INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR: PAPER NO.440
B.RAMAN
(To be read in continuation of my earlier paper of September 4,2008, titled "US Special Forces Launch Hit & Withdraw Raid in S. Waziristan"at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers29/paper2832.html )
The car bomb explosion outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul on July 7,2008, has boomeranged on Pakistan. According to reliable Pakistanipolice sources, the US has been able to collect independent evidence from its own sources that the plan for the explosion was drawn up byserving officers of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and executed through a suicide bomber selected by Serajuddin Haqqani, sonof Jalalludin Haqqani, the senior Taliban Commander.
2. These sources say that while the US has conclusive evidence on the role of some serving officers of the ISI in organising the explosion, itstill does not have adequate evidence to show whether Lt.Gen.Nadeem Taj, the Director-General of the ISI, who is related to Gen.(retd)Pervez Musharraf, was in the picture and whether clearance had been obtained at the political level.
3. The US generally does not act upon intelligence against Pakistan provided by India due to the possibility that it may be motivated. Itacts only when it is able to collect independent evidence from its own sources. The US has not yet been able to identify all the ISI officers,who had played a role in organising this attack just as it was able to identify in 1992-93 all the ISI officers, including Lt.Gen.Javed Nasir, thethen DG of the ISI, who had instigated the Afghan Mujahideen not to sell back the unused Stinger missiles to the US.
4. It may be recalled that after assuming office in January,1993, the then US President Bill Clinton had placed Pakistan in a list of suspectedState-sponsors of international terrorism and pressured Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister, to sack Lt.Gen.Nasir and other officersidentified. Only thereafter was Pakistan's name removed from that list.
5. If the US succeeds in identifying all the officers involved in the Kabul explosion, it may demand their removal from the ISI. It is reportedthat the US investigation has not yet reached that stage.
6. However, the information so far collected by the US investigators on the role of some serving officers of the ISI in the Kabul explosion hasconfirmed the suspicions which it already had even before the Kabl explosion that some serving officers of the ISI and other wings of thePakistan Army have been leaking to Al Qaeda and the Taliban intelligence collected by the US agencies through human and technicalmeans. These suspicions arose following the arrest of some Pashtun tribals by the Taliban and their execution on charges of working forthe US intelligence.
7. Previously, the US was aware that some retired senior officers of the Pakistan Army and its ISI such as Nasir, Lt.Gen.(retd) Hamid Gul,another former DG, etc were allegedly helping the Taliban and Al Qaeda through advice and information. The US also had some vaguesuspicion of the involvement of serving ISI officers at junior level, who had served under Nasir and Gul, when they headed the ISI. Theinvestigation into the Kabul explosion reportedly confirmed the involvement of serving ISI officers even at senior levels.
8. Alarmed by this discovery, the US is reported to have stopped sharing sensitive intelligence with Pakistani Army and ISI officers. Underthe rules of engagement followed till the middle of July, while the US intelligence acted on all information, which called for instant airstrikes, it left it to the Pakistan Army to carry out ground operations where instant follow-up was not required. It was decided in July, withthe approval of President George Bush, that ground-level follow-up would also be done by the US special forces without informing theirPakistani counterparts.
9. The "New York Times" and the BBC, quoting American official sources, have reported that Bush signed a classified order in Julyauthorising ground actions inside Pakistani territory in the tribal belt by the US forces without informing the Pakistan Army beforehand.According to other sources unrelated to the NYT and the BBC,only after the US forces have withdrawn from the Pakistani territory wouldtheir action and the justification for it would be conveyed to the Pakistan Army. It is not clear whether the Presidential orders specify thedepths up to which US forces can enter into Pakistani territory.
10. There are three possible types of cross-border special operations. The first is the hot pursuit into Pakistani territory to kill or capturemembers of the Taliban or Al Qaeda fleeing after attacking NATO forces in the Afghan territory. The second is air-borne raids on suspectedterrorist hideouts to kill or capture Taliban or Al Qaeda operatives on the basis of intelligence about their presence in the hide-outs. Thethird is search and destroy operations on the basis of general and not specific intelligence regarding the location of training camps etc. Itwould seem that only the first two kinds of cross-border operations have been authorised for the present. These would involve the presencein Pakistani territory of the US forces for a very short duration. These would be hit and withdraw or hit and quit operations. The search anddestroy operations, which could involve a longish stay of the US forces in Pakistani territory, do not appear to have been authorised for thepresent.
11. The first raid in Pakistani territory under the new orders took place in the early hours of the morning of September 3,2008, when USSpecial Forces launched a hit and withdraw attack on three houses in the village of Jalal Khel, also known locally as Moosa Nika, in theAngoor Adda area of South Waziristan. The houses were located about one KM inside Pakistani territory from the border with Afghanistan.The village is about one kilometre from Angoor Adda and seven kilometres from the US military base at Machadat in Afghanistan's Paktikaprovince. The raid did not find any high-profile operative of Al Qaeda or the Taliban in the houses raided.The fact that the raid was made soclose to a Frontier Corps (FC)post and that the FC personnel did not react indicated a possible understanding between Admiral Mike Mullen,Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Pakistan's Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), when they met on board anAmerican aircraft-carrier on August 26, 2008, about the circumstances under which US Special Forces could launch hit and withdraw raidson suspected hide-outs of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistani territory close to the Afghan border without prior intimation to the Pakistani posts.
12. The speculation that the raid was made in pursuance of a secret understanding with Kayani created some embarrassment for thePakistan Government and Army. They condemned the raid, but in a low profile manner. But the reports from Washington on September10,2008, which quoted official sources as saying that Bush himself had authorised such raids without informing the Pakistan Army added tothe embarrassment of the Government and the Army. The embarrassment was increased further by comments made openly by Bush in anaddress to the National Defence University at Washington DC on September 9,2008, on the eve of the seventh anniversary of the 9/11terrorist strikes in the US Homeland by Al Qaeda.Bush named Pakistan as among the major battlegrounds in the global war on terrorism andreminded Islamabad that it was its responsibility to eradicate terrorism from the tribal areas. He said: “Defeating these terrorists andextremists is also Pakistan’s responsibility — because every nation has an obligation to govern its own territory and make certain that itdoes not become a safe haven for terror.” He described Iraq, Afghanistan and "parts of Pakistan" as " theatres in the same overall struggle.In all three places, extremists are using violence and terror in an attempt to impose their ideology on whole populations.They murder toimpose their dark vision of the world.”
13.In an unusually strong statement on September 10,2008, Kayani said that his forces would not tolerate such incursions and woulddefend the country's sovereignty "at all costs." "No external force is allowed to conduct operations inside Pakistan," he added. Was it only aproforma protest to conceal any Pakistani secret approval of such raids or was it an expression of genuine indignation? It would be difficultto answer this question at present.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStudies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
AL QAEDA HAS CHANGED TACTICS, BUT AS DEADLY AS EVER
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.439
B.RAMAN
(This was carried by the “Times of India” in its Editorial page on September 11,2008)
Despite the set-backs suffered by Al Qaeda in Iraq, it is constantly on the look-out for opportunities for another act of mass casualty terrorism anywhere in the world where an opportunity presents itself.
Mass casualty operations of the 9/11 kind in countries far removed from the terrorist sanctuaries have been rendered difficult by the enforcement of strict travel and immigration control measures. It has become difficult for terrorists normally resident in one country to go to another country with which there is no common border for carrying out a terrorist strike. The trend is, therefore, increasingly to depend on local residents in the targeted country for carrying out a terrorist strike. Hence, the phenomenon of home-grown jihadis.
From the messages disseminated by Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the No.2 to Osama bin Laden, in recent months, it is clear that Al Qaeda is trying to adapt itself to the new ground realities by promoting the concept of a global intifada in the place of a global jihad. Its message to Muslims all over the world has been---- hit wherever you can, whenever you can and in whatever way and with whatever means you can.
US counter-terrorism experts have managed to drive a wedge between the secular Iraqi Arabs of the national resistance movement and the Wahabi Saudi Arabs and their associates from other Arab countries, who constitute the bulk of Al Qaeda in Iraq. This has affected Al Qaeda. It still manages to carry out sporadic terrorist strikes in the Sunni area, but not on the same scale and not as frequently as before.
However, US experts have not succeeded in similarly driving a wedge between the Pashtuns of the Taliban and the Arabs, Uzbeks and Chechens of Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda organizations. The Taliban and Al Qaeda remain firm in their solidarity with each other. Pakistan’s reluctance to act firmly against Al Qaeda sanctuaries in its Pashtun belt and its collusion with the Taliban have posed a cruel dilemma for the US---- either act on its own against the sanctuaries in Pakistani territory, thereby running the danger of driving more Pashtuns into the arms of the Taliban and Al Qaeda or continue bleeding helplessly in Afghanistan. There have been some indications that the US may no longer be averse to undertaking unilateral strikes on the ground in Pakistani territory. Deniable air strikes have been there since 2002, but ground strikes have been avoided till now.
The majority of the Muslims all over the world still do not take seriously Al Qaeda’s goal of an Islamic Caliphate, but they have started paying attention to the call of Al Qaeda and the Taliban to take Islam back to the days of its pristine purity Thus, one finds Al Qaeda and its associates mastering and using modern means of communication and motivation through the Internet etc not for taking their community forward towards modernization, but backwards towards archaic concepts and beliefs.
There is no evidence in South Asia to indicate that formerly peaceful groups are now becoming radical because of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan or other reasons. However, there are three trends which need attention: First, organizations, which were already radical, are becoming more radical due to external (anti-US anger in Pakistan) or internal ( anger over domestic grievances in India) reasons. Second, an increase in the flow of new recruits of individual Muslims to these organizations. Thus, formerly peaceful Muslims are now tending to get radicalized. Third, first signs of concern in the Indian Muslim community over this phenomenon. This has led to an open condemnation of resort to terrorism by some leaders of the Muslim community and a reported split in the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) between those advocating terrorism and those advocating peaceful political means.
Radicalisation in some measure or the other has been there in sections of the Indian Muslim community at least since the 1970s,but what is of comparatively recent origin is pan-Islamisation. Al Qaeda was not the originator of pan-islamic tendencies, but it took advantage of them to promote the concept of a global jihad or a global intifada. There were not many takers for its ideas in the past, but it has now started attracting followers from small sections of the Indian Muslim youth in India as well as abroad.
Anger is the basic root cause of all terrorism. The anger is often caused by domestic or external factors. While India may not have much control over the external factors, it should be able to detect in time signs of anger due to domestic reasons and take action to address them. Unaddressed anger at the domestic level drives the angry into the arms of trans-national organizations such as Al Qaeda in course of time.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
(This was carried by the “Times of India” in its Editorial page on September 11,2008)
Despite the set-backs suffered by Al Qaeda in Iraq, it is constantly on the look-out for opportunities for another act of mass casualty terrorism anywhere in the world where an opportunity presents itself.
Mass casualty operations of the 9/11 kind in countries far removed from the terrorist sanctuaries have been rendered difficult by the enforcement of strict travel and immigration control measures. It has become difficult for terrorists normally resident in one country to go to another country with which there is no common border for carrying out a terrorist strike. The trend is, therefore, increasingly to depend on local residents in the targeted country for carrying out a terrorist strike. Hence, the phenomenon of home-grown jihadis.
