INDIA: CAST ADRIFT BY AN ICEBERG

 

 

B.RAMAN

 

The Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh was 80 yesterday. He is the second oldest Prime Minister the country has had. Morarji Desai was the oldest. He became Prime Minister in 1977 at 81 and left office at 83 two years later.

2. Dr. Manmohan Singh took over as the PM when he was 72.He would be 82 if he continues in office till 2014.Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee took over as the Prime Minister when he was 74 and left office at 80 after the defeat of his party in the elections of 2004. If the BJP had been returned to power in the 2004 elections, he might have continued as the PM till the age of 85.

3.Rajiv Gandhi was the youngest Prime Minister in the history of independent India. He became Prime Minister when he was 40 and left office at 45 after his Congress Party lost the elections of 1989. His mother Indira Gandhi was the second youngest Prime Minister in the history of independent India. She became the PM at the age of 49 and was assassinated when she was 67 in 1984. For three years between 1977 and 1980, she was in political wilderness. The remaining years between 1966 and 1984, she was in office as the Prime Minister. The other Prime Ministers of India were in office between 50 and 70 years of age.

4. Till 1991, when Narasimha Rao, on being sworn in as the Prime Minister, inducted Dr.Manmohan Singh as the Finance Minister, he had served as a bureaucrat and not as a politician. He joined the Congress after taking over as the Finance Minister in 1991. He enjoyed the total trust of Rao and was totally loyal to Rao.

5.Rao gave him a free hand to re-shape the economy and he performed the task creditably. His success as the Finance Minister between 1991 and 1996 was due to the fact that he and Rao were on the same wave-length on the need for liberalising and modernising the economy. He did not have to hold any important post in the party in order to be successful as the Finance Minister.

6. When he took over as the Prime Minister in 2004 at the request of Mrs.Sonia Gandhi, Dr.Manmohan Singh faced many handicaps due to the fact that he had never held any post in the party and people like Shri Pranab Mukherjee under whom he had worked as a bureaucrat were now required to work under him as the Prime Minister. Initially, this created uneasy personal equations but he managed to get over them. Another major difficulty faced by him arose from the fact that the primary loyalty of the Ministers from the Congress in his Council of Ministers was to Mrs.Sonia Gandhi and not to him. There was and there still is no Minister whose primary loyalty is to Dr.Manmohan Singh.

7. During his first tenure as the Prime Minister, the country faced some major internal security problems. The Maoist insurgents spread their area of operations over large tracts of Central India. There was a major act of mass casualty terrorism carried out by Pakistan-sponsored jihadi terrorists in the suburban trains of Mumbai in July 2006. There were many acts of jihadi terrorism by the Indian Mujahideen in different cities of India in 2007 and 2008. There was a three-day commando-style attack on different targets in Mumbai between November 26 and 29,2008, by sea-borne terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET).

8. Despite the deterioration in the internal security situation during his first tenure in the rest of India, the situation in Jammu and Kashmir registered a qualitative improvement with new ideas for finding a solution to the Kashmir problem with Pakistan being discussed with positive results through back channels with the regime of Gen.Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan. If the terrorism situation in Punjab improved and normalcy was restored when Narasimha Rao was the Prime Minister, the situation in J&K improved under Dr.Manmohan Singh for which credit has to be given to him.

9. Under the management of Shri P.Chidambaram as the Finance Minister, the economy registered considerable improvement and India was taken as seriously as China in the economic decision-making circles of the world. Dr. Manmohan Singh along with President Hu Jintao of China was invited to the head table in all economic summits. Chindia became a much used expression in characterising the economic race between India and China.

10. Foreign policy was another major area of success between 2004 and 2009, with India and the US coming closer together and with India’s relations with China showing improvement despite the suspicions caused in Bejing by the Indo-US strategic partnership and the initiatives taken by the Manmohan Singh Government for  improving relations with Singapore, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea and Australia.

11. During this period, Dr.Manmohan Singh was only Prime Minister by half with much of political authority and prominence remaining in the hands of Mrs.Sonia Gandhi. Despite this, his visible and palpable record was positive.

12. At the same time, a huge iceberg of corruption, nepotism, crony governance and favouritism was gathering shape and strength under his administration. His reluctance and inability to control the Ministers from the coalition partners under the pretext of coalition dharma or coalition compulsions contributed to the formation of this iceberg. The tip of this iceberg was seen in 2010 in the so-called Radia tapes which brought out the enormous political influence that an apparently mediocre person had been able to acquire over the decision and opinion-making process by taking advantage of the permissive atmosphere that prevailed. The iceberg hit the Government in 2011---with one scam after another, with one irregularity after another and with one wrong-doing after another denting the credibility of the Prime Minister.

