj.Abdur Rehman also probably belonged to the 313 Brigade.
9. The LET and the 313 Brigade were aware of each other's conspiracies relating to India and Denmark respectively and of the role of Headley in both the conspiracies, but their focus of interest was different. The LET was more interested in a spectacular operation in India than in Denmark. The 313 Brigade was more interested in a spectacular operation in Denmark than in India. It was the FBI's successful monitoring of the plans for an attack in Copenhagen which led to the arrest of Headley and the subsequent discovery of his role in India.
10. The FBI has not filed any Criminal Information Report against Rana in connection with Mumbai 26/11.
11.This may please be read in continuation of my earlier paper titled RE-VISITING MUMBAI 26/11 INVESTIGATION available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers36/paper3504.html (8-12-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) filed before a Federal court in Chicago on December 7,2009, a Criminal Information Report charging David Coleman Headley previously known as Daood Gilani, a US national of Pakistani origin normally resident in Chicago, on 12 counts. Six of these counts related to participating in a conspiracy to bomb public places in India, murder and maim persons in India and Denmark, providing material support to foreign terrorist plots and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). The remaining six counts related to participating in a conspiracy to aid and abet the murder of US citizens in India. This refers to the massacre of six US nationals by the LET in Mumbai during the terrorist strike of 26/11 last year.
2. It is learnt that it has been called a Criminal Information Report and not yet an indictment because the charges relating to India are largely based on voluntary admissions made by him during his interrogation after he was arrested by the FBI on October 3,2009, on a charge of conspiring with Pakistan-based elements to carry out a terrorist attack in Copenhagen against a Danish journal which had published caricatures of Prophet Mohammad in 2005. The FBI had originally filed a criminal affidavit giving details of evidence collected on the basis of technical intelligence which justified his arrest and interrogation. Subsequently, they submitted to the court in a sealed cover information obtained during his initial interrogation to justify his continued custody. This sealed cover has now been opened and its contents incorporated in the Criminal Information Report.
3. The FBI has described the investigation against Headley as still active. A formal indictment would follow after the investigations into his disclosures in India and Pakistan. The National Investigation Agency of the Government of India has already started an investigation into his activities in India during his periodic visits, but no arrests would appear to have been made as yet during this investigation. Rahul Bhatt, the film world personality and son of Mahesh Bhatt, film producer/director, who was the only Indian whose name had figured in the E-mails exchanged by Headley with his Pakistani handlers, could be a material witness during the investigation and prosecution in the US as well as India. The Criminal Information Report against Headley, however, does not refer to Rahul.
4. The FBI has also filed a separate Criminal Information Report on two counts in the same court on December 7,2009, against Major (retd) Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, a Pakistani citizen based in Pakistan. The two counts relate to conspiring to attack the Danish newspaper and its employees. The Criminal Information Report against the retired Pakistani Major does not refer to Mumbai 26/11. In the affidavit filed earlier by the FBI against Headley, there were references to two handlers of Headley in Pakistan--- a person referred to as Individual A and an LET office-bearer referred to as LET member A. Headley was allegedly in touch with Individual A in connection with the Copenhagen conspiracy and with LET member A in connection with the Indian and Copenhagen conspiracies. Individual A appeared in the earlier affidavit as an associate of Ilyas Kashmiri of the 313 Brigade. He had introduced Headley to Ilyas Kashmiri and was acting as a cut-out between the two.
5. The earlier affidavits had not identified Individual A and the LET member A. The Criminal Information Report filed on December 7 has identified Individual A as Major (retd) Abdur Rehman. While the Report does not say anything about the arrest of the Major, media reports have said that he has been arrested by the Pakistani authorities at the request of the FBI. For reasons which are not clear, no Criminal Information Report has been filed against Ilyas, who seemed to have initiated the conspiracy relating to Copenhagen. The FBI has not yet named the LET handler of Headley called LET member A.
6.A careful reading of the earlier affidavits, the criminal information reports filed on December 7 and the media reports in the US and Canada would indicate that Headley played a role in two conspiracies unrelated to each other. The first conspiracy was initiated by the LET in 2006 for the terrorist strike in Mumbai. In this connection, he visited India five times spending long periods to reccee the targets ultimately attacked by the LET, including the two hotels, the railway terminus and the Jewish centre, took video photographs and then carried them to Pakistan. The details of his participation in the Mumbai 26/11 related conspiracy are as follows:
2005: The LET, of which he had become a member, asked him to "travel to India to perform surveillance."
Feb. 2006: He changed his name from his original "Daood Gilani" in order to "present himself in India as an American who was neither Muslim nor Pakistani."
June 2006: Obtained permission from friend and businessman, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, to open an ostensible consultancy franchise in India. Rana is a Canadian national of Pakistani origin living in Chicago, who was running an immigration consultancy service.
Sept. 2006: Visited India for several weeks, then Pakistan.
Feb. 2007: Visited India for several weeks, then Pakistan.
Sept. 2007: Visited India for several weeks, then Pakistan.
April 2008: Visited India for several week, making a surveillance video as he took a boat ride through the Mumbai harbour.
July 2008: Visited India for several weeks, then Pakistan.
7. The FBI's Criminal Information Report does not refer to any Indian visit by Headley in November,2008. There is also no reference to any role of his in connection with the July 2006 explosions in some suburban trains of Mumbai.
8. The second conspiracy related to the planned terrorist attack in Copenhagen for which Headley had visited Copenhagen earlier this year on behalf of Ilyas Kashmiri and Major Abdur Rehman. It is known that Ilyas heads the so-called 313 Brigade based in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas. Maj.Abdur Rehman also probably belonged to the 313 Brigade.
9. The LET and the 313 Brigade were aware of each other's conspiracies relating to India and Denmark respectively and of the role of Headley in both the conspiracies, but their focus of interest was different. The LET was more interested in a spectacular operation in India than in Denmark. The 313 Brigade was more interested in a spectacular operation in Denmark than in India. It was the FBI's successful monitoring of the plans for an attack in Copenhagen which led to the arrest of Headley and the subsequent discovery of his role in India.
10. The FBI has not filed any Criminal Information Report against Rana in connection with Mumbai 26/11.
11.This may please be read in continuation of my earlier paper titled RE-VISITING MUMBAI 26/11 INVESTIGATION available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers36/paper3504.html (8-12-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Afghanistan-Pakistan: The Real Story
The the documentary film, CONFLICT OF INTEREST in the following link is worth watching. Melissa Roddy is a filmmaker whose work is focused on issues of Afghan and Pakistani history and current affairs.
It's high time we frame the argument that Punjab Pakistan is the Real Problem. Kumar K Iyer
http://afghan-info.blogspot.com/
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
THE MISSION
AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN: THE REAL STORY sets out to completely change our collective conversation about Afghanistan and Pakistan; to expose propagandist lies; and finally tell the truth about what has been happening in this war ravaged region of the world for more than three and a half decades.
POINT 1.
The Taliban is a Pakistani paramilitary organization. Taliban are trained, supplied and financed by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Agency ("ISI"), which does an exceptionally good job of disseminating misinformation and suppressing this basic truth.
POINT 2.
When the Pakistani government claims to be fighting the Taliban in the provinces of Pakistan which border Afghanistan, including Baluchistan, Northwest Frontier Province (“NWFP”) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (“FATA”), they are in reality fighting Balochi and Pashtun separatist rebels.
Official media reports coming out of Pakistan by government and/or military, constantly beat the drum that the Pakistan Army is fighting the Taliban in Northwest Pakistan, which are plane lies.
Hundreds of local leaders in the Northwest Frontier Province ("NWFP") and Federally Administered Tribal Areas ("FATA") have been assassinated and replaced with radical Islamist Taliban, who have been terrorizing the people of the region and instituted Sharia law.
In reality Pakistan Army is fighting only those small factions within the Taliban which are pan-Islamist and anti-state, i.e., anti-Pakistan.
POINT 3.
U.S. policy with regard to Afghanistan and Pakistan has been slanted in favor of Pakistan since the early 1980s for a variety of reasons, but most particularly because key American policy makers, were strategically influenced through ownership stakes in the Badin oil fields in the Punjab and Sindh regions of eastern Pakistan.
CONCLUSION
According to the Afghans, there will only be peace in Afghanistan when Pashtunistan and Baluchistan achieve independence from Punjabi controlled Pakistan. Punjab is a region of Pakistan which borders India, and the Pakistani military (which runs the country) is dominated by Punjabi's. The Pakistani government has long held that control these regions and Afghanistan is necessary for purposes of "strategic depth" in case of an invasion from India, despite the fact that India has long demonstrated a lack of interest in such an invasion.
The ruling elite of Punjab have been extracting natural resources from Pashtunistan and Balochistan for many years and are very determined to maintain control over these two western provinces. The ethnic and provincial division of Pakistan roughly follows the Indus River, which was the ancient and natural border between Afghanistan and India. Thus, the Indus River would be the logical border between Pakistan,Pashtunistan and Baluchistan.
It's high time we frame the argument that Punjab Pakistan is the Real Problem. Kumar K Iyer
http://afghan-info.blogspot.com/
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
THE MISSION
AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN: THE REAL STORY sets out to completely change our collective conversation about Afghanistan and Pakistan; to expose propagandist lies; and finally tell the truth about what has been happening in this war ravaged region of the world for more than three and a half decades.
POINT 1.
The Taliban is a Pakistani paramilitary organization. Taliban are trained, supplied and financed by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Agency ("ISI"), which does an exceptionally good job of disseminating misinformation and suppressing this basic truth.
POINT 2.
When the Pakistani government claims to be fighting the Taliban in the provinces of Pakistan which border Afghanistan, including Baluchistan, Northwest Frontier Province (“NWFP”) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (“FATA”), they are in reality fighting Balochi and Pashtun separatist rebels.