From the messages disseminated by Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the No.2 to Osama bin Laden, in recent months, it is clear that Al Qaeda is trying to adapt itself to the new ground realities by promoting the concept of a global intifada in the place of a global jihad. Its message to Muslims all over the world has been---- hit wherever you can, whenever you can and in whatever way and with whatever means you can.
US counter-terrorism experts have managed to drive a wedge between the secular Iraqi Arabs of the national resistance movement and the Wahabi Saudi Arabs and their associates from other Arab countries, who constitute the bulk of Al Qaeda in Iraq. This has affected Al Qaeda. It still manages to carry out sporadic terrorist strikes in the Sunni area, but not on the same scale and not as frequently as before.
However, US experts have not succeeded in similarly driving a wedge between the Pashtuns of the Taliban and the Arabs, Uzbeks and Chechens of Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda organizations. The Taliban and Al Qaeda remain firm in their solidarity with each other. Pakistan’s reluctance to act firmly against Al Qaeda sanctuaries in its Pashtun belt and its collusion with the Taliban have posed a cruel dilemma for the US---- either act on its own against the sanctuaries in Pakistani territory, thereby running the danger of driving more Pashtuns into the arms of the Taliban and Al Qaeda or continue bleeding helplessly in Afghanistan. There have been some indications that the US may no longer be averse to undertaking unilateral strikes on the ground in Pakistani territory. Deniable air strikes have been there since 2002, but ground strikes have been avoided till now.
The majority of the Muslims all over the world still do not take seriously Al Qaeda’s goal of an Islamic Caliphate, but they have started paying attention to the call of Al Qaeda and the Taliban to take Islam back to the days of its pristine purity Thus, one finds Al Qaeda and its associates mastering and using modern means of communication and motivation through the Internet etc not for taking their community forward towards modernization, but backwards towards archaic concepts and beliefs.
There is no evidence in South Asia to indicate that formerly peaceful groups are now becoming radical because of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan or other reasons. However, there are three trends which need attention: First, organizations, which were already radical, are becoming more radical due to external (anti-US anger in Pakistan) or internal ( anger over domestic grievances in India) reasons. Second, an increase in the flow of new recruits of individual Muslims to these organizations. Thus, formerly peaceful Muslims are now tending to get radicalized. Third, first signs of concern in the Indian Muslim community over this phenomenon. This has led to an open condemnation of resort to terrorism by some leaders of the Muslim community and a reported split in the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) between those advocating terrorism and those advocating peaceful political means.
Radicalisation in some measure or the other has been there in sections of the Indian Muslim community at least since the 1970s,but what is of comparatively recent origin is pan-Islamisation. Al Qaeda was not the originator of pan-islamic tendencies, but it took advantage of them to promote the concept of a global jihad or a global intifada. There were not many takers for its ideas in the past, but it has now started attracting followers from small sections of the Indian Muslim youth in India as well as abroad.
Anger is the basic root cause of all terrorism. The anger is often caused by domestic or external factors. While India may not have much control over the external factors, it should be able to detect in time signs of anger due to domestic reasons and take action to address them. Unaddressed anger at the domestic level drives the angry into the arms of trans-national organizations such as Al Qaeda in course of time.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
VIENNA & AFTER
B.RAMAN
The significant decision of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG), which met for the second time at Vienna from September 4 to 6,2008, to waive the application to India of the embargo on nuclear trade as laid down in the guidelines adopted by the NSG in 1992 havebeen greeted with unwarranted euphoria on the one side and unbalanced or even motivated criticism on the other.
2. Many media reports and New Delhi-based analysts given to hype have projected the decision as marking the end of 34 years of nuclearisolation for India, which was imposed on it after it carried out its first nuclear test (Pokhran I) in 1974 when Indira Gandhi was the PrimeMinister. After 1974, the US and Canada had imposed bilateral embargoes on India, but there were no universal embargoes. India continuedto interact commercially and scientifically with other countries--- particularly with the then USSR and France---in the nuclear field till 1992. Itwas during this period before 1992 that India signed the agreement with the USSR for the purchase of the Koodankulam I and II nuclearpower stations, which are now under erection in Tamil Nadu by a joint team of Russian and Indian engineers and scientists. To talk of 34years of nuclear isolation is, therefore, incorrect. Bilateral isolation imposed by the US in 1974 did not mean universal isolation by theinternational community till 1992.
3.The Export Guidelines, adopted by the NSG in 1992 under US pressure, made these embargoes universal and came in the way of freshcontracts even with countries such as Russia and France. Despite this, Russia rejected pressure from the Clinton Administration in the USnot to go ahead with the implementation of the contract relating to Koodankulam I and II even though signed before 1992 and has goneahead with its implementation. It was even prepared to sign supplementary contracts under the same pre-1992 agreement for theconstruction of more reactors at Koodankulam. It was the Manmohan Singh Government, which decided not to sign the supplementarycontracts proposed by Russia till the waiver was granted by the NSG lest there be any misunderstanding with the US, which took theinitiative for granting an NSG waiver to India.
4. What the waiver granted on September 6,2008, has done is to restore the status quo ante as it was before 1992. There are no longer anyuniversal embargoes on nuclear trade with India. but the bilateral embargoes imposed by the US after Pokhran I in 1974 still remain. Thesewill be removed only after the so-called 123 Agreement on civil nuclear co-operation signed by India and the US is approved by the USCongress and is formally signed by the two countries. The optimistic expectation is that this will be done before the end of September,2008.When that happens, the status quo ante as it was before 1974 in the nuclear interactions between the US and India will be restored.
5. Though the universal embargoes stand removed, national embargoes or restrictions will remain, wherever they exist unless they srespecifically waived or removed by the country concerned. Thus, Australia has imposed an embargo on the sale of uranium to countries,which have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This embargo will continue to stand in the way of the sale of uranium toIndia by Australia unless a waiver is granted by the Australian Government. The previous Government of John Howard was prepared to grantsuch a waiver after the NSG granted its waiver to India, but the present Government headed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is not.
6. Even in the case of the US, it will not be bilateral nuclear trade with sky being the limit as projected by some analysts . It will be bilateralnuclear trade subject to the limits laid down in the Hyde Act passed by the US Congress. It is an India-specific legislation enacted by the USCongress and , in effect, lays down the conditions, which would govern the nuclear trade with India once the waiver is granted by the NSGand the US Government removes its bilateral embargoes. Thus, the Hyde Act will be very relevant in determining the extent of the nucleartrade between India and the US and the conditions under which it will be carried on. The argument often advanced by the Government ofIndia and its supporters that the Hyde Act is a matter between the US President and the Congress about which India does not have to worryis equally incorrect.
7. Even after the grant of the waiver by the NSG and the coming into force of the 123 agreement between India and the US, interestedcountries will continue to use nuclear co-operation and trade as an instrument of coercive diplomacy to achieve foreign policy objectives innon-nuclear related matters. The US has suspended the implementation of its civil nuclear co-operation agreement with Russia after itstroops intervened recently in Georgia. Similarly, Australia, taking the cue from the US, has suspended the process for the ratification of itsagreement with Moscow for the sale of uranium. Both the countries have made it clear that the suspension will remain in force till theRussian troops are withdrawn from Georgia. India too could be the victim of such coercive pressures in future in case it has seriousdifferences with the US on foreign or other policy matters of interest to the US.
8. Nuclear co-operation with the US could be a double-edged sword. That was the lesson from 1974. It will be unwise to forget that lesson.Arule of prudence will be to avoid over-dependence on the US to meet our nuclear energy and technology requirements and to diversify oursources of procurement. The question is: Will the US allow it or will it demand more than its pound of flesh in return for the leadership roleplayed by it in securing a waiver in favour of India from the NSG India has reasons to be grateful to the US for all that it has done tofacilitate the restoration of the status quo ante, but that feeling of gratitude should not make us tie the future of our nuclear power projectsand industry to the whims and fancies of US policy-makers.
9.A lot of time and energy has been spent on examining whether our agreements with the US and the commitments made by us through theUS in the margins of the parleys at Vienna would affect our future manoeuvrability in matters such as nuclear testing, acquisition ofstrategic fuel reserves for our nuclear power stations and our acquiring the enrichment and reprocessing capabilities. These are importantmatters, but equally, if not more important, is the question whether, in our anxiety to secure the US support for the waiver, we haveinformally bartered away our right to purchase our nuclear equipment and technology from wherever and from whomsoever we want. Isthere an informal commitment made by the Government to the US that all other conditions being equal, preferential treatment will be givento US suppliers? From the evasive remarks coming out of the Government as to whether we intend going ahead with signing thealready-negotiated contracts with Russia, one cannot avoid the suspicion that such a commitment probably exists.
10.Some Russian analysts also seem to suspect that such a commitment exists. Dmitry Yevstafiev of the PIR Centre of Russia has beenquoted by "The Hindu's" Moscow correspondent as saying as follows (September 9): " The waiver would push India closer towards the US. India is clearly drifting towards the US. We (Russia) may have tactical gains, but the strategic outlook for us is dim." What he means is thatwhile Russia may be able to participate in the expansion of the existing projects concluded or initiated before 1992, the prospects of Russia supplying new power stations are not that good.
11.The only way of removing these suspicions from the minds of the public will be for the Government to sign the contracts with Russia foradditional reactors ar Koodankulam as soon as the US Congress approves the 123 Agreement and go ahead with their implementation. Ifthe present Congress does not approve the 123 Agreement due to any reason and the matter gets postponed to the next Congress whichwill come into office only in January next, the Government of India should not hesitate to go ahead with signing the already-negotiatedcontracts with Russia. If it does not and waits indefinitely for a nod from the US, that will only confirm these suspicions.
12. Even though the US Government is not supposed to intervene in private contract negotiations between US companies and their foreigncounterparts, it does try to exercise political pressure to secure a decision in favour of US companies. One has often seen it in the case ofnegotiations of the Boeing with foreign countries for the sale of Boeing aircraft for their airline companies. Similar political pressure onbehalf of US nuclear equipment suppliers will be a fact of life.
13. The post-waiver world of nuclear commerce will be different from the pre-1992 world. We got Koodankulam I and II at concessionalprices from Mikhail Gorbachebv's USSR and Boris Yeltsin's Russia. We will be negotiating our future contracts with Russia of Vladimir Putinand his successors. Putin's Russia has already shown that it could be as money-minded as the US companies. We had the unpleasantexperience of its hard bargaining tactics from the way it sought to impose on us a cost escalation in respect of an old and re-conditionedaircraft carrier being bought for our Navy. It imposed the cost escalation when the implementation of the contract was half-way through. Wehave also been seeing how after completing the two nuclear power stations for Iran, it has avoided their commissioning by delaying thesupply of nuclear fuel on the ground that that there was a delay in Iran meeting its payment obligations. Another reported reason is that Russia is demanding a cost escalation from Iran as it did in respect of the aircraft-carrier for our Navy.
14. While the status quo ante as before 1992 has been restored, we are going to handle our future negotiations in a world different from thepre-1992 world. While we have reasons to be happy with the undoubted diplomatic success achieved by us, we must keep our feet firmly onthe ground, identify the ground realities of today and see how to come to terms with them without damaging our national interests.
