Target the Pakistan army, not Pakistan

Colonel Anil Athale (retd) | December 11, 2008 | 17:28 IST

In the first part of a two-part column, Colonel Dr Anil Athale (retired) discussed the terrorists's objectives of the Mumbai terror attacks. Here he lists where India went wrong and how it must respond

Without the follies of our own people this attack was not possible. Foremost is the United Progressive Alliance government's policy. The scrapping of anti-terror laws signalled the government's resolve to treat terrorists with kid gloves.

Essentially, in the last four-and-a-half years India has been without a leader. The consequence of that has been the mushrooming of violence in all corners of the country. With no policy, no leadership and demoralised police forces, the country of one billion people is rudderless. This is the prime and basic cause of encouraging the terrorists from across the border who saw a golden opportunity to fulfil their dream of breaking up India.

In addition to this is the Raj Thackeray-led mayhem in Mumbai and the obsession with the Malegaon bomb blast investigation. Raj Thackeray's infamy has spread from Kashmir (where I was last month) to Kanyakumari and Porbunder to Mizoram (where I was last week -- on a study mission again). Thanks to the exposure in the media, he is even well-known internationally. What this did was to convince the jihadis in Pakistan that Mumbai was at war with itself and ripe for an attack.

During my visit to Pakistan a few years ago I noticed the interest that an average Pakistani takes in events taking place in Mumbai in particular and India in general. Raj Thackeray prepared the ground in a sense for this jihadi attack on Mumbai. All this while the attention of the Mumbai police was focussed on bar girls and such 'important' issues.

The sadhvi Pragya Thakur and Ahbhinav Bharat episode in which a serving lieutenant colonel from army intelligence, Srikant Purohit, was allegedly involved in the Malegaon bomb blast is indeed a very serious matter. Instead of letting it take its due course, a chorus was mounted to create an image of 'Hindu terror'. Thus in one stroke, the politicians and media elevated an individual aberration. This was good vote bank politics that played havoc with the armed forces's morale and made their job extremely difficult.

It gave a handle to Pakistan to fish in troubled waters and an opening to create a chasm between the Indian Army and the minorities. The late Hemant Karkare, the Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad chief, was on record saying that 70 percent of his time was being spent on the Malegaon investigation at the cost of many other cases like the horrific train bombing of 2006 for which no information exists even after two years. Who pressured the ATS to concentrate on Malegaon alone at the cost of everything else?

Though a digression, it needs to be reiterated that Indian Army has an unblemished record as far dealing with communal violence is concerned. Never has anyone levelled an allegation of bias in its conduct. I have personal experience of many riot-control missions and can vouch for that.

Even in Gujarat during the 2002 riots, the Muslims have always welcomed the army with flowers and regard it as their saviour. I had the opportunity to share the dais with Qutubuddin Ansari, a tailor from Ahmedabad, who became the 'face' of that agony, on August 15, 2002 at Pune at a function at which both Hindu and Muslim victims of the riots shared their grief and urged peace. Ansari told me that it was the army's timely arrival that saved him and his family.

The cavalier fashion in which the electronic and other media went about destroying the army's credibility will mark a new low in media irresponsibility. But what can one expect from a media that makes a love affair of a Patna college teacher with one of his students as 'breaking news'. It is this media that played its role in creating a situation where the jihadis saw a golden opportunity to strike India.

What can India do?

There has been a clamour for an attack on Pakistani territory to take out the 'terror-training camps'. This is asinine. Does anyone think that the camps will still be there? In any case, these are just some makeshift buildings; empty of all terrorists by now. The terrorists may well have abandoned it already. It will have no effect other than give the golden opportunity to the Pakistan army to disengage from the Afghan border and move east. This will pressure NATO and the US who will then breathe down our necks and not that of the Pakistanis.

It is by now very clear that our target ought to be the rogue Pakistan army. Yes, I use the word rogue with full responsibility. Remember, it was this very army that killed over 300,000 Bangladeshis in March 1971, according to the Hamidur Rehaman Commission report ordered by the Pakistani government itself. It was the biggest genocide since the Second World War and yet being the pet dog of the US, it escaped all consequences of this.

If India wants peace, it has to target the Pakistan army, not Pakistan. How to do it is not a matter for public debate and is best left that way.

This will liberate the long suffering Pakistani citizenry from tyranny. With its nukes, Pakistan is safe from military aggression from India. A cut down military is in the best interest of the whole world.

Colonel Athale is the Chhattrapati Shivaji Fellow at the United Services Institute, New Delhi, working on a project on internal security. He is also coordinator of the Pune-based think-tank Inpad.

http://www.rediff.com///news/2008/dec/11mumterror-target-the-pakistan-army-not-pakistan.htm

How should India respond to Mumbai attacks

Colonel (retired) Anil Athale | December 05, 2008 | 15:54 IST

The Mumbai terror strike is no ordinary attack. All over the world there have been several blasts but in all those cases they have been attacks by stealth. Here is the first instance where the attackers have openly defied a nation of one billion.That the nation's 200 elite commandos were defied for 60 hours is a tremendous boost for the morale of terrorists all over the world. This also brings into question even India's nuclear deterrence. The effect of inaction can be devastating.

Understanding the attack objectives:

Enough has been written and shown about the methods, routes and actual actions of the young psychopath terrorists who killed Indian citizens and foreigners in Mumbai. I do not intend to cover that ground again except to say that as an ex-soldier (and a commando instructor) I felt immense pride at the bravery shown by our men in eliminating the terrorists.

I salute those brave men and women of the staff at the hotels who gave their lives to protect the guests in hotel. It is in a sense our finest hour -- shows how a decent peace-loving citizenry can rise to the occasion. I salute them.

First and foremost it must be clearly understood that the attack did not have a direct Pakistan government hand in it, by that I mean the civil government. Whether it had the backing of Pakistan Army/Inter Services Intelligence combine is a difficult question to answer. I wish to again reiterate that I do not distinguish between ISI and the army. This is myth propagated by the Pakistan army and swallowed by gullible Indian media; after all the ISI functions directly under the army chief (recent efforts to put it under civil control were brought to naught due to army pressure) and headed by a serving Lieutenant General. The ISI and Pakistan army are one and the same.

The young attackers had a single motivation -- to kill the maximum number of Indians. It is true that they asked for Americans and British citizens in hotels -- but that must have been when they may be running short of ammunition.

Some idea of the aim of the terrorists could be gauged from the effect it has had on the sub-continent. First and foremost, it has brought to naught the entire peace process and CBMs (confidence building measures) between India and Pakistan. This has been the aim of extremist elements in Pakistan for a very long time. Some elements in Pakistan, close to the army, are blaming India for over-reaction. These worthies forget that it is the failure of the Pakistan government and society to control these jihadists in their midst that is the reason for this sorry pass.