13.But even before the iceberg hit the Indian ship, one could see the gathering storm and darkening clouds from different directions. The shifting of Shri Chidambaram from the Finance Ministry to the Home Ministry after the 26/11 terrorist strikes improved our internal security management, but considerably weakened our economic management. This weakening of the economic management took place at a time of the global economic melt-down. India came to be seen less and less as a success story and more and more as a stalling economy. References to Chindia disappeared from debates in international financial circles.

14. The crisis and the drift called for strong leadership that came to be missing. The duality of control between Mrs.Sonia Gandhi and the Prime Minister added to the gravity of the drift. Instead of admitting the gravity of the iceberg that had hit the State and his Government and trying to bring the ship back under control, Dr.Manmohan Singh and his Ministers tried to deny the presence of the iceberg.

15. Only now, there has been a belated realisation that India is adrift and needs a strong and decisive leadership to bring it back on the route of progress and development. One has to welcome the hard economic decisions already taken by the Government and the support that the Prime Minister has received from his party for those decisions. As I had pointed out in an earlier article, this is only the beginning. More hard decisions are required not only in the field of economy, but also in respect of administrative reforms to deal with corruption and to improve further the national security  machinery.

16. It is time for the Prime Minister to convince the people that those decisions will be forthcoming and will be implemented even if they lead to early elections and the possibility of a defeat for his party. Dr.Manmohan Singh has less than two years left in office. He can still salvage his reputation and that of his Government and party by doing all that needs to be done to restore the confidence of the people.

17. The need of the hour is not only for better leadership and governance, but also for a greater role for GenNext in policy and decision making and implementation. It is a time of transition from the old to the young. The transition should be expedited and not delayed. ( 27-9-12)

 

(The  writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com  Twitter @SORBONNE75)

 

AL QAEDA, THE TALIBAN & THE US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

 

 

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO. 768

 

Al Qaeda in North Waziristan, Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP), the NeoTaliban of Afghanistan and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have been closely following the presidential election campaign in the US. While they have kept up their rhetoric against President Barack Obama, they are not yet clear in their mind whether it would be in their interest  to work for the defeat of Mr.Obama by stepping up acts of terrorism in the Af-Pak region and in the Iraq-Syria-Libya region.

2. There is a high level of anger against Mr.Obama in all these organisations. This is due to his intensification of the Drone strikes against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the Waziristan area after coming into office, the killing of Osama bin Laden in a special operation at Abbottabad on May 1 / 2,2011, the killing of Abu Yahya al-Libi, the religious mentor of Al Qaeda, who was a Libyan religious cleric, in a Drone strike in Waziristan on June 4 last, the death of Anwar al-Awlaki, the Amir of AQAP, who was a US citizen of Yemeni origin, in a Drone strike in Yemen in September last year, and the US refusal to take action against the producer of the anti-Islam film that has triggered a wave of demonstrations, some of them violent, by Muslims in different countries.

3. The strong dislike of Al Qaeda for Mr.Obama was evident from two recent messages of Al Qaeda. A video message of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Amir of Al Qaeda, released on September 10,2012, described Mr.Obama as a liar  who was elected to "trick" Muslims around the world, but who nevertheless is "being defeated in Afghanistan".

4. A statement circulated by the AQAP after the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi in Libya on September 11,2012, that led to the death of the US Ambassador to Libya and three other US nationals said: “The killing of Sheikh Abu Yahya only increased the enthusiasm and determination of the sons of (Libyan independence hero) Omar al-Mukhtar to take revenge upon those who attack our Prophet. The uprising of our people in Libya, Egypt and Yemen against America and its embassies is a sign to notify the United States that its war is not directed against groups and organisations... but against the Islamic nation that has rebelled against injustice." It called for more violent demonstrations against US embassies in the Middle East and Africa, and urged Muslims in the West to attack American interests in their countries of residence. "May the expulsion of embassies and consulates lead to the liberation of Arab lands from the American hegemony and the arrogance,"  the statement said. The AQAP is led by Nasser al-Wahishi. 

5. There has been an increase in anti-Obama and anti-US rhetoric from the Neo-Taliban of Afghanistan and the TTP too. They have called for protests against the US film and have stepped up anti-US demonstrations and acts of violence in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. At the same time, they are confused whether it would be in their interest for Mr.Obama to be defeated in his bid for re-election. Though they may intensely dislike him, they  are not sure of what would be the policy of Mr. Mitt Romney in matters like intensified Drone strikes, thinning out of the US military presence in Afghanistan and not opposing a role for the moderate elements of the Neo-Taliban in any future political dispensation in Kabul.

