Most crucial changes are in the offing as a result of the South Asia being sucked in a whirlpool of tactical moves by the unipolar world power. The US is striving to dominate the South Asian regions despite the one time leadership of India in the non-aligned movement. The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty has eroded whatever position of value based dominance India had had in the past. Therefore a little genuflecting is in the order.
There is a widening acceptance of the fact that the West is beating a dead horse in its war on terrorism. It must bequeath the onerous task of the fight to local players, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. Correspondingly there must be changes within these countries.
There is need for revamping intelligence gathering. On January 22, 2010 Intelligence Bureau gave two press releases. In the first it said that Lashkar-e-Taiba has bought 50 paragliders to attack targets in India. In another it claimed that the intelligence agency has received information that there is imminent danger of the terrorists across the border would attempt to hijack Indian commercial aircraft.
Home Minister Chidambrum got an opportunity in the wake of National Security Advisor's being shifted to West Bengal as governor. He wanted to find out the facts on which the input regarding the paragliders was made. It turned out that the parachute like glider was only three in number and they were not bought in Europe. They were actually purchased from China.
The implication of the IB input was very mischievous. One, by exaggerating the number the aim was to again turn up the hype of war on terror. Two, some one in the intelligence agency has a brief on local facilitators and wants to turn the screw of fear psychosis on the ordinary people. He is the mole planted to achieve a calculated effect of maintaining the pressure of suspence within the country against a group. For, the hiding of such huge number of paragliders and terrorists with them would make it more melodramatic.
The context in which all this was done was the arrival of the 62 Republic Day and the so called entry of two potential terrorists who were even identified with names. But the IB or their "collaborators" did not deem it necessary to disclose their identity.
Three days passed. 26 January came and passed. Nothing happened. The intelligence fudge was rushed through to win praise of its "commitment" as the IB has to live up to its reputation. It doesn't matter for our local consumption that others are also in it. How Tony Blair also fudged the intelligence in put to wage war against Iraq. Even if weapons of mass destruction were not there the war has to be fought. Even if the paragliders are not there the war on terrorism has to be fought!
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
IB needs to be overhauled and brought under democratic norms
Delivering the fourth RN Kao Memorial Lecture organized by Research and Anlysis Wing the vice president Mohammad Hamid Ansari said that internal and external intelligence in the Indian system did not report to the same minister, the possibility of entrusting this wok to the Standing Committee on Home Affairs may not meet the requirement. He argued for greater oversight and accountability of the country’s intelligence to meet the needs of good governance in a democratic society. There is also desire for openness. This sentiment of the vice president should be given serious thought, analysed and accepted after thorough objective discussion.
The need for this process was felt for quite some times. In fact it was felt right at the time of independence. There was a notice sent out to watch out for RSS chief Guru Golwalker after the Home Secretary was informed about a huge cache of weapons and details of a secret plan of RSS for attacks on the Muslims in the aftermath of the partition. He advised Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to take action. Golwalker was very much in the neighbourhood of Delhi but the intelligence field workers failed to serve the notice to him. What amazed the home secretary was inaction of Nehru in the face of actionable intelligence. In another case Rajnath Singh was the Chief Minister as well as Home Minister of Madhya Pradesh when the kar sevaks on Sabarmati express passed through his state. According to IG (Intelligence) of Gujarat BR Sreekumar the Home Minister of MP did not submit intelligence report on the behavior of the unruly passengers of the train. Thus the rowdy elements were given safe passage that emboldened them to persevere in their willful behavior like quarreling with Muslim hawkers at Godhra station and abducting a Muslim woman washing clothes in the vicinity of the tracks.