The rise in Indo-Pakistan tensions has given the opportunity to the Pakistani army to wind down its operations against al Qaeda and Taliban on the Afghan border. Thus the direct beneficiary of this attack is undoubtedly al Qaeda/Taliban. The perceived threat from India has given rise to the Taliban offering a ceasefire to the Pakistan army to deal with the infidel enemy on the east -- India! This has extricated the Pakistan army from a difficult and bloody campaign that many in Pakistan and in its army had termed as 'America's war'. Thus there is a convergence of interests of Taliban/Al Qaeda/Pakistan army in breaking the Indo-Pakistan peace process and creating tensions on the Indo-Pakistan border.

In international affairs there are no accidents -- each event has a firm cause-effect relationship. It is therefore fair to assume that it was a joint al Qaeda/Taliban/Pakistan Army operation. Here the term 'Taliban is used in a generic sense and includes groups like Massod Azhar's Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Tayiba or its new 'avatar' Markaz-e-Dawa. As more and more evidence comes to light, involvement of groups from the middle-east -- Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh and UK-based Pakistani is coming to light. There seems to be a 'consortium' formed to carry out terror attacks in India.

Another reason to suspect such involvement is the magnitude of logistic support needed for such an operation. Even professional armies find it difficult to launch a sea borne assault nearly 500 nautical miles from its base! As a thumb rule for each terrorist in operation, there would be ten persons needed for support and logistics. This means at least 100 to 150 persons are involved with skills ranging from sea navigation to communication to medical aid. The terrorist must have planned for contingencies and a get away. A local support cell is an absolute certainty.

None of this can be done without support or nod from the real rulers of Pakistan -- the army. Democratic facade notwithstanding -- Pakistan is unique. Elsewhere a country has an army -- here an army has a country. One of the pluses of this operation could well be the ending of brief life of the democratic govt in that country. The Pakistan army has conquered Pakistan several times, it may well be preparing for anther conquest of their own country.

Predictably, western pressure seems to be mounting on India, the victim of terrorism and not Pakistan the perpetrator. The West is solely interested in getting help for its operations in Afghanistan -- Indian loss of lives be damned. Some indication of this is already available with Western media acting coy in acknowledging the fact that a terrorist has been caught alive and singing like a canary.

There have been attempts to link this with Kashmir -- the perennial love of the West. That at this very moment Kashmir has voted in elections -- an overwhelming 60 percent -- is of no consequence to the blind western media. Indians have seen this farce repeat in the past 30 years, the end of Cold war has done very little to change this entrenched mindset. This author was in Salzburg (Austria) last year September attending a global workshop on terrorism. Whenever there was a mention of a terrorist attack, 9/11 topped the list and that included London and Madrid bombings but never the serial bomb attacks on Mumbai. But it must be admitted that it is wrong to blame the foreigners alone. Our own pseudo liberals and secularists have time and time only highlighted the victim hood of minorities. These anti-nationals have created an image of the country and its majority as one of the most intolerant countries in the world.

Col Athale is Chhattrapati Shivaji fellow of the USI, Delhi, working on a project on internal security. He is also coordinator of the Pune-based think tank Inpad.

http://www.rediff.com//news/2008/dec/05mumterror-how-should-india-respond-to-mumbai-attacks.htm

 

 Sleuths who talk too much.

Hindusthan’s Federal Bureau of Investigation: urgent reform, silence.

Bizarre: 1. Return of Ansari who had Mumbai road maps 2. Arrest of Mukhtar, undercover agent.

Three arrests: Ansari, Mukhtar, Tausif.

Two investigation goof-ups: 1. Strangely, Mumbai police had returned Ansari who had recce maps; 2. Arrest of Mukhtar by Kolkata police and the claim of J&K police that he was an undercover agent.

Surely, FB India will not resolve such decentralized goof-ups with the left-hand not knowing what the right-hand is upto.

No wonder, Paki media is making merry that Indian muslims are involved. Now, the investigation is on a Park Circus Class XII student.

Aha, investigation circus indeed. Can't someone tell Brij Lal's and B. Srinivasan's that silence is golden and that they should just to keep quiet instead of talking their mouths-off to foreign media?

This was the same thing done by ATS under the late hero Karkare's leadership as regards an MI officer -- just to gain politico's brownie points on imaginary Hindu terror. Talking to the media about other intelligence agencies' goof-ups seems to be a pleasurable exercise for some investigating pundits.

Read on, particularly for those who want to reform Hindusthan’s intelligence/investigative agencies…

kalyanaraman

 

India questions two citizens over Mumbai attacks

Daily Times, Pakistan,

8 Dec. 2008

…A Lashkar-e-Tayyaba-linked man, Ansari,suspected of reconnoitring Mumbai well before the attacks has been in custody since February in Uttar Pradesh, police Special Task Force chief Brij Lal told Reuters.

Evidence: The disclosure about, Ansari, 26, was the first evidence to emerge of Indian complicity in the attacks. “Strangely, Mumbai police had returned Ansari when we sought to hand him over to them after we discovered Mumbai road maps highlighting places like the CST railway station, the Taj hotel and state police headquarters in his possession,” Lal said.

The train station and Taj were both attacked last month, and police in Mumbai now want to question Ansari, Lal said. Mumbai police had no immediate comment…

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\12\08\story_8-12-2008_pg7_15

 

Police Focus on Two Men in Mumbai Attacks

By JEREMY KAHN

Published: December 7, 2008

…Rakesh Maria, joint commissioner of the Mumbai police, said Sunday that he had sent officers to Calcutta to interview both suspects being held there. Mr. Maria said his officers had yet to confirm reports that Mr. Ahmed was a member of an irregular Jammu and Kashmir police force that carries out counterinsurgency operations in that state. Kashmir police declined to comment on Sunday.

But some Kashmir police officers who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media said Mr.Ahmed did work in counterinsurgency…

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/world/asia/08mumbai.html?ref=asia

 

Undercover tag on catch by city cops

OUR BUREAU (Kolkata, Telegraph, 8 Dec. 2008)

Dec. 7: A SIM card suspect arrested by Calcutta police could be a counter-insurgency policeman from Kashmir on an undercover mission, according to highly placed sources.

If the claim is established, it will mean the law enforcement network unwittingly helped the Mumbai attackers procure communication cards. It will also blow the cover of an undercover operative, which puts his life and that of his family at risk.

Calcutta police, unaware that the suspect could be associated with counter-insurgency, though he screamed “I too am a police constable” at the time of his arrest in Delhi,

had publicly announced his name yesterday. The Telegraph is mentioning his name as it is already in the public domain.

Mukhtar Ahmed was arrested after a SIM card found on a slain terrorist in Mumbai was traced to him, according to Calcutta police, which are still to verify whether he is a policeman.

The sources said senior police officers in Kashmir have demanded Mukhtar’s release, saying he was one of their own and had infiltrated the Lashkar-e-Toiba. However, Calcutta

police said they had not heard from Kashmir.