6. For them, Mr.Romney is an unknown and unpredictable element in their objective of securing the withdrawal of the US troops from Afghanistan. The US has already completed the withdrawal of the additional troops inducted into Afghanistan under the surge ordered by Mr.Obama after he came to office. They have reasons to hope that if Mr.Obama is re-elected he may continue the further thinning out of the US troops which could prove to be advantageous to the Talibans and Al Qaeda.

7. In the case of the AQAP too, which controls Al Qaeda operations in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Syria, Mr.Obama’s policy of regime change with US-sponsored external interventions has proved beneficial and helped them to strengthen their foothold in these areas. Their only worry is whether Mr.Obama, if re-elected, would step up attacks on AQAP as he had stepped up attacks against AQ in the Af-Pak region after coming to office in 2009.

8.While calling for an intensification of anti-US activities, these organisations have been avoiding any disproportionate acts of reprisal against US nationals and interests that might turn US public opinion against Mr.Obama. It is likely as of now that while maintaining the anti-Obama rhetoric and the present levels of demonstrations and violence, they would avoid actions that could aggravate anti-Obama voter anger in the US. ( 26-9-12)

(The  writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com  Twitter @SORBONNE75)

 

 

CHINA-AFGHANISTAN SECURITY LIAISON

 

 

B.RAMAN

The internal security services of China and Afghanistan signed a formal agreement at Kabul on September 22, 2012, to have a liaison relationship between them. The agreement, inter alia, provides for exchange of security-related intelligence, counter-terrorism co-operation and training of Afghan police officers by China.

2. The agreement  was signed by officials of the two countries during an unannounced four-hour hush-hush visit to Kabul by Mr.Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China (CPC) , who is also the Minister for Public Security. The Ministry of Public Security is responsible for internal intelligence and security. In addition, it also supervises the work of the police and the criminal justice system all over China. Counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency and counter-intelligence are among its responsibilities. The external intelligence service of China is called the Ministry of State Security.

3. Officials in charge of internal security and counter-terrorism in the two countries have been in informal touch with each other in the framework of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), of which Afghanistan is an observer. An agreement to formalise and upgrade this relationship was taken  during a visit of President Hamid Karzai to Beijing in June  to attend an SCO summit.

4. The formal establishment of a liaison relationship would enable the two services to exchange intelligence regarding the activities of the extremist organisations of the Xinjiang province of China and the Central Asian Republics.

5. There has been close co-operation  among the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Islamic Jihad Group (also from Uzbekistan),the Islamic Movement of East Turkestan ( of Xinjiang) and Al Qaeda. All these organisations have their command and control centres in North Waziristan in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan and their terrorists often transit through Afghan territory on their way to Xinjiang in China and the Central Asian Republics.

6. While the level of extremist activity by the Uighurs in the Xinjiang province of China from their sanctuaries in North Waziristan has remained high, there has been a decrease in the activities of the Uzbek groups and Al Qaeda in the CARs. Despite this, Chinese concerns over the remnants of the Uzbek groups and Al Qaeda operating from Pakistani territory remain high due to the threats that they could pose to energy supplies from the CARs through pipelines to China.

7.While Chinese officials outwardly speak highly of the co-operation from the Pakistani intelligence for dealing with threats from these groups, they have not been quite satisfied in reality. All terrorist incidents in Xinjiang have had a Pakistani link either in the form of training, or sanctuaries or recruitment.

8.Recently, the Pakistan Government has terminated the contract given by it to a Singapore company for the running of the Gwadar port on the Mekran coast in Balochistan constructed with Chinese assistance. This port, which was meant to meet the external trade requirements of Western China, Afghanistan and the CARs, in addition to that of Pakistan, has not got going due to various teething troubles. There have been reports in sections of the Pakistani media that Islamabad has been pressing a Chinese company to take over the responsibility for the running of the Gwadar port.

9. While the port is very well equipped from the point of view of modern installations, its security cover is weak due to the disturbed situation in Balochistan and the activities of anti-Beijing Uighur and Uzbek elements in that area. If the Chinese take over the responsibility for the maintenance of the port, its security will be a matter of major concern to them. Since the co-operation of the Pakistani intelligence agencies may not be satisfactory in this regard, they may have to depend on the Afghan intelligence services for the necessary flow of intelligence.