An actionable intelligence can save a situation. In Gwalior and other parts of Madhya Pradesh there were frequent attacks on Muslims leaving for Pakistan. One of the most remarkable marauders was a Punjabi youth Madanlal Pawa. Mahatma Gandhi came to know about it and prevailed upon the rulers to curb in the marauders. Pawa had to leave for Maharashtra. He settled in Bombay and moved to Ahmednager where he organized attacks on Muslim commercial establishments and collected extortion money from them. He came in contact with Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte and became a part of the crime syndicate that finally assassinated Gandhi. It is now known that Apte spent the last night with the daughter of the police commissioner of the metropolis before leaving for Delhi. Gopal Godse’s wife carried her daughter Himani to bid farewell to her husband. She and he husband were resolute in the mission. A part of the resolute nature reappeared in Himani Savarkar (nee Himani Godse) when she called for bomb for bomb retaliation. (As it ultimately turned out that the members of her own Abhinav Bharat had exploded bombs and Muslims were blamed.) All these facts are recorded in history. And yet people came to know her and her Abhinav Bharat only when Hemant Kakare arrested Lt Col Shrikant Prasad Purohit. We would not have known this but for the professionalism of Karkare. Thus the Augean stables of Intelligence Bureau (and for that matter the ATS, Crime Branch Police, the CBI or the numerous other intelligence agencies) call for purging those who have failed in the performance of their duties.
The most deplorable situation prevailing in the country is in Gujarat. Chief Minister Narendra Modi told a huge public meeting on December 4, 2007: “They want me to answer why I killed Sohabuddin. Sohrabuddin was a notorious criminal who had links with Pakistan and from whose farm house aAK 47s were recovered. So what should I have done with him? Pooja? Or should I have called up Sonia Behen before he was killed? I am thumping my chest and declaring that Sohrabuddin’s encounter had taken place on the dharti of Gujarat. If I have done something wrong, hang me.” What kind of intelligence agencies he was having in his state that even after the pogroms of Muslim in 2002 he still enjoys so much of over confidence and impunity?
Even now the Supreme Court is asking his government to supply the apex court with his speeches of September 2002. What have the IB, R&AW and crime branch of the police of the state and the Centre been doing there? Most of his speeches have flagrantly violated the constitutional acts as well as criminal laws. In September 2002 he castigated the Muslims by calling the relief camps as child producing factories producing future criminals and terrorists!
Those who have worked with R&AW or IB, as well as those who are still in service do not bother to notice that there is a subtle change. Now as never before there is a generational shift that is calling for demystifying the government agencies’ work. In the wake of Karkare’s investigation into Malegaon blast of 2008 and the circumstances of his death, the IB and ATS under Raghuvanshi as well as Crime Branch Police under Rakesh Maria have acquired notoriety of sabotaging work entrusted to them.
When R&AW had given 35 phone numbers to IB to monitor why did IB fail to comply when some of the numbers of the cell phones were used by the terrorists who attacked Mumbai on 26/11? And why did the Crime Branch Police withdraw surveillance of the Bhadwar Park landing? Hyderabad has a piquant situation where Maulana Naseerudin has just been released from prison. He was in prison for six years. The police failed to prove terrorism charges against him. His four sons are also accused but he says that they are all innocent.
Maulana Falahi’s case is even more tragic. His son Mujahid Saleem was shot dead by Gujarat police inspector Narendra Amin in the police chowki in Hyderbad where he had gone to investigate but Amin was put behind bars as he had shot dead Sohrabuddin’s wife Kauserbi and was involved in the fake encounter of Sohrabuddin. The Maulana’s wife Lateefa Begum says that the police have been targeting her family for 15 years. She had demanded (habeas corpus) the police to produce her son Mohammad Amjad Khwaja in court. The next day the police produced him in Chennai. He had spoken to her twelve days earlier and was in Jeddah doing a job. He was returning home when contact was lost. The police produced him at a press conference on Sunday January 17, 2010 and accused him of being involved in the blast at a police chowki in Hyderabad in October 2005 and conspiracy to kill right wing leader Indrasen Reddy of BJP in 2004, attack on the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, attacks on Lumbini Park and Gokul chat in 2007. He is now called the HuJi operative in India. They allegedly found foreign currency, Saudi Riyal, Bangladeshi Tikka, UAE Dirham. This is a familiar pattern of trapping Muslim youths: slamming so many charges against them that they would have lost decades in prison before they would be acquitted. That serves a purpose. That is, the Muslims are blamed and ill will is created against them. That covers up the terrorists activities of the Hindutva groups which many in the IB and ATS want.