The arrests of Mukhtar, 37, and Tausif Rehman, the Calcutta youth who allegedly bought 22 SIM cards for him, were the first after the Mumbai attacks.

“Several days back, my son told me he is going to Jammu. This morning, I received a call from him and he said he is fine and would be home in a day or two,” Mukhtar’s father said in Srinagar today.

The father, a shopkeeper, said his son was in the police and was working with a senior officer. “After reports that Mukhtar was arrested, I approached (the officer) and he told me my son is perfectly all right,” he added.

The officer, however, told The Telegraph in Srinagar: “I know nothing about him. There were thousands of policemen working under me (in his last posting).”

Kashmir police are not commenting on the arrest officially. “I have not been informed about the issue. How can I order an investigation when I have no information?” state police chief B. Srinivasan said.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081208/jsp/frontpage/story_10221988.jsp 

Terror war. Fix Paki to win in Afghani

Revamping Aid to Pakistan Is Expected in Bush Report

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/12/07/world/07policy01-600.jpg

By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: December 6, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is preparing to present President-elect Barack Obama with a lengthy, classified strategy review aimed at reversing the gains that militants have made in destabilizing Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The review contains an array of options, including telling Pakistan's military that billions of dollars in American aid will depend on the military's being reconfigured to effectively fight militants. That proposal amounts to a tacit acknowledgment that roughly $10 billion in military aid provided to Pakistan as "reimbursements" for its efforts to root out militant groups has largely been wasted.

The payments have been the source of increasing criticism on Capitol Hill and from independent review groups, which have concluded that Pakistan diverted much of the money to build up its forces against India.

Revamping the aid to the military was part of a three-month study of what has gone wrong in the seven-year war along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The study calls for a new and broadly regional approach to insurgencies that move freely across the mountainous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the short term, it calls for continued covert strikes into Pakistani territory from Afghanistan, though the American military has been reluctant to repeat the kind of ground attack that led to an open exchange of fire with Pakistani border forces in September.

The report, which is expected to be presented to Mr. Obama's top national security advisers in the next week or two, was the product of a highly unusual strategy review that was begun in mid-September, just four months before President Bush leaves office.

"We've gone seven long years proclaiming that Pakistan was an ally and that it was doing everything we asked in the war on terror," said one senior official involved in drafting the report. "And the truth is that $10 billion later, they still don't have the basic capacity for counterinsurgency operations. What we are telling Obama and his people is that has to be reversed."

As a war that Mr. Bush once believed he had won came back to life in 2005 and 2006, the White House began a series of strategic reassessments, the most recent one reporting in the fall of 2006, just before the forced resignation of Donald H. Rumsfeld as secretary of defense.

But those past studies looked primarily at the dynamics in Afghanistan. The current one, headed by the White House war czar, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, took a far broader view. The drafts prepared for the incoming Obama administration suggest that the United States has never focused sufficiently on nation-building, jobs creation, construction of schools and roads, and, most important, pushing the Pakistani government to focus on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency.

It also urges Mr. Obama to take a far more regional approach to the problem, something he has indicated in speeches he is inclined to do.

"The Pashtun tribes treat these countries as one territory, and we have to begin to do something similar," one official familiar with the report said, declining to speak on the record because the contents of the report are confidential.

The report includes options, not "recommendations," so that Mr. Obama would not be put in the position of endorsing or rejecting Mr. Bush's suggested policies. It was completed just before the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India's commercial capital, last month, and the reaction to those events is likely to complicate some of the central options even before they are handed off to Mr. Obama.

Though Pakistani officials regularly promised Mr. Bush, his intelligence chiefs and top American military officials that they would rout Al Qaeda and other militants from their sanctuary in Pakistan's tribal areas, mountains of intelligence suggest that the country was playing both sides, financing the Taliban even while fighting them. The group accused of the Mumbai attacks, Lashkar-e-Taiba, was essentially the creation of the Pakistani intelligence services, as a proxy to fight in Kashmir against India.

Now, with the strong possibility that India will strike back for the Mumbai attacks, many in the Pakistani military are expected to argue that they were prudent to keep their forces primarily arrayed against India, rather than hunting down Al Qaeda and other militants.

"The real danger here is that what happened in Mumbai is gong to reinforce all the instincts to focus on India," said one official familiar with the contents of the strategy review. "It worsens their paranoia."

As recently as 2006, Mr. Bush would speak regularly of eventual "victory" in Afghanistan, as he did in Iraq. He is leaving office declaring that the so-called military surge in Iraq was successful, and with a status of forces agreement that calls for the withdrawal of the bulk of the American force over the next two years. But he has said little about Afghanistan, where the fighting has worsened, and the strategy review was premised on intelligence assessments that said that the United States was not losing the war, but was in danger of losing ground.

Several members of the strategy review, notably David J. Kilcullen, an Australian counterinsurgency expert, have publicly offered a significantly grimmer view. Mr. Kilcullen told senior officials before he left a State Department post that the United States could begin to lose the war soon if strategy was not reversed. He has advocated working to secure major population centers rather than using NATO troops to chase the Taliban around the Afghan countryside.

A senior aide to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Eliot Cohen, also joined the panel, along with a top marine general and a number of officials from the intelligence agencies.

Asked about the study, a White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said only: "We are concluding our review. We intend to pass it to the new team, since most policy adaptations would take place on their watch. This is another part of our efforts to ensure a smooth transition."

The tone of the new report, officials familiar with it say, is in line with arguments made over the past year by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who has agreed to remain in his post under Mr. Obama. He has made clear in an article he wrote for a forthcoming issue of the journal Foreign Affairs that the kind of military victory Mr. Bush once spoke of, the military crippling of militants in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, is not the way to think about the future of the conflict.

"Over the long term, the United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory," Mr. Gates wrote. "Where possible, what the military calls kinetic operations should be subordinated to measures aimed at promoting better governance, economic programs that spur development, and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented, from whom the terrorists recruit. It will take the patient accumulation of quiet successes over a long time to discredit and defeat extremist movements and their ideologies."

Yet the problem in Pakistan has been getting the military to accept help from the United States, which it suspects is tilting toward India and may harbor plans to seize Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the government in Islamabad collapses. In Afghanistan, the problem is incompetence, corruption, and the inability of President Hamid Karzai to extend his control of the country significantly beyond the capital, Kabul.

A senior military official said "the message of the report is that you can't win in Afghanistan without first fixing Pakistan."

"But even if you fix Pakistan," the official said, "that won't be enough."

That was also the conclusion of a major study of what has gone wrong in Afghanistan, published in January by a group led by Gen. James L. Jones, a former NATO commander. General Jones, who retired from the Marine Corps, was appointed last week to become the next national security adviser.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/washington/07policy.html?ref=asia

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/washington/07policy.html?ref=asia

Terror war. Locating the war theatre. Where is Problemistan?