10. It is interesting and significant that Mr.Zhou flew secretly to Kabul after a two-day visit to Singapore where considerable information will be available with the local port management experts regarding the kind of difficulties the Singapore company faced in Gwadar before it decided to pull out. Mr.Zhou seems to have gone directly to Kabul from Singapore and not through Pakistan. It is not known whether he stopped over in Pakistan on his way back.

11. According to media reports, during the talks in Kabul Mr.Zhou signed agreements on increased security and economic cooperation, including a deal to help “train, fund and equip the Afghan police”. The Xinhua news agency of China quoted him as saying as follows: “It is in line with the fundamental interests of the two nations for China and Afghanistan to strengthen a strategic and cooperative partnership which is also conducive to regional peace, stability and development. “

12. No details regarding the economic co-operation agreement signed during the visit are available. The Chinese state-owned  company called the China Metallurgical Group (MCC) operates a $3 billion  copper mine in the eastern Logar province. The project was expected to go into production in 2013, but there has reportedly been a delay due to security reasons.

13. This is the first time since 1966 that a senior Chinese Party and Government leader has visited Kabul. In 1966, then President Liu Shaoqi visited Kabul. ( 24-9-12)

(The  writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com  Twitter @SORBONNE75)

 

 

PM: NEED TO PROJECT A NEW LEADERSHIP STYLE

 

B.RAMAN

During the eight years that the Congress-led coalition has been in office, the country has moved forward in many directions. It enjoys a greater stature in the international community than ever before. For the first time, India came to be looked upon as a budding equal of China. Many started talking of the phenomenon of Chindia--- China and India rising together to occupy their due place in the international community.

2.The positive “We Can” feeling generated by the achievements of the Manmohan Singh Government in its first term in office has since given way to a negative atmosphere. This has been due to leadership inadequacies, the weakening of the image and authority of the Prime Minister, moral and administrative permissiveness in the name of coalition compulsions giving rise to widespread perceptions of corruption galore and stalling in the introduction of  the much-needed economic reforms.

3. The Prime Minister’s televised address to the nation on September 21,2012, clearly indicated that he has realised the need for changing this negative atmosphere and projecting an “ I Can and I will” image of himself to the people of the country. A brief address like this could not have been comprehensive. He focussed himself largely on the economic issues and did not touch upon other burning issues of the day like action to deal with corruption and improve governance through administrative reforms. Such reforms would have to be in the functioning of our anti-corruption and national security apparatus.

4. It is important for him to interact with the people again on the issues of action against corruption and administrative reforms. He could do so either through another address to the nation devoted only to these two subjects or through a televised live chat with distinguished journalists.------ either individually or with all  of them in a group. The journalists should be given the freedom to decide the format of the chat and the issues that will be discussed. The Prime Minister’s Office should resist the temptation to steer the chat in a direction favourable to the Government.

5. I would not say that the Prime Minister’s address to the nation has made public perceptions more favourable to him, but it has at least placed before the people his view of the state of the nation and what he intends doing about it. Till now, the public was exposed only to the constant negative campaign of the opposition, particularly the BJP.

6. The failure of the Prime Minister and  his party to realise the importance of an appropriate media strategy that could take advantage of the new technologies and new techniques of perception management has been exploited by the BJP and its NRI followers to assume their dominance over the new media in the virtual world and add to the negative image of the Prime Minister and his Government.

7. It is important for the Congress to break this dominance and establish a level playing field. The image of a Government which is all the time reticent, over-cautious and over-defensive has to be changed quickly. We need the image of a Government that is self-confident, self-assertive and forward-moving.

8. Policies and actions are important for achieving an image transformation, but a style of more accessible, more articulate, more responsive, more spontaneous and more forthcoming approach to interactions with the public and the media is equally important. We live in a world where style is as important as substance, but the Prime Minister and his Government have for too long neglected paying attention to the style of leadership.

9. There is a need for an urgent mid-course correction in the way the Prime Minister projects himself to public opinion and makes himself available for explaining the thinking and policies of his Government. He should not think that with his televised address to the nation he has done his job. He has only begun his new task. He has to press forward and transform the negative atmosphere into a positive one. (24-9-12)

(The  writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com  Twitter @SORBONNE75)

PAKISTANI INTELLIGENCE BASE IN COLOMBO

 

 

B.RAMAN

In an article written on June 12,2004, I had inter alia stated as follows:

“ For its intelligence-collection and covert action operations directed against India, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) uses four external bases - Kathmandu, Dubai, Bangkok and Colombo.