Should Khwaja also spend a good deal of his youth in prison on charges which cannot be proved except confession under duress? Lateefa’s another son Abdul Kaleem was also released after the police failed to prove anything against him. They had accused him for bombing at Mecca mosque in May 2007. In another case he was booked for shifting RDX and handling SIM cards. Incidentally it is relevant to note that Abhinav Bharat and Shrikant Prasad Purohit are believed to be responsible for the attack. The high court has already released a batch of Muslim youths who were kept in illegal detention at private farm houses and tortured and subsequently put in prison by the police.
IB’s apprehending Khwaja raises doubts because he was returning from Jedda. When his mother lost contact she approached the court /police and demanded them to produce him in court. The next day the police produced him at press conference. This follows a pattern ala arrest of Abrar Ahmed accused in Malegaon blast of 2006 in which IB and the police at the bidding of IB arrested innocent youths and falsely accused them of terrorism and made them languish their youth in jails. Why did the police wait until Lateefa approached the court? She also feared that her son would be killed in fake encounter like Sohrabuddin. After all it was Sohabuddin’s brother who approached the court and filed habeas corpus regarding his brother’s wife Kauserbi that exposed the fake encounter and extrajudicial killing.
Vice President Ansari accepted that operational intelligence does require secrecy but the history of arrests in Hyderabad, Malegaon, Ahmedabad show that IB and its field officers in the states have no credible record. To say that every country gets the intelligence agencies it deserves, as B.Raman remaked, is a slur on the people of the country. Raman was neck deep in R&AW and should know better.
The need for this process was felt for quite some times. In fact it was felt right at the time of independence. There was a notice sent out to watch out for RSS chief Guru Golwalker after the Home Secretary was informed about a huge cache of weapons and details of a secret plan of RSS for attacks on the Muslims in the aftermath of the partition. He advised Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to take action. Golwalker was very much in the neighbourhood of Delhi but the intelligence field workers failed to serve the notice to him. What amazed the home secretary was inaction of Nehru in the face of actionable intelligence. In another case Rajnath Singh was the Chief Minister as well as Home Minister of Madhya Pradesh when the kar sevaks on Sabarmati express passed through his state. According to IG (Intelligence) of Gujarat BR Sreekumar the Home Minister of MP did not submit intelligence report on the behavior of the unruly passengers of the train. Thus the rowdy elements were given safe passage that emboldened them to persevere in their willful behavior like quarreling with Muslim hawkers at Godhra station and abducting a Muslim woman washing clothes in the vicinity of the tracks.
An actionable intelligence can save a situation. In Gwalior and other parts of Madhya Pradesh there were frequent attacks on Muslims leaving for Pakistan. One of the most remarkable marauders was a Punjabi youth Madanlal Pawa. Mahatma Gandhi came to know about it and prevailed upon the rulers to curb in the marauders. Pawa had to leave for Maharashtra. He settled in Bombay and moved to Ahmednager where he organized attacks on Muslim commercial establishments and collected extortion money from them. He came in contact with Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte and became a part of the crime syndicate that finally assassinated Gandhi. It is now known that Apte spent the last night with the daughter of the police commissioner of the metropolis before leaving for Delhi. Gopal Godse’s wife carried her daughter Himani to bid farewell to her husband. She and he husband were resolute in the mission. A part of the resolute nature reappeared in Himani Savarkar (nee Himani Godse) when she called for bomb for bomb retaliation. (As it ultimately turned out that the members of her own Abhinav Bharat had exploded bombs and Muslims were blamed.) All these facts are recorded in history. And yet people came to know her and her Abhinav Bharat only when Hemant Kakare arrested Lt Col Shrikant Prasad Purohit. We would not have known this but for the professionalism of Karkare. Thus the Augean stables of Intelligence Bureau (and for that matter the ATS, Crime Branch Police, the CBI or the numerous other intelligence agencies) call for purging those who have failed in the performance of their duties.
