B.RAMAN
( In 2006, the Canadian Government had appointed a Commission of Inquiry headed by former Supreme Court justice John Major to enquire into the crash of an aircraft of Air India named Kanishka on June 23,1985. The crash was caused by an explosive device suspected to have been planted in a piece of unaccompanied baggage by Sikh extremists belonging to the Babbar Khalsa headed by the late Talwinder Singh Parmar of Vancouver, Canada. The report of the Commission was released on June 17, 2010. The Commission has found that a "cascading series of errors" by the Government of Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service allowed the terrorist attack to take place.This is the second instalment of relevant extracts from the report)
Despite its awareness of the threat and of the identity of the potential
protagonists who might carry it out, CSIS appears to have obtained little
important new information of its own about the Sikh extremist threat or about
the Babbar Khalsa or about Parmar from the fall of 1984 through to March of
1985. The major reason for this gap lay in the state of the warrant approvals
process that had been put in place by the CSIS Act in June 1984.
On the ground, CSIS BC investigators were aware of the urgent nature of the
threat from Sikh extremism and of the inadequacy of their information resources
to deal with it. They simply had no information sources of their own and had
been totally unsuccessful in recruiting sources within a Sikh community that
was somewhat insular and vulnerable to intimidation by the extremists. They
soon concluded that they needed surveillance and electronic intercepts in order
to be able to understand and respond to the increasing threat.
The institutional response to the request to approve a warrant to intercept
Parmar’s communications demonstrates a fi xation with form over substance
and, despite protestations to the contrary at the time – and subsequently,
suggests a lack of appreciation of the reality of the threat.
The civilianization of CSIS was in part a reaction to RCMP Security Service
excesses in its investigation of the Front de Libération du Québec (the “FLQ”)
and extremist Quebec Separatists. Under the RCMP Security Service, while
electronic intercepts had required approval, the process was informal, simply
requiring a request to the Solicitor General, the Minister responsible for the
RCMP (and later also for CSIS). With the creation of CSIS, as one of the means to
protect civil liberties from unjustifi able intrusion by or on behalf of government,
a new system of judicial supervision of certain intelligence operations was
instituted, including a requirement for judicial approval for intercepting private
communications. This new protocol was to apply prospectively but also was
intended to cover existing intercepts that had been approved by the Minister.
There was an explicit requirement that existing intercepts had to be reviewed
internally and approved by the Solicitor General and then by a judge of the
Federal Court, all within 6 months of the coming into force of the CSIS Act, i.e. by
January 1985.
When added to the considerable stresses and strains that accompanied
the rushed transition to CSIS from the RCMP Security Service, it was entirely
foreseeable that this warrant conversion process would be the source of added
pressure and potential misadventure. The foreseeability of the problems that
might be caused by the requirement to devote considerable resources to the
conversion process should have called for added care and attention to ensure
that the process would be capable of meeting new needs that would arise and
not just of preserving existing arrangements. Instead, the response of CSIS was
to prioritize existing warrants and to defer new applications, with the exception
of only those deemed most urgent. As CSIS understandably would want to avoid
disrupting existing investigations, in theory, this process could be considered a
sensible policy; in practice, its eff ectiveness depended on the Service’s ability to
respect the new needs that were more urgent.
The evidence before the Commission indicates that, despite the priority
afforded to the warrant conversion process, it was possible to secure a warrant
in an extremely short timeline to respond to a perceived urgent priority, as
occurred in an area other than the threat of Sikh extremism. The protracted wait
for the processing of the Parmar warrant application either demonstrates an
unthinking application of the concept of priority of existing warrants or, more
likely, refl ects the lack of appreciation of the true urgency of the threat of Sikh
extremism.
Despite certifi cation by the existing chain of command in BC as well as by the
Headquarters counterterrorism hierarchy, and despite increasingly pointed
memoranda from the front lines in BC, the application for the Parmar warrant
lay dormant for months while the conversion process went forward. Then, after
proceeding through multiple steps in the complicated, and still in fl ux, approval
process, it was further delayed for an additional month by what turned out to
be an irrelevant issue raised by the Minister’s Offi ce. Although the fi nal steps
leading up to the submission of the warrant to, and approval by, the Federal
Court proceeded relatively quickly, the total time from the request for a warrant
to the date of approval was over fi ve months. This lengthy delay was entirely
disproportionate to the heightened threat and the demonstrated lack of
intelligence sources available to respond to it.