Official media reports coming out of Pakistan by government and/or military, constantly beat the drum that the Pakistan Army is fighting the Taliban in Northwest Pakistan, which are plane lies.
Hundreds of local leaders in the Northwest Frontier Province ("NWFP") and Federally Administered Tribal Areas ("FATA") have been assassinated and replaced with radical Islamist Taliban, who have been terrorizing the people of the region and instituted Sharia law.
In reality Pakistan Army is fighting only those small factions within the Taliban which are pan-Islamist and anti-state, i.e., anti-Pakistan.
POINT 3.
U.S. policy with regard to Afghanistan and Pakistan has been slanted in favor of Pakistan since the early 1980s for a variety of reasons, but most particularly because key American policy makers, were strategically influenced through ownership stakes in the Badin oil fields in the Punjab and Sindh regions of eastern Pakistan.
CONCLUSION
According to the Afghans, there will only be peace in Afghanistan when Pashtunistan and Baluchistan achieve independence from Punjabi controlled Pakistan. Punjab is a region of Pakistan which borders India, and the Pakistani military (which runs the country) is dominated by Punjabi's. The Pakistani government has long held that control these regions and Afghanistan is necessary for purposes of "strategic depth" in case of an invasion from India, despite the fact that India has long demonstrated a lack of interest in such an invasion.
The ruling elite of Punjab have been extracting natural resources from Pashtunistan and Balochistan for many years and are very determined to maintain control over these two western provinces. The ethnic and provincial division of Pakistan roughly follows the Indus River, which was the ancient and natural border between Afghanistan and India. Thus, the Indus River would be the logical border between Pakistan,Pashtunistan and Baluchistan.
Russian N-deal better than US offer
Arnab Mitra, Hindustan Times
Email Author
Moscow, December 07, 2009
First Published: 18:02 IST(7/12/2009)
Last Updated: 01:29 IST(8/12/2009)
Russia will continue to supply India with nuclear fuel even if India carries out a nuclear test in future, but does not favour amending the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to grant India the status of a full-fledged nuclear weapons’ state.
The civil nuclear deal signed in the presence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday is being described as “better than the 123 agreement” that was signed with the United States because it binds Russia to carry on supplying nuclear fuel and technology to India even if the pact is cancelled for any reason.
The Russian agreement also allows India to reprocess and enrich spent nuclear fuel — which is being negotiated with the US under a separate agreement.
But the biggest fish eluded the Prime Minister. Addressing a joint press conference at the Kremlin, President Medvedev, said: “I will be very frank. We are not interested in expanding the nuclear club.”
New Delhi has been canvassing support from the five declared nuclear powers for a proposed amendment to the NPT which would make India a de jure nuclear weapon state rather than merely a de facto one.
The NPT grants nuclear weapon state status to countries that carried out nuclear tests before January 1, 1967. India wants the cut-off date pushed beyond May 18, 1974 — when it carried out its first test.
Significantly, American President Barrack Obama had referred to India as nuclear power at a joint press conference with Singh in Washington on November 24 — the first time any US president has done so.
2. Nuclear pact signed with Russia
Vladimir Radyuhin and Sandeep Dikshit
http://www.hindu.com/2009/12/08/stories/2009120857940100.htm
Major step forward in strengthening our ties: Manmohan
— Photo: AFP
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev greets Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a press conference in Moscow on Monday.
MOSCOW: India and Russia have sealed a breakthrough long-term pact for expanding civil nuclear cooperation that is free from any restriction on India and guarantees it against any curb in the future.
Under the agreement signed on Monday during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Moscow, Russia will set up more nuclear reactors in India, transfer the full range of nuclear energy technologies and ensure uninterrupted supply of fuel.
“Today we have signed an agreement which broadens the reach of our co-operation beyond the supply of nuclear reactors to areas of research and development and a whole range of areas of nuclear energy,” Dr. Singh told a joint press conference in the Kremlin.
He described the nuclear deal as a “major step forward in strengthening our existing cooperation in this field.”
The nuclear pact with Russia goes far beyond the bounds of the 123 pact with the U.S., which calls for the termination of ongoing nuclear cooperation and for the return to the U.S. of equipment and fuel already supplied to India in the event of the nuclear agreement being terminated.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made it clear that Russia will not accept any foreign-imposed restrictions on its nuclear cooperation with India.
Asked whether Russia would continue unrestricted nuclear cooperation with India despite the G8 resolution restricting the sale of reprocessing technologies to non-NPT countries, Mr. Medvedev said: “That [resolution] does not change anything in our cooperation. It has a great future.”
“We do not have and never had this problem with India. This is an issue between India and the U.S., so let them sort it out,” Russian nuclear energy Rosatom head Sergei Kirienko told reporters.
Email Author
Moscow, December 07, 2009
First Published: 18:02 IST(7/12/2009)
Last Updated: 01:29 IST(8/12/2009)
Russia will continue to supply India with nuclear fuel even if India carries out a nuclear test in future, but does not favour amending the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to grant India the status of a full-fledged nuclear weapons’ state.
The civil nuclear deal signed in the presence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday is being described as “better than the 123 agreement” that was signed with the United States because it binds Russia to carry on supplying nuclear fuel and technology to India even if the pact is cancelled for any reason.
The Russian agreement also allows India to reprocess and enrich spent nuclear fuel — which is being negotiated with the US under a separate agreement.
But the biggest fish eluded the Prime Minister. Addressing a joint press conference at the Kremlin, President Medvedev, said: “I will be very frank. We are not interested in expanding the nuclear club.”
New Delhi has been canvassing support from the five declared nuclear powers for a proposed amendment to the NPT which would make India a de jure nuclear weapon state rather than merely a de facto one.
The NPT grants nuclear weapon state status to countries that carried out nuclear tests before January 1, 1967. India wants the cut-off date pushed beyond May 18, 1974 — when it carried out its first test.
Significantly, American President Barrack Obama had referred to India as nuclear power at a joint press conference with Singh in Washington on November 24 — the first time any US president has done so.
2. Nuclear pact signed with Russia
Vladimir Radyuhin and Sandeep Dikshit
http://www.hindu.com/2009/12/08/stories/2009120857940100.htm
Major step forward in strengthening our ties: Manmohan
— Photo: AFP
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev greets Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a press conference in Moscow on Monday.
MOSCOW: India and Russia have sealed a breakthrough long-term pact for expanding civil nuclear cooperation that is free from any restriction on India and guarantees it against any curb in the future.
Under the agreement signed on Monday during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Moscow, Russia will set up more nuclear reactors in India, transfer the full range of nuclear energy technologies and ensure uninterrupted supply of fuel.
“Today we have signed an agreement which broadens the reach of our co-operation beyond the supply of nuclear reactors to areas of research and development and a whole range of areas of nuclear energy,” Dr. Singh told a joint press conference in the Kremlin.
He described the nuclear deal as a “major step forward in strengthening our existing cooperation in this field.”
The nuclear pact with Russia goes far beyond the bounds of the 123 pact with the U.S., which calls for the termination of ongoing nuclear cooperation and for the return to the U.S. of equipment and fuel already supplied to India in the event of the nuclear agreement being terminated.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made it clear that Russia will not accept any foreign-imposed restrictions on its nuclear cooperation with India.
Asked whether Russia would continue unrestricted nuclear cooperation with India despite the G8 resolution restricting the sale of reprocessing technologies to non-NPT countries, Mr. Medvedev said: “That [resolution] does not change anything in our cooperation. It has a great future.”
“We do not have and never had this problem with India. This is an issue between India and the U.S., so let them sort it out,” Russian nuclear energy Rosatom head Sergei Kirienko told reporters.
OSAMA, ARE YOU THERE?
B.RAMAN
( An updated version of an article titled "The Oracle of Al Qaeda" written by me on October 3,2003, available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers9/paper808.html )
"Watch out if you are over six feet tall. The CIA's Predator aircraft have been programmed to kill all those above six feet, hoping one of them would turn out to be bin Laden."
So said the graffiti in villages in the Pashtun tribal belt of Pakistan in 2003, reflecting the extent to which the US hunt for Osama bin Laden had become a butt of ridicule amongst the tribals.
Osama, Osama everywhere, yet nowhere to be found. The US has been desperately hunting for him ever since he reportedly escaped from the exotic-sounding Tora Bora caves of Afghanistan in 2002, injured and slightly incapacitated by a sharpnel, but alive and kicking.
And leading. So claimed his followers. His hand was felt, but not seen from Bali to Mombasa, from Riyadh to Casablanca, from Madrid to London.
He became like Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Feared, but not seen. Hunted relentlessly, but not found.
Offers of rewards of millions of dollars did not help. Naturally, said an intelligence analyst. The tribals are so poor and illiterate that they don't know what is a million dollar reward. If one offered them instead a plot of land or a few dozen goats they would join the hunt with gusto. So it was said.
And so it was done. But without results. Neither offers of dollars nor plots nor goats would interest the tribals. Why? The answer is simple, my dear Americans, wrote Mr.Afrasiab Khattak, a well-known Pashtun leader of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), in the "Dawn" of May 10, 2003. Osama was nowhere in the tribal belt, according to him.
He wrote: "The myth of no-man's land and the wild north-west comes quite handy as a spin and as a diversion when the Government fails to muster the required political will for taking the bull of terrorism right by the horns."
Gen.Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's then military dictator, sent the Americans on a wild goose chase in the forbidding tribal land. "Osama can't be alive," he said in 2002. He always moved around with a large entourage to protect him. Even if one failed to notice him, one would not fail to notice his retinue. So he used to say.
Then, tricky Mush, as his retired seniors in the Army used to call him, had a different spin. He was alive, he admitted, but in the no-go land of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where no British soldier had ever gone and come back alive.
"We Pakistanis are of a different mettle," said the legendary commando. "We will go where no British dared. And we will find him dead or alive. " The Americans were duly impressed. Gave him another three billion dollars at Camp David.