15. Vienna has added to our fears and misgivings about China.Can China's word in any matter be trusted? This question bothered us afterthe Sino-Indian war of 1962. During the 1950s, maps started circulating in Communist China showing large parts of India near the border inArunachal Pradesh and Ladakh as Chinese territory. Jawaharlal Nehru repeatedly took this up with Chou En-lai. He assured Nehru that thesewere KMT-era maps and that we should not worry about them. He promised that these maps would be revised after the Communists settleddown in power. They did not revise them. Instead, they invaded India in order to enforce their claims as indicated in these very maps.
16. In the 1980s and the 1990s, the Chinese violated repeatedly all international restrictsions on the sale of nuclear and missile equipmentand technologies and helped Pakistan acquire a nuclear and missile capability. When the US discovered this and took it up with Beijing, ittotally denied helping Pakistan in the military nuclear field and put the blame for the violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime onprivate entities as if so-called private companies in China can hoodwink the Government.
17.During their meetings with each other, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had agreed in principle that anyborder settlement between the two countries should not involve an exchange of populations and should be restricted to unpopulated areas.The Chinese subsequently wriggled out of this and reportedly said that this would not apply to Tawang in Arunachl Pradesh. They aredemanding that India should agree to transfer the Tawang Tract to China even if it is a populated area.
18. They have now added to the suspicions in the minds of many in India by the way they reportedly conducted themselves in Vienna. Duringthe last two years, they had repeatedly assured the Indian leaders and other interlocutors that they would not pose a problem in the way ofthe NSG granting a waiver, but in Vienna, their role was allegedly far from helpful. They did not openly try to oppose a consensus, but theytried to delay it for as long as they can by encouraging the opposition of smaller nations such as Austria and Ireland. They were evidently hoping that negotiations fatigue would set in and delay a consensus before the US Congress completed its term.
19. The "Mail Today", a New Delhi-based daily, reported as follows on September 8,2008: " Addressing Saturday's meeting (of the NSG) atVienna, Cheng Jingye, head of the Chinese delegation, said it was China's hope that the decision taken by the NSG would stand the test oftime and contribute to the goals of nuclear non-proliferation and peaceful use of nuclear power. It was also China's hope that the NSGwould equally address the aspirations of all parties for the peaceful use of nuclear power while adhering to the nuclear non-proliferationmechanism." The second point was apparently made with Pakistan in the Chinese mind.
20. This has been the standard Chinese formulation. It was expected even before the Vienna meeting that the Chinese would reiterate thisformulation without standing in the way of a consensus. This is what the Chinese ultimately did at Vienna, but the way they avoided playinga role in support of India has given rise to a perception in the minds of many in India that this was yet another instance of the Chinese notkeeping their word. This suspicion will continue to influence Indian attitude to China despite the spectacular improvement in trade andother fields.
21. Yang Jiechi, the Chinese Foreign Minister, who visited New Delhi on September 8 and 9, 2008, for talks with Indian leaders stronglydenied reports emanating from Indian media sources in Vienna that China had tried to block a consensus at Vienna.He said: " I am surprisedby these reports. Facts speak louder than words. China has always worked responsibly towards consensus both in the International AtomicEnergy Agency and the NSG." Despite his denial, the suspicion persists that China's attitude at Vienna was far from positive.
22.Why did China hum and haw at Vienna before going along with the consensus? Was it out of a feeling of solidarity with Pakistan, whichwill not be a beneficiary of a similar nuclear trade? Or was it a futile attempt to save face for the Communist Party of India (Marxist), whichhas doggedly opposed Indo-US co-operation whether in the nuclear or any other field?(11-9-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStrudies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
The significant decision of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG), which met for the second time at Vienna from September 4 to 6,2008, to waive the application to India of the embargo on nuclear trade as laid down in the guidelines adopted by the NSG in 1992 havebeen greeted with unwarranted euphoria on the one side and unbalanced or even motivated criticism on the other.
2. Many media reports and New Delhi-based analysts given to hype have projected the decision as marking the end of 34 years of nuclearisolation for India, which was imposed on it after it carried out its first nuclear test (Pokhran I) in 1974 when Indira Gandhi was the PrimeMinister. After 1974, the US and Canada had imposed bilateral embargoes on India, but there were no universal embargoes. India continuedto interact commercially and scientifically with other countries--- particularly with the then USSR and France---in the nuclear field till 1992. Itwas during this period before 1992 that India signed the agreement with the USSR for the purchase of the Koodankulam I and II nuclearpower stations, which are now under erection in Tamil Nadu by a joint team of Russian and Indian engineers and scientists. To talk of 34years of nuclear isolation is, therefore, incorrect. Bilateral isolation imposed by the US in 1974 did not mean universal isolation by theinternational community till 1992.
3.The Export Guidelines, adopted by the NSG in 1992 under US pressure, made these embargoes universal and came in the way of freshcontracts even with countries such as Russia and France. Despite this, Russia rejected pressure from the Clinton Administration in the USnot to go ahead with the implementation of the contract relating to Koodankulam I and II even though signed before 1992 and has goneahead with its implementation. It was even prepared to sign supplementary contracts under the same pre-1992 agreement for theconstruction of more reactors at Koodankulam. It was the Manmohan Singh Government, which decided not to sign the supplementarycontracts proposed by Russia till the waiver was granted by the NSG lest there be any misunderstanding with the US, which took theinitiative for granting an NSG waiver to India.
4. What the waiver granted on September 6,2008, has done is to restore the status quo ante as it was before 1992. There are no longer anyuniversal embargoes on nuclear trade with India. but the bilateral embargoes imposed by the US after Pokhran I in 1974 still remain. Thesewill be removed only after the so-called 123 Agreement on civil nuclear co-operation signed by India and the US is approved by the USCongress and is formally signed by the two countries. The optimistic expectation is that this will be done before the end of September,2008.When that happens, the status quo ante as it was before 1974 in the nuclear interactions between the US and India will be restored.
5. Though the universal embargoes stand removed, national embargoes or restrictions will remain, wherever they exist unless they srespecifically waived or removed by the country concerned. Thus, Australia has imposed an embargo on the sale of uranium to countries,which have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This embargo will continue to stand in the way of the sale of uranium toIndia by Australia unless a waiver is granted by the Australian Government. The previous Government of John Howard was prepared to grantsuch a waiver after the NSG granted its waiver to India, but the present Government headed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is not.
6. Even in the case of the US, it will not be bilateral nuclear trade with sky being the limit as projected by some analysts . It will be bilateralnuclear trade subject to the limits laid down in the Hyde Act passed by the US Congress. It is an India-specific legislation enacted by the USCongress and , in effect, lays down the conditions, which would govern the nuclear trade with India once the waiver is granted by the NSGand the US Government removes its bilateral embargoes. Thus, the Hyde Act will be very relevant in determining the extent of the nucleartrade between India and the US and the conditions under which it will be carried on. The argument often advanced by the Government ofIndia and its supporters that the Hyde Act is a matter between the US President and the Congress about which India does not have to worryis equally incorrect.
7. Even after the grant of the waiver by the NSG and the coming into force of the 123 agreement between India and the US, interestedcountries will continue to use nuclear co-operation and trade as an instrument of coercive diplomacy to achieve foreign policy objectives innon-nuclear related matters. The US has suspended the implementation of its civil nuclear co-operation agreement with Russia after itstroops intervened recently in Georgia. Similarly, Australia, taking the cue from the US, has suspended the process for the ratification of itsagreement with Moscow for the sale of uranium. Both the countries have made it clear that the suspension will remain in force till theRussian troops are withdrawn from Georgia. India too could be the victim of such coercive pressures in future in case it has seriousdifferences with the US on foreign or other policy matters of interest to the US.
8. Nuclear co-operation with the US could be a double-edged sword. That was the lesson from 1974. It will be unwise to forget that lesson.Arule of prudence will be to avoid over-dependence on the US to meet our nuclear energy and technology requirements and to diversify oursources of procurement. The question is: Will the US allow it or will it demand more than its pound of flesh in return for the leadership roleplayed by it in securing a waiver in favour of India from the NSG India has reasons to be grateful to the US for all that it has done tofacilitate the restoration of the status quo ante, but that feeling of gratitude should not make us tie the future of our nuclear power projectsand industry to the whims and fancies of US policy-makers.
9.A lot of time and energy has been spent on examining whether our agreements with the US and the commitments made by us through theUS in the margins of the parleys at Vienna would affect our future manoeuvrability in matters such as nuclear testing, acquisition ofstrategic fuel reserves for our nuclear power stations and our acquiring the enrichment and reprocessing capabilities. These are importantmatters, but equally, if not more important, is the question whether, in our anxiety to secure the US support for the waiver, we haveinformally bartered away our right to purchase our nuclear equipment and technology from wherever and from whomsoever we want. Isthere an informal commitment made by the Government to the US that all other conditions being equal, preferential treatment will be givento US suppliers? From the evasive remarks coming out of the Government as to whether we intend going ahead with signing thealready-negotiated contracts with Russia, one cannot avoid the suspicion that such a commitment probably exists.
10.Some Russian analysts also seem to suspect that such a commitment exists. Dmitry Yevstafiev of the PIR Centre of Russia has beenquoted by "The Hindu's" Moscow correspondent as saying as follows (September 9): " The waiver would push India closer towards the US. India is clearly drifting towards the US. We (Russia) may have tactical gains, but the strategic outlook for us is dim." What he means is thatwhile Russia may be able to participate in the expansion of the existing projects concluded or initiated before 1992, the prospects of Russia supplying new power stations are not that good.
11.The only way of removing these suspicions from the minds of the public will be for the Government to sign the contracts with Russia foradditional reactors ar Koodankulam as soon as the US Congress approves the 123 Agreement and go ahead with their implementation. Ifthe present Congress does not approve the 123 Agreement due to any reason and the matter gets postponed to the next Congress whichwill come into office only in January next, the Government of India should not hesitate to go ahead with signing the already-negotiatedcontracts with Russia. If it does not and waits indefinitely for a nod from the US, that will only confirm these suspicions.
12. Even though the US Government is not supposed to intervene in private contract negotiations between US companies and their foreigncounterparts, it does try to exercise political pressure to secure a decision in favour of US companies. One has often seen it in the case ofnegotiations of the Boeing with foreign countries for the sale of Boeing aircraft for their airline companies. Similar political pressure onbehalf of US nuclear equipment suppliers will be a fact of life.
13. The post-waiver world of nuclear commerce will be different from the pre-1992 world. We got Koodankulam I and II at concessionalprices from Mikhail Gorbachebv's USSR and Boris Yeltsin's Russia. We will be negotiating our future contracts with Russia of Vladimir Putinand his successors. Putin's Russia has already shown that it could be as money-minded as the US companies. We had the unpleasantexperience of its hard bargaining tactics from the way it sought to impose on us a cost escalation in respect of an old and re-conditionedaircraft carrier being bought for our Navy. It imposed the cost escalation when the implementation of the contract was half-way through. Wehave also been seeing how after completing the two nuclear power stations for Iran, it has avoided their commissioning by delaying thesupply of nuclear fuel on the ground that that there was a delay in Iran meeting its payment obligations. Another reported reason is that Russia is demanding a cost escalation from Iran as it did in respect of the aircraft-carrier for our Navy.
14. While the status quo ante as before 1992 has been restored, we are going to handle our future negotiations in a world different from thepre-1992 world. While we have reasons to be happy with the undoubted diplomatic success achieved by us, we must keep our feet firmly onthe ground, identify the ground realities of today and see how to come to terms with them without damaging our national interests.