Problemistan (Pakistan or Hindustan?)

• Ashok Malik presents strategic options for many key players in the terror game
• Swapan Dasgupta changes portraits on the wall
• Chandan Mitra critiques long-term tenants of Taj hotel
• Kanchan Gupta questions VIP insecurity
• MJ AKbar reviews pithy SMS messages
• Arun Shourie dissects bureaucratic idiocy
• Gurumurthy wants people to listen and to punish the rulers
• Saeed Shah reveals Kasav's village

So, where is Problemistan?

McCain warns Pakistan of Indian air strikes

Nirupama Subramanian

 

http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/07/images/2008120757500101.jpg

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani (right) with U.S. Senator John McCain (second left) and Senator Joe Lieberman during a meeting in Islamabad on Saturday. Mr. McCain was on a daylong visit to Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD: United States Senator John McCain has said there is enough evidence of the involvement of former Inter-Services Intelligence officers in the planning and execution of the Mumbai attacks.

If Pakistan did not act swiftly to arrest the people involved, the Senator said, India would be left with no option but to conduct aerial operations against select targets in Pakistan.

Senator McCain, the Republican presidential candidate who lost to Barack Obama, told a select group of Pakistanis at an informal lunch in Lahore on Saturday that this was conveyed to him by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi.

Ejaz Haider, a senior editor at the Daily Times, who was at the lunch said Mr. McCain told the group that Washington would not be able to do much to stop India, as the Mumbai attacks were its “9/11.”

“The democratic government of India is under pressure and it will be a matter of days after they have given the evidence to Pakistan [that they decide] to use the option of force if Islamabad fails to act against the terrorists,” Mr. Haider quoted the Senator as saying.

Mr. McCain, who arrived in Pakistan from New Delhi on Friday and met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in Islamabad in the evening, told the group that Dr. Singh was “visibly angry and reeling from the shock of the attacks.”

He said if Pakistan did not act to get the “bad guys,” India would have no option but to use force.

“We were angry after 9/11. This is India’s 9/11. We cannot tell India not to act when that is what we did, asking the Taliban to hand over Osama Bin Laden to avoid a war and waging one when they refused to do so,” Mr. McCain said.

An official statement of Mr. Gilani’s meeting with the Senator said he had assured him that his government was determined to fight terrorism and had offered India all help in the Mumbai attacks.

He reiterated that Pakistan wanted good relations with its neighbours.

U.S. will act: Rice

IANS reports:

A report quoting the Dawn newspaper said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was understood to have told Pakistan that there was “irrefutable evidence” of involvement of elements in the country in the Mumbai attacks and that it needed to act urgently and effectively to avert a strong international response.

Contrary to the formal statements issued by Pakistani authorities and her own statement at the Chaklala Airbase before her departure, sources said she “pushed the Pakistani leaders to take care of perpetrators, otherwise the U.S. will act.”

http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/07/stories/2008120757500100.htm

What does the world do with Pakistan?

Ashok Malik assesses why scenario-building is more important today than it was in 2001 (Pioneer, Sunday, December 7, 2008)

1. The Lashkar view

On the face of it the diplomatic crisis after the November 26 terrorist attack on Mumbai is a replay of what followed after the December 13, 2001, assault on Parliament. Then, as now, India was attempting to convince the world that jihad could not be segmented. Then, as now, an embattled Pakistani Government was responding with bluff and bluster.

Then, as now, terrorist groups hoped to instigate an India-Pakistan war. The Lashkar-e-Tayyeba is fairly open about this. Its chief, Hafeez Mohammad Saeed, has told Outlook magazine that, “Like any other patriotic Pakistani, we will stand with the Army if there is any aggression.”

The implication is clear. If India attacks or even resorts to strikes on terror camps, the Pakistani Army and Laskhar and its jihadist associates will bury differences, don the cloak of Pakistani nationalism and take on the common enemy. The maritime capabilities and the sleeper cells of Lashkar will mean that India will end up fighting both a conventional war — against the Pakistani Army — as well as an unconventional war within its borders.

Whatever the route the war (or wars) may take for India, one consequence is certain for Lashkar, Al Qaeda and their cohorts — they will acquire even more legitimacy, power and territory in Pakistan.

There is an important precedent here from 2001. The attack on Parliament was, analysts have concluded, timed to cause a situation where Pakistani troops were moved away from the Afghan border and the escaping Taliban and Al Qaeda forces were allowed breathing space.

Analysing the Mumbai terror strikes at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, this past week, Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and specialist on security issues in South Asia, said, “The attack is also reminiscent ... to the December 13, 2001, attack on the Indian Parliament, which was also timed by the terrorists ... to divert the Pakistan Army away from its border with Afghanistan to the border with India in order to permit the retreating Al Qaeda and Taliban followers to find safe haven. That attack, of course, was brilliantly successful in its implications.”

In its best case scenario, Lashkar would hope for another stand-off or war between the two armies, one that would allow Al Qaeda and the Taliban to geographically expand their “safe haven” within Pakistan, from just the Northwest Frontier, parts of Balochistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to the heart of Punjab and, in a sense, all of Pakistan.

2. The Indian view

In December 2001, India was ready for war. However, an intricate mix of factors inhibited it.

First, senior generals made it clear that talk of a “limited war” was an oxymoron. If India attacked terrorist camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir — provided these camps still existed — the retaliation by the Pakistanis could be expected in, say, Punjab. A full-scale war was inevitable.

Second, as an intelligence official who worked with the Government at the time put it, there was no clarity on the political goals of the probable full-scale war. Did India want to effect regime change in Pakistan — and in which case did it have a candidate? Did it want to break up Pakistan? Did it want to annex all or part of Pakistan or Pakistani-occupied territory? In reality, the Indian Government was ready for none of these options.

Third, the external situation could not be forgotten. American Special Forces were already inside Pakistan. What if they got caught in the cross-fire? Also, the world could not be expected to sit back and watch two nuclear powers go to war, and just have faith that neither party would use the ultimate weapon.

Fourth, there would an economic consequence of conflict in the form of debilitated business confidence. In 2002, while Operation Parakram was on, at least one MNC changed its mind about setting up a massive ITES facility in Rajasthan on the grounds that it was a border State. The facility was eventually relocated to Gurgaon, Haryana, not very far from Rajasthan but, for all it mattered, not in a border State.

Finally, India’s internal security mechanism was not strong enough in 2001 — and is much, much weaker now, after five years of Shivraj Patil at the Home Ministry — to cope with rapid-fire terror attacks in case the Pakistani Army asked jihadist auxiliaries to intensify the war in the streets and neighbourhoods of India.

Between 2001 and 2008, none of these conditions has changed. So what has?

3. The American view

In 2001, the Americans and Europeans were less than convinced that the two sets of jihadists — the ones in Pakistan targeting India and the ones in Afghanistan targeting the West — were equally dangerous. Lashkar was seen as India’s little Kashmiri problem, no more.