Lollipops kept pouring into Pakistan in the expectation that Musharraf would help the US rid the world of Osama and his terrorist hordes. Hadn't he already delivered nearly 500 Al Qaeda types?
What he did was to round up many poor Arabs living in Pakistan who had become a social pest and make them a charge on the US tax-payers' money. Only five Al Qaeda leaders of real consequence were caught and handed over to the US. And that too, only after the US intelligence came to know of their sanctuaries in Pakistan and he had no other option but to arrest them.
Where were they found? asked the Pashtun leader. Abu Zubaidah in Faislabad in Pakistani Punjab;Ramzi Binalshibh and Waleed bin Attash in Karachi, Musharraf's home town after he migrated to Pakistan from India, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the so-called master-mind of 9/11, in Rawalpindi, where the Army's GHQ is located. Nowhere in the tribal belt. Only Abu Faraj al-Libi was found in the tribal belt in 2005.
And in Karachi was harboured the injured Osama till August ,2002. In the Binori madrasa, which has produced more terrorists than all the other madrasas of Pakistan put together. That was the one place where Musharraf should have searched for him, if he was really sincere about wanting to help the US.
And that was one place where he did not search for him. Why? Because he knew Osama was there. And the Americans did not. After Osama knew that the US intelligence traced his presence in Tora Bora through his communications with his followers, he totally stopped using modern means of communications.
After Binalshibh was caught in a different hide-out in Karachi in September 2002, because he had indiscreetly used the telephone, Osama was whisked out of Binori and possibly Karachi.
Is Osama still alive or dead? If alive, where is he? There are only three who know the answers to these questions definitively. Allah, the ISI and those who produce and disseminate through Al Jazeera videos and audios purporting to be his provided they are authentic.
Why doesn't the ISI arrest and hand him over to the US and get a few more billions of dollars? Because of a fear that he might spill the beans about his links with the ISI.
Why doesn't the ISI get him killed and be rid of this nuisance? Because of a fear that Osama's terrorist hordes may no longer help Pakistan in India and Afghanistan. And an equally strong fear that Pakistan may lose its importance in the eyes of the US, if Osama and Al Qaeda were no longer there.
The Pakistanis know their Americans. How naive and trusting, the Americans can be. Didn't Ahmed Chalabi and other anti-Saddam money-makers make millions from the CIA and the DIA by feeding imaginary reports about Saddam's WMD and by telling the then US Vice-President Dick Cheney and the then Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the Iraqi people would welcome the US troops as liberators.
And since November 2002 an oracle started getting disseminated one tape after another purportedly of Osama and his No.2 Ayman al-Zawahiri. These tapes started coming out of Pakistan and reaching Al Jazeera and other Arab channels like rabbits out of a magician's hat.
The tapes kept coming at periodic intervals. The Congressional committees kept holding one session after another with testimonies by the top guns of the US intelligence and Armed Forces regarding the whereabouts of bin Laden. We know now he is in North Waziristan, they said.
US Drones went after him----attacking one suspected hide-out after another. They killed a lot of people. The world was told they were top guns of Al Qaeda. "We may not have got OBL, but we are eliminating others around him".
"Al Qaeda is weakened even if we have not caught or killed OBL," said one Al Qaeda watcher.
The then President George Bush came out with his own gem: " The fact that Osama has not yet been caught shows that he is trying desperately not to get caught."
Many Al Qaeda cadres---- each of them projected at the time of their capture as the No.3 of Al Qaeda--- were caught in different cities of Pakistan. " We will now know where OBL is. The No.3 will know. We will get it during the interrogation."
Apparently, their interrogation revealed nothing. Either they were tough nuts to crack or they themselves did not know where the hell was OBL.
So the hunt goes on. There has been no business like Al Qaeda and OBL business. How many Al Qaeda watchers must have minted fortunes by claiming to know all that is fit to be known about them!
How many billions Islamabad must have made by pretending to help the US in its search! How much of that must have gone into the jihad chest of Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban!
In an interview to the ABC news on December 6,2009, a sheepish Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, has finally admitted: "The US has had no reliable information on the whereabouts of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in years. Well, we don't know for a fact where Osama Bin Laden is. If we did, we'd go get him."
Well, Mr.Gates, search for him where you have not searched for him so far. You are till now looking for him in the sparsely populated tribal areas of the FATA. Start looking for him in the populated tribal areas of the North-West Frontier Province and in the other provinces of Pakistan. Set up a special group to re-interrogate all the top guns of Al Qaeda arrested in Pakistan. Find out how the tapes are reaching Al Jazeera from Pakistan. Trace them back to wherefrom they started their journey. Seek the co-operation of the Sindhis, the Mohajirs, the Balochs and the Shias of Pakistan in the search for him.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi,and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
( An updated version of an article titled "The Oracle of Al Qaeda" written by me on October 3,2003, available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers9/paper808.html )
"Watch out if you are over six feet tall. The CIA's Predator aircraft have been programmed to kill all those above six feet, hoping one of them would turn out to be bin Laden."
So said the graffiti in villages in the Pashtun tribal belt of Pakistan in 2003, reflecting the extent to which the US hunt for Osama bin Laden had become a butt of ridicule amongst the tribals.
Osama, Osama everywhere, yet nowhere to be found. The US has been desperately hunting for him ever since he reportedly escaped from the exotic-sounding Tora Bora caves of Afghanistan in 2002, injured and slightly incapacitated by a sharpnel, but alive and kicking.
And leading. So claimed his followers. His hand was felt, but not seen from Bali to Mombasa, from Riyadh to Casablanca, from Madrid to London.
He became like Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Feared, but not seen. Hunted relentlessly, but not found.
Offers of rewards of millions of dollars did not help. Naturally, said an intelligence analyst. The tribals are so poor and illiterate that they don't know what is a million dollar reward. If one offered them instead a plot of land or a few dozen goats they would join the hunt with gusto. So it was said.
And so it was done. But without results. Neither offers of dollars nor plots nor goats would interest the tribals. Why? The answer is simple, my dear Americans, wrote Mr.Afrasiab Khattak, a well-known Pashtun leader of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), in the "Dawn" of May 10, 2003. Osama was nowhere in the tribal belt, according to him.
He wrote: "The myth of no-man's land and the wild north-west comes quite handy as a spin and as a diversion when the Government fails to muster the required political will for taking the bull of terrorism right by the horns."
Gen.Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's then military dictator, sent the Americans on a wild goose chase in the forbidding tribal land. "Osama can't be alive," he said in 2002. He always moved around with a large entourage to protect him. Even if one failed to notice him, one would not fail to notice his retinue. So he used to say.
Then, tricky Mush, as his retired seniors in the Army used to call him, had a different spin. He was alive, he admitted, but in the no-go land of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where no British soldier had ever gone and come back alive.
"We Pakistanis are of a different mettle," said the legendary commando. "We will go where no British dared. And we will find him dead or alive. " The Americans were duly impressed. Gave him another three billion dollars at Camp David.
Lollipops kept pouring into Pakistan in the expectation that Musharraf would help the US rid the world of Osama and his terrorist hordes. Hadn't he already delivered nearly 500 Al Qaeda types?
What he did was to round up many poor Arabs living in Pakistan who had become a social pest and make them a charge on the US tax-payers' money. Only five Al Qaeda leaders of real consequence were caught and handed over to the US. And that too, only after the US intelligence came to know of their sanctuaries in Pakistan and he had no other option but to arrest them.
Where were they found? asked the Pashtun leader. Abu Zubaidah in Faislabad in Pakistani Punjab;Ramzi Binalshibh and Waleed bin Attash in Karachi, Musharraf's home town after he migrated to Pakistan from India, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the so-called master-mind of 9/11, in Rawalpindi, where the Army's GHQ is located. Nowhere in the tribal belt. Only Abu Faraj al-Libi was found in the tribal belt in 2005.
And in Karachi was harboured the injured Osama till August ,2002. In the Binori madrasa, which has produced more terrorists than all the other madrasas of Pakistan put together. That was the one place where Musharraf should have searched for him, if he was really sincere about wanting to help the US.
And that was one place where he did not search for him. Why? Because he knew Osama was there. And the Americans did not. After Osama knew that the US intelligence traced his presence in Tora Bora through his communications with his followers, he totally stopped using modern means of communications.
After Binalshibh was caught in a different hide-out in Karachi in September 2002, because he had indiscreetly used the telephone, Osama was whisked out of Binori and possibly Karachi.
Is Osama still alive or dead? If alive, where is he? There are only three who know the answers to these questions definitively. Allah, the ISI and those who produce and disseminate through Al Jazeera videos and audios purporting to be his provided they are authentic.
Why doesn't the ISI arrest and hand him over to the US and get a few more billions of dollars? Because of a fear that he might spill the beans about his links with the ISI.
Why doesn't the ISI get him killed and be rid of this nuisance? Because of a fear that Osama's terrorist hordes may no longer help Pakistan in India and Afghanistan. And an equally strong fear that Pakistan may lose its importance in the eyes of the US, if Osama and Al Qaeda were no longer there.
The Pakistanis know their Americans. How naive and trusting, the Americans can be. Didn't Ahmed Chalabi and other anti-Saddam money-makers make millions from the CIA and the DIA by feeding imaginary reports about Saddam's WMD and by telling the then US Vice-President Dick Cheney and the then Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the Iraqi people would welcome the US troops as liberators.
And since November 2002 an oracle started getting disseminated one tape after another purportedly of Osama and his No.2 Ayman al-Zawahiri. These tapes started coming out of Pakistan and reaching Al Jazeera and other Arab channels like rabbits out of a magician's hat.
The tapes kept coming at periodic intervals. The Congressional committees kept holding one session after another with testimonies by the top guns of the US intelligence and Armed Forces regarding the whereabouts of bin Laden. We know now he is in North Waziristan, they said.