The subsequent course of the BC investigation confi rms the theme of inadequate
resourcing and indicates that execution on the ground was not suffi cient for the
seriousness of the threat being dealt with. Eventually the BC investigators did get
approval both for electronic intercepts and for physical surveillance coverage on
Parmar. As will be seen, the story of neither eff ort is particularly edifying. ( To be continued)
Saturday, June 19, 2010
KANISHKA DISASTER---SALIENT POINTS OF THE MAJOR COMMISSION REPORT
B.RAMAN
( In 2006, the Canadian Government had appointed a Commission of Inquiry headed by former Supreme Court justice John Major to enquire into the crash of an aircraft of Air India named Kanishka on June 23,1985. The crash was caused by an explosive device suspected to have been planted in a piece of unaccompanied baggage by Sikh extremists belonging to the Babbar Khalsa headed by the late Talwinder Singh Parmar of Vancouver, Canada. The report of the Commission was released on June 17, 2010. The Commission has found that a "cascading series of errors" by the Government of Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service allowed the terrorist attack to take place.We will be carrying from today relevant extracts from the report)
The Air India Flight 182 tragedy was the result of a cascading series of
failures. The failures were widely distributed across the agencies and institutions
whose mandate it was to protect the safety and security of Canadians. There
were structural failures and operational failures; policy failures, communications
failures and human errors. Each contributed to, but none was the sole cause
for, Sikh terrorists being able to place a bomb in the checked baggage loaded
aboard Flight 182 without being detected. Some failures came to light almost
immediately, but a number have lain undetected, or at least unacknowledged,
for decades and have only come to light during the currency of this Commission
of Inquiry.
The first question posed by the Terms of Reference of this Inquiry is whether
Canadian institutions adequately understood and assessed the threat posed by
Sikh extremism.
All of the institutions and agencies were theoretically aware of the potential
threat to safety and security posed by terrorism in general. A few had some
knowledge of the dangers of its Sikh extremism version in particular. Several
were nominally aware of the threat of sabotage to passenger aircraft by means
of timed explosive devices in checked baggage, and one agency was even
aware of information indicating that Air India might be targeted by this method
in June 1985. As a practical matter however, none of the institutions or agencies
was adequately prepared for the events of June 22/23, 1985.
Indeed it is impossible to draw any conclusion other than that, almost without
exception, the agencies and institutions did not take the threat seriously, and
that the few individuals within these institutions who did, were faced with
insurmountable obstacles in their efforts to deal with the threat.
There are a number of plausible ways to break down the failures that allowed
the bombing of Flight 182 to occur. Each of the agencies and institutions that
should have had a role in preventing terrorist attacks displayed structural flaws
that impaired their performance.
CSIS only came into being as an independent civilian agency in 1984. Before
that, the national security intelligence was under the purview of the Security
Service of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The circumstances surrounding
the birth of CSIS had a deep and detrimental impact on its ability to detect the
particular security threat posed by Sikh extremism and on its ability to provide
useful advice to the agencies and institutions charged with protecting Canadian
lives and property.
Although the notion that intelligence should be handled by a civilian agency
rather than the police had been widely discussed and debated in Canada for
over a decade, the CSIS Act, which brought about this transformation, was
passed hurriedly as the last legislative act of the outgoing Liberal government
in June of 1984. It was then left to be implemented in a very short time frame
by a new Progressive Conservative administration with limited accumulated
experience in the area of national security. The result was an uneven transition,
marred by scarce resources and by bruised feelings: both at the RCMP, which
felt wronged by the removal of its intelligence mandate, and at CSIS, which felt
poorly supported in its new role.
While intelligence officers were aware of the existence of the phenomenon of
Sikh extremism, the rise in the intensity, fervour and potential danger of this
phenomenon was the result of events in the Indian sub-continent that took
place in the same time frame as the transition from the Security Service to CSIS.