The most deplorable situation prevailing in the country is in Gujarat. Chief Minister Narendra Modi told a huge public meeting on December 4, 2007: “They want me to answer why I killed Sohabuddin. Sohrabuddin was a notorious criminal who had links with Pakistan and from whose farm house aAK 47s were recovered. So what should I have done with him? Pooja? Or should I have called up Sonia Behen before he was killed? I am thumping my chest and declaring that Sohrabuddin’s encounter had taken place on the dharti of Gujarat. If I have done something wrong, hang me.” What kind of intelligence agencies he was having in his state that even after the pogroms of Muslim in 2002 he still enjoys so much of over confidence and impunity?
Even now the Supreme Court is asking his government to supply the apex court with his speeches of September 2002. What have the IB, R&AW and crime branch of the police of the state and the Centre been doing there? Most of his speeches have flagrantly violated the constitutional acts as well as criminal laws. In September 2002 he castigated the Muslims by calling the relief camps as child producing factories producing future criminals and terrorists!
Those who have worked with R&AW or IB, as well as those who are still in service do not bother to notice that there is a subtle change. Now as never before there is a generational shift that is calling for demystifying the government agencies’ work. In the wake of Karkare’s investigation into Malegaon blast of 2008 and the circumstances of his death, the IB and ATS under Raghuvanshi as well as Crime Branch Police under Rakesh Maria have acquired notoriety of sabotaging work entrusted to them.
When R&AW had given 35 phone numbers to IB to monitor why did IB fail to comply when some of the numbers of the cell phones were used by the terrorists who attacked Mumbai on 26/11? And why did the Crime Branch Police withdraw surveillance of the Bhadwar Park landing? Hyderabad has a piquant situation where Maulana Naseerudin has just been released from prison. He was in prison for six years. The police failed to prove terrorism charges against him. His four sons are also accused but he says that they are all innocent.
Maulana Falahi’s case is even more tragic. His son Mujahid Saleem was shot dead by Gujarat police inspector Narendra Amin in the police chowki in Hyderbad where he had gone to investigate but Amin was put behind bars as he had shot dead Sohrabuddin’s wife Kauserbi and was involved in the fake encounter of Sohrabuddin. The Maulana’s wife Lateefa Begum says that the police have been targeting her family for 15 years. She had demanded (habeas corpus) the police to produce her son Mohammad Amjad Khwaja in court. The next day the police produced him in Chennai. He had spoken to her twelve days earlier and was in Jeddah doing a job. He was returning home when contact was lost. The police produced him at a press conference on Sunday January 17, 2010 and accused him of being involved in the blast at a police chowki in Hyderabad in October 2005 and conspiracy to kill right wing leader Indrasen Reddy of BJP in 2004, attack on the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, attacks on Lumbini Park and Gokul chat in 2007. He is now called the HuJi operative in India. They allegedly found foreign currency, Saudi Riyal, Bangladeshi Tikka, UAE Dirham. This is a familiar pattern of trapping Muslim youths: slamming so many charges against them that they would have lost decades in prison before they would be acquitted. That serves a purpose. That is, the Muslims are blamed and ill will is created against them. That covers up the terrorists activities of the Hindutva groups which many in the IB and ATS want.
Should Khwaja also spend a good deal of his youth in prison on charges which cannot be proved except confession under duress? Lateefa’s another son Abdul Kaleem was also released after the police failed to prove anything against him. They had accused him for bombing at Mecca mosque in May 2007. In another case he was booked for shifting RDX and handling SIM cards. Incidentally it is relevant to note that Abhinav Bharat and Shrikant Prasad Purohit are believed to be responsible for the attack. The high court has already released a batch of Muslim youths who were kept in illegal detention at private farm houses and tortured and subsequently put in prison by the police.