15. Vienna has added to our fears and misgivings about China.Can China's word in any matter be trusted? This question bothered us afterthe Sino-Indian war of 1962. During the 1950s, maps started circulating in Communist China showing large parts of India near the border inArunachal Pradesh and Ladakh as Chinese territory. Jawaharlal Nehru repeatedly took this up with Chou En-lai. He assured Nehru that thesewere KMT-era maps and that we should not worry about them. He promised that these maps would be revised after the Communists settleddown in power. They did not revise them. Instead, they invaded India in order to enforce their claims as indicated in these very maps.
16. In the 1980s and the 1990s, the Chinese violated repeatedly all international restrictsions on the sale of nuclear and missile equipmentand technologies and helped Pakistan acquire a nuclear and missile capability. When the US discovered this and took it up with Beijing, ittotally denied helping Pakistan in the military nuclear field and put the blame for the violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime onprivate entities as if so-called private companies in China can hoodwink the Government.
17.During their meetings with each other, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had agreed in principle that anyborder settlement between the two countries should not involve an exchange of populations and should be restricted to unpopulated areas.The Chinese subsequently wriggled out of this and reportedly said that this would not apply to Tawang in Arunachl Pradesh. They aredemanding that India should agree to transfer the Tawang Tract to China even if it is a populated area.
18. They have now added to the suspicions in the minds of many in India by the way they reportedly conducted themselves in Vienna. Duringthe last two years, they had repeatedly assured the Indian leaders and other interlocutors that they would not pose a problem in the way ofthe NSG granting a waiver, but in Vienna, their role was allegedly far from helpful. They did not openly try to oppose a consensus, but theytried to delay it for as long as they can by encouraging the opposition of smaller nations such as Austria and Ireland. They were evidently hoping that negotiations fatigue would set in and delay a consensus before the US Congress completed its term.
19. The "Mail Today", a New Delhi-based daily, reported as follows on September 8,2008: " Addressing Saturday's meeting (of the NSG) atVienna, Cheng Jingye, head of the Chinese delegation, said it was China's hope that the decision taken by the NSG would stand the test oftime and contribute to the goals of nuclear non-proliferation and peaceful use of nuclear power. It was also China's hope that the NSGwould equally address the aspirations of all parties for the peaceful use of nuclear power while adhering to the nuclear non-proliferationmechanism." The second point was apparently made with Pakistan in the Chinese mind.
20. This has been the standard Chinese formulation. It was expected even before the Vienna meeting that the Chinese would reiterate thisformulation without standing in the way of a consensus. This is what the Chinese ultimately did at Vienna, but the way they avoided playinga role in support of India has given rise to a perception in the minds of many in India that this was yet another instance of the Chinese notkeeping their word. This suspicion will continue to influence Indian attitude to China despite the spectacular improvement in trade andother fields.
21. Yang Jiechi, the Chinese Foreign Minister, who visited New Delhi on September 8 and 9, 2008, for talks with Indian leaders stronglydenied reports emanating from Indian media sources in Vienna that China had tried to block a consensus at Vienna.He said: " I am surprisedby these reports. Facts speak louder than words. China has always worked responsibly towards consensus both in the International AtomicEnergy Agency and the NSG." Despite his denial, the suspicion persists that China's attitude at Vienna was far from positive.
22.Why did China hum and haw at Vienna before going along with the consensus? Was it out of a feeling of solidarity with Pakistan, whichwill not be a beneficiary of a similar nuclear trade? Or was it a futile attempt to save face for the Communist Party of India (Marxist), whichhas doggedly opposed Indo-US co-operation whether in the nuclear or any other field?(11-9-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStrudies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Friday, September 5, 2008
TALIBAN'S CONTINUING ANGER AGAINST CHINA
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--PAPER NO.437
B.RAMAN
The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has not forgotten the role of China in exercising pressure on the then President Pervez Musharraf to order commando action inside the Lal Masjid of Islamabad from July10 to 13,2007. The commando action led to the death of Abdul Rashid, a cleric popular with the Pashtun tribals, and of a large number of tribal girls from the Pashtun tribal belt studying in a girls' madrasa attached to the Masjid. The madrasa was destroyed during the commando action.
2. Before the commando action, there was an incident in Islamabad in which students studying in the girls' madrasa attached to the Lal Masjid---some of them Uighurs--- kidnapped six Chinese women working in a massage parlour of Islamabad and accused them of working as prostitutes. They were subsequently released. It was after this incident that the Chinese authorities strongly took up with Musharraf the question of taking action against the madrasa students who were responsible for the kidnapping. Unnerved by the strong Chinese reaction, Musharraf ordered the commando action, which resulted in a huge tragedy.
3. The commando action led to a wave of suicide terrorism by tribals from the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) in tribal as well as non-tribal areas, including in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Two of the retaliatory attacks after the commando action were directed against Chinese nationals working in Pakistan. In the first attack in Peshawar, three Chinese working for a company importing meat, skin and hide from Pakistan were killed. Chinese engineers travelling to work in a bus in Hub in Balochistan escaped unhurt when a suicide bomber blew himself up near their bus, killing a large number of policemen and civilians. Following these incidents, the Pakistan Government tightened physical security for Chinese nationals working in Pakistan. A Joint Task Force consisting of representatives of the Pakistani security agencies and the Chinese Embassy was set up to co-ordinate the physical security measures.
4. There are different estimates of the total number of Chinese living and working in Pakistan----varying between 3,500 and 5,000. They consist of three categories. In the first category are the Chinese engineers and technicians working in Chinese State-aided projects such as the Gwadar port construction and the Saindak copper-gold extraction projects in Balochistan, the construction of a hydel power station in the FATA and the expansion of the reservoir capacity of the Mangla dam in Mirpur in POK. All these Chinese are well-protected by the Pakistani security forces, but despite this, some of the engineers working in Gwadar and FATA were killed in terrorist attacks in recent years, some allegedly by the Uighurs and one by the late Abdullah Mehsud of South Waziristan, a former detenu in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.
5. The second category consists of independent Chinese businessmen running small-scale business enterprises employing not more than half a dozen Chinese per enterprise like the one in Peshawar, which came under attack. The third category consists largely of single Chinese women in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore and Karachi working in massage and beauty parlours, dental and native Chinese medicine clinics etc. These two categories do not enjoy any special protection. They are dependent on the local police of the area, where they are living and working, for their protection.
6. There was a campaign of slander against these single Chinese women by the clerics of the Lal Masjid and their Uighur students, which led to the kidnapping of some of them working in Islamabad. While the clerics were describing them as prostitutes corrupting the morals of Muslims, the Uighur students studying in the madrasas attached to the Lal Masjid were accusing them of being agents of the Chinese intelligence agencies sent to Pakistan to monitor the activities of the Uighurs in Pakistan before the Beijing Olympics.
7.Taken aback by the Pashtun anger against the Chinese, the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad tried to reassure the Pakistani religious elements that China had nothing against the Lal Masjid. It denied reports that Beijing forced Musharraf to act against the Masjid following the kidnapping of some Chinese women by the madrasa students.
8. The "China Daily" reported as follows on July 18, 2007: "China did not push Pakistan for operations against the Red Mosque, Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Luo Zhaohui said. It is the consistent policy of China not to meddle in the domestic affairs of other countries, he told The News, a major Pakistani daily. Luo said he was considering an invitation to visit the mosque but it was made impossible due to the unstable security situation. "We enjoy very cordial relations with the ruling party here and likewise we maintain friendly ties with other segments of the society including the political parties of the opposition," he said. "I had no knowledge as to why Chinese nationals are being targeted and were the victims in five recent incidents", Luo said, referring to several Chinese who were killed in that country. He said if Chinese continued to be targeted, cooperation between the two countries could suffer. To protect the 3,000 Chinese working in Pakistan, China and Pakistan have decided to set up a Joint Task Force (JTF), the Ambassador revealed."
9. Following these initiatives by the Chinese Embassy, the anger against the Chinese seemed to have subsided. The fact that this was really not so became evident on August 29,2008, when two Chinese engineers, Zhanggua and Lung, along with their security guard Imranullah and driver Khalil, went missing in the Khall area of the Dir Lower district in the NWFP.They were working for the Zong mobile company, which was running mobile phone services in Dir Upper and Lower districts. They were kidnapped while they were being drven in a car. Following this incident, the Chinese Embassy advised 15 other Chinese engineers working in the area to leave the area. They did so.
10. Subsequently, Muslim Khan, who described himself as a spokesman of the TTP in the Swat Valley, claimed that the Chinese engineers were in the custody of the TTP, which wuld be shortly announcing its demands for their release. Initially he said: “Our aim is to hit the government’s interests wherever they are. We kidnap everyone irrespective of whether he’s Pakistani or Chinese and we’ll continue to do this until they stop killing our people.” But the daily newspaper "The News" reported on September 4,2008, as follows: " The militants' spokesman was critical of the 'Chinese role' in pressurising the Pakistani Government to launch Operation Silence on the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad. The Lal Masjid administration had taken hostage Chinese women who were running a massage centre in Islamabad last year who were later released unharmed. He said the US also played a role in forcing Pakistan to attack the mosque and seminary in which hundreds of students and their teachers were reportedly killed." (5-9-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat. Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has not forgotten the role of China in exercising pressure on the then President Pervez Musharraf to order commando action inside the Lal Masjid of Islamabad from July10 to 13,2007. The commando action led to the death of Abdul Rashid, a cleric popular with the Pashtun tribals, and of a large number of tribal girls from the Pashtun tribal belt studying in a girls' madrasa attached to the Masjid. The madrasa was destroyed during the commando action.
2. Before the commando action, there was an incident in Islamabad in which students studying in the girls' madrasa attached to the Lal Masjid---some of them Uighurs--- kidnapped six Chinese women working in a massage parlour of Islamabad and accused them of working as prostitutes. They were subsequently released. It was after this incident that the Chinese authorities strongly took up with Musharraf the question of taking action against the madrasa students who were responsible for the kidnapping. Unnerved by the strong Chinese reaction, Musharraf ordered the commando action, which resulted in a huge tragedy.
3. The commando action led to a wave of suicide terrorism by tribals from the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) in tribal as well as non-tribal areas, including in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Two of the retaliatory attacks after the commando action were directed against Chinese nationals working in Pakistan. In the first attack in Peshawar, three Chinese working for a company importing meat, skin and hide from Pakistan were killed. Chinese engineers travelling to work in a bus in Hub in Balochistan escaped unhurt when a suicide bomber blew himself up near their bus, killing a large number of policemen and civilians. Following these incidents, the Pakistan Government tightened physical security for Chinese nationals working in Pakistan. A Joint Task Force consisting of representatives of the Pakistani security agencies and the Chinese Embassy was set up to co-ordinate the physical security measures.
4. There are different estimates of the total number of Chinese living and working in Pakistan----varying between 3,500 and 5,000. They consist of three categories. In the first category are the Chinese engineers and technicians working in Chinese State-aided projects such as the Gwadar port construction and the Saindak copper-gold extraction projects in Balochistan, the construction of a hydel power station in the FATA and the expansion of the reservoir capacity of the Mangla dam in Mirpur in POK. All these Chinese are well-protected by the Pakistani security forces, but despite this, some of the engineers working in Gwadar and FATA were killed in terrorist attacks in recent years, some allegedly by the Uighurs and one by the late Abdullah Mehsud of South Waziristan, a former detenu in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.