These events included the occupation and fortification of the Golden Temple
in Amritsar, Sikhism’s central shrine, by armed Sikh separatists, the subsequent
bloody storming of the Golden Temple by the Indian army, and the resulting
massacres and intercommunal violence in the State of Punjab, all of which
culminated in the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her
own Sikh bodyguards. This chain of events led to a rise in anti-Indian sentiment
within the Sikh diaspora, including the Sikh community in Canada.
Even in a relatively stable institutional environment, keeping up with the rapidly
changing landscape of Sikh extremism in Canada would no doubt have proved
challenging. The impact of the transition from the RCMP Security Service to CSIS
made a difficult situation that much worse.
Although CSIS personnel were dedicated and hardworking, the institutional
context was poorly geared toward dealing with terrorism in general – and with
a terrorist threat arising from Sikh extremism in particular. Canadian intelligence
gathering was stuck in a Cold War paradigm in which the primary threat to
national security was assessed as emanating from espionage by hostile foreign
governments. Most resources were allocated to counter-espionage, with
comparatively few resources devoted to counter-terrorism.
Of the resources devoted to counter-terrorism, most were concentrated on the
risks posed by Armenian terrorist attacks against Turkish interests in Canada.
Even at the so-called “Sikh Desk” at CSIS headquarters, (which was a sub-unit
of the “Western Europe and Pacific Rim” unit of the Counterterrorism unit) the
arguably inadequate official complement, consisting of a unit head and four
analyst positions, was in fact only partially staffed. Only the unit head and
two analyst positions were actually filled, and that even smaller number was
further reduced by the fact that, for the better part of the year leading up to the
bombing of Flight 182, one of the incumbents was away on French language
training. In the Regions, staffing was equally thin. In BC Region, where the most
militant and most obviously dangerous elements of Sikh extremism in Canada
were to be found, two investigators were responsible for the entire investigation
of Sikh terrorism.
CSIS personnel assigned to this investigation received no additional training;
investigators and analysts were expected to learn on the job. CSIS appears
to have uncovered little, if any, information on its own, with most of
its information coming from the Government of India through the Indian High
Commission. The full extent of CSIS’s knowledge in the summer of 1984 was that
Talwinder Singh Parmar had been released from prison in Germany following a
failed extradition attempt on murder charges by the Government of India, and
had returned to Canada, where he was launching a public campaign of fiery
rhetoric and communal intimidation to radicalize gurdwaras (Sikh temples)
and to take over their direction and their revenues. CSIS was unable to provide
confirmation of its existence in Canada, let alone the actual size of the extremist
Babbar Khalsa movement that Parmar claimed to lead, and even referred to it as
the “Barbara Khalsa group.” By the fall of 1984, CSIS had pieced together enough
information to be able to identify Parmar as the most dangerous Sikh in Canada
and to opine that his associate Ajaib Singh Bagri could be manipulated to carry
out a terrorist attack. ( To be continued)
( In 2006, the Canadian Government had appointed a Commission of Inquiry headed by former Supreme Court justice John Major to enquire into the crash of an aircraft of Air India named Kanishka on June 23,1985. The crash was caused by an explosive device suspected to have been planted in a piece of unaccompanied baggage by Sikh extremists belonging to the Babbar Khalsa headed by the late Talwinder Singh Parmar of Vancouver, Canada. The report of the Commission was released on June 17, 2010. The Commission has found that a "cascading series of errors" by the Government of Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service allowed the terrorist attack to take place.We will be carrying from today relevant extracts from the report)
The Air India Flight 182 tragedy was the result of a cascading series of
failures. The failures were widely distributed across the agencies and institutions
whose mandate it was to protect the safety and security of Canadians. There
were structural failures and operational failures; policy failures, communications
failures and human errors. Each contributed to, but none was the sole cause
for, Sikh terrorists being able to place a bomb in the checked baggage loaded
aboard Flight 182 without being detected. Some failures came to light almost
immediately, but a number have lain undetected, or at least unacknowledged,
for decades and have only come to light during the currency of this Commission
of Inquiry.
The first question posed by the Terms of Reference of this Inquiry is whether
Canadian institutions adequately understood and assessed the threat posed by
Sikh extremism.
All of the institutions and agencies were theoretically aware of the potential
threat to safety and security posed by terrorism in general. A few had some
knowledge of the dangers of its Sikh extremism version in particular. Several
were nominally aware of the threat of sabotage to passenger aircraft by means
of timed explosive devices in checked baggage, and one agency was even
aware of information indicating that Air India might be targeted by this method
in June 1985. As a practical matter however, none of the institutions or agencies
was adequately prepared for the events of June 22/23, 1985.