US Drones went after him----attacking one suspected hide-out after another. They killed a lot of people. The world was told they were top guns of Al Qaeda. "We may not have got OBL, but we are eliminating others around him".
"Al Qaeda is weakened even if we have not caught or killed OBL," said one Al Qaeda watcher.
The then President George Bush came out with his own gem: " The fact that Osama has not yet been caught shows that he is trying desperately not to get caught."
Many Al Qaeda cadres---- each of them projected at the time of their capture as the No.3 of Al Qaeda--- were caught in different cities of Pakistan. " We will now know where OBL is. The No.3 will know. We will get it during the interrogation."
Apparently, their interrogation revealed nothing. Either they were tough nuts to crack or they themselves did not know where the hell was OBL.
So the hunt goes on. There has been no business like Al Qaeda and OBL business. How many Al Qaeda watchers must have minted fortunes by claiming to know all that is fit to be known about them!
How many billions Islamabad must have made by pretending to help the US in its search! How much of that must have gone into the jihad chest of Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban!
In an interview to the ABC news on December 6,2009, a sheepish Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, has finally admitted: "The US has had no reliable information on the whereabouts of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in years. Well, we don't know for a fact where Osama Bin Laden is. If we did, we'd go get him."
Well, Mr.Gates, search for him where you have not searched for him so far. You are till now looking for him in the sparsely populated tribal areas of the FATA. Start looking for him in the populated tribal areas of the North-West Frontier Province and in the other provinces of Pakistan. Set up a special group to re-interrogate all the top guns of Al Qaeda arrested in Pakistan. Find out how the tapes are reaching Al Jazeera from Pakistan. Trace them back to wherefrom they started their journey. Seek the co-operation of the Sindhis, the Mohajirs, the Balochs and the Shias of Pakistan in the search for him.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi,and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Indian students turn their backs on US grad schools
Last updated on: December 03, 2009 16:22 IST
http://getahead.rediff.com/report/2009/dec/03/career-enrolment-of-indian-students-to-us-graduate-schools.htm
Graduate students from India [ Images ], who have traditionally dominated the international students category in American schools, have begun shunning US educational institutions.
The Council of Graduate Schools, basing its findings on a country-wide survey, reported last week that enrolment of first-time graduate students from India registered a massive 16-per cent decline in 2008-09, while China registered a 16-per cent growth.
In 2005-06, India had topped the list of international for graduate enrolment with 32 per cent, followed by China with 20 per cent. That percentage declined to minus two per cent in 2007-08 before reaching the current nadir.
"It started a couple of years ago, but the decline has been steeper than I expected," Nathan Bell, director of research and policy analysis, told India Abroad. "I thought there would be some drop in the number of Indian students coming to the US, but I did not expect it to be a 16-per cent drop. That is very significant."
Collectively, students from India, China and South Korea have accounted for about one half of all non-US citizens attending US graduate schools, CGS and the Institute of International Education report. The CGS report shows that after peaking at 12 per cent in 2006, the rate of change in international first-time enrolment has slowed in the past three years.
The CGS found that the overall decline in enrolment at the 10 largest institutions was only six per cent. However, enrolment of Indian students decreased by 17 per cent at the 50 largest institutions, by 16 per cent at the 100 largest institutions, and by 15 per cent at the institutions outside the largest 100. In contrast, first-time enrolment of US graduate students grew six by per cent, the report pointed out, adding that the total enrolment for international students had actually risen by two per cent.
The report attributed the decline in enrolment of Indian students to the global economic crisis, competition from other countries and increased capacity for graduate education in India itself.
When asked how the economic meltdown could be blamed, considering that India had comfortably weathered that storm, Bell said given that India's economy is doing much better that many other countries "It is probable that the economy is not the biggest driver."
Arvind Panagariya, professor of Indian Political Economy at Columbia University, said part of the decline could be explained in context of the increased enrolments of US students. "These tend to be counter-cyclical," Panagriya said. "With the economy doing poorly, more Americans are applying to graduate schools. This naturally crowds out foreign students. But a 16-per cent decline in one year is too large to be explained by this phenomenon alone. Besides, foreign enrolments have been flat, not declined. Visas are probably an important cause, since due to security checks the decisions on granting visas probably do not get made fast enough."
Bell pointed out that students now had options other than the US to chose from. "There are a lot of countries who are working hard to attract international students. The US is not the only destination, which it used to be 20, 30 years ago," he pointed out.
Employment opportunities, or lack thereof, could be another factor, Bell reasoned. Traditionally, after completing their masters or doctorate degrees, Indian students had been virtually assured jobs in the US. "I wonder if there is a perception among international students that more than the US with its economy, there might be better places for finding jobs after graduation," Bell said. "So that part of the global economy could have an effect." Further, he said, India had increased its own capacity for graduate education, thus affording an alternative for students who could now get high quality education without the trouble and expense of leaving the country.
"What may be happening is that some of the brightest graduates are now attracted to the lucrative Indian market rather than higher degrees," Panagriya pointed out. "When you combine this factor with reduced availability of fellowships and assistantships, the diversion to the Indian market could be large."
Renu Khator, president, University of Houston, agrees. "Many American universities had to reduce the size of their entering class in 2009 due to reductions in budget," Khator pointed out. "The number of foreign students may very well be reflective of this reality. There has also been a reduction in financial aid packages being offered by American universities to graduate students, particularly international students. Undoubtedly, the economic difficulties facing American universities throughout the US are major factors leading to the reduced financial aid packages."
Khator pointed out that like other sectors, higher education is also becoming a global market place, as students are travelling to countries like the UK, Canada [ Images ] and Australia [ Images ] based on their interests, convenience and affordability.
"American universities are still among the best in the world in offering research-oriented education; however, not everyone needs or is looking for that kind of an educational experience," Khator told India Abroad.
Asked if this decline had any impact on the US economy, Bell pointed out that the CGS study was not based on that perspective. "I can't say how it would impact the economy. Even though students from India are down this year, the students from China are up. On the whole it is quite flat, there is no change. Obviously, students from India are very important for US grad schools, they being the one of the two largest contributors along with China, and we would like to attract them to the US schools," he said.
Panagariya said the decline was likely a loss to both America and India. "Graduate education in India in most fields is not particularly good, and the US accounts for a very large proportion of annual additions to Indian PhDs," he pointed out. "Therefore, the declining trend is worrisome from India's viewpoint. In so far as some of the most talented students may not be coming to do graduate studies in the US, it is contrary to US interests as well," he said.
Khator said the US benefits a great deal from the fiscal, physical and human capital provided by foreign students who seek higher education in this country. "Since Texas did not suffer economically and its universities did not see a decline in the number of foreign students, it makes me believe that the declining trend is connected primarily with economic difficulties in the US and is temporary," she said, adding that the University of Houston saw a 10 per cent increase in the number of Indian students enrolling in Fall 2009.
http://getahead.rediff.com/report/2009/dec/03/career-enrolment-of-indian-students-to-us-graduate-schools.htm
Graduate students from India [ Images ], who have traditionally dominated the international students category in American schools, have begun shunning US educational institutions.
The Council of Graduate Schools, basing its findings on a country-wide survey, reported last week that enrolment of first-time graduate students from India registered a massive 16-per cent decline in 2008-09, while China registered a 16-per cent growth.
In 2005-06, India had topped the list of international for graduate enrolment with 32 per cent, followed by China with 20 per cent. That percentage declined to minus two per cent in 2007-08 before reaching the current nadir.
"It started a couple of years ago, but the decline has been steeper than I expected," Nathan Bell, director of research and policy analysis, told India Abroad. "I thought there would be some drop in the number of Indian students coming to the US, but I did not expect it to be a 16-per cent drop. That is very significant."
Collectively, students from India, China and South Korea have accounted for about one half of all non-US citizens attending US graduate schools, CGS and the Institute of International Education report. The CGS report shows that after peaking at 12 per cent in 2006, the rate of change in international first-time enrolment has slowed in the past three years.
The CGS found that the overall decline in enrolment at the 10 largest institutions was only six per cent. However, enrolment of Indian students decreased by 17 per cent at the 50 largest institutions, by 16 per cent at the 100 largest institutions, and by 15 per cent at the institutions outside the largest 100. In contrast, first-time enrolment of US graduate students grew six by per cent, the report pointed out, adding that the total enrolment for international students had actually risen by two per cent.
The report attributed the decline in enrolment of Indian students to the global economic crisis, competition from other countries and increased capacity for graduate education in India itself.
When asked how the economic meltdown could be blamed, considering that India had comfortably weathered that storm, Bell said given that India's economy is doing much better that many other countries "It is probable that the economy is not the biggest driver."
Arvind Panagariya, professor of Indian Political Economy at Columbia University, said part of the decline could be explained in context of the increased enrolments of US students. "These tend to be counter-cyclical," Panagriya said. "With the economy doing poorly, more Americans are applying to graduate schools. This naturally crowds out foreign students. But a 16-per cent decline in one year is too large to be explained by this phenomenon alone. Besides, foreign enrolments have been flat, not declined. Visas are probably an important cause, since due to security checks the decisions on granting visas probably do not get made fast enough."
Bell pointed out that students now had options other than the US to chose from. "There are a lot of countries who are working hard to attract international students. The US is not the only destination, which it used to be 20, 30 years ago," he pointed out.
Employment opportunities, or lack thereof, could be another factor, Bell reasoned. Traditionally, after completing their masters or doctorate degrees, Indian students had been virtually assured jobs in the US. "I wonder if there is a perception among international students that more than the US with its economy, there might be better places for finding jobs after graduation," Bell said. "So that part of the global economy could have an effect." Further, he said, India had increased its own capacity for graduate education, thus affording an alternative for students who could now get high quality education without the trouble and expense of leaving the country.