IB’s apprehending Khwaja raises doubts because he was returning from Jedda. When his mother lost contact she approached the court /police and demanded them to produce him in court. The next day the police produced him at press conference. This follows a pattern ala arrest of Abrar Ahmed accused in Malegaon blast of 2006 in which IB and the police at the bidding of IB arrested innocent youths and falsely accused them of terrorism and made them languish their youth in jails. Why did the police wait until Lateefa approached the court? She also feared that her son would be killed in fake encounter like Sohrabuddin. After all it was Sohabuddin’s brother who approached the court and filed habeas corpus regarding his brother’s wife Kauserbi that exposed the fake encounter and extrajudicial killing.
Vice President Ansari accepted that operational intelligence does require secrecy but the history of arrests in Hyderabad, Malegaon, Ahmedabad show that IB and its field officers in the states have no credible record. To say that every country gets the intelligence agencies it deserves, as B.Raman remaked, is a slur on the people of the country. Raman was neck deep in R&AW and should know better.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
What prospect for peace when fight against terrorism is relegated to it!
A conference organized by India Times and Jang Group at New Delhi 10-12 January 2010 has churned up significant responses. Aman ki Asha (desire for peace) is patently south Asia phenomenon while terrorism that infects the region is transcontinental. To believe that terrorism in the region has provenance there only is not helpful in resolving any issue, least of all, bilateral. 26/11 happened not on account of Siachen valley or Kashmir dispute. If terrorism in the subcontinent were just confined to it the two sides would have openly and sincerely undertaken the task of jointly investigating the terror attacks instead of leveling charges against each other or talking tongue in cheek.
Believing in the role of local facilitators in it smacks of sophomoric grasp of terrorism. A Narendra Modi or Aitzaz Ahsan will keep harping on it as is their wont, hardcore communalist or the chicane liberal. It would nevertheless be disingenuous to say as did President Asif Zardari that non state actors were involved in 26/11 attacks. His country is already reeling under the relentless almost daily terrorist attacks. India is temporarily enjoying a respite from it. However, the global ambition of one and the daze of the other do not make either exonerated from the moral responsibility they owe to their citizens if they really want to live in peace.
It is alleged by a colleague of Lt Col. Prasad Purohit, Captain Nitin Joshi, that Purohit had told him about pilfering RDX from the military stock(Purohit told me about pilfering RDX:Army Capt, TOI Nov 18,2008). Is this involvement of the army an extension of religious extremism that threatens the country or a part of the army chore of anti terror and counterinsurgency operation as Purohit was working for Military Intelligence in the capacity of a liaison officer coordinating fight against terrorism? In Pakistan also there are people who are extremists and most of them are the byproduct of the US policy. In the case of India the extremism verges on India’s strategic relations with Israel formally as far as the government is concerned and with Abhinav Bharat unofficially, nay clandestinely. Thus religious extremism is fuelling terrorism on both the sides.
In the Kabul attack on Monday Januay18, 2010 again atmosphere of suspicion is aroused which is not conducive for peace because the other side is pointing an accusing finger not to the Taliban or LeT but to India. This is the result of the visit to Kabul of MI chief Lieutenant General RK Loomba just before the latest attack.(http://dailymailnews.com/0110/19/FrontPage/FrontPage1.htm )India has its military trainers there. Its stake in Afghanistan is high and of strategic nature vis-à-vis Pakistan. Call it ambition or what it is irretrievably enmeshed there. Hence, the chances of peace are like chimera.
This ongoing war on terrorism has disastrous collateral damage inflicted on the civilians. Leave alone the dead and injured, people incarcerated on flimsy ground are in thousands. They languish in prisons across the country. Haj house Imam Ghulam Ilahi Yahya Baksh in Mumbai would casually talk to a Kashmiri hawker of fruits, Haji Mohammad Ramzan, who also prayed in the mosque. Even for this so casual contact the police accused him of complicity in terrorism and arrested him. For four years he was unnecessarily kept behind the bars. Only this week he was released by the court in Mumbai because there was no proof against him. The same is the case with Maulana Naseerudin of Hyderabad who spent six years in prison on terrorism charges. He was absolved of the charges and released last week.