In the past seven years, Lashkar has grown. It has sought to establish itself as a global organisation, with an Al Qaeda like reach. In April 2004, Pakistan-born medical student Izhar ul-Haque became the first Australian since 1978 to be charged with terrorism. He was arrested when the police bust a Lashkar sleeper cell in Sydney.

Ul-Haque was said to have been recruited for Lashkar by Faheem Khalid Lodhi, a Sydney man charged with seven terrorist offences. Lodhi was accused of masterminding attempts to bomb a series of Sydney targets. 

Lodhi’s principal co-conspirator was Willy Brigitte, a suspected terrorist deported to France from Australia in October 2003. Put into a Paris prison, Brigitte apparently told French interrogators that he — like ul-Haque — had trained at a Lashkar camp in Pakistan. 

Speaking to this writer in Canberra in 2004, an Australian counter-terrorist official had said, “We are detecting signs of Lashkar showing interest in Southeast Asia. We are concerned by the links Lashkar may be establishing with Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). For instance, we know of a JI cell in Karachi.”

JI, based in Indonesia but since beaten back by the Government there, is a jihadist group with a pan-Southeast Asian footprint. Lashkar also attempted to recruit religious warriors for Iraq, after the defeat of Saddam Hussein.

After the Mumbai attack, Lashkar is likely to be taken as seriously by Israeli, British or American police forces as Al Qaeda. It has, in that sense, climbed the terror hierarchy.

Riedel referred to this phenomenon in his Brookings Institution briefing as the “Pakistan-isation of Al Qaeda’s operational activities”. “More and more of its activities outside of the South Asian arena, and particularly in Western Europe, used Pakistanis, principally members of the diaspora and the United Kingdom, but also Pakistanis in Denmark, Germany, and Spain. The most visible symbol of that, of course, was the foiled plot in August of 2006, which was designed to simultaneously blow up 10 jumbo jets over the North Atlantic.”

“If Al Qaeda can now work with LeT,” the former CIA official continued, “which has established cells in many of these communities, it’s much more serious.” 

At the same briefing, South Asian affairs scholar Stephen Cohen referred to “the 800,000-strong Pakistani diaspora in the UK, the vast majority of which are law-abiding people ... [as] Al Qaeda’s number one target today for recruiting individuals that can be used to target both United Kingdom and the United States.”

This is the principal gain for India since 2001. What was then seen as a narrow-prism India problem is today recognised as a global problem. It will require a global solution.

4. The end of nation-building 

Between 2001 and 2008, the overriding American strategic goal for Pakistan has shifted from nation-building to containment. Terms like “failed state” and discussions about the collapse of Pakistan are taken far more seriously. 

Released earlier this month, Work at Risk, the report of the United States Congressional Commission on WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, tells the story of a dystopia. “Over the past six years,” it says, “the United States supported Pakistan with a mix of military, security, economic, and social aid, totalling $12 billion. Of that total, $8.9 billion (74 per cent) was devoted to security and military assistance, and only $3.1 billion (26 per cent) went to social and economic programmes.”

“Festering economic and social ills in Pakistan have created a hospitable environment for radicalisation,” it goes on, “and the trends indicate that the challenge is growing. Pakistan’s population is projected to double to nearly 300 million people by 2050, making it the world’s fifth most populous country. Over the next decade, food, water, and energy are likely to become scarcer.”

Pakistan has the worst education indices outside Africa: “Pakistan’s overall literacy rate hovers between 40 and 50 per cent. For women, the literacy rate is below 30 per cent — and for women in the FATA, it is only three per cent.”

The report focused on the combustible mix of endless recruits for jihad, terrorism and nuclear weapons. For months now, intelligence agencies have warned that the next terrorist attack on American soil is likely to originate from Pakistan. The year 2009 is of particular significance, as jihadists may want to “test” a new man in the White House.

The report urges that the United States work with regional and global actors — from India to China to Russia — to bring stability to Pakistan and its environs.

The question is: what if this necessitates a break-up of Pakistan? Are the means more important or the end? It is a question exercising American think-tanks — and alarming the failing Pakistani state.

5. The rise of containment

In 2006, Ralph Peters, a former United States Army colonel and strategic affairs writer, wrote an essay called “Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look” in the Armed Forces Journal. A speculative though engaging exercise, it recommended the redrawing of boundaries, from Turkey to Pakistan — “between the Bosporus and the Indus” — to create ethnically homogeneous and stable nation-territories.

For instance, Peters recommended a Shia Arab state that would take territory from Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia and become an oil power. The Saudi royal family would be left with a rump. Mecca and Medina would become a Muslim Vatican, free of one nation’s (or family’s) control. 

Iran would take over Herat and Farsi-speaking western Afghanistan (part of the historical Greater Khorasan) but would cede space, along with Pakistan, for a Free Balochistan. Iran, Iraq and Turkey would surrender land for Kurdistan. Afghanistan would gain the Pashtun areas in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier. 

“The remaining ‘natural’ Pakistan,” Peters wrote, “would lie entirely east of the Indus, except for a westward spur near Karachi.” Essentially Pakistan would be contained to landlocked Punjab and dependent on Sindh for sea access.

Peters’ essay is unlikely to become policy anytime soon. A Treaty of Versailles carving out the Middle East is not about to be signed. From Ankara to Riyadh, many political elites can veto the idea.

Yet, of all the countries mentioned as possible “losers” in Peters’ map-making experiment, Pakistan is the most vulnerable. The state has all but disappeared. The Taliban rules the Northwest and has threatened to formally capture Peshawar. A strong Pashtun government in Kabul — run by either the Taliban or Hamid Karzai — could conceivably take away the Northwest Frontier. 

Neither can covert Indian support for the Baloch insurgency be written off. After Mumbai, there may even be a strong case for it.

It is interesting that the reappearance of Peters’ map in recent weeks has focused solely on its remedy for Pakistan, ignoring the rest of the Middle East. This has led to fears among Islamabad’s military and political elite that the map is part of a secret American “design” to dismember Jinnah’s nation. Following 26/11, does India want to help the process?

 

http://dailypioneer.com/141606/Problemistan.html

Sunday, December 7, 2008 


Time to show extreme prejudice

Swapan Dasgupta (Pioneer, Sunday, December 7, 2008)

In his breathtaking account of The Last Battle for Berlin in 1945, published some four decades ago, Cornelius Ryan narrated the story of how one Berliner tried to anticipate the final collapse. Walking to work each morning, he would look into the drawing room of a prominent Nazi and focus on the lavish portrait of Adolf Hitler. The removal of the portrait, he had decided in his mind, would be the signal that the fall of the city was imminent.