"What may be happening is that some of the brightest graduates are now attracted to the lucrative Indian market rather than higher degrees," Panagriya pointed out. "When you combine this factor with reduced availability of fellowships and assistantships, the diversion to the Indian market could be large."
Renu Khator, president, University of Houston, agrees. "Many American universities had to reduce the size of their entering class in 2009 due to reductions in budget," Khator pointed out. "The number of foreign students may very well be reflective of this reality. There has also been a reduction in financial aid packages being offered by American universities to graduate students, particularly international students. Undoubtedly, the economic difficulties facing American universities throughout the US are major factors leading to the reduced financial aid packages."
Khator pointed out that like other sectors, higher education is also becoming a global market place, as students are travelling to countries like the UK, Canada [ Images ] and Australia [ Images ] based on their interests, convenience and affordability.
"American universities are still among the best in the world in offering research-oriented education; however, not everyone needs or is looking for that kind of an educational experience," Khator told India Abroad.
Asked if this decline had any impact on the US economy, Bell pointed out that the CGS study was not based on that perspective. "I can't say how it would impact the economy. Even though students from India are down this year, the students from China are up. On the whole it is quite flat, there is no change. Obviously, students from India are very important for US grad schools, they being the one of the two largest contributors along with China, and we would like to attract them to the US schools," he said.
Panagariya said the decline was likely a loss to both America and India. "Graduate education in India in most fields is not particularly good, and the US accounts for a very large proportion of annual additions to Indian PhDs," he pointed out. "Therefore, the declining trend is worrisome from India's viewpoint. In so far as some of the most talented students may not be coming to do graduate studies in the US, it is contrary to US interests as well," he said.
Khator said the US benefits a great deal from the fiscal, physical and human capital provided by foreign students who seek higher education in this country. "Since Texas did not suffer economically and its universities did not see a decline in the number of foreign students, it makes me believe that the declining trend is connected primarily with economic difficulties in the US and is temporary," she said, adding that the University of Houston saw a 10 per cent increase in the number of Indian students enrolling in Fall 2009.
SWAT:Death of Dr.Khan
By Khurshid Khan
December 5, 2009
Shamshir Ali Khan popularly known as Dr. Khan was assassinated in his native village on the eve of the holy day of Eid ul Azha, the day Muslims all over the world celebrate in the honour of the Prophet Ibrahim’s sacrifice of his son in compliance to the will of Almighty. God was pleased by his remarkable submission and instead of his dear son, the sacrifice of a sheep was accepted and from the day onward, Muslims sacrifice animals to commemorate this sublime event in the submission of God every year.
In the Indian mythology a goddess, Kali Mata (Black Mother), was exhilarated by the human sacrifices (Bali Dan) in her honour. The Hindus continued the brutal ritual till the occupation by East India Company which discouraged this inhuman ritual. Certain fundamentalist Hindus still believe in this myth but don’t have the spine to revive this ritual in the present day’s world.
Dr. Khan was born in 1950 at Derai, Swat in the house of Abdur Rashid Khan locally known as Derai Khan and Khan Baba. Khan Baba is famous for his integrity and strict adherence to the Pukhtunwali-the Pukhtun code of life - across the valley. To the People, he is the perfect embodiment of a typical Pukhtun. He was a close companion of Bacha Khan, Wali Khan and still supports the nationalist Awami National Party (ANP) with extraordinary zeal and commitment. Derai Khan was considered a strong opponent by the late Wali of Swat in the Swat State era.
Abdur Rahid Khan never bowed down in front of militants and remained in Swat through out the insurgency. During this tumultuous period, militants incinerated his Hujra and blew up his house abducted his two sons, Wakeel and Shawkat, and a grand son. His grand son was accidentally killed in military shelling while Shawkat was seriously wounded who was rescued by the military later, from Kalakalai and Wakeel was, later on, rescued in a commando operation in Dardyal, Swat.
Derai Khan endured all these catastrophes with a demonour that behooves a great Pukhtun and never poured out his heart to anyone whosoever. He suffered with his people in his village while the Army was dislodging the whole valley for launching its decisive assault operation, Rahi-e-Rast in Swat.
The whole atmosphere was pregnant with apprehensions and bad omens on the doomed day when a suicide bomber blew up himself in front of Shmasher Ali Khan assassinating him and wounding fourteen persons including two children and his two brothers, Wakeel and Shawkat on 1st December, 2009. The attack was calculative, well planned and targeted which blasted all the security measures separating the Khan from the rest of the world in mere seconds. The news spread like a wild fire in the whole valley and the peaceful atmosphere of Swat once again landed in chaos and uncertainty. The unexpected and untoward incident was so sudden that it was hard for anyone to believe it.
Major General Ashfaq Nadeem, Brigadier Salman Akbar, ANP workers, friends and people of the area participated in his funeral ceremony.
Major General Ashfaq Nadeem, Brigadier Salman Akbar, ANP workers, friends and people of the area participated in his funeral ceremony.
Speaking on the occasion of the sad demise of his son, Abdur Rashid Khan, father of the Dr. Khan, said, “I am proud of my son’s martyrdom as he laid down his life for the cause of peace in Swat, serving the people of the area is the mission of my family and nobody could dare deter us from this noble cause”.
Khan Baba again affirmed his commitment and said, “His family did not abandon the people of Swat when the militants were active in the area. We didn’t bow to the militants’ will and will not do so in future”.
Strange is the Puktun race and strange are its ways: always kill and discredit those who love them instead, to be loved. A hypothesis/ theory about their origin, Bani-Israelites, seems proving true.
The protest over the tragic death of the Khan was obvious. The Swat Bar Council boycotted the courts and condemned the assassination of their colleague followed by students, civil society and traders of the valley. Provincial Government declared a day’s mourning across the province while three days in Swat. The flag flew at half-mast on all the government buildings in Pukhtunkhwa. The national dailies condemned his murder through Editorials.
Shamshir Ali Khan shouldered the responsibilities of his party in a critical time and proved himself a mature leader when Afzal Khan Lala parted ways with ANP. The District Cabinet of ANP Swat sided with Khan Lalala and left the party in crises. Shamshir Ali Khan emerged as the new leadership in the valley. He toured across the valley and the adjoining districts of Bunair, Dir and Shangla along with Wajid Ali Khan and Sardar Hussain Bacha. After a long and tough consultative process Shamshir Ali Khan became the president of ANP Swat while Wajid Ali Khan and Sardar Hussain Bacha General Secretary and Salar, respectively. In the opposition of such a towering personality like Afzal Khan Lala he tactfully organized the party and that was a Herculean task, he accomplished.
Dr. Khan contested elections for Provincial Assembly many times but was elected in the general election of Feb 18, 2008. Being an educated parliamentarian, he was regarded as one of the seasoned members in the provincial assembly. Mr. Khan, being a courteous and soft spoken person, gained respect in the Government machinery in a very short time due to his humanistic attitude. He was a person who clearly falsified the notion that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. He neither misused his powerful public representative status nor adapted the traditions of our corrupt political culture in the country and never compromised on his dignity and honour.
Dr. Khan was a learned, decent, tolerant, brave and trusted person like his father and forefathers. He died as a hero and will be remembered as a hero, for ever.
Email: bazirkhan@gmail.com
December 5, 2009
Shamshir Ali Khan popularly known as Dr. Khan was assassinated in his native village on the eve of the holy day of Eid ul Azha, the day Muslims all over the world celebrate in the honour of the Prophet Ibrahim’s sacrifice of his son in compliance to the will of Almighty. God was pleased by his remarkable submission and instead of his dear son, the sacrifice of a sheep was accepted and from the day onward, Muslims sacrifice animals to commemorate this sublime event in the submission of God every year.
In the Indian mythology a goddess, Kali Mata (Black Mother), was exhilarated by the human sacrifices (Bali Dan) in her honour. The Hindus continued the brutal ritual till the occupation by East India Company which discouraged this inhuman ritual. Certain fundamentalist Hindus still believe in this myth but don’t have the spine to revive this ritual in the present day’s world.
Dr. Khan was born in 1950 at Derai, Swat in the house of Abdur Rashid Khan locally known as Derai Khan and Khan Baba. Khan Baba is famous for his integrity and strict adherence to the Pukhtunwali-the Pukhtun code of life - across the valley. To the People, he is the perfect embodiment of a typical Pukhtun. He was a close companion of Bacha Khan, Wali Khan and still supports the nationalist Awami National Party (ANP) with extraordinary zeal and commitment. Derai Khan was considered a strong opponent by the late Wali of Swat in the Swat State era.
Abdur Rahid Khan never bowed down in front of militants and remained in Swat through out the insurgency. During this tumultuous period, militants incinerated his Hujra and blew up his house abducted his two sons, Wakeel and Shawkat, and a grand son. His grand son was accidentally killed in military shelling while Shawkat was seriously wounded who was rescued by the military later, from Kalakalai and Wakeel was, later on, rescued in a commando operation in Dardyal, Swat.
Derai Khan endured all these catastrophes with a demonour that behooves a great Pukhtun and never poured out his heart to anyone whosoever. He suffered with his people in his village while the Army was dislodging the whole valley for launching its decisive assault operation, Rahi-e-Rast in Swat.
The whole atmosphere was pregnant with apprehensions and bad omens on the doomed day when a suicide bomber blew up himself in front of Shmasher Ali Khan assassinating him and wounding fourteen persons including two children and his two brothers, Wakeel and Shawkat on 1st December, 2009. The attack was calculative, well planned and targeted which blasted all the security measures separating the Khan from the rest of the world in mere seconds. The news spread like a wild fire in the whole valley and the peaceful atmosphere of Swat once again landed in chaos and uncertainty. The unexpected and untoward incident was so sudden that it was hard for anyone to believe it.
Major General Ashfaq Nadeem, Brigadier Salman Akbar, ANP workers, friends and people of the area participated in his funeral ceremony.