Indeed it is impossible to draw any conclusion other than that, almost without
exception, the agencies and institutions did not take the threat seriously, and
that the few individuals within these institutions who did, were faced with
insurmountable obstacles in their efforts to deal with the threat.
There are a number of plausible ways to break down the failures that allowed
the bombing of Flight 182 to occur. Each of the agencies and institutions that
should have had a role in preventing terrorist attacks displayed structural flaws
that impaired their performance.
CSIS only came into being as an independent civilian agency in 1984. Before
that, the national security intelligence was under the purview of the Security
Service of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The circumstances surrounding
the birth of CSIS had a deep and detrimental impact on its ability to detect the
particular security threat posed by Sikh extremism and on its ability to provide
useful advice to the agencies and institutions charged with protecting Canadian
lives and property.
Although the notion that intelligence should be handled by a civilian agency
rather than the police had been widely discussed and debated in Canada for
over a decade, the CSIS Act, which brought about this transformation, was
passed hurriedly as the last legislative act of the outgoing Liberal government
in June of 1984. It was then left to be implemented in a very short time frame
by a new Progressive Conservative administration with limited accumulated
experience in the area of national security. The result was an uneven transition,
marred by scarce resources and by bruised feelings: both at the RCMP, which
felt wronged by the removal of its intelligence mandate, and at CSIS, which felt
poorly supported in its new role.
While intelligence officers were aware of the existence of the phenomenon of
Sikh extremism, the rise in the intensity, fervour and potential danger of this
phenomenon was the result of events in the Indian sub-continent that took
place in the same time frame as the transition from the Security Service to CSIS.
These events included the occupation and fortification of the Golden Temple
in Amritsar, Sikhism’s central shrine, by armed Sikh separatists, the subsequent
bloody storming of the Golden Temple by the Indian army, and the resulting
massacres and intercommunal violence in the State of Punjab, all of which
culminated in the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her
own Sikh bodyguards. This chain of events led to a rise in anti-Indian sentiment
within the Sikh diaspora, including the Sikh community in Canada.
Even in a relatively stable institutional environment, keeping up with the rapidly
changing landscape of Sikh extremism in Canada would no doubt have proved
challenging. The impact of the transition from the RCMP Security Service to CSIS
made a difficult situation that much worse.
Although CSIS personnel were dedicated and hardworking, the institutional
context was poorly geared toward dealing with terrorism in general – and with
a terrorist threat arising from Sikh extremism in particular. Canadian intelligence
gathering was stuck in a Cold War paradigm in which the primary threat to
national security was assessed as emanating from espionage by hostile foreign
governments. Most resources were allocated to counter-espionage, with
comparatively few resources devoted to counter-terrorism.
Of the resources devoted to counter-terrorism, most were concentrated on the
risks posed by Armenian terrorist attacks against Turkish interests in Canada.
Even at the so-called “Sikh Desk” at CSIS headquarters, (which was a sub-unit
of the “Western Europe and Pacific Rim” unit of the Counterterrorism unit) the
arguably inadequate official complement, consisting of a unit head and four
analyst positions, was in fact only partially staffed. Only the unit head and
two analyst positions were actually filled, and that even smaller number was
further reduced by the fact that, for the better part of the year leading up to the
bombing of Flight 182, one of the incumbents was away on French language
training. In the Regions, staffing was equally thin. In BC Region, where the most
militant and most obviously dangerous elements of Sikh extremism in Canada
were to be found, two investigators were responsible for the entire investigation
of Sikh terrorism.