For the past week, diplomats, spooks and assorted international busybodies have been working overtime to gauge the imminence or otherwise of a retaliatory Indian attack on terror camps in Pakistan. Logically speaking, their sense of anticipation was not unfounded. A beleaguered Government, caught with its pants down and confronted by possible electoral reverses, was under tremendous pressure to “do something” to avenge the attack on Mumbai. With nerves firmly on edge, it was feared that a knee-jerk bid to placate angry public opinion would trigger something catastrophic. Those with a sense of history recalled that it was literally a wrong turn in Sarajevo and a fluke shot by a fringe sect that triggered World War I.

International crisis managers need not have preoccupied themselves with looking for tell-tale signs. A casual perusal of “open sources” would have alerted them to the startling fact that it was business as usual for the rulers. Last Saturday, even as the full horror of the Mumbai carnage was sinking in, the heir apparent was busy partying till 5 am. Three days later, his entire family was celebrating the wedding of the son of a loyal courtier (who is also a Congress MP) in the full gaze of the paparazzi. There was no sign of restraint. It was as if Mumbai was another land.

The Delhi edition of Times of India did a seminal service by publishing two pages of photographs of the ruling family’s post-Mumbai celebrations. Those photographs did what thousands of candles, lakhs of text messages and a trillion words of indignation failed to achieve: Expose the callousness of India’s rulers.

The international busybodies feared war. The photographs recalled the immortal words of John McEnroe, “You cannot be serious!”

Maybe left to himself President Asif Zardari and a minusculity of the Clifton elite and Aitchison College alumni would have readily agreed to send all jihadis in Pakistan to a UN-run Guantanamo Bay. After the devastation of the Marriott in Islamabad, there is a greater awareness of the jihadi blowback within Pakistan than ever before. Beautiful Pakistanis hate visa denials, that extra scrutiny at international airports and being dubbed a global migraine. It ruins their composure and commerce.

Unfortunately when it comes to India there is a blind spot. Islamabad has despatched innumerable of its wild Islamists to US custody in unknown destinations without any concern for the due process of law. However, any attempt to emulate the process to India’s satisfaction will lead to a national uprising that could end up with Zardari making London his permanent residence.

But Pakistan has no reason to fear the Indian bully. Egged on by the global fraternity of deranged liberalism, Pakistan has expediently concluded that the discrimination and persecution of the Muslim minority lie at the heart of India’s terrorist problem. The thread that binds the conspiracy theorists, the Hindu-Zionist haters and the India-watchers who have been prolific in shedding tears for the Indian Muslim in the op-ed pages of western publications, is the belief that India had it coming.

For the jihadis, the Mumbai operation is fast becoming an unqualified victory. Using the cover of a fledgling democracy and its nuclear assets, the jihadis have taunted a supine India and mocked an America that is dithering on its global entanglements. In the aftermath of Mumbai, the LeT has made itself synonymous with Pakistan’s honour and negated the possibility of any effective international punitive action against those who organised the butchery. It has invoked the fear of unilateral Indian action to underline the West’s over-dependence on Pakistan in the pacification of Afghanistan.

There is an eerie similarity between how Pakistan moved after 9/11 and how it has reacted to Mumbai. There is, however, one monumental difference. In 2001, the world was still dealing with a single entity called Pakistan, governed by a military dictator who attempted to balance its ugly imperatives in Afghanistan with a modernising agenda at home; in 2008, India is confronted with a fractured Pakistan where a weak civilian authority has to dance to the tune of a subversive army and a menacing explosion of perverse religiosity. In seven years, the balance has tilted more decisively in favour of the Islamists in Pakistan, a shift hastened by weariness and existential crisis of the US.

The Mumbai attack has exposed the crisis within India. On the security front, India was callously unprepared; on the diplomatic plane, it found itself with little room for manoeuvre. The Government was guilty of a lack of foresight and paralysed by a leadership that couldn’t distinguish between a “soft power” and an emasculated power. If Pakistan is in wilful denial of its complicity in spreading terrorism, the Indian Government is in denial of its vulnerability and helplessness.

Yet, there are small signs of hope. For the first time since the country encountered jihadi terrorism, there is an outburst of visceral anger directed at those who secured themselves but left ordinary people unprotected. Media organisations may try to channel this anger for commercial advantage but the rage won’t be dissipated by the mere burning of candles. It is time to demonstrate extreme prejudice towards those who kill and those who don’t even have the humanity to stop partying while India burns. It’s time to change the portraits on the wall. 

Pitfalls of citizen power

Chandan Mitra (Pioneer, Sunday, December 7, 2008)

I am more amused than agitated by the sudden burst of activity among Page 3 people over the terror outrage in two of Mumbai's best hotels. During and after the carnage, celebrities have been holding forth, crying "Enough is enough" and demanding banishment of politicians from public life. They have argued that civil society is the only entity that should determine the response to Mumbai's angst. Candlelight processions have been held and last Wednesday several thousand people gathered at the Gateway of India to mark the passage of a week since India's commercial capital was brought to its knees. Now, similar exhibitions of citizen power are slated to be held in other metros, starting with Delhi this week.

Probably for the first time since India became a victim of organised terrorism nearly 20 years ago, the affluent classes have been stirred. This is a welcome trend because their articulation and the celebrity status of some of the protagonists undoubtedly helps focus public anger, which has been diffused so far. Arguably, many would say their hearts should have bled earlier when city after city was ravaged by thejihadis. Such is the socio-economic stratification of Indian society that anger remained muted in the past because most terror victims belonged to the underclass or lower middle classes.

For instance, this time too attention is focused on Taj and Oberoi hotels while the carnage at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (VT), where a whopping 62 ordinary people were mowed down did not elicit remotely comparable consternation. Similarly, the July 2007 serial blasts in commuter trains that killed 190, was largely ignored by the city's chatterati. Then we were subjected to standard homilies like how the "spirit of Mumbai" would never allow pitiful wallowing in grief; that it would be "business as usual" from the very next day. Such comments were approvingly highlighted by the electronic media, and even its print counterpart was not immune to chanting the same mantra.

This time, however, nobody is talking about the "unbeatable spirit" of Mumbai. Now that Taj ("Which is like my second home," as a celebrity told a news channel) has been pulverised by the satanic bloodlust of Pakistan-trained terrorists, upper middle class rage is boiling over. Politically biased English language TV news channels have, however, skillfully directed this anger to indulge in wanton politician bashing. The channels, newspaper columns and blogs are full of venom spewed at the entire political class. "Withdraw their security" is the common refrain. Accusing politicians as a class for messing up things, people have gone so far as to demand takeover by the Army! One banner at the Gateway of India proclaimed: "There are many more terrorists prowling. They are called politicians". It is no longer possible to dismiss these voices as totally unrepresentative or emanating only from fossils of the Raj era who love to recall the mythical "good old days" when life was orderly. Nowadays, young, educated, well-groomed executives are expressing these sentiments with feverish gusto. A series of gaffes by politicians unnerved by the highly publicised outrage of this section has added more fuel to the fire.