5. The second category consists of independent Chinese businessmen running small-scale business enterprises employing not more than half a dozen Chinese per enterprise like the one in Peshawar, which came under attack. The third category consists largely of single Chinese women in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore and Karachi working in massage and beauty parlours, dental and native Chinese medicine clinics etc. These two categories do not enjoy any special protection. They are dependent on the local police of the area, where they are living and working, for their protection.
6. There was a campaign of slander against these single Chinese women by the clerics of the Lal Masjid and their Uighur students, which led to the kidnapping of some of them working in Islamabad. While the clerics were describing them as prostitutes corrupting the morals of Muslims, the Uighur students studying in the madrasas attached to the Lal Masjid were accusing them of being agents of the Chinese intelligence agencies sent to Pakistan to monitor the activities of the Uighurs in Pakistan before the Beijing Olympics.
7.Taken aback by the Pashtun anger against the Chinese, the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad tried to reassure the Pakistani religious elements that China had nothing against the Lal Masjid. It denied reports that Beijing forced Musharraf to act against the Masjid following the kidnapping of some Chinese women by the madrasa students.
8. The "China Daily" reported as follows on July 18, 2007: "China did not push Pakistan for operations against the Red Mosque, Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Luo Zhaohui said. It is the consistent policy of China not to meddle in the domestic affairs of other countries, he told The News, a major Pakistani daily. Luo said he was considering an invitation to visit the mosque but it was made impossible due to the unstable security situation. "We enjoy very cordial relations with the ruling party here and likewise we maintain friendly ties with other segments of the society including the political parties of the opposition," he said. "I had no knowledge as to why Chinese nationals are being targeted and were the victims in five recent incidents", Luo said, referring to several Chinese who were killed in that country. He said if Chinese continued to be targeted, cooperation between the two countries could suffer. To protect the 3,000 Chinese working in Pakistan, China and Pakistan have decided to set up a Joint Task Force (JTF), the Ambassador revealed."
9. Following these initiatives by the Chinese Embassy, the anger against the Chinese seemed to have subsided. The fact that this was really not so became evident on August 29,2008, when two Chinese engineers, Zhanggua and Lung, along with their security guard Imranullah and driver Khalil, went missing in the Khall area of the Dir Lower district in the NWFP.They were working for the Zong mobile company, which was running mobile phone services in Dir Upper and Lower districts. They were kidnapped while they were being drven in a car. Following this incident, the Chinese Embassy advised 15 other Chinese engineers working in the area to leave the area. They did so.
10. Subsequently, Muslim Khan, who described himself as a spokesman of the TTP in the Swat Valley, claimed that the Chinese engineers were in the custody of the TTP, which wuld be shortly announcing its demands for their release. Initially he said: “Our aim is to hit the government’s interests wherever they are. We kidnap everyone irrespective of whether he’s Pakistani or Chinese and we’ll continue to do this until they stop killing our people.” But the daily newspaper "The News" reported on September 4,2008, as follows: " The militants' spokesman was critical of the 'Chinese role' in pressurising the Pakistani Government to launch Operation Silence on the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad. The Lal Masjid administration had taken hostage Chinese women who were running a massage centre in Islamabad last year who were later released unharmed. He said the US also played a role in forcing Pakistan to attack the mosque and seminary in which hundreds of students and their teachers were reportedly killed." (5-9-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat. Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
THE HINDU-CHRISTIAN DIVIDE (CONTD)
Dear Mr. Raman,
I read your article on the Hindu-Christian divide and respectfully beg to differ with you on a few points. You say that India is 80% Hindu and that Hindus have a right to form organisations. You are factually correct. But does this assertion imply that Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Bahais and others have secondary rights by virtue of being in a minority? If I got it wrong and if indeed "Indians" regardless of religion have equal rights then should we be dividing Indian society by religion in the first place? What does India being 80% Hindu have anything to do by way of justifying Hindu anger over conversions? Conversions then should be wrong regardless of Hindus being the majority.
Besides, does India "belong" to the Hindus that they are so angry over conversions? Aren't we all ethnically the same? We look the same, our language, food, cultural mores and values are the same.
On a side note, a poor tribal in Orissa, oppressed by the caste system has every incentive to convert to Christianity or Buddhism or any faith that promises him or her a better life. Freedom of religion is enshrined in the constitution. Hindu groups, even if they oppose conversions peacefully, are fundamentally protesting personal liberties. Bribing people into a new religion is wrong but violently or even constitutionally preventing them is wrong.
I wish groups like the VHP spent more time fighting against caste oppression instead of spreading these myths about Hinduism's original claims on the tribals of Orissa or on the people of India.
Please know that I mean no offence to your valuable work.
Best,
Alaphia
(The writer is the former correspondent of NDTV in Chennai, who now lives in the US )
In France, the birth place of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, the Catholics are in a preponderant majority. While non-Catholics have been Prime Ministers rarely has a non-Catholic become the President. In the UK, the Anglican Protestants, are in a majority. Only an Anglican Protestant can be the head of State (The Crown). Rarely has a Catholic become the Prime Minister. In all Muslim countries, while the Muslims have the right to convert a non-Muslim to Islam, non-Muslims do not have the right to convert a Muslim to their faith. In many Muslim countries, converting a Muslim to another religion is punishable with death.If a non-Muslim wants to marry a Muslim, he or she has to embrace Islam.In Pakistan last week, four Muslim women were buried alive as a punishment for being friendly with men.Muslims should look inwards and remove despicable practices in their religion before they give sermons to others. India is the homeland of the Hindus. It is the birthplace of their religion, culture and civilisation. India is as holy to the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Jains and the Sikhs as Saudi Arabia is to the Muslims and Palestine and Jerusalem are to the Christians and the Jewish people. The Hindus being in a preponderant majority along with the Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs, have every right to safeguard their interests, religion, culture and civilisation. They have to do it in such a manner as not to infringe on the rights of the Muslims and Christians, who are equal citizens of the country. Equality of rights does not mean freedom for the Muslims and the Christians to eradicate Hinduism from India through conversions. Take care. Raman
I read your article on the Hindu-Christian divide and respectfully beg to differ with you on a few points. You say that India is 80% Hindu and that Hindus have a right to form organisations. You are factually correct. But does this assertion imply that Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Bahais and others have secondary rights by virtue of being in a minority? If I got it wrong and if indeed "Indians" regardless of religion have equal rights then should we be dividing Indian society by religion in the first place? What does India being 80% Hindu have anything to do by way of justifying Hindu anger over conversions? Conversions then should be wrong regardless of Hindus being the majority.
Besides, does India "belong" to the Hindus that they are so angry over conversions? Aren't we all ethnically the same? We look the same, our language, food, cultural mores and values are the same.
On a side note, a poor tribal in Orissa, oppressed by the caste system has every incentive to convert to Christianity or Buddhism or any faith that promises him or her a better life. Freedom of religion is enshrined in the constitution. Hindu groups, even if they oppose conversions peacefully, are fundamentally protesting personal liberties. Bribing people into a new religion is wrong but violently or even constitutionally preventing them is wrong.
I wish groups like the VHP spent more time fighting against caste oppression instead of spreading these myths about Hinduism's original claims on the tribals of Orissa or on the people of India.
Please know that I mean no offence to your valuable work.
Best,
Alaphia
(The writer is the former correspondent of NDTV in Chennai, who now lives in the US )
In France, the birth place of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, the Catholics are in a preponderant majority. While non-Catholics have been Prime Ministers rarely has a non-Catholic become the President. In the UK, the Anglican Protestants, are in a majority. Only an Anglican Protestant can be the head of State (The Crown). Rarely has a Catholic become the Prime Minister. In all Muslim countries, while the Muslims have the right to convert a non-Muslim to Islam, non-Muslims do not have the right to convert a Muslim to their faith. In many Muslim countries, converting a Muslim to another religion is punishable with death.If a non-Muslim wants to marry a Muslim, he or she has to embrace Islam.In Pakistan last week, four Muslim women were buried alive as a punishment for being friendly with men.Muslims should look inwards and remove despicable practices in their religion before they give sermons to others. India is the homeland of the Hindus. It is the birthplace of their religion, culture and civilisation. India is as holy to the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Jains and the Sikhs as Saudi Arabia is to the Muslims and Palestine and Jerusalem are to the Christians and the Jewish people. The Hindus being in a preponderant majority along with the Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs, have every right to safeguard their interests, religion, culture and civilisation. They have to do it in such a manner as not to infringe on the rights of the Muslims and Christians, who are equal citizens of the country. Equality of rights does not mean freedom for the Muslims and the Christians to eradicate Hinduism from India through conversions. Take care. Raman
THE HINDU-CHRISTIAN DIVIDE
B.RAMAN
Every Indian, who wishes to see India grow in unity, strength and prosperity, will be concerned over the implications of the emergence of a growing Hindu-Christian divide in the Indian civil society.
2. The recent shocking incidents of violence in some parts of the State of Orissa have brought home to us the extent to which the poison inthe relations between the two communities has spread. What one saw in Orissa was nothing less than a mini version of what one saw inGujarat in 2002.
3. In Gujarat, the massacre of a group of Hindu pilgrims travelling in a railway compartment by a group of Muslim fanatics when the trainhad stopped at a railway station called Godhra, led to widespread retaliatory attacks on members of the Muslim community in different partsof the State. The brutal violence witnessed during these incidents committed initially by the Muslims and subsequently by the Hindus shouldbe a matter of shame to us as a nation.
4. In Orissa, the brutal murder of a highly-respected leader of the Hindu community belonging to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) by a groupof suspected Christian elements led to widespread attacks by members of the Hindu community----most of them allegedly belonging to theVHP--- on the Christan community. The casualties in Orissa were thankfully small as compared to those in Gujarat in 2002, but the brutalitywitnessed on both sides----initially by alleged Christian elements and subsequently by alleged VHP members--- was no less disturbing thanwhat one had seen in Gujarat in 2002.
5. The seeds of the Hindu-Muslim divide were initially sown by the British during the pre-1947 colonial days. It resulted in the creation ofPakistan and the subsequent violent incidents between the Hindu and Muslim communities in different parts of India. The jihadi terrorismwitnessed in different parts of India since the demolition of the Babri Masjid by a group of Hindus in December,1992,marked a new phase inthe continuing divide between some sections of the Hindus and the Muslims. Forunately, this mental divide remained confined to smallsections of the two communities. The two communities as a whole have till now not allowed the attempts of these small sections to spreadthis poison further to succeed. One of the objectives of the repeated jihadi terrorist strikes is to aggravate this divide.
6. The seeds of the Hindu-Christian divide were sown much later---long after India became independent. Even in the 1950s and the 1960s,there were concerns over the objectionable activities of foreign Christian missionaries in Indian territory. These activities perceived asobjectionable not only by large sections of the Hindu community, but also by the intelligence and security agencies and by highly-respected leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi consisted of attempts to indulge in large -scale conversion of underprivileged Hindusand animist tribals in Central India into Christianity with the help of large, unrestricted flow of funds from the Vatican and from Catholic andBaptist organisations in the US and the role played by foreign missionaries such as the late Rev.Michael Scot in instigating the insurgency in the North-East where many of the inhabitants in Nagaland and Mizoram are Baptists.