CSIS personnel assigned to this investigation received no additional training;
investigators and analysts were expected to learn on the job. CSIS appears
to have uncovered little, if any, information on its own, with most of
its information coming from the Government of India through the Indian High
Commission. The full extent of CSIS’s knowledge in the summer of 1984 was that
Talwinder Singh Parmar had been released from prison in Germany following a
failed extradition attempt on murder charges by the Government of India, and
had returned to Canada, where he was launching a public campaign of fiery
rhetoric and communal intimidation to radicalize gurdwaras (Sikh temples)
and to take over their direction and their revenues. CSIS was unable to provide
confirmation of its existence in Canada, let alone the actual size of the extremist
Babbar Khalsa movement that Parmar claimed to lead, and even referred to it as
the “Barbara Khalsa group.” By the fall of 1984, CSIS had pieced together enough
information to be able to identify Parmar as the most dangerous Sikh in Canada
and to opine that his associate Ajaib Singh Bagri could be manipulated to carry
out a terrorist attack. ( To be continued)
Friday, June 18, 2010
CHINESE ALERT IN XINJIANG
B.RAMAN
The Munich-based World Uighur Congress (WUC) has notified plans for protest meetings and demonstrations in different cities of the world having an Uighur presence to mark the first anniversary of the outbreak of anti-Beijing violence in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, which falls on July 5,2010.
2. Coinciding with the WUC announcement, the authorities in Xinjiang have notified the local people through a Government-run web site of stepped-up security measures, which will be in force from June 20 to July 20. These measures include increased police deployment and patrols in Urumqi and checking of vehicles for concealed weapons and explosive material.
3. It has been reported that about 1000 additional police personnel from other provinces will be moved to Urumqi for deployment during this period. Uighur sources have also claimed that rural students from the interior areas studying in Urumqi have been asked to return to their villages for a month and that restrictions are being imposed on visits of foreign tourists to the capital during this period. Anti-riot exercises have already been held by the local police in different parts of the city.
4. The plans for the induction of about 1000 additional police personnel were made before the recent outbreak of Kyrgyz-Uzbek ethnic violence in Southern Kyrgyzstan, which necessitated the airlift of over 600 Chinese residents, the majority of them Uighurs, from that country to Urumqi. The Chinese are reportedly concerned over the likelihood of the infiltration of elements belonging to the Islamic Movement of East Turkestan (IMET) into Urumqi by taking advantage of this air-lift. In view of this, it is possible that the Chinese may induct more police reinforcements from other provinces.
5. The Chinese have been unnerved by the success of 20 Uighurs---many of them Christians--- in escaping from Urumqi to Cambodia allegedly via Vietnam towards the end of last year and seeking political asylum from the local office of the UN High Commission For Refugees. The Cambodian authorities had them arrested and deported to China before the UNHCR could intervene. It was alleged that these refugees were helped to flee from Xinjiang by a Macau-based Christian organization called the Macau Interfaith Network headed by Rev.Marcus Ramsey. This organization has allegedly been helping Christians wanting to flee from North Korea and China.
6. The Network, which was reportedly founded by another organization called the Full Gospel Church, seeks to promote inter-faith dialogue in China,Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and Central Asia and to help the Christians in these countries. It has been holding inter-faith discussions in Macau, Chiangmai and Vientiane.
7. The interest taken by Christian organizations in the developments in Xinjiang has added to Beijing’s concerns. It is not known how many Christians are there in Xinjiang, but many of them seem to support the WUC. (19-6-10)
( 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 )
The Munich-based World Uighur Congress (WUC) has notified plans for protest meetings and demonstrations in different cities of the world having an Uighur presence to mark the first anniversary of the outbreak of anti-Beijing violence in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, which falls on July 5,2010.
2. Coinciding with the WUC announcement, the authorities in Xinjiang have notified the local people through a Government-run web site of stepped-up security measures, which will be in force from June 20 to July 20. These measures include increased police deployment and patrols in Urumqi and checking of vehicles for concealed weapons and explosive material.
3. It has been reported that about 1000 additional police personnel from other provinces will be moved to Urumqi for deployment during this period. Uighur sources have also claimed that rural students from the interior areas studying in Urumqi have been asked to return to their villages for a month and that restrictions are being imposed on visits of foreign tourists to the capital during this period. Anti-riot exercises have already been held by the local police in different parts of the city.
4. The plans for the induction of about 1000 additional police personnel were made before the recent outbreak of Kyrgyz-Uzbek ethnic violence in Southern Kyrgyzstan, which necessitated the airlift of over 600 Chinese residents, the majority of them Uighurs, from that country to Urumqi. The Chinese are reportedly concerned over the likelihood of the infiltration of elements belonging to the Islamic Movement of East Turkestan (IMET) into Urumqi by taking advantage of this air-lift. In view of this, it is possible that the Chinese may induct more police reinforcements from other provinces.