If this makes the extremists among Hindus elated it should be all the more a cause of concern for fellow Indians who still have some sanity and can see through the charade practiced in the name of fight against terrorism. David Headley’s role in 26/11 has shown that even with the best intention in the world your fight against terrorism may run against the interest of Uncle Sam. As the Americans propped the jihadists against the Russians, they could very well try the same trick with others. There is nothing like permanent in foreign policy so we must keep our house safe. Pakistan is going through the baptism of hellfire over this.
From across several oceans and continents the Americans have a different perspective which we have still not comprehended well. They gathered intelligence by relegating Headley to snoop on terror threat emanating from the subcontinent that might endanger their interest and pass on to us selectively what might be of interest in such a way that their nationals are not prosecuted in a foreign county or by the International Criminal Court. They are now planning to reach understanding with the Taliban and even with Mullah Mohammad Umar. They want to remove terrorist tag against him so that they have no problems at the UN Security Council. There is a bathetic low in it as you can see how the FBI transmogrified the face of a Spanish Member of Parliament Mr Gasper Llamazares into what Osama bin Laden might look today. How would Umar’s face look, may be like Obama in turban as in the New Yorker cartoon during the presidential electioneering.
But the opposite of bathos is pathos. Last time when Robert Gates visited India, Mirwas Moulvi Farooq was brutally murdered on May 21, 1990 ala the massacre of 36 Sikhs in Chittisingpora on the eve of President Clinton’s visit on March 20, 2000. Gates wanted to discuss the Kashmir issue with New Delhi. In the present case India’s Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao told on the eve of the Kabul attack on January 18, 2010 that President Barack Obama would not have any negotiation on the Kashmir dispute. Subsequently Gates arrived in Delhi. This kind vicious stimulus and response involving terrorism does not bode well for peace prospect in the subcontinent.
In Hamid Karzai India has a friend while Pakistan, a bête noir. In 2008 attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul national security advisor MK Narayanan blamed Pakistan for it and remarked “We not only suspect but we have a fair amount of intelligence (on the involvement of Pakistan). He denied that this was insinuation. “I think we need to pay back in the same coin. We are quite clear in our mind.”
For sometimes now we may not have peace in the subcontinent because of this switchback of terrorism.
tags:Indo Pak relation, peace, terrorism
Believing in the role of local facilitators in it smacks of sophomoric grasp of terrorism. A Narendra Modi or Aitzaz Ahsan will keep harping on it as is their wont, hardcore communalist or the chicane liberal. It would nevertheless be disingenuous to say as did President Asif Zardari that non state actors were involved in 26/11 attacks. His country is already reeling under the relentless almost daily terrorist attacks. India is temporarily enjoying a respite from it. However, the global ambition of one and the daze of the other do not make either exonerated from the moral responsibility they owe to their citizens if they really want to live in peace.
It is alleged by a colleague of Lt Col. Prasad Purohit, Captain Nitin Joshi, that Purohit had told him about pilfering RDX from the military stock(Purohit told me about pilfering RDX:Army Capt, TOI Nov 18,2008). Is this involvement of the army an extension of religious extremism that threatens the country or a part of the army chore of anti terror and counterinsurgency operation as Purohit was working for Military Intelligence in the capacity of a liaison officer coordinating fight against terrorism? In Pakistan also there are people who are extremists and most of them are the byproduct of the US policy. In the case of India the extremism verges on India’s strategic relations with Israel formally as far as the government is concerned and with Abhinav Bharat unofficially, nay clandestinely. Thus religious extremism is fuelling terrorism on both the sides.