“While Kathmandu and Dubai are used by the ISI for intelligence collection as well as covert actions, Bangkok is used as an alternate sanctuary and as a clandestine meeting place to brief and debrief its agents in India. After the Mumbai blasts of March,1993, the ISI had the perpetrators of the terrorist attack shifted to Bangkok from Karachi and kept them there for some time in different hotels in order to prevent the detection of their links with the ISI by the US diplomatic missions in Pakistan, which were enquiring into Indian allegations in this regard.

“Past evidence indicated that the main interest of the ISI in using Colombo as a base was to collect intelligence about developments in sensitive Indian nuclear and missile establishments, many of which are located in South India, particularly in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

 

“For collecting intelligence about these establishments, the ISI generally uses Sri Lankan Tamil-speaking Muslims visiting India as well as South Indians visiting Colombo. Colombo also serves as a convenient transit point for arranging clandestine visits of Indians co-operating with the ISI to Karachi by the flights of the Pakistan International Airlines without any entry of their visits in their passports.

“There has been no evidence so far of the ISI using Colombo as a base for covert actions directed against India. However, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) has been showing increasing interest in taking jihad to the Muslims of the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. There have been persistent reports of the beginning of a radicalisation of small sections of the Tamil-speaking Muslim youth of the Eastern Province. During the riots in the Eastern Province in the middle of 2002, pamphlets in the name of a so-called Osama Brigade came to notice. The Chennai media had reported subsequently that some members of an organisation called the Muslim Defence Force (MDF) arrested by the Chennai Police had been in touch with one Abu Hamza of the LET based in the Gulf and that they were to meet him clandestinely in Sri Lanka. However, the meeting did not materialise as Abu Hamza did not come.

“The LET is very close to the ISI and it would not have taken its initial moves to explore the possibility of using Sri Lanka as a clandestine base for its activities and for creating sleeper cells there without the knowledge and prior clearance of the ISI.

 

“The recent investigations into the clandestine nuclear proliferation activities of A.Q.Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistan atom bomb, have revealed that Bukhary Seyed Abu Tahir, a Sri Lankan Tamil Muslim of Indian origin, married in Malaysia and with business interests in Kuala Lumpur and Dubai, was one of the external kingpins of Pakistan's clandestine nuclear procurement network. In a speech at the National Defence University of Washington DC in February last, President Bush had described this Sri Lankan Tamil-speaking Muslim as the "chief financial officer and money-launderer" of A.Q.Khan's clandestine operations.

“In the past, the ISI had posted its officers in junior and middle level clerical posts as well as in diplomatic posts in the Pakistani High Commission in Colombo. While it had never posted its officers as the head of the Pakistani diplomatic mission, Hussain Haqqani, a journalist who was then allegedly close to the ISI, was posted as the Pakistani High Commissioner to Sri Lanka during the first tenure of Nawaz Sharif as the Prime Minister (1990-93).

“The "Jang", the Urdu daily of Pakistan, has now reported that the Pervez Musharraf regime has decided to post Col (retd) Bashir Wali, former Director of the Pakistani Intelligence Bureau (IB), as the new High Commissioner to Sri Lanka. It is not clear at what stage is the proposal. Has his name been already sent to the Sri Lankan Government for agrement? If so, has the Sri Lankan Government given its consent?

 

“The IB is part of Pakistan's Ministry of the Interior. Like its Indian counterpart, it used to be a largely Police organisation, but since the days of the late Gen.Zia-ul-Haq, there has been a gradual militarisation of the organisation. Musharraf has made it for all practical purposes a wing of the ISI, with Lt.Gen.Ehsan-ul-Haq, the Director-General of the ISI, exercising powers of supervision and co-ordination over it.

“It was reported in the Pakistani media last year that Musharraf had tried to send Brig. (retd) Ejaz Shah, who used to handle Omar Sheikh, the accused in the kidnapping and murder case of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist,in the ISI as the Pakistani High Commissioner to Australia, but the Australian Government did not reportedly give its agrement. He then tried to send him as Ambassador to Indonesia, which also did not give its agrement. It has recently been reported that he has since been posted to the IB to supervise operations relating to India.

“If the "Jang" report is correct, the posting of a former Director of the IB to Colombo as High Commissioner could have serious implications for India's national security. The Government of India should immediately express its concerns to the Sri Lankan Government and oppose his being based in Colombo. “

2. Subsequently, on June 18,2004, I wrote as follows:

 

"The Island", a daily of Sri Lanka, has reported as follows on June 17,2004: "Pakistan with the concurrence of Sri Lanka has appointed Colonel (retd) Bashir Wali as Islamabad's top envoy here, Sri Lankan and Pakistan High Commission officials said. "He is expected to take over the mission before end of this month," an official said. "We don't see any reason to disagree with Pakistan's choice," the official said, dismissing concerns over the planned appointment among a section of political analysts in India."