5. The Chinese have been unnerved by the success of 20 Uighurs---many of them Christians--- in escaping from Urumqi to Cambodia allegedly via Vietnam towards the end of last year and seeking political asylum from the local office of the UN High Commission For Refugees. The Cambodian authorities had them arrested and deported to China before the UNHCR could intervene. It was alleged that these refugees were helped to flee from Xinjiang by a Macau-based Christian organization called the Macau Interfaith Network headed by Rev.Marcus Ramsey. This organization has allegedly been helping Christians wanting to flee from North Korea and China.
6. The Network, which was reportedly founded by another organization called the Full Gospel Church, seeks to promote inter-faith dialogue in China,Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and Central Asia and to help the Christians in these countries. It has been holding inter-faith discussions in Macau, Chiangmai and Vientiane.
7. The interest taken by Christian organizations in the developments in Xinjiang has added to Beijing’s concerns. It is not known how many Christians are there in Xinjiang, but many of them seem to support the WUC. (19-6-10)
( 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 )
Thursday, June 17, 2010
ANTI-MUSLIM REPRISAL TERRORISM---AN UPDATE
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO. 659
B.RAMAN
( This may kindly be read in continuation of my earlier article of October 24,2008, on the same subject, which is available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers29/paper2892.html . The earlier article is annexed for easy reference )
Rediff.com has reported as follows: "The long-pending investigations into the three-year-old Mecca Masjid blast case on Thursday (June 17,2010) moved forward with the Central Bureau of Investigation producing two suspects RSS pracharak Devender Gupta and his accomplice Lokesh Sharma in a special CBI court in Hyderabad. 14th additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate remanded the two to the judicial custody till June 30. A CBI team brought the two from Ajmer jail on a prisoner transit warrant......Devender Gupta and Lokesh Sharma, prime accused in bomb blast in Ajmer Dargah, were in Ajmer jail for the last one and a half months. CBI sources said that they will seek the custody of Gupta and Sharma to question them about their role in the bomb blast in Mecca Masjid on May 18, 2007. 15 people were killed in the blast during Friday congregation and subsequent police firing. CBI says that it was on the look out for two more suspects Sandeep Dange and Ramachandra Kalasangar alias Ramji. "
2. The investigation is still on-going and the final charge-sheet against the accused----all members of the Hindu community--- is still to be filed. The investigation made so far points in the direction of suspected targeted attacks on Muslims and their places of worship by some individual elements in the Hindu community as acts of retaliation for jihadi terrorism in different parts of India.
3.The fact that some of the arrested Hindu suspects had alleged links with the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) and other allied organisations has given rise to fresh allegations regarding Hindu terrorism. Prominent office-bearers of the RSS have done well to dissociate their organisation from the alleged acts of terrorism of the arrested individuals and express their support for the investigation against them to move forward vigorously.
4. Retaliation by a State against a State sponsoring acts of terrorism through surrogate terrorist organisations and against terrorist organisations which let themselves be used by a State are permitted under many UN resolutions against State-sponsorship of terrorism against another State. Such acts by a State are categorised as amounting to indirect aggression. There are instances of States retaliating against another State or in the territory of another State in order to make the sponsorship of terrorism by a State or acts of terrorism by an organisation from the territory of another State prohibitively costly.
5.The US air strikes in Libya in 1986 were an act of State retaliation for the terrorist attack on some US soldiers in a West Berlin discotheque by suspected terrorists allegedly sponsored by Libya. The US Cruise missile attacks on suspected Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and the Sudan in 1998 were acts of State retaliation against a terrorist organisation for its suspected involvement in the explosions of August 1998 outside the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam. There have been such acts of retaliation by Israel too.
6. While such acts of selective retaliation against another State and terrorist organisations in their foreign hide-outs can be justified depending on the circumstances which led to the retaliation, no law----domestic or international---permits an act of retaliation by a State or organisation or individuals in one's own territory against one's own co-citizens.
7.There has been no universally accepted definition of terrorism, but it is agreed by terrorism analysts that the indiscriminate killing of civilians by using an explosive device in a public place is an act of terrorism. Thus, the members of the Hindu community who have been arrested and are presently under investigation have indulged in acts of terrorism against Muslims if the facts alleged against them are proved in a court of law.