Major General Ashfaq Nadeem, Brigadier Salman Akbar, ANP workers, friends and people of the area participated in his funeral ceremony.
Speaking on the occasion of the sad demise of his son, Abdur Rashid Khan, father of the Dr. Khan, said, “I am proud of my son’s martyrdom as he laid down his life for the cause of peace in Swat, serving the people of the area is the mission of my family and nobody could dare deter us from this noble cause”.
Khan Baba again affirmed his commitment and said, “His family did not abandon the people of Swat when the militants were active in the area. We didn’t bow to the militants’ will and will not do so in future”.
Strange is the Puktun race and strange are its ways: always kill and discredit those who love them instead, to be loved. A hypothesis/ theory about their origin, Bani-Israelites, seems proving true.
The protest over the tragic death of the Khan was obvious. The Swat Bar Council boycotted the courts and condemned the assassination of their colleague followed by students, civil society and traders of the valley. Provincial Government declared a day’s mourning across the province while three days in Swat. The flag flew at half-mast on all the government buildings in Pukhtunkhwa. The national dailies condemned his murder through Editorials.
Shamshir Ali Khan shouldered the responsibilities of his party in a critical time and proved himself a mature leader when Afzal Khan Lala parted ways with ANP. The District Cabinet of ANP Swat sided with Khan Lalala and left the party in crises. Shamshir Ali Khan emerged as the new leadership in the valley. He toured across the valley and the adjoining districts of Bunair, Dir and Shangla along with Wajid Ali Khan and Sardar Hussain Bacha. After a long and tough consultative process Shamshir Ali Khan became the president of ANP Swat while Wajid Ali Khan and Sardar Hussain Bacha General Secretary and Salar, respectively. In the opposition of such a towering personality like Afzal Khan Lala he tactfully organized the party and that was a Herculean task, he accomplished.
Dr. Khan contested elections for Provincial Assembly many times but was elected in the general election of Feb 18, 2008. Being an educated parliamentarian, he was regarded as one of the seasoned members in the provincial assembly. Mr. Khan, being a courteous and soft spoken person, gained respect in the Government machinery in a very short time due to his humanistic attitude. He was a person who clearly falsified the notion that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. He neither misused his powerful public representative status nor adapted the traditions of our corrupt political culture in the country and never compromised on his dignity and honour.
Dr. Khan was a learned, decent, tolerant, brave and trusted person like his father and forefathers. He died as a hero and will be remembered as a hero, for ever.
Email: bazirkhan@gmail.com
Troop Surge in Afghanistan: Related Nuances
By Divya Kumar Soti
The efficacy of troop surge and new tactics will be put to test in upcoming spring.
President Obama has yielded to demand of 30,000 more troops by US commanders in Afghanistan. It will be in all foreseeability last troop surge of its kind in Afghanistan. This is underlined by repeated statements from White house that US’ Afghan commitment is not open-ended. There is already lot of friction on Capitol Hill and within Obama administration over this troop surge and winnability of war in Afghanistan.
Although Gen McChrystal’s review of strategy in Afghanistan, on which this latest surge is founded, suggested some smart evolutions and tactical innovations like redeployment of intelligence assets in such a way as to manipulate local equations but prolonged internal debate within Obama Administration have delayed implementation of Gen McChrystal’s report. The panel headed by McChrystal tried to incorporate suggestions from a too wide spectrum including some Washington think tanks advocating swift exit. All these lengthy processes helped Taliban recover from whatever little losses it suffered due to last spring surge. Such reversals increase risks of co-operating with NATO forces for tribal leaders and push local tribal leaders towards Taliban as in afghan landscape if you are a tribal leader you can’t remain neutral.
Now efficacy of this latest troop surge will be tested in upcoming spring. As the winters are already here, operations in far-flung rural areas will slow down and focus shifts to urban centers. So, the main challenge for Gen McChrystal will be to secure major cities like Kabul and Kandhar from audacious strikes by Taliban during winters. Over last one year Taliban has repeatedly managed to hit major installations in Kabul and Kandhar. Taliban managed to concentrate on outskirts of Kandhar during last winters.
In its review, Gen McChrystal panel has devised some community based plans to stop roadside IED blasts learning from their experiences in Iraq. The success of such basic tactical changes will be initial indicators of success during winters.
Annual Spring Challenge
Over the last three years, every spring comes with a challenge of new wave of violence. During winters, Taliban regroups, recruit and train in safe havens across the Durand line in Pak tribal areas. However, this year a winter offensive by Pak army against Tehrik-e-Taliban-Pakistan and foreign fighters is currently underway in tribal areas. Despite high claims by Pak army, offensive’s real effect will only be known in spring, as there is little or no flow of independent information out these areas given Media’s very limited access to this area. However, information coming out from intelligence sources is not very encouraging. There are reports that most of TTP fighters have taken refuge with tribal warlords like Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazir. Ironically, Pak army entered into peace agreements with both of them before launching its offensive against TTP citing operational viability. There are no reports of any major damage to TTP as it swiftly shied away from putting up any major resistance to Pak army. Moreover, Pak army has not so far targeted Haqanni network.
On the other hand, US drone strikes have done considerable damage to Al-Qaeda and Haqanni network over last few months. There are reports of militants shifting to North Waziristan in wake of increasing drone strikes in South. Some intelligence reports also suggest shifting by some militant leaders to Balochistan. But, drone strikes have demonstrated some limitations inasmuch as they are focused on a particular area for a particular period. Moreover, drone strikes have not targeted Quetta Shura so far, thus, enabling it to function with substantial impunity. All this is raising fears that this winter offensive may end up yielding similar results as those of similar offensives in tribal areas during Musharraf years.
(The author is an intelligence affairs analyst and may be reached at writing2divya@gmail.com)
The efficacy of troop surge and new tactics will be put to test in upcoming spring.
President Obama has yielded to demand of 30,000 more troops by US commanders in Afghanistan. It will be in all foreseeability last troop surge of its kind in Afghanistan. This is underlined by repeated statements from White house that US’ Afghan commitment is not open-ended. There is already lot of friction on Capitol Hill and within Obama administration over this troop surge and winnability of war in Afghanistan.
Although Gen McChrystal’s review of strategy in Afghanistan, on which this latest surge is founded, suggested some smart evolutions and tactical innovations like redeployment of intelligence assets in such a way as to manipulate local equations but prolonged internal debate within Obama Administration have delayed implementation of Gen McChrystal’s report. The panel headed by McChrystal tried to incorporate suggestions from a too wide spectrum including some Washington think tanks advocating swift exit. All these lengthy processes helped Taliban recover from whatever little losses it suffered due to last spring surge. Such reversals increase risks of co-operating with NATO forces for tribal leaders and push local tribal leaders towards Taliban as in afghan landscape if you are a tribal leader you can’t remain neutral.
Now efficacy of this latest troop surge will be tested in upcoming spring. As the winters are already here, operations in far-flung rural areas will slow down and focus shifts to urban centers. So, the main challenge for Gen McChrystal will be to secure major cities like Kabul and Kandhar from audacious strikes by Taliban during winters. Over last one year Taliban has repeatedly managed to hit major installations in Kabul and Kandhar. Taliban managed to concentrate on outskirts of Kandhar during last winters.
In its review, Gen McChrystal panel has devised some community based plans to stop roadside IED blasts learning from their experiences in Iraq. The success of such basic tactical changes will be initial indicators of success during winters.
Annual Spring Challenge
Over the last three years, every spring comes with a challenge of new wave of violence. During winters, Taliban regroups, recruit and train in safe havens across the Durand line in Pak tribal areas. However, this year a winter offensive by Pak army against Tehrik-e-Taliban-Pakistan and foreign fighters is currently underway in tribal areas. Despite high claims by Pak army, offensive’s real effect will only be known in spring, as there is little or no flow of independent information out these areas given Media’s very limited access to this area. However, information coming out from intelligence sources is not very encouraging. There are reports that most of TTP fighters have taken refuge with tribal warlords like Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazir. Ironically, Pak army entered into peace agreements with both of them before launching its offensive against TTP citing operational viability. There are no reports of any major damage to TTP as it swiftly shied away from putting up any major resistance to Pak army. Moreover, Pak army has not so far targeted Haqanni network.
On the other hand, US drone strikes have done considerable damage to Al-Qaeda and Haqanni network over last few months. There are reports of militants shifting to North Waziristan in wake of increasing drone strikes in South. Some intelligence reports also suggest shifting by some militant leaders to Balochistan. But, drone strikes have demonstrated some limitations inasmuch as they are focused on a particular area for a particular period. Moreover, drone strikes have not targeted Quetta Shura so far, thus, enabling it to function with substantial impunity. All this is raising fears that this winter offensive may end up yielding similar results as those of similar offensives in tribal areas during Musharraf years.
(The author is an intelligence affairs analyst and may be reached at writing2divya@gmail.com)
December 04, 2009
THE SOMALI FRONT OF THE GLOBAL JIHAD
B.RAMAN
Al Qaeda looks upon its continuing jihad against the so-called Crusaders --- thereby meaning essentially the US, Israel and their supporters--- as a global intifada waged on many fronts and through many means. In this global jihad, Afghanistan, Somalia and Algeria are seen as battle fronts, which will determine the ultimate outcome. Afghanistan is seen as the core of the battle, Somalia as its southern front and Algeria as the Western front.