By targeting the entire political class, the angry young (and not so young) men and women have happily overlooked that it is only the legitimately elected Government, its political leaders and bureaucrats, who can be held accountable for the lapses that led to the tragedy -- be it the failure to act with alacrity on intelligence inputs, ineptitude of marine security personnel, delay in dispatching NSG commandos and so on. In other words, both the Union and State Government of Maharashtra must be held responsible for the disastrous denouement. And both Governments happen to be controlled by the Congress Party and its allies.

So, you can't bracket, say, Mayawati, with Vilasrao Deshmukh, Naveen Patnaik with Shivraj Patil or LK Advani with Manmohan Singh or Sonia Gandhi. When public anger should rightly be directed at the gross incompetence of the Congress-led UPA and its five-year-old record of mollycoddling terrorists, the media manipulated redirection of the fury towards the entire political class is a potentially dangerous gambit. It is dangerous because it sanctifies the ongoing systematic tirade against democracy itself. If we lose faith in the entire political class as some people would like us to do, we erode the very basis of India's democratic polity; we thus lose our faith in the Constitution itself.

I know this won't happen. There is too much at stake. Affluent people, usually cocooned in their plush, multi-crore apartments, often do not participate in the electoral process. They have far lesser stake in who becomes the local MLA or MP or which party forms the Government, compared to the impoverished villager of eastern Uttar Pradesh, the small artisan of Tamil Nadu or even the average commuter on Mumbai's suburban trains. The indigent urban labourer or the marginal farmer has a stake in democracy because they need their elected representative as a cushion against wanton exploitation and to get their legitimate rights from an insensitive junior bureaucracy or corrupt policemen.

The rich, on the other hand, can easily afford to lubricate their way through India's Byzantine bureaucratic maze while funding political parties across the board to ensure their work gets done irrespective of a regime's ideological complexion. In turn, they need the comfort of a secure environment, a dependable law and order mechanism and appropriate conditions for conducting business and leisure activities. I know I may be sounding like an old fashioned Leftist, but there is nothing ideological about this stark reality. 

Admittedly by reacting intolerantly, politicians have invited further ignominy upon themselves. Martyred Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan's father may have said in a fit of rage that he wouldn't let into his house "any old dog" that came visiting, but that did not justify veteran VS Achuthanandan responding in a most undignified manner. Outgoing Maharashtra Home Minister RR Patil's comment that such "small things" happen in big cities was reminiscent of a similarly insensitive remark by former UP Minister Shivpal Yadav in connection with the Nithari killings of children by two perverted sex maniacs. Had BJP Vice-President Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi not prefaced his critique of near-anarchic activism by celebrity women in Mumbai with a reference to "powder, lipstick and Western ideas", the substance of his assertion might not have been misconstrued.

Our politicians may have much to answer for. But that does not mean democracy can do without politicians. And those who champion the idea that citizen power can be a substitute for elected Government should realise that the logical extension of that argument is abolition of democracy itself. "Citizen-power" to replace political power -- a fashionable cause extolled by sections of the media -- amounts to advocacy of dictatorship of the elite.

Are we ready to have as Home Minister an ageing ad guru who goes on every channel claiming his 21-year-old daughter has discovered the perfect solution to hostage-taking by terrorists: Use sleeping bombs instead of grenades, he passionately demands! Are our security forces so daft as not to have explored all options? Does the monopoly of reason rest with India's elite, effete at the best of times and subversive at the worst? By the way, why is Arundhati Roy in hiding this time? 

http://dailypioneer.com/141450/Pitfalls-of-citizen-power.html

Must we pay for ‘VIP’ security?

Kanchan Gupta (Pioneer, Sunday, December 7, 2008)

The diatribe against politicians following the fidayeen attacks is extremely disconcerting, but not entirely unjustified. Till now, we did not get to hear of or read about what people in this country think of their politicians, although we had a fairly good idea about it, because the views of the unwashed masses rarely find mention on prime time television or the front pages of our so-called national newspapers. Now that we have the bold and the beautiful who can be spotted at the ‘happening places’ in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and wherever else it’s ‘happening’ denouncing politicians and blaming them for holding India up to ridicule, 24x7 news channels and newspapers competing with instant television to grab eyeballs are tripping over each other to publicise the views of the la-di-da crowd as profound observations on the pitiable state of our country, a nuclear weapon state which aspires to emerge as a great power. Ask Binapani Adok of Baltitola Lane in Howrah, and she will tell you what she has always thought of politicians every time she has had to stand in a mile-long queue at the local ration shop. There’s nothing profound about her profanity, but at least it’s far more honest than the balderdash dished out by television channels and newspapers this past week.

It would, however, be wrong to brush aside the angry voices we have been hearing on the streets ever since the hideous bloodletting in Mumbai as inconsequential. Indeed, it could prove to be disastrous for the political class to pretend that the popular mood will calm down before long and life in this wondrous land of ours will be back to ‘normal’. For, there are some genuine concerns that are being voiced and the solutions that are being proposed should cause alarm among politicians and set alarm bells ringing. After suffering the callous indifference of those in power, whether at the Centre or in the States, and fed up with the cynicism of politicians who are solely obsessed with themselves and feathering their nests, people have begun asking why they should pay taxes to keep their rulers in comfort while they are left to fend for themselves. There’s a groundswell of anger over the elaborate security arrangements that politicians ensure for themselves and their families while leaving the citizens at the mercy of jihadis and assorted criminals, to be killed, maimed, raped and denied the security of life and property which is their inalienable right and the Government’s primary responsibility. If politicians believe that it is the state’s job to protect them, here’s what the people believe: We would like to see them suffer for a change. The ‘VIP’ sees himself as a ‘Very Important Person’; the people now pity him as a ‘Very Impotent Person’. 

Politicians have only themselves to blame for being seen as objects of ridicule, scorned and loathed by the masses. They claim to be servants of the people, but actually believe that they are more privileged than the rest, that their lives are more precious than those that are lost in terrorist attacks. They see themselves as indispensable to India; the nation has begun to see them as eminently dispensable. It is this inflated sense of importance, of being able to manipulate the system, that has resulted in the creation of the ‘VIP’ who must be provided with round-the-clock security in the form of bullet-proof vehicles and gun-toting commandos. It is immaterial whether the ‘VIP’ actually faces a threat to his or her life, what is important is that their security cover should shock and awe the masses. This is not about protecting their ‘precious’ lives, but projecting their ‘status’ and ‘prestige’. So we have the likes of Mr Ram Vilas Paswan and Mr Amar Singh (just two of the many such politicians) who coerce the Government to deploy commandos to guard them and their families — to be upgraded from ‘X’ to ‘Y’, from ‘Y’ to ‘Z’, and from ‘Z’ to ‘Z+’ security cover is a measure of the political clout, social status and prestige of the self-annointed ‘VIP’. After becoming Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Ms Mayawati demanded that she be provided with SPG cover, meant for ‘Very Very Important Persons’ like the Prime Minister, former Prime Ministers and, of course, the presiding dynasty of the Congress. Upset over being denied similar privilege, she has commandeered 350 policemen to provide her with security cover night and day, and travels in a 25-vehicle cavalcade. Each time she decides to take a ride in her bullet-proof SUV, traffic is stopped, shopkeepers are asked to down their shutters, pedestrians are made to stand facing away from the street. The Prime Minister and his leader make do with only traffic being stopped and the roads being cleared of potential assassins among exasperated commuters.