“For Col. Wali, this would be the second posting in the Pakistani High Commission in Colombo. He had earlier served as the head of the Pakistani intelligence set-up in the High Commission in the 1990s and then as an intelligence officer in the Pakistani High Commission in London.

“It was during his previous stay in Colombo that  Al Ummah, the terrorist organisation of Tamil Nadu, expanded its activities in Tamil Nadu and Kerala and , during his stay in London, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) set up secret cells in the UK to recruit volunteers for its jihadi terrorist operations from amongst the members of the Muslim community in the UK. This ultimately led to a ban on the LET by the British Government.

“It is reported that Col. Wali was and still is an active member of the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ), which acts as the cover organisation of Pakistani jihadi organisations such as the LET, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) and helps them in their recruitment of cadres not only in Pakistan, but also in other countries of the world. During his earlier stay in Colombo, he had reportedly sent a number of Tamil Muslims from the Eastern Province to Karachi to study in the Binori madrasa on scholarships provided by the TJ. Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai of this madrasa, who was considered the mentor and god father of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the Pakistani jihadi and anti-Shia organisations, was assassinated by unidentified elements in Karachi on May 30,2004.

“While in Pakistan, Col. Wali used to attend regularly the annual conventions of the LET at Muridke, near Lahore, and was also attached to the Taliban as an adviser for some months in the 1990s. He was considered a protege of Brig (retd).Imtiaz, who headed the political division of the ISI during the tenure of the late Gen.Zia-ul-Haq, and had helped Imtiaz in running the ISI operations for training the terrorists from India's Punjab in Pakistani territory and arming them.

“When Benazir Bhutto came to power in 1988, she sacked Imtiaz, who was taken by Nawaz, the then Chief Minister of Pakistani Punjab, as his intelligence adviser. After the sacking of Benazir by the then President Ghulam Ishaq Khan in 1990, Nawaz, on taking over as the Prime Minister, appointed Imtiaz as the Director of the IB, a post which has since been upgraded as Director-General. Imtiaz took Wali into the IB and made him responsible for assisting the terrorists in Punjab and J&K. The training of the terrorists from Mumbai, responsible for  the  blasts of March,1993, was allegedly organisded by him on behalf of the ISI in association with Dawood Ibrahim, the mafia leader, who was designated by the US in October last year as an international terrorist because of his linkages with Al Qaeda and the LET.

“ Now that the Sri Lankan Government seems to have confronted India with a fait accompli by agreeing to the appointment of a die-hard anti- Indian sponsor of terrorism against India as the head of the Pakistani diplomatic mission in Colombo, India has to carefully analyse the implications of his presence in Colombo and take the necessary follow-up action. His presence in Colombo will pose a threat not only to India's national security, but also to stability and law and order in Sri Lanka's Eastern Province. “

3.On August 14,2006,seven persons, including four special commandos of the Special Diplomatic Security Unit, providing VVIP escort to the vehicle of Col.(retd) Bashir Wali  were killed in a three-wheeler explosion that targeted the military convoy that was escorting the diplomatic vehicle of Col.Bashir Wali  in the heart of Colombo city, on Flower Road in Kolpity. Col. Wali escaped unhurt and was subsequently withdrawn to Pakistan.

4.Commenting on the incident, I wrote as follows:

“Since taking over as the Pakistani High Commissioner in Colombo, he ( Col.Wali) has been very active in promoting military-military relationship between Sri Lanka and Pakistan and liaison between the intelligence agencies of the two countries. “ It was suspected that the LTTE targeted him because of this.

5.The Indian media has reported last week the arrest of a suspected spy of an ISI officer posted in Colombo by the Tamil Nadu Police. Our media has stated as follows:  “The arrest of Dhameem Anzari, the alleged spy nabbed while attempting to pass on sensitive information to the ISI in Colombo, has reportedly exposed an increase in the activities of the Pakistan intelligence agency in Sri Lanka. Anzari had reportedly confessed to Q Branch police during initial interrogation that the ISI, which operated out of the Pakistani Embassy in Colombo, had increased its activities of monitoring the southern states of India. Police said Anzari (35), son of Abdul Rahman of Thanjavur, went to the Pakistan consulate (High Commission in Colombo) and met Boss alias Ameer Subbiah Siddique, said to be the man in charge of the TN unit of the ISI at the Consulate. Ameer reportedly had asked Anzari to get him security details of installations in India, especially TN, and promised a hefty sum in return. He tried to send the information online but it failed to reach Ameer. So, he was waiting to hand it over to Ameer personally. Anzari took footage and photos of security installations in South India and reportedly told several acquaintances that he was making a movie to portray how secure India was.”