In the Kabul attack on Monday Januay18, 2010 again atmosphere of suspicion is aroused which is not conducive for peace because the other side is pointing an accusing finger not to the Taliban or LeT but to India. This is the result of the visit to Kabul of MI chief Lieutenant General RK Loomba just before the latest attack.(http://dailymailnews.com/0110/19/FrontPage/FrontPage1.htm )India has its military trainers there. Its stake in Afghanistan is high and of strategic nature vis-à-vis Pakistan. Call it ambition or what it is irretrievably enmeshed there. Hence, the chances of peace are like chimera.
This ongoing war on terrorism has disastrous collateral damage inflicted on the civilians. Leave alone the dead and injured, people incarcerated on flimsy ground are in thousands. They languish in prisons across the country. Haj house Imam Ghulam Ilahi Yahya Baksh in Mumbai would casually talk to a Kashmiri hawker of fruits, Haji Mohammad Ramzan, who also prayed in the mosque. Even for this so casual contact the police accused him of complicity in terrorism and arrested him. For four years he was unnecessarily kept behind the bars. Only this week he was released by the court in Mumbai because there was no proof against him. The same is the case with Maulana Naseerudin of Hyderabad who spent six years in prison on terrorism charges. He was absolved of the charges and released last week.
If this makes the extremists among Hindus elated it should be all the more a cause of concern for fellow Indians who still have some sanity and can see through the charade practiced in the name of fight against terrorism. David Headley’s role in 26/11 has shown that even with the best intention in the world your fight against terrorism may run against the interest of Uncle Sam. As the Americans propped the jihadists against the Russians, they could very well try the same trick with others. There is nothing like permanent in foreign policy so we must keep our house safe. Pakistan is going through the baptism of hellfire over this.
From across several oceans and continents the Americans have a different perspective which we have still not comprehended well. They gathered intelligence by relegating Headley to snoop on terror threat emanating from the subcontinent that might endanger their interest and pass on to us selectively what might be of interest in such a way that their nationals are not prosecuted in a foreign county or by the International Criminal Court. They are now planning to reach understanding with the Taliban and even with Mullah Mohammad Umar. They want to remove terrorist tag against him so that they have no problems at the UN Security Council. There is a bathetic low in it as you can see how the FBI transmogrified the face of a Spanish Member of Parliament Mr Gasper Llamazares into what Osama bin Laden might look today. How would Umar’s face look, may be like Obama in turban as in the New Yorker cartoon during the presidential electioneering.
But the opposite of bathos is pathos. Last time when Robert Gates visited India, Mirwas Moulvi Farooq was brutally murdered on May 21, 1990 ala the massacre of 36 Sikhs in Chittisingpora on the eve of President Clinton’s visit on March 20, 2000. Gates wanted to discuss the Kashmir issue with New Delhi. In the present case India’s Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao told on the eve of the Kabul attack on January 18, 2010 that President Barack Obama would not have any negotiation on the Kashmir dispute. Subsequently Gates arrived in Delhi. This kind vicious stimulus and response involving terrorism does not bode well for peace prospect in the subcontinent.
In Hamid Karzai India has a friend while Pakistan, a bête noir. In 2008 attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul national security advisor MK Narayanan blamed Pakistan for it and remarked “We not only suspect but we have a fair amount of intelligence (on the involvement of Pakistan). He denied that this was insinuation. “I think we need to pay back in the same coin. We are quite clear in our mind.”
For sometimes now we may not have peace in the subcontinent because of this switchback of terrorism.
tags:Indo Pak relation, peace, terrorism
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Media in collusion with the IB in war on terrorism
Ex nihilo nihili fit is an old saying of which the Intelligence Bureau seems to be ignorant of. It has fed successive Prime Ministers and their Home Ministers with canards. What you sow you reap. The mainstream media has been the bedfellow which has given mutual gratification. The investigation into the bomb incidents of Malegaon (2006) and Samjhauta express (2007) have reached a blind alley because of the deliberate design foisted on the public by the IB and the media. The hype created by the two incidents and many others like them have succeeded in keeping the people on the tenterhook of taking in what is coming in the garb of the 'breaking news' so much so that that have been taken in by weltanschauung of jihadi terrorism.