2. In a message disseminated on December 20,2006, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No.2 to Osama bin Laden in Al Qaeda, said: “Brothers in Islam and Jihad in Somalia: know that you are on the southern garrison of Islam, so don’t allow Islam to be attacked from your flank, and know that we are with you, and that the entire Muslim Ummah is with you. So don’t lose heart, or fall into despair, for you must dominate if you are true in faith. And know that you are fending off the same Crusade which is fighting your brothers in Islam in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. So be resolute, be patient and be optimistic, for by Allah beside whom there is no other God, even if your enemies possess thousands of tons of iron and explosives, in their chests lie the hearts of mice. So be severe against them like Muhammad was. "
3. To keep the jihad going in Somalia is one of its important objectives. For this purpose, it uses not only recruits from the impoverished local population, but also from the Somali diaspora in the West----including the US--- as well as jihad-hardened cadres sent from the battle fronts in the Af-Pak region. The Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) of Pakistan has had a long history of contacts with the Muslim population in Somalia and East African countries just as it has with the Muslim population of Chechnya and Dagestan. Though the TJ itself does not indulge in acts of terrorism, it plays an important role in facilitating the ideological motivation of the population on behalf of Al Qaeda.
4. In September 2009, Al Shabaab, meaning “The Lads”, an organization of Somali youths, was reported to have disseminated through Islamic web sites usually identified with Al Qaeda a 48-minute video documentary in which it proclaimed its allegiance to Osama bin Laden. It derives its name “The Lads” from the fact that it used to be the youth wing of a fundamentalist organization called the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which had established control over some parts of Somalia and was ultimately crushed by invading Ethiopian troops in 2006. While the elders of the UIC disappeared after being defeated by the better trained and better armed Ethiopian troops allegedly inspired and aided by the US, the Al Shabaab replaced the UIC as a born-again jihadi organization, which was determined to continue the jihad against the troops of the African Union, which had replaced the Ethiopian troops, and of the UN-backed local Government, which it viewed as apostate.
5. Though Somalis had participated in acts of suicide terrorism on behalf of Al Qaeda in other countries, suicide terrorism was unknown in Somalia itself till Al Shabaab made its appearance in 2006. Even though it proclaimed its loyalty to bin Laden only in September,2009, it had carried out a number of acts of suicide terrorism against local Government targets as well as the peace-keeping troops of the African Union ever since the AU troops took over their peace-keeping responsibility in Somalia. Al Shabaab has been waging a two-front jihad---- against the AU troops and the local Government being protected by the AU troops. The first act of suicide terrorism took place on September 18,2006. Since then, there have been 13 suicide attacks--- two in 2006, four in 2007, two in 2008 and five this year.
6. The Al Shabaab cadres, many of whom had allegedly served with the Afghan Mujahideen, the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the Af-Pak region, look upon their jihad as similar to the jihad waged by the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet troops and those of the Government of the then President Najibullah in the 1980s and the early 1990s.
7. In a serious attack of suicide terrorism, a male suicide bomber dressed as a woman managed to find his way into a graduation ceremony of medical students in a Mogadishu hotel on December 3,2009, and blew himself up killing 19 persons, including three Ministers of the Cabinet of Prime Minister Omar Sharmarke of the UN-backed Government. Even though no organization has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, Al Shabaab is strongly suspected by the local authorities.
8. Though there is so far no evidence of any nexus between Al Shabaab and the Somali pirates, the dangers of money earned from piracy going to the coffers of Al Qaeda and the availability in Somalia of sea-faring people who could be used by Al Qaeda for future acts of maritime terrorism cannot be ignored.
9. A Reuters report carried on December 4,2009, by the “Daily Times” of Lahore has quoted Bethuel Kiplagat, who used to be Kenya’s special envoy to the Somalia peace process from 2003 to 2005, as saying as follows: “Suicide bombings are a worrying trend not only for Somalia but also the region. There has been a rise in fundamentalism in Somalia coming from the Middle East and Pakistan. There’s a worry Al Qaeda may be looking at Somalia as a new sanctuary.”
10. On March 16,2009, Mohamed Mohamed of the BBC’s Somali section, reported as follows: “As well as alleged links to al-Qaeda it is said to have Arabs, Asians, other Africans and - America's FBI believes - Westerners among its ranks. These foreigners are said to be involved in training Al Sabaab recruits in various aspects of guerrilla warfare, including suicide bombings and booby traps.”
11. On February 29, 2008, the then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice designated Al Shabaab as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act . (4-12-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
Al Qaeda looks upon its continuing jihad against the so-called Crusaders --- thereby meaning essentially the US, Israel and their supporters--- as a global intifada waged on many fronts and through many means. In this global jihad, Afghanistan, Somalia and Algeria are seen as battle fronts, which will determine the ultimate outcome. Afghanistan is seen as the core of the battle, Somalia as its southern front and Algeria as the Western front.
2. In a message disseminated on December 20,2006, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No.2 to Osama bin Laden in Al Qaeda, said: “Brothers in Islam and Jihad in Somalia: know that you are on the southern garrison of Islam, so don’t allow Islam to be attacked from your flank, and know that we are with you, and that the entire Muslim Ummah is with you. So don’t lose heart, or fall into despair, for you must dominate if you are true in faith. And know that you are fending off the same Crusade which is fighting your brothers in Islam in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. So be resolute, be patient and be optimistic, for by Allah beside whom there is no other God, even if your enemies possess thousands of tons of iron and explosives, in their chests lie the hearts of mice. So be severe against them like Muhammad was. "
3. To keep the jihad going in Somalia is one of its important objectives. For this purpose, it uses not only recruits from the impoverished local population, but also from the Somali diaspora in the West----including the US--- as well as jihad-hardened cadres sent from the battle fronts in the Af-Pak region. The Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) of Pakistan has had a long history of contacts with the Muslim population in Somalia and East African countries just as it has with the Muslim population of Chechnya and Dagestan. Though the TJ itself does not indulge in acts of terrorism, it plays an important role in facilitating the ideological motivation of the population on behalf of Al Qaeda.
4. In September 2009, Al Shabaab, meaning “The Lads”, an organization of Somali youths, was reported to have disseminated through Islamic web sites usually identified with Al Qaeda a 48-minute video documentary in which it proclaimed its allegiance to Osama bin Laden. It derives its name “The Lads” from the fact that it used to be the youth wing of a fundamentalist organization called the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which had established control over some parts of Somalia and was ultimately crushed by invading Ethiopian troops in 2006. While the elders of the UIC disappeared after being defeated by the better trained and better armed Ethiopian troops allegedly inspired and aided by the US, the Al Shabaab replaced the UIC as a born-again jihadi organization, which was determined to continue the jihad against the troops of the African Union, which had replaced the Ethiopian troops, and of the UN-backed local Government, which it viewed as apostate.
5. Though Somalis had participated in acts of suicide terrorism on behalf of Al Qaeda in other countries, suicide terrorism was unknown in Somalia itself till Al Shabaab made its appearance in 2006. Even though it proclaimed its loyalty to bin Laden only in September,2009, it had carried out a number of acts of suicide terrorism against local Government targets as well as the peace-keeping troops of the African Union ever since the AU troops took over their peace-keeping responsibility in Somalia. Al Shabaab has been waging a two-front jihad---- against the AU troops and the local Government being protected by the AU troops. The first act of suicide terrorism took place on September 18,2006. Since then, there have been 13 suicide attacks--- two in 2006, four in 2007, two in 2008 and five this year.
6. The Al Shabaab cadres, many of whom had allegedly served with the Afghan Mujahideen, the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the Af-Pak region, look upon their jihad as similar to the jihad waged by the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet troops and those of the Government of the then President Najibullah in the 1980s and the early 1990s.
7. In a serious attack of suicide terrorism, a male suicide bomber dressed as a woman managed to find his way into a graduation ceremony of medical students in a Mogadishu hotel on December 3,2009, and blew himself up killing 19 persons, including three Ministers of the Cabinet of Prime Minister Omar Sharmarke of the UN-backed Government. Even though no organization has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, Al Shabaab is strongly suspected by the local authorities.
8. Though there is so far no evidence of any nexus between Al Shabaab and the Somali pirates, the dangers of money earned from piracy going to the coffers of Al Qaeda and the availability in Somalia of sea-faring people who could be used by Al Qaeda for future acts of maritime terrorism cannot be ignored.
9. A Reuters report carried on December 4,2009, by the “Daily Times” of Lahore has quoted Bethuel Kiplagat, who used to be Kenya’s special envoy to the Somalia peace process from 2003 to 2005, as saying as follows: “Suicide bombings are a worrying trend not only for Somalia but also the region. There has been a rise in fundamentalism in Somalia coming from the Middle East and Pakistan. There’s a worry Al Qaeda may be looking at Somalia as a new sanctuary.”
10. On March 16,2009, Mohamed Mohamed of the BBC’s Somali section, reported as follows: “As well as alleged links to al-Qaeda it is said to have Arabs, Asians, other Africans and - America's FBI believes - Westerners among its ranks. These foreigners are said to be involved in training Al Sabaab recruits in various aspects of guerrilla warfare, including suicide bombings and booby traps.”
11. On February 29, 2008, the then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice designated Al Shabaab as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act . (4-12-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
December 03, 2009
A Wish List for Santa Putin
By Tom Balmforth
Russia Profile
Vladimir Putin’s Longest-Ever Question-and-Answer Session Was the Usual Combination of Politics and Conspicuous Munificence
According to one analyst, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was like “Father Christmas dishing out presents” during his question-and-answer session on December 3, making a raft of promises and pledges to anxious callers. Reviving Russia’s single-industry cities and combating terrorism were the main topics at the four-hour phone-in session, as Putin tried to calm a nation shaken by the economic crisis and the Nevsky Express bombing last week. Several recent polls suggest the prime minister’s popularity has taken a tumble. So what did Putin set out to achieve in the call-in? And was it anything more than a long-winded exercise in self-promotion?