6.While the activities of the ISI and the Pakistani IB from the Pakistani High Commission in Colombo have been well known in the past, this is possibly the first time a suspected Tamil agent of the ISI operated from Colombo has been caught. He needs to be thoroughly interrogated to establish whether he was operating alone or was part of a network.

7.In the light of the details ascertained from him, our counter-intelligence capability for monitoring the activities of the Pakistani intelligence from their station in Colombo needs to be reviewed to remove any loopholes.

(The  writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com  Twitter @SORBONNE75)

 

 

 

 

 

A PRIME MINISTERIAL MESSAGE:STATESMANLIKE, NON-PARTISAN & NON-APOLOGETIC

 

B.RAMAN

The Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh, whose Government is left with less than two years in office addressed the nation on the night of September 21,2012.

2. He has been addressing the people from the Red Fort on the Independence Day every year. He had also briefly addressed the people on the TV after the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai.

3. His televised address of September 21, 2012, had a different context and a different purpose. The context was the growing negative atmosphere in the country partly as a result of his own sins of commission and omission in providing effective and inspiring leadership to the country during his second tenure as the Prime Minister that started in  2009.The negative atmosphere was also partly the result of the concerted efforts of the opposition led by the BJP to exploit the economic and other difficulties faced by the country to destroy the credibility of his Government and of him as a leader.

4. The BJP and other Hindutva elements have been constantly trying to project him as a non-leader, who has neither the stature nor the will  nor the ability nor the powers to govern. They have been projecting him as a Prime Minister on sufferance kept in office by Mrs.Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the Congress Party, in order to enjoy the powers of office  without the accountability for its record.

5. The purpose was to explain to the people the state of the national economy against the background of the global economic meltdown and the rationale for some unpopular economic decisions taken by his Government last week to reverse the slow-down in the economy. These decisions, inter alia, related to the increase in diesel prices to reduce the fiscal deficit in the short term and to permit foreign direct investment  in multi-brand retail and civil aviation in order to revive the interest of the foreign businessmen in investing in India. The purpose was also to convey a clear message to the foreign investors that India is still a vigorously on-going story and not a story that has petered out.

6. Thus, his message was simultaneously addressed to two audiences---Indian and global. His message to the Indian audience was that “I am the Prime Minister of India, I started the Indian economic miracle between 1991 and 96,I have a responsibility to take the miracle forward despite the temporary difficulties, I am determined to do so and my ability to do so would depend on your support.”

7. He explained the rationale for the recent economic decisions in lucid terms, admitted that these are hard and unpopular decisions and sought the people’s understanding and support. His message for understanding and co-operation was not addressed to the political class---neither in his own party nor in the opposition. It was directly addressed to the people in his capacity as the Prime Minister responsible for the governance of the country.

8.His message to the global audience sought to highlight his determination to give a fresh momentum to the economic reforms of which he was the architect between 1991 and 1996 and to make India investor-friendly once again.

9. While the purpose of his message to both the audiences was loud and clear, his ability to translate that message into action is not. That ability would depend upon to what extent he has been able to convince his own party on the need for hard decisions and to what extent he can depend on its backing for mobilising the support of the people.

10. The country has been passing through not only severe economic difficulties, but also a crisis of confidence and national self-esteem caused by widespread allegations of corruption, nepotism and malgovernance. Large sections of the people, rightly or wrongly, share the views of the detractors of the Prime Minister that he and his party have brought the country to the present  pass.

11.He is the leader of the Government, but not the leader of the party. His word is not law in the party. It is Mrs.Sonia Gandhi’s word that prevails in the party and not his. That is the public perception. Not unjustified.

12. It was a statesmanlike address, dignified, non-partisan, non-polemic and non-apologetic. To deliver  an address of such high quality marked by determination is easy, but to translate it into action is not. Translating it into action would depend on his determination to assert himself as the Prime Minister in the remaining months of his office and to function as he ought to function. Till now the public perception has been that he has been the most non-assertive Prime Minister the country has had.