For the same reason the startling news from Kannad near Aurangabad has gone under the carpet of the mainstream media. On January 10, 2010 ex serviceman Gulab Rao Ram Rao Sonowne went out brandishing sword in his hand. When some panicked citizen informed the police, they overwhelmed him. Then searched his house and found two live bombs and swords. In a bizarre coincidence this seizure happens when the town is getting ready for a Jamat -e- Islami convention scheduled for 17 of the month. What can anyone infer from this? What the laity like the uninformed jury would infer does not matter for the media and the IB because their syllogism is already predetermined. This, despite the fact that the bombs were kept in a box containing a paper in Urdu. Why the bomb makers should be enamoured of the Urdu language in places like Kannad and Margao in Goa is the continuing puzzle.
Such puzzles have so much bedeviled the government that there is need for what Shashi Tharoor calls demystifying the government. Perhaps another twitter is on the way. A part of the mystification you can understand from Vijay Tendurkar's play Ghasiram Kotwal. The chitpawan Brahmins (the ilks of Nathuram Godse and Savarkars) in his play make a beeline to the mansions of the Muslim concubines while the Maratha sardars visit the Brahmin houses in the dead of the night. They observe such a code of maintaining silence that this kind of communal prostitution passes on as if no one has heard, seen or known it. But then comes the Brahmin from Benares, Ghasiram. Comparisons are odious. But does it strike someone that Hemant Karkare also playacted a wonderful role of this persona, albeit in real life?
The wall of hush hush created by Marathi language is a monumental contribution. Such a real wall must have also outraged Vijay Tndulkar so extremely that he wanted a gun to go and kill Narendra Modi. The acquittal of Moulana Naseerudin and twenty one others by the court in Ahemdabad on January 12, 2010 after their imprisonment for six years on terrorism charges, is also an instance of the hide and seek the IB and the mainstream media play. Thus the saga of suffering in the name of 'nothing comes out of nothing' goes on, as the IB and the media gratify each other while the Neros of the time fiddle.
For the same reason the startling news from Kannad near Aurangabad has gone under the carpet of the mainstream media. On January 10, 2010 ex serviceman Gulab Rao Ram Rao Sonowne went out brandishing sword in his hand. When some panicked citizen informed the police, they overwhelmed him. Then searched his house and found two live bombs and swords. In a bizarre coincidence this seizure happens when the town is getting ready for a Jamat -e- Islami convention scheduled for 17 of the month. What can anyone infer from this? What the laity like the uninformed jury would infer does not matter for the media and the IB because their syllogism is already predetermined. This, despite the fact that the bombs were kept in a box containing a paper in Urdu. Why the bomb makers should be enamoured of the Urdu language in places like Kannad and Margao in Goa is the continuing puzzle.
Such puzzles have so much bedeviled the government that there is need for what Shashi Tharoor calls demystifying the government. Perhaps another twitter is on the way. A part of the mystification you can understand from Vijay Tendurkar's play Ghasiram Kotwal. The chitpawan Brahmins (the ilks of Nathuram Godse and Savarkars) in his play make a beeline to the mansions of the Muslim concubines while the Maratha sardars visit the Brahmin houses in the dead of the night. They observe such a code of maintaining silence that this kind of communal prostitution passes on as if no one has heard, seen or known it. But then comes the Brahmin from Benares, Ghasiram. Comparisons are odious. But does it strike someone that Hemant Karkare also playacted a wonderful role of this persona, albeit in real life?
The wall of hush hush created by Marathi language is a monumental contribution. Such a real wall must have also outraged Vijay Tndulkar so extremely that he wanted a gun to go and kill Narendra Modi. The acquittal of Moulana Naseerudin and twenty one others by the court in Ahemdabad on January 12, 2010 after their imprisonment for six years on terrorism charges, is also an instance of the hide and seek the IB and the mainstream media play. Thus the saga of suffering in the name of 'nothing comes out of nothing' goes on, as the IB and the media gratify each other while the Neros of the time fiddle.
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