7. Just as the flow of money from so-called Muslim charity organisations in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Muslim countries sought tosustain and aggravate the divide between the Muslims and the Hindus, projected as infidels, and to promote jihadi terrorism in Indianterritory, the flow of money from the Vatican and Christian missionary and fundamentalist organisations in the West tended to create amental divide between the Hindus and the Christians and promote and sustain the insurgency in our North-East.
8. But the leaders of India in the post-independence years sought to see that the concerns over the role of the foreign Christian missionariesand the massive funds at their disposal did not create unwarranted suspicions in the minds of the Hindu community against their Christianfellow-citizens. They realised that if they allowed such suspicions to appear in the relations between the two communities, they would onlybe playing into the hands of foreign missionary organisations, which wanted to create a mental divide. They refrained from viewing ourChristian fellow-citizens as surrogates of the foreign missionary organisations.
9. This conscious attempt not to allow suspicions about foreign Christian missionary organisations create prejudices in our mind about ourChristian fellow-citizens started disappearing after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led coalition came to power in Delhi in 1998. For thefirst time, there was a greater aggressiveness and less sensitivity in the interactions between the Christian organisations----foreign as wellas indigenous-- and Hindu organisations such as the VHP. It would be incorrect to blame the Government of A.B.Vajpayee for thisdevelopment. No Government policy directly encouraged this development. But the silence of the Government in the face of an aggressivecampaign against certain aspects of the activities of Christian organisations and against certain elements of the Christian community bythe VHP indirectly led to the emergence of the first signs of a mental divide between the two communities. I was myself a witness to thispost-1998 aggressive anti-Christian campaign by the VHP on some occasions.
10. This aggressive campaign by the VHP led to an equally aggressive counter-campaign by some of the indigenous Christian organisations against the VHP and those associated with it, directly or indirectly. Some members of the community of Indian origin in the US---Hindus aswell as Christians--- joined this campaign, with the Hindus in the US supporting the VHP and the Christians of Indian origin in the USsupporting anti-VHP organisations.
11. From an anti-conversion campaign, which in my view is justified if peaceful and in accordance with law, it took on additional dimensionsof a disturbing nature. One such dimension was anti-Vatican. Sonia Gandhi, who before 1998 was projected as of Italian origin and henceunsuitable to be the Prime Minister of India, was post-1998 sought to be projected as a Roman Catholic with suspected ties to the Vatican.She was projected as the source of the greater aggressiveness exhibited by the Christian organisations. There was a discernible attempt tomerge the anti-Christian and the anti-Sonia campaigns.
12. This aggression and counter-aggression, rhetoric and counter-rhetoric totally lacking in a sense of balance between the VHP on the oneside and some Christian organisations on the other threaten to create fresh pockets of social and religious disharmony in the alreadyfragile Indian society. If India is to take its place as an important power in the world and as the equal, if not the better, of China, it isimportant for all right-thinking people----whatever be their religion or language or political background--- to come together to strongly opposethese new divisive trends in our society and nation.
13. The Hindus constitute the preponderant majority of this nation with 80 per cent of the population. India is their homeland and they haveevery right to protect their interests and to safeguard the essentially Hindu nature of this country. They have a right to have organisationssuch as the VHP to help them in doing so. At the same time, they have an important responsibility to carry out their activities in a peacefulmanner in such a way as not to add to the divisions in our society. We have to find ways of making the interests of different religious groupsand communities compatible with each other and not antagonistic to each other.
14. The way the VHP and the Christian organisations determined to oppose it are carrying on their activities is threatening to create more pockets of mutual antagonism than pockets of unity and harmony. This is not good for India.(3-9-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStudies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Every Indian, who wishes to see India grow in unity, strength and prosperity, will be concerned over the implications of the emergence of a growing Hindu-Christian divide in the Indian civil society.
2. The recent shocking incidents of violence in some parts of the State of Orissa have brought home to us the extent to which the poison inthe relations between the two communities has spread. What one saw in Orissa was nothing less than a mini version of what one saw inGujarat in 2002.
3. In Gujarat, the massacre of a group of Hindu pilgrims travelling in a railway compartment by a group of Muslim fanatics when the trainhad stopped at a railway station called Godhra, led to widespread retaliatory attacks on members of the Muslim community in different partsof the State. The brutal violence witnessed during these incidents committed initially by the Muslims and subsequently by the Hindus shouldbe a matter of shame to us as a nation.
4. In Orissa, the brutal murder of a highly-respected leader of the Hindu community belonging to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) by a groupof suspected Christian elements led to widespread attacks by members of the Hindu community----most of them allegedly belonging to theVHP--- on the Christan community. The casualties in Orissa were thankfully small as compared to those in Gujarat in 2002, but the brutalitywitnessed on both sides----initially by alleged Christian elements and subsequently by alleged VHP members--- was no less disturbing thanwhat one had seen in Gujarat in 2002.
5. The seeds of the Hindu-Muslim divide were initially sown by the British during the pre-1947 colonial days. It resulted in the creation ofPakistan and the subsequent violent incidents between the Hindu and Muslim communities in different parts of India. The jihadi terrorismwitnessed in different parts of India since the demolition of the Babri Masjid by a group of Hindus in December,1992,marked a new phase inthe continuing divide between some sections of the Hindus and the Muslims. Forunately, this mental divide remained confined to smallsections of the two communities. The two communities as a whole have till now not allowed the attempts of these small sections to spreadthis poison further to succeed. One of the objectives of the repeated jihadi terrorist strikes is to aggravate this divide.
6. The seeds of the Hindu-Christian divide were sown much later---long after India became independent. Even in the 1950s and the 1960s,there were concerns over the objectionable activities of foreign Christian missionaries in Indian territory. These activities perceived asobjectionable not only by large sections of the Hindu community, but also by the intelligence and security agencies and by highly-respected leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi consisted of attempts to indulge in large -scale conversion of underprivileged Hindusand animist tribals in Central India into Christianity with the help of large, unrestricted flow of funds from the Vatican and from Catholic andBaptist organisations in the US and the role played by foreign missionaries such as the late Rev.Michael Scot in instigating the insurgency in the North-East where many of the inhabitants in Nagaland and Mizoram are Baptists.
7. Just as the flow of money from so-called Muslim charity organisations in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Muslim countries sought tosustain and aggravate the divide between the Muslims and the Hindus, projected as infidels, and to promote jihadi terrorism in Indianterritory, the flow of money from the Vatican and Christian missionary and fundamentalist organisations in the West tended to create amental divide between the Hindus and the Christians and promote and sustain the insurgency in our North-East.
8. But the leaders of India in the post-independence years sought to see that the concerns over the role of the foreign Christian missionariesand the massive funds at their disposal did not create unwarranted suspicions in the minds of the Hindu community against their Christianfellow-citizens. They realised that if they allowed such suspicions to appear in the relations between the two communities, they would onlybe playing into the hands of foreign missionary organisations, which wanted to create a mental divide. They refrained from viewing ourChristian fellow-citizens as surrogates of the foreign missionary organisations.
9. This conscious attempt not to allow suspicions about foreign Christian missionary organisations create prejudices in our mind about ourChristian fellow-citizens started disappearing after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led coalition came to power in Delhi in 1998. For thefirst time, there was a greater aggressiveness and less sensitivity in the interactions between the Christian organisations----foreign as wellas indigenous-- and Hindu organisations such as the VHP. It would be incorrect to blame the Government of A.B.Vajpayee for thisdevelopment. No Government policy directly encouraged this development. But the silence of the Government in the face of an aggressivecampaign against certain aspects of the activities of Christian organisations and against certain elements of the Christian community bythe VHP indirectly led to the emergence of the first signs of a mental divide between the two communities. I was myself a witness to thispost-1998 aggressive anti-Christian campaign by the VHP on some occasions.
10. This aggressive campaign by the VHP led to an equally aggressive counter-campaign by some of the indigenous Christian organisations against the VHP and those associated with it, directly or indirectly. Some members of the community of Indian origin in the US---Hindus aswell as Christians--- joined this campaign, with the Hindus in the US supporting the VHP and the Christians of Indian origin in the USsupporting anti-VHP organisations.
11. From an anti-conversion campaign, which in my view is justified if peaceful and in accordance with law, it took on additional dimensionsof a disturbing nature. One such dimension was anti-Vatican. Sonia Gandhi, who before 1998 was projected as of Italian origin and henceunsuitable to be the Prime Minister of India, was post-1998 sought to be projected as a Roman Catholic with suspected ties to the Vatican.She was projected as the source of the greater aggressiveness exhibited by the Christian organisations. There was a discernible attempt tomerge the anti-Christian and the anti-Sonia campaigns.
12. This aggression and counter-aggression, rhetoric and counter-rhetoric totally lacking in a sense of balance between the VHP on the oneside and some Christian organisations on the other threaten to create fresh pockets of social and religious disharmony in the alreadyfragile Indian society. If India is to take its place as an important power in the world and as the equal, if not the better, of China, it isimportant for all right-thinking people----whatever be their religion or language or political background--- to come together to strongly opposethese new divisive trends in our society and nation.
13. The Hindus constitute the preponderant majority of this nation with 80 per cent of the population. India is their homeland and they haveevery right to protect their interests and to safeguard the essentially Hindu nature of this country. They have a right to have organisationssuch as the VHP to help them in doing so. At the same time, they have an important responsibility to carry out their activities in a peacefulmanner in such a way as not to add to the divisions in our society. We have to find ways of making the interests of different religious groupsand communities compatible with each other and not antagonistic to each other.
14. The way the VHP and the Christian organisations determined to oppose it are carrying on their activities is threatening to create more pockets of mutual antagonism than pockets of unity and harmony. This is not good for India.(3-9-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStudies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
KURRAM AGENCY CONTINUES TO BLEED
International Terrorism Monitor---Paper No. 435
B. Raman
(An update of my earlier articles on the subject written since November 20,2007)
"Al Qaeda is trying to replicate Iraq in Pakistan by exacerbating the already existing divide between the Shias and the Sunnis in the civil society as well as in the Army." --- Extract from my earlier paper of November 15, 2007, titled "The State of Jihadi Terrorism in Pakistan" at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers25/paper2459.html
-------------------------------
Till 1977, the Shias were in a preponderant majority in the Kurram Agency in Pakistan's Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on its border with Afghanistan and in the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan) of Jammu and Kashmir, which is presently under Pakistani occupation.
2. After the triumph of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in February, 1979, there was a radicalisation of the Shias of these areas. They started demanding the creation of a separate Shia majority province to be called the Karakoram Province, consisting of the Kurram Agency, the Northern Areas and other contiguous Shia majority areas. The leadership of this movement came mainly from the Turi tribe of the Kurram Agency. The movement was allegedly funded by the Iranian intelligence.
3. Gen. Zia-ul-Haq put down this movement ruthlessly. He also started a policy of re-settling the Sunnis in these areas in order to control the Shias and dilute their preponderant majority. While Sunni ex-servicemen from other parts of Pakistan were re-settled in the Northern Areas, Afghan Sunni refugees from the refugee camps were re-settled in the Kurram Agency. This led to widespread resentment among the Shias against the Government as well as the Sunni settlers. The Iraqi intelligence of Saddam Hussein too allegedly funded these Sunni settlers in the Kurram Agency to enable them to fight the radical Shias.