“The peak of the crisis has been overcome ... But the exit from the crisis takes time, strength and no small amount of funds,” Putin said today at his second call-in session as prime minister. Putin was optimistic about Russia’s economic recovery, pointing to the economy’s average monthly growth of 0.5 percent in the last five months. Unlike the last financial crisis in 1998, Russia now has a much better demographic situation, which is good news for the country’s economic recovery, Putin said. Whereas in 1998, the birth rate was falling and the death rate rising, exactly the opposite is the case today. “Birth rates are growing at a record pace, soon to exceed three percent, and death rates are also falling ... This has an economic impact too, because it supports demand,” he said. “My main impression today is that Putin is eager to keep citizens thinking that the crisis is almost over,” said Nikolai Petrov, an expert on domestic politics at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
During the nationally televised phone-in session Putin was connected to live video feeds from various single-industry towns, or “monogorods,” and took questions from congregations of immaculately turned-out factory workers, lined up in neat rows and wearing hard hats. The first city to be video-streamed was Pikalyovo, a cement-producing monogorod in the Leningrad region where Putin is lauded as a savior for his role in settling a managerial squabble that had brought all three of the town’s factories – and its power station -- to a halt, depriving the residents of both jobs and hot water. The first Pikalyovo factory-worker to speak began by thanking his great benefactor profusely for having come to the rescue of the monogorod half a year ago, but requested that Putin come again because a similar row is developing. Putin replied firmly and unequivocally. "If the situation demands, I will come to you and to any other place in the country. It is my duty."
The prime minister restated his commitment to fighting for the Russian industry. Steel producers will be propped up through continued government support for Russia’s steel-consuming industries, including its ailing car sector. When the video feed was streamed from Togliatti, home of AvtoVaz, Putin stressed his support for the Lada-making brand and suggested that it might soon attract further foreign investment from Renault.
Out of the 1.5 million questions received three hours before the session began, queries about the terrorist attack on the Neva Express were the most numerous, Dmitry Peskov, the prime minister’s spokesman, told RIA Novosti in the run-up to the phone-in. The day before the broadcast a group calling itself the Caucasian Mujahedin, led by Doku Umarov, Russia’s most wanted terrorist, claimed responsibility for the bomb attack, which killed 26 people on Friday evening. The authenticity of the claim was impossible to verify, but for Russians it has brought back memories of the appalling terrorist acts of the first half of the decade. Since Putin largely built his reputation on putting an end to these horrors, it was apt that he first answered a question about terrorism.
"We have done a lot to break the back of terrorism, but the threat has not been fully liquidated ... The threat of terrorism remains very high," he said. Nonetheless, the prime minister was quick to rule out the possibility of a war in the North Caucasus, a region where assassinations and terrorism have now become routine. "Do events in Ingushetia, Dagestan and other regions signal the start of a new war in the Caucasus? No. I don't sense any sort of war in the Caucasus. The situation is difficult ... There are still extremist groups. That's a fact, and we will continue to fight them until they are completely extinguished."
Putin also reaffirmed his close working relationship with Medvedev, but again suggested he could run for president in 2012. “I will think about it. There is plenty of time,” he said.
Apart from this, much of the four-hour marathon was devoted to specific complaints from Russians. Putin invariably vowed to resolve these quibbles, usually with the promise of money. At one point he reassured a man who complained that his war veteran aunt had been denied the free accommodation Putin had publicly promised. Not to worry, said the prime minister – it is on its way. “The decision has been taken and it is final. We are allocating the funds for this in 2010,” Putin said.
“In general, Putin looked good today. He likes this format and he looks professional. Every time around he is eager to increase the length of the annual session and the number of questions answered,” said Petrov. Still, this image-boosting dimension to Putin’s phone-ins is nothing new. As Aleksei Mukhin, head of the Center for Political Information, put it, “by now people have realized that with the help of Putin they can resolve any of their little but real problems: problems they’ve encountered with the state system, problems getting registered for treatment in hospitals, or getting their pensions increased. People in Russia are now beginning to think of Vladimir Putin as Father Christmas,” said Mukhin.
So, was the real purpose of Putin’s record length phone-in today just to hone his image? “I believe that boosting his own popularity ratings was definitely not at the bottom of Putin’s list of priorities today,” said Mukhin. A poll by the Public Opinion Foundation released on November 3 suggested that Putin’s popularity was declining, with 66 percent of respondents saying they trusted their prime minister, down from 72 percent the previous month. Petrov agreed, seeing a clear populist pattern in Putin’s promises. “All of those decisions which were reported in detail by Putin today, such as increasing people’s pensions, these decisions are all populist,” said Petrov. Of course, this is nothing new, he added. “I would say that the whole activism of the government is oriented toward keeping Putin’s ratings pretty high; in fact, it’s very important for this political system in general,” said Petrov.
Russia Profile
Vladimir Putin’s Longest-Ever Question-and-Answer Session Was the Usual Combination of Politics and Conspicuous Munificence
According to one analyst, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was like “Father Christmas dishing out presents” during his question-and-answer session on December 3, making a raft of promises and pledges to anxious callers. Reviving Russia’s single-industry cities and combating terrorism were the main topics at the four-hour phone-in session, as Putin tried to calm a nation shaken by the economic crisis and the Nevsky Express bombing last week. Several recent polls suggest the prime minister’s popularity has taken a tumble. So what did Putin set out to achieve in the call-in? And was it anything more than a long-winded exercise in self-promotion?
“The peak of the crisis has been overcome ... But the exit from the crisis takes time, strength and no small amount of funds,” Putin said today at his second call-in session as prime minister. Putin was optimistic about Russia’s economic recovery, pointing to the economy’s average monthly growth of 0.5 percent in the last five months. Unlike the last financial crisis in 1998, Russia now has a much better demographic situation, which is good news for the country’s economic recovery, Putin said. Whereas in 1998, the birth rate was falling and the death rate rising, exactly the opposite is the case today. “Birth rates are growing at a record pace, soon to exceed three percent, and death rates are also falling ... This has an economic impact too, because it supports demand,” he said. “My main impression today is that Putin is eager to keep citizens thinking that the crisis is almost over,” said Nikolai Petrov, an expert on domestic politics at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
During the nationally televised phone-in session Putin was connected to live video feeds from various single-industry towns, or “monogorods,” and took questions from congregations of immaculately turned-out factory workers, lined up in neat rows and wearing hard hats. The first city to be video-streamed was Pikalyovo, a cement-producing monogorod in the Leningrad region where Putin is lauded as a savior for his role in settling a managerial squabble that had brought all three of the town’s factories – and its power station -- to a halt, depriving the residents of both jobs and hot water. The first Pikalyovo factory-worker to speak began by thanking his great benefactor profusely for having come to the rescue of the monogorod half a year ago, but requested that Putin come again because a similar row is developing. Putin replied firmly and unequivocally. "If the situation demands, I will come to you and to any other place in the country. It is my duty."
The prime minister restated his commitment to fighting for the Russian industry. Steel producers will be propped up through continued government support for Russia’s steel-consuming industries, including its ailing car sector. When the video feed was streamed from Togliatti, home of AvtoVaz, Putin stressed his support for the Lada-making brand and suggested that it might soon attract further foreign investment from Renault.
Out of the 1.5 million questions received three hours before the session began, queries about the terrorist attack on the Neva Express were the most numerous, Dmitry Peskov, the prime minister’s spokesman, told RIA Novosti in the run-up to the phone-in. The day before the broadcast a group calling itself the Caucasian Mujahedin, led by Doku Umarov, Russia’s most wanted terrorist, claimed responsibility for the bomb attack, which killed 26 people on Friday evening. The authenticity of the claim was impossible to verify, but for Russians it has brought back memories of the appalling terrorist acts of the first half of the decade. Since Putin largely built his reputation on putting an end to these horrors, it was apt that he first answered a question about terrorism.
"We have done a lot to break the back of terrorism, but the threat has not been fully liquidated ... The threat of terrorism remains very high," he said. Nonetheless, the prime minister was quick to rule out the possibility of a war in the North Caucasus, a region where assassinations and terrorism have now become routine. "Do events in Ingushetia, Dagestan and other regions signal the start of a new war in the Caucasus? No. I don't sense any sort of war in the Caucasus. The situation is difficult ... There are still extremist groups. That's a fact, and we will continue to fight them until they are completely extinguished."
Putin also reaffirmed his close working relationship with Medvedev, but again suggested he could run for president in 2012. “I will think about it. There is plenty of time,” he said.
Apart from this, much of the four-hour marathon was devoted to specific complaints from Russians. Putin invariably vowed to resolve these quibbles, usually with the promise of money. At one point he reassured a man who complained that his war veteran aunt had been denied the free accommodation Putin had publicly promised. Not to worry, said the prime minister – it is on its way. “The decision has been taken and it is final. We are allocating the funds for this in 2010,” Putin said.
“In general, Putin looked good today. He likes this format and he looks professional. Every time around he is eager to increase the length of the annual session and the number of questions answered,” said Petrov. Still, this image-boosting dimension to Putin’s phone-ins is nothing new. As Aleksei Mukhin, head of the Center for Political Information, put it, “by now people have realized that with the help of Putin they can resolve any of their little but real problems: problems they’ve encountered with the state system, problems getting registered for treatment in hospitals, or getting their pensions increased. People in Russia are now beginning to think of Vladimir Putin as Father Christmas,” said Mukhin.
So, was the real purpose of Putin’s record length phone-in today just to hone his image? “I believe that boosting his own popularity ratings was definitely not at the bottom of Putin’s list of priorities today,” said Mukhin. A poll by the Public Opinion Foundation released on November 3 suggested that Putin’s popularity was declining, with 66 percent of respondents saying they trusted their prime minister, down from 72 percent the previous month. Petrov agreed, seeing a clear populist pattern in Putin’s promises. “All of those decisions which were reported in detail by Putin today, such as increasing people’s pensions, these decisions are all populist,” said Petrov. Of course, this is nothing new, he added. “I would say that the whole activism of the government is oriented toward keeping Putin’s ratings pretty high; in fact, it’s very important for this political system in general,” said Petrov.
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