8. Calculations of what we call vote bank politics ---- electoral dividend or the lack of it---- should not be allowed to come in the way of the thorough investigation of the charges against the arrested persons There are two kinds of violence under the law----- violence in the heat of the moment in exercise of the right of self-defence and pre-meditated and pre-planned acts of violence. There is no excuse under the law for pre-meditated and pre-planned acts of violence-----whether they amount to terrorism or not.
9. Any perception that the investigation against the arrested Hindus is not being done as vigorously as the investigation against Muslims suspected of terrorism would weaken our case against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism and provide an excuse to organisations such as the Indian Mujahideen (IM) for indulging in more acts of terrorism. The statement disseminated by the IM before its blasts in Uttar Pradesh in November 2007, alleged that the Indian criminal justice system is unfair to the Muslims. Any perception of a lack of thoroughness in the investigation against the arrested Hindus would add substance to this allegation of the IM.
10. It is in the interest of the RSS and allied organisations to strongly support such a thorough investigation and make it abundantly clear that they do not support acts of retaliation in our territory against our co-citizens. ( 18-6-10)
( 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 )
ANNEXURE
Paper no. 2892 24-Oct.-2008
Anti-Muslim Reprisal Terrorism? - International Terrorism Monitor--Paper No. 460
by B. Raman
"Some sections of the Muslim community suspected that this attack ----like the other attacks targeting members of their community--- must have been the responsibility of Hindu extremist elements. There was no basis for their suspicions, but they persist. The only way of removing their suspicions is through a thorough investigation and the definitive identification of all those involved. The many missing links in the investigation of this strike as well as in the terrorist attack on the Mumbai suburban trains should be a cause for concern. Targeted attacks on innocent Muslims by Al Qaeda and other jihadi organizations is nothing new. Such attacks take place often in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. But, in those countries, the attacks on Muslim civilians are generally due to one of two factors. Either the targeted Muslims belonged to a rival sect (Sunni vs Shia or Deobandi vs Barelvi) or rival organization or were perceived as collaborators of the Government and hence apostates. None of these factors applied in the case of the Muslims----Indians and Pakistanis--- who were traveling by the Samjotha Express. The conventional wisdom was that the Muslims were now being deliberately targeted by the jihadi organizations in order to provoke them against the Government and the Hindus. I do not subscribe to this wisdom. It is important to keep an open mind while investigating these targeted attacks on Indian Muslims and one should not jump to the conclusion that the LET or the HUJI must have been involved. We owe it to our Muslims, most of whom have kept away from Al Qaeda and other pan-Islamic organizations, to see that these cases of targeted attacks on Muslims are thoroughly investigated instead of coming to a facile conclusion that jihadi organizations must be behind them."
-----My comments on the terrorist strike in the Samjotha Express in my book "Terrorism---Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow" published in June, 2008, by the Lancer Publishers of New Delhi (www.lancerpublishers.com)
"While there are grounds for suspecting that the blast of Delhi and those of Agartala might have been carried out by the IM ( Indian Mujahideen) and its associates from the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) in Delhi and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) of Bangladesh in Agartala, the blasts in Modasa and Malegaon seem to stand apart. Though the Gujarat Police are reported to have detained some members of the Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) during their investigation of the Modasa blast, the Modasa and Malegaon blasts do not carry any unique signature. More evidence will be required before one could analyse as to who might have been responsible. "----From my article of October 2, 2008, titled "Mushrooming Terrorism: Now Agartala" at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers29/paper2866.html
-----------------------------
In the last three years, we have had at least seven terrorist strikes in different parts of the country in which the perpetrators seemed to have targeted innocent Muslim civilians. Those seemed to be not indiscriminate attacks on all civilians, but targeted attacks on Muslims. There were two such incidents in Malegaon in Maharashtra and one each in New Delhi, Hyderabad, in the Ajmer Sharif in Rajasthan, in the Samjotha Express to Pakistan and in Modasa in Gujarat.