4. There were serious riots in Gilgit in 1988 which were ruthlessly put down by Zia with the help of a combined force of Sunni tribals and Arabs led by Osama bin Laden. Hundreds of Shias were killed. It is generally believed that the anger caused by this massacre contributed to the death of Zia-ul-Haq in a plane crash in August 1988. Enquiries into the crash reportedly brought out that the crash took place when a Shia airman belonging to Gilgit released tear-smoke or some other gas in the cockpit, thereby disorienting the crew.
5. The Kurram Agency has also been the scene of frequent Shia-Sunni clashes, with most of the attacks by the Shias directed against the Afghan and Pakistani Sunni settlers brought in by Zia. There were three major Shia-Sunni clashes in the Agency in 1983, 1988 and 1996, which resulted in the deaths of a total of 1,200 persons belonging to both the sects.
6. There was a recrudescence of the violence in April, 2007, after a gap of 11 years. For nearly three weeks from April 6, 2007, the Kurram Agency became the scene of a no-holds barred jihad waged by the local Shias and Sunnis against each other following an incident of firing allegedly by the Shias on a procession taken out by the Sunnis to mark the Holy Prophet's birthday. The local adherents of the two sects of Islam used not only small arms and ammunition, but also mortars and rocket-launchers against each other, resulting in heavy casualties. The clashes initially started in Parachinar, the capital of the Agency. It then spread to the interior areas. The imposition of a curfew by the Pakistani authorities and severe action against the local leaders and volunteers of the two sects ultimately restored an uneasy normalcy. The Pakistan Army extensively used helicopter gunships to put down the violence.
7. There were conflicting figures of the fatalities inflicted by the two sects against each other and by the security forces on the warring sects. While the Pakistani authorities estimated the total number of fatalities as around 50, non-Governmental sources estimated that at least 80 persons died in the violence.
8. During the clashes of April, 2007, the local leaders of the two sects accused the Pakistani Army of siding with the other sect. Some Sunni leaders also accused Iran of fomenting the Shia attacks against the Sunnis.
9. Addressing the media at the Peshawar Press Club on April 9, 2007, Mast Gul, a Sunni jihadi leader, alleged that since April 6, 2007, Shias had killed hundreds of innocent Sunnis. According to him, just on one day about 28 Sunni women and children were slaughtered in the Kurram Agency. He accused Iran of providing financial resources and weapons to the Shias in the Agency. He warned the Pakistan Army that if it did not take effective action against the Shias, he would appeal to the Sunnis in the other parts of Pakistan and in Jammu and Kashmir to come to Kurram and help the local Sunnis.
10. Mast Gul used to belong to the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), which is a founding member of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF) formed in 1998. He used to operate in J&K till 1995. He and his followers were responsible for the burning down of the Islamic holy shrine at Charar-e-Sharief in J&K in 1995.
11. After violence instigated by Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda Sunni tribal elements escalated in South and North Waziristan in October, 2007, there were reports of fresh tension in the Kurram Agency in the wake of reports that the jihadi terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden were targeting the Shia members of the Frontier Constabulary and the Frontier Corps deployed in these two Agencies. It was alleged that while the terrorists brutally killed the captured Shia soldiers, they let free the Sunnis. Some of the Shias beheaded by the terrorists belonged to the predominantly Shia tribe of Turis in the Kurram Agency. Some Shia leaders of the civil society in these two agencies were also targeted by pro-Al Qaeda elements and killed.
12. These incidents led to a fresh outbreak of violence between the Shias and the Sunnis in the Kurram Agency since the night of November 15, 2007. Despite the imposition of a curfew by the Pakistani authorities and the use of helicopter gunships to quell the riots, violence continued for days. It was reported that the fighting in November was more fierce than in April, 2007, and that about 100 persons, including 11 members of the para-military forces, died in the violence. Police sources suspected that the fresh violence had been engineered by Al Qaeda in order to divert the attention of the Pakistan army from its on-going operations against the jihadis in the Swat Valley.
13. In December,2007, there was a fresh flare-up of clashes between the Shia Turi tribals and Sunni tribals belonging to Al Qaeda and the newly-formed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Many of the Sunni tribals involved in the fresh clashes had reportedly infiltrated into the agency from South Waziristan and the Swat Valley.
14. During the clashes of December,2007, the Shias and the Sunnis used mortars, rocket launchers etc against each other's places of worship and schools, causing large casualties and severe damages to places of worship. Each side accused the other of starting the fresh violence. There were over 150 fatalities in the intermittent clashes, which continued for over a month. The Taliban and Al Qaeda also targeted the Shia members of the local para-military forces.
15.The Pakistan Army, which was preoccupied with the operations against the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) in the Swat Valley of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) during December,2007, was not in a position to send reinforcements to the Kurram Agency. It left the anti-Al Qaeda and anti-Taliban operations there in the hands of the para-military forces. Their requests for helicopter gunships were not accepted. The Shias hit back at Al Qaeda and Taliban elements with considerable effectiveness. The Sunni leaders once again accused Iran of sending arms and ammunition to the local Shias. This was denied by the local Shia leaders.
16. While official spokesmen and the Pakistani mainstream media refrained from identifying the dramatis personae and giving details of the fighting, the "Frontier Post" of Peshawar (December 27,2007) reported, inter alia, as follows: " It is worth mentioning that the recent clashes started when a group of local Taliban militants attacked and opened fire on security forces (FC) at Sada.Plus they also attacked the nearby Balishkhel village where Turi tribe is living. As the Sada is the strongest base of Taliban militants therefore the government writ is nil; that is why due to lack of monitoring and writ of government, clashes spread throughout the Kurram Agency and now its control is quiet difficult due to invasion of Taliban militants."
17. The "Post", another Pakistani daily, reported as follows on December 31,2007: " A delegation of notables from Kurram Agency has appealed to President Pervez Musharraf and Chief of Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani to stop the ongoing violence that has resulted in the loss of more than 100 lives and billions of rupees' worth of property. Haji Latif Hussain, President, Kurram Welfare Society, said the residents had been fighting the Taliban infiltrating from Afghanistan, North and South Waziristan and Al Qaeda operatives in the area who were thousands in number. He added over 70 people had been killed in furious clashes during the last 45 days. "The armed forces of Pakistan are playing the role of silent spectators instead of countering the attackers and protecting the residents under attack," he said. Latif Hussain said Al Qaeda fighters had occupied various areas of Kurram Agency and blocked the main road from Peshawar to Parachinar, resulting in a shortage of basic commodities. "There is an acute shortage of medicines, food, electricity and water," he added. The Kurram Welfare Society President said that as a result of the war, hundreds of women, children and the elderly had taken refuge in Peshawar while over a hundred students who were unable to move to their native areas because of the war had been forced to stay in Islamabad. Mehdi Ghulam from Kurram Agency said Alizai, Balyamin, Tangi Amro Khail, Arravali, Santikot, Singk, Burqi and Pevar were under Taliban and Al Qaeda attacks while dozens of injured were waiting for their death in the Parachinar hospital owing to a shortage of medicines. He said that although the current confrontation was not sectarian, shrines and mosques of both Sunni and Shiite sects were being damaged by Taliban and Al Qaeda forces. Mehdi said that in Pevar firing from the other side of the border was causing multiple deaths daily. Muhammad Hussain Turi, secretary, Ittehad-e-Ummat Committee, said: "We are not only fighting for our lives and the area but also for the sovereignty of our country.We are fighting the international war against terrorism on our borders by shedding our blood but, instead of helping us, everyone is creating trouble for us by trying to stop us from defending our area." Turi appealed to the President and the Chief of the Army Staff to issue a directive to the army to intervene to save the lives of thousands of people. Gull Ishrat, member, Kurram Welfare Society, said: "We are fighting the battle of the Pakistan Army against those who managed to escape from Swat, Bajaur, North and South Waziristan and Afghanistan and are involved in furious attacks on the Pakistan Army."
18. The clashes, which never really stopped, have picked up fresh intensity since the beginning of July,2008, reportedly resulting in over a thousand fatalities on both sides. The Shias have been fighting with great ferocity. According to some accounts, there have been more fatalities among the Sunnis than among the Shias. Since the beginning of this year, the blood-letting has been worse in the Kurram Agency than it has been in the Bajaur, South Waziristan and the North Waziristan Agencies of the FATA. The permanent sanctuaries of Al Qaeda and the Taliban are located in Bajaur and the two Waziristans. There has been blood-letting in the Swat Valley of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) too. The US has been repeatedly expressing its concern over the activities of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Bajaur and the two Waziristans. The situation there has repeatedly found mention in US Congressional testimonies and in the statements of US military officers. The spokesmen of the Afghan National Army too have been expressing their worries over the situation there. The US and the Hamid Karzai Government have been repeatedly urging the Pakistan Army to do more against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in those areas.
19. But, surprisingly---- and intriguingly--- they have been silent on the terrible blood-letting in the Kurram Agency. The situation in Kurram hardly finds mention in US testimonies and statements. There has hardly been any pressure on Pakistan to do more to bring the situation in Kurram under control. Everybody---- Pakistan, the US, Afghanistan, Iran and Al Qaeda---- have been behaving as if it suits them fine if the Shias and the Sunnis---Pakistani and Afghan--- keep killing each other in the Kurram Agency. The more the Sunnis killed by the Shias in Kurram, the less the problems for Pakistan, the US and Afghanistan in Bajaur and the two Waziristans and the less the problems for Iran in its Sunni-majority Baloch areas. Iran suspects that the so-called Jundullahs (Soldiers of Allah) attacking, kidnapping and killing Iranian National Guards in its Baloch areas are operating from sanctuaries in Kurram. The more the Shias killed by the Sunnis, the better it is for Al Qaeda, which suspects that many of the newly-recruited human sources of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Pashtun tribal belt come from the anti-Sunni Shia community. So money and arms and ammunition keep flowing to the two warring communities.
20. The Shia community in the rest of Pakistan is getting increasingly restive over what it sees as the strange silence of the Pakistan Army over the continuing violence in Kurram.While Sunni Pashtuns from other parts of the FATA and the NWFP have been going to the assistance of the Sunnis of Kurram, Shias from other parts of Pakistan have not been doing so till now, but they are now threatening to go in large numbers to Kurram to join the Shia jihad against the Sunnis.
21.On September 1,2008, a big Shia demonstration was held in Karachi at which Shia leaders warned the Government that if the eight-month long siege and economic blockade in Kurram Agency by the Taliban is not ended, they would issue a call for a long march to the Kurram Agency to free the besieged Shias by force. The demonstrators shouted slogans against the Government over its failure to stop the aggression of the Taliban against the Shia community in the Kurram Agency and Dera Ismail Khan in the NWFP. (3-9-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B. Raman
(An update of my earlier articles on the subject written since November 20,2007)
"Al Qaeda is trying to replicate Iraq in Pakistan by exacerbating the already existing divide between the Shias and the Sunnis in the civil society as well as in the Army." --- Extract from my earlier paper of November 15, 2007, titled "The State of Jihadi Terrorism in Pakistan" at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers25/paper2459.html
-------------------------------
Till 1977, the Shias were in a preponderant majority in the Kurram Agency in Pakistan's Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on its border with Afghanistan and in the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan) of Jammu and Kashmir, which is presently under Pakistani occupation.
2. After the triumph of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in February, 1979, there was a radicalisation of the Shias of these areas. They started demanding the creation of a separate Shia majority province to be called the Karakoram Province, consisting of the Kurram Agency, the Northern Areas and other contiguous Shia majority areas. The leadership of this movement came mainly from the Turi tribe of the Kurram Agency. The movement was allegedly funded by the Iranian intelligence.