13. To reverse that perception, he has to convey a clear message to Mrs.Sonia Gandhi and the party----thus far and no further. His message needed to be addressed to a third audience---Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and  the Congress Party.  That he could not have done in a televised address to the nation. He has to convey his message separately to Mrs.Sonia Gandhi and the Party. He has already made it clear to them that there can be no roll-back on the hard economic decisions already taken. He has to make it clear now that more hard decisions are required and he is determined to take them.

14.He has also to convey a clear message to the other political parties in the opposition as well as in his own ruling coalition. He must make it clear to them  that if they do not co-operate he and the Congress will not hesitate to seek a fresh mandate of the people by going for premature elections, if necessary.

15. If the Prime Minister has to translate his message into action, he and his party should rid themselves of the fear of premature elections. If they win and come back with a renewed mandate, well and good. If they do not, let whoever wins take over the responsibility for pulling the country out of its difficulties. (22-9-12)

(The  writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com  Twitter @SORBONNE75)

ANTI-US MUSLIM ANGER IN CHENNAI: YOUTH & CLERGY JOIN HANDS

 

B.RAMAN

 

The obnoxious anti-Muslim film produced by someone in the US and disseminated through the Internet has already caused five days of daily ant-US demonstrations in Chennai.

2.Muslim youth of Chennai did not react in such a vigorous manner over the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, during the visit of former US President George Bush to India in 2006 and against the cartoons published by a Danish journal in September 2005 projecting the Holy Prophet of Islam in negative colours.

3.The surprisingly angry reaction of the Muslim youth this time could be attributed partly to  the fact that the film is much,much more obnoxious than the Danish cartoons and partly to the feeling that the Government of India has not reacted against the film as vehemently as it should have. The anger in sections of the Muslim youth of Chennai also reflects the growth of religious activism among the Muslim youth in educational institutions and the dilution of the control of the elders of the community over the angry youth.

4. There are over 20 Muslim organisations in Tamil Nadu with different political agendas and objectives. The Muslim political consciousness movement in Tamil Nadu has been widely splintered. It continues to be so. However, whereas the elders constituting the leadership of these organisations are still splintered, the youth of these organisations have shown a readiness to come  together and work jointly for common Islamic causes.

5. The anger of the youth belonging to different organisations ( their number is estimated at around 5000 ) has had certain characteristics that need attention. Initially, the expression of anger started in the colleges and subsequently it spread to schools. The protests attracted a  number of Muslim women from colleges and schools who took to the streets in solidarity with the boys. On the fifth day on September 18,2012, some of the clergy in charge of prayers in  some of the main mosques of the city were also reported to have joined.

6.On the evening of September 18, when the elders tried to persuade the youth to go back to their mosques for their evening prayers, many of them in a spontaneous gesture of Islamic solidarity prayed in the middle of the Anna Salai (road) totally disrupting traffic. An incident like this has not happened  before.  Details of the protests on all the five days underline the difficulties increasingly faced by the elders of the community in persuading the youth not to violate the law in expressing their anger.

7. The youth disregarding the appeals of the elders violated the law in various ways --- like acts of vandalism in and around the US Consulate-General on the first day, burning in the streets US flags and pictures of President Barack Obama on all the days and clashes with the police when they tried to prevent them from marching to the Consulate. The Chennai Police seemed to have been taken by surprise by the intensity of the anger and by the orchestrated manner in which attempts were made to give expression to it.

8. While there was apparently an attempt at competitive instigation of the anger by different organisations and youth groups from different educational institutions, the anger was kept directed against the US Government and President Obama without letting it degenerate into anger against US nationals living and working in Chennai. The anger was directed against the US Consulate as representing the US government, but not against other US establishments such as business houses.

9. The youth leaders also saw to it that the anger did not assume a communal dimension. There seems to be an anxiety among some leaders of the Muslim community that the anger could assume a communal dimension in the coming days as the Vinayak Chaturthi is observed. They have appealed to the youth to discontinue their protests and return to their classes. It remains to be seen whether the youth heed their appeals.

10. The Chennai Police has been doing well under tremendous pressure. They should step up their intelligence collection efforts and intensify their interactions with the influential members of the Muslim community---young and old—in order to seek their cooperation in mitigating the anger. The central intelligence agencies should pay more attention to the phenomenon of Muslim youth activism in Chennai.

11. This may please be read in continuation of my earlier article titled  “Anti-US Protests By Some Muslims In Chennai” at http://ramanstrategicanalysis.blogspot.in/2012/09/anti-us-protests-by-some-muslims-in.html

(19-9-12)

(The  writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com  Twitter @SORBONNE75)