The cost to the tax-payer? According to one estimate, Rs 250 crore is spent every year on providing security cover to our ‘Very Important Persons’. An additional Rs 184 crore is spent on securing the lives of the ‘Very Very Important Persons’. In Lutyens’ Delhi, 10,000 policemen of various ranks are deployed every day to protect 391 people. Had there been 1,000 policemen on duty at Gateway of India on November 26, the massacre at Mumbai may have been averted. But if you were to point out to a ‘VIP’ that the discrimination is obnoxious, that his fixation with security cover has resulted in the people being rendered vulnerable, he would take great offence and insist that it is important to protect the ‘leader’ so that the ‘led’ can be governed. What good is a democracy unless its politicians are safe and sound? Who’s to tell them that along with democracy the political class is threatened when citizens start looking up to the Army for deliverance? So, like our national assets, for example oil installations and airports, the politicians must also be protected at the tax-payers’ expense.

The most frustrating part of it all is that there’s nothing we can do about it. The Delhi High Court, which has been hearing a PIL on ‘VIP’ security, had acidly commented last year that “politicians are not national assets that need to be protected” and that the “security cover given to political leaders is often a nuisance for the common man”. The court had also observed, “If there is a threat to the lives of the politicians, they should remain in the confines of their homes and offices… You should not let these men (politicians) come out.”

The courts may not be able to force the VIPs and VVIPs to stay at home, but the people can. All we need to do is honk every time we see a ‘VIP’ on the road, honk louder when traffic is stopped, and raise such a din that the ‘VIP’ is left fuming at his impotence. And if we have the guts, we could, collectively, refuse to pay taxes to a Government of the few, by the few and for the few. Any takers? 

http://dailypioneer.com/141416/Must-we-pay-for-‘VIP’-security.html

Government can survive criticism, but not ridicule

MJ Akbar (Pioneer, Sunday, December 7, 2008)

We have enough evidence: There is a cabal of cyber terrorists employed by mobile phone companies to destabilise the honourable Government of Mr Manmohan Singh with evil jokes. Who else could be manufacturing those SMSes that begin to circulate whenever opportunity arises? This is a professional hit job. This is not the work of amateurs. If stand-up comedians like Jay Leno can hire professional gag-writers, so can mobile phone companies, since each SMS-joke that is circulated means revenue for hungry coffers. The Government seems to be as impotent against gagsters within the country as it is against gangsters from across the border.

We had hardly blinked upon hearing that our smug Finance Minister had become even smugger after being transferred to Home Affairs when a solemn SMS landed on my machine: 

“Let us pray that Chidambaram succeeds in bringing down terrorism the way he has brought down share prices.”

If this is not sedition at a moment of national crisis, then please let me know the meaning of sedition. The gagster, moreover, has the temerity to be subtle. This is not one of those ha-ha husband-wife jokes. This is serious stuff.

This was followed by a committee effort, for I cannot believe that only one gagster dreamt this whole bit up:

“Chidambaram’s report card after 6 months. 1: Police to people ratio increased from 14 per lakh to 14.0012 per lakh. How? One million commit suicide due to inflation. One lakh die in explosions, 25 lakhs in crime and accidents, three million migrate out of India due to fear. 2: Holding and folding dhoti time reduced by 5%. Big productivity gains. 3: Duties of all DGPs outsourced to FPOs, Home Guards, Excise Department and his ex-Harvard associates. 4: Police to be paid in oil bonds only. 5: RDX imports attract higher penalties. 6: Duties slashed for substandard bulletproof jackets. 7: Service tax to be imposed on Bangladeshi infiltrators at border crossings. 8: Visa entry tax imposed only on Nepalis. 9: 25% entry tax on all AK series rifles and all types of grenades. 10: If you still survive… then see you in 2009! But be ready for tax on your happiness and survival!”

I have been wondering about that phrase “If you still survive…” Is that a double entendre? At one level of course the gagster was referring to you and me, and the bleak possibilities of our survival against gangsters. But could he be also, obliquely, referring to bleaker possibility of Mr Chidambaram’s survival as Home Minister? Note that the report card was limited to six months. Why? I sense something sinister here. Has he already drawn the conclusion that this arrangement will end before six months? What are the facts?

No matter how long Mr Manmohan Singh and Ms Sonia Gandhi drag out the life of this dying Government with virility injections that turn out to be too watery, they have to hold general elections by April. That is it. In 15 weeks at the outside, and probably within 13 weeks, the great electoral contraption will begin to whirr. This means that the Election Commission will declare the season open around mid-March, after which the Government really becomes a holding operation. Expect results in the first week of May. 

Is the gagster saying that this lot in Delhi will not return to power? A fellow gagster certainly thinks so. I quote: “We have taken care of the men who came by boats… Time now to sort out the idiots who came by votes.” Mumbai predictably evoked anger. This gag was not quite a gag, but rose from the heart: “Forgiving a terrorist is left to god. But fixing their appointment with god is our responsibility.” Laughter may be the best medicine for anger, but there are times when you do not want the relief of such medicine.

Have some of the gagsters gone too far? The SMS about the Kerala Chief Minister cannot be printed in a family newspaper. But it did very well on SMS, for whom laws of libel have not yet been invented.

I wonder if politicians understand one law of public affairs. Everyone can survive criticism. And no one can survive ridicule. The gagster flourishes only when ridicule is the only weapon left in a democracy, until the day of voting arrives.

There is a point at which the gagster can run out of gags. After a week of dithering, when Maharashtra was effectively without a Government despite being in the throes of its most serious crisis, the Congress finally installed a new Chief Minister, Mr Ashok Chavan, and its ally, Mr Sharad Pawar, made Mr Chhagan Bhujbal the Deputy Chief Minister. The SMS that followed was not a gag:

“Chhagan Bhujbal, a man who was single-handedly responsible for the complete decay and corruption in the police force and was removed for his involvement in the Telgi scam has been rewarded to head the Home Department (sic) again by the NCP. So much for the show of force by Mumbaikars. We should not take this lying down. Forward this message to as many as possible.”

Dear Mumbaikars, I am doing my bit.

-- MJ Akbar is Chairman of the fortnightly news magazine Covert 

http://dailypioneer.com/141412/Government-can-survive-criticism-but-not-ridicule.html