3. Gen. Zia-ul-Haq put down this movement ruthlessly. He also started a policy of re-settling the Sunnis in these areas in order to control the Shias and dilute their preponderant majority. While Sunni ex-servicemen from other parts of Pakistan were re-settled in the Northern Areas, Afghan Sunni refugees from the refugee camps were re-settled in the Kurram Agency. This led to widespread resentment among the Shias against the Government as well as the Sunni settlers. The Iraqi intelligence of Saddam Hussein too allegedly funded these Sunni settlers in the Kurram Agency to enable them to fight the radical Shias.
4. There were serious riots in Gilgit in 1988 which were ruthlessly put down by Zia with the help of a combined force of Sunni tribals and Arabs led by Osama bin Laden. Hundreds of Shias were killed. It is generally believed that the anger caused by this massacre contributed to the death of Zia-ul-Haq in a plane crash in August 1988. Enquiries into the crash reportedly brought out that the crash took place when a Shia airman belonging to Gilgit released tear-smoke or some other gas in the cockpit, thereby disorienting the crew.
5. The Kurram Agency has also been the scene of frequent Shia-Sunni clashes, with most of the attacks by the Shias directed against the Afghan and Pakistani Sunni settlers brought in by Zia. There were three major Shia-Sunni clashes in the Agency in 1983, 1988 and 1996, which resulted in the deaths of a total of 1,200 persons belonging to both the sects.
6. There was a recrudescence of the violence in April, 2007, after a gap of 11 years. For nearly three weeks from April 6, 2007, the Kurram Agency became the scene of a no-holds barred jihad waged by the local Shias and Sunnis against each other following an incident of firing allegedly by the Shias on a procession taken out by the Sunnis to mark the Holy Prophet's birthday. The local adherents of the two sects of Islam used not only small arms and ammunition, but also mortars and rocket-launchers against each other, resulting in heavy casualties. The clashes initially started in Parachinar, the capital of the Agency. It then spread to the interior areas. The imposition of a curfew by the Pakistani authorities and severe action against the local leaders and volunteers of the two sects ultimately restored an uneasy normalcy. The Pakistan Army extensively used helicopter gunships to put down the violence.
7. There were conflicting figures of the fatalities inflicted by the two sects against each other and by the security forces on the warring sects. While the Pakistani authorities estimated the total number of fatalities as around 50, non-Governmental sources estimated that at least 80 persons died in the violence.
8. During the clashes of April, 2007, the local leaders of the two sects accused the Pakistani Army of siding with the other sect. Some Sunni leaders also accused Iran of fomenting the Shia attacks against the Sunnis.
9. Addressing the media at the Peshawar Press Club on April 9, 2007, Mast Gul, a Sunni jihadi leader, alleged that since April 6, 2007, Shias had killed hundreds of innocent Sunnis. According to him, just on one day about 28 Sunni women and children were slaughtered in the Kurram Agency. He accused Iran of providing financial resources and weapons to the Shias in the Agency. He warned the Pakistan Army that if it did not take effective action against the Shias, he would appeal to the Sunnis in the other parts of Pakistan and in Jammu and Kashmir to come to Kurram and help the local Sunnis.
10. Mast Gul used to belong to the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), which is a founding member of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF) formed in 1998. He used to operate in J&K till 1995. He and his followers were responsible for the burning down of the Islamic holy shrine at Charar-e-Sharief in J&K in 1995.
11. After violence instigated by Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda Sunni tribal elements escalated in South and North Waziristan in October, 2007, there were reports of fresh tension in the Kurram Agency in the wake of reports that the jihadi terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden were targeting the Shia members of the Frontier Constabulary and the Frontier Corps deployed in these two Agencies. It was alleged that while the terrorists brutally killed the captured Shia soldiers, they let free the Sunnis. Some of the Shias beheaded by the terrorists belonged to the predominantly Shia tribe of Turis in the Kurram Agency. Some Shia leaders of the civil society in these two agencies were also targeted by pro-Al Qaeda elements and killed.
12. These incidents led to a fresh outbreak of violence between the Shias and the Sunnis in the Kurram Agency since the night of November 15, 2007. Despite the imposition of a curfew by the Pakistani authorities and the use of helicopter gunships to quell the riots, violence continued for days. It was reported that the fighting in November was more fierce than in April, 2007, and that about 100 persons, including 11 members of the para-military forces, died in the violence. Police sources suspected that the fresh violence had been engineered by Al Qaeda in order to divert the attention of the Pakistan army from its on-going operations against the jihadis in the Swat Valley.
13. In December,2007, there was a fresh flare-up of clashes between the Shia Turi tribals and Sunni tribals belonging to Al Qaeda and the newly-formed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Many of the Sunni tribals involved in the fresh clashes had reportedly infiltrated into the agency from South Waziristan and the Swat Valley.
14. During the clashes of December,2007, the Shias and the Sunnis used mortars, rocket launchers etc against each other's places of worship and schools, causing large casualties and severe damages to places of worship. Each side accused the other of starting the fresh violence. There were over 150 fatalities in the intermittent clashes, which continued for over a month. The Taliban and Al Qaeda also targeted the Shia members of the local para-military forces.
15.The Pakistan Army, which was preoccupied with the operations against the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) in the Swat Valley of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) during December,2007, was not in a position to send reinforcements to the Kurram Agency. It left the anti-Al Qaeda and anti-Taliban operations there in the hands of the para-military forces. Their requests for helicopter gunships were not accepted. The Shias hit back at Al Qaeda and Taliban elements with considerable effectiveness. The Sunni leaders once again accused Iran of sending arms and ammunition to the local Shias. This was denied by the local Shia leaders.
16. While official spokesmen and the Pakistani mainstream media refrained from identifying the dramatis personae and giving details of the fighting, the "Frontier Post" of Peshawar (December 27,2007) reported, inter alia, as follows: " It is worth mentioning that the recent clashes started when a group of local Taliban militants attacked and opened fire on security forces (FC) at Sada.Plus they also attacked the nearby Balishkhel village where Turi tribe is living. As the Sada is the strongest base of Taliban militants therefore the government writ is nil; that is why due to lack of monitoring and writ of government, clashes spread throughout the Kurram Agency and now its control is quiet difficult due to invasion of Taliban militants."
17. The "Post", another Pakistani daily, reported as follows on December 31,2007: " A delegation of notables from Kurram Agency has appealed to President Pervez Musharraf and Chief of Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani to stop the ongoing violence that has resulted in the loss of more than 100 lives and billions of rupees' worth of property. Haji Latif Hussain, President, Kurram Welfare Society, said the residents had been fighting the Taliban infiltrating from Afghanistan, North and South Waziristan and Al Qaeda operatives in the area who were thousands in number. He added over 70 people had been killed in furious clashes during the last 45 days. "The armed forces of Pakistan are playing the role of silent spectators instead of countering the attackers and protecting the residents under attack," he said. Latif Hussain said Al Qaeda fighters had occupied various areas of Kurram Agency and blocked the main road from Peshawar to Parachinar, resulting in a shortage of basic commodities. "There is an acute shortage of medicines, food, electricity and water," he added. The Kurram Welfare Society President said that as a result of the war, hundreds of women, children and the elderly had taken refuge in Peshawar while over a hundred students who were unable to move to their native areas because of the war had been forced to stay in Islamabad. Mehdi Ghulam from Kurram Agency said Alizai, Balyamin, Tangi Amro Khail, Arravali, Santikot, Singk, Burqi and Pevar were under Taliban and Al Qaeda attacks while dozens of injured were waiting for their death in the Parachinar hospital owing to a shortage of medicines. He said that although the current confrontation was not sectarian, shrines and mosques of both Sunni and Shiite sects were being damaged by Taliban and Al Qaeda forces. Mehdi said that in Pevar firing from the other side of the border was causing multiple deaths daily. Muhammad Hussain Turi, secretary, Ittehad-e-Ummat Committee, said: "We are not only fighting for our lives and the area but also for the sovereignty of our country.We are fighting the international war against terrorism on our borders by shedding our blood but, instead of helping us, everyone is creating trouble for us by trying to stop us from defending our area." Turi appealed to the President and the Chief of the Army Staff to issue a directive to the army to intervene to save the lives of thousands of people. Gull Ishrat, member, Kurram Welfare Society, said: "We are fighting the battle of the Pakistan Army against those who managed to escape from Swat, Bajaur, North and South Waziristan and Afghanistan and are involved in furious attacks on the Pakistan Army."
18. The clashes, which never really stopped, have picked up fresh intensity since the beginning of July,2008, reportedly resulting in over a thousand fatalities on both sides. The Shias have been fighting with great ferocity. According to some accounts, there have been more fatalities among the Sunnis than among the Shias. Since the beginning of this year, the blood-letting has been worse in the Kurram Agency than it has been in the Bajaur, South Waziristan and the North Waziristan Agencies of the FATA. The permanent sanctuaries of Al Qaeda and the Taliban are located in Bajaur and the two Waziristans. There has been blood-letting in the Swat Valley of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) too. The US has been repeatedly expressing its concern over the activities of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Bajaur and the two Waziristans. The situation there has repeatedly found mention in US Congressional testimonies and in the statements of US military officers. The spokesmen of the Afghan National Army too have been expressing their worries over the situation there. The US and the Hamid Karzai Government have been repeatedly urging the Pakistan Army to do more against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in those areas.
19. But, surprisingly---- and intriguingly--- they have been silent on the terrible blood-letting in the Kurram Agency. The situation in Kurram hardly finds mention in US testimonies and statements. There has hardly been any pressure on Pakistan to do more to bring the situation in Kurram under control. Everybody---- Pakistan, the US, Afghanistan, Iran and Al Qaeda---- have been behaving as if it suits them fine if the Shias and the Sunnis---Pakistani and Afghan--- keep killing each other in the Kurram Agency. The more the Sunnis killed by the Shias in Kurram, the less the problems for Pakistan, the US and Afghanistan in Bajaur and the two Waziristans and the less the problems for Iran in its Sunni-majority Baloch areas. Iran suspects that the so-called Jundullahs (Soldiers of Allah) attacking, kidnapping and killing Iranian National Guards in its Baloch areas are operating from sanctuaries in Kurram. The more the Shias killed by the Sunnis, the better it is for Al Qaeda, which suspects that many of the newly-recruited human sources of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Pashtun tribal belt come from the anti-Sunni Shia community. So money and arms and ammunition keep flowing to the two warring communities.
20. The Shia community in the rest of Pakistan is getting increasingly restive over what it sees as the strange silence of the Pakistan Army over the continuing violence in Kurram.While Sunni Pashtuns from other parts of the FATA and the NWFP have been going to the assistance of the Sunnis of Kurram, Shias from other parts of Pakistan have not been doing so till now, but they are now threatening to go in large numbers to Kurram to join the Shia jihad against the Sunnis.
21.On September 1,2008, a big Shia demonstration was held in Karachi at which Shia leaders warned the Government that if the eight-month long siege and economic blockade in Kurram Agency by the Taliban is not ended, they would issue a call for a long march to the Kurram Agency to free the besieged Shias by force. The demonstrators shouted slogans against the Government over its failure to stop the aggression of the Taliban against the Shia community in the Kurram Agency and Dera Ismail Khan in the NWFP. (3-9-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
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