2. On the basis of the available reports, I had myself stated after five of these strikes---- but not after the Malegaon and Modasa incidents of September 29,2008--- that they seemed to have been carried out by terrorists belonging to jihadi terrorist organisations. I had also referred to instances of jihadi terrorists deliberately targeting innocent Muslims in many countries in pursuit of their agenda.
3. Some months after the Ajmer Sharif incident, a young Muslim officer of the Indian Police Service (IPS) had met me privately and expressed his doubts as to whether Muslims would have been involved in these incidents. He strongly believed that no Muslim however extremist he might be and to whichever jihadi organisation he belonged would have planted a bomb in or near the Ajmer Sharif.
4. I did not feel convinced, but felt somewhat troubled by what he said. I felt that as a senior (though now retired) officer of the IPS, I owed it to him and other young Muslim officers of the IPS to take note of what he said and re-open my mind. It was in pursuance of this that I made the above-mentioned observations in my book.
5. Who carried out the pre-September 29, 2008, terrorist strikes, which seemed to have mainly targeted innocent Muslims? Where they the acts of the usual jihadi organisations or are they the precursor to acts of reprisal terrorism against members of the Muslim community by some irrational elements in the Hindu community? These questions, which were already being raised by sections of the public----Muslims as well as non-Muslims--- even before September 29, have re-surfaced following the publication or dissemination by some sections of the media of reports claiming that the Anti-Terrorism Cell (ATS) of the Mumbai Police have detained three Hindus in connection with their investigation into the recent Malegon blasts. The ATS itself has neither officially denied nor confirmed these reports.
6. The matter is in the initial stages of the investigation. To instill confidence in our Muslim community, the ATS should see that the investigation against these Hindus and any others associated with them is carried out thoroughly irrespective of their organisational affiliation. Religion is not a mitigating factor in deciding on the culpability of a person suspected of involvement in a criminal act. If they are proved to have participated in the acts of terrorism in Malegain and Modesa, the fact that they are Hindus would not make them any the less criminal or terrorist.
7. Indian criminal laws----the Indian Penal Code, the Indian Evidence Act and the Criminal Procedure Code--- do not talk of the majority or the minorities or even of Indian citizens or foreigners. Their provisions apply to anyone who commits an offence in Indian territory---whether he or she is an Indian national or a foreigner, whatever be his or her religion, language or ethnicity. The arrested persons must be investigated and proceeded against without worrying about their background or organisational affiliation.
8. Do these arrests strengthen the case for a ban on the Bajrang Dal or any other organisation to which they might have belonged? Or do they at least call for a characterisation of such orgainsations----even if they be of Hindus---as terrorist organisations? To characterise an organisation as a terrorist organisation and to take legal action against it ----and not merely against its members---- two types of evidence are required. Firstly, that its constitution or manifesto advocates the resort to violence amounting to terrorism for achieving its objective. Secondly, that it has been involved in repeated acts of pre-meditated violence which amount to terrorism. One has to wait and see whether such evidence surfaces during the investigation.
(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 may kindly be read in continuation of my earlier article of October 24,2008, on the same subject, which is available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers29/paper2892.html . The earlier article is annexed for easy reference )
Rediff.com has reported as follows: "The long-pending investigations into the three-year-old Mecca Masjid blast case on Thursday (June 17,2010) moved forward with the Central Bureau of Investigation producing two suspects RSS pracharak Devender Gupta and his accomplice Lokesh Sharma in a special CBI court in Hyderabad. 14th additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate remanded the two to the judicial custody till June 30. A CBI team brought the two from Ajmer jail on a prisoner transit warrant......Devender Gupta and Lokesh Sharma, prime accused in bomb blast in Ajmer Dargah, were in Ajmer jail for the last one and a half months. CBI sources said that they will seek the custody of Gupta and Sharma to question them about their role in the bomb blast in Mecca Masjid on May 18, 2007. 15 people were killed in the blast during Friday congregation and subsequent police firing. CBI says that it was on the look out for two more suspects Sandeep Dange and Ramachandra Kalasangar alias Ramji. "
2. The investigation is still on-going and the final charge-sheet against the accused----all members of the Hindu community--- is still to be filed. The investigation made so far points in the direction of suspected targeted attacks on Muslims and their places of worship by some individual elements in the Hindu community as acts of retaliation for jihadi terrorism in different parts of India.
3.The fact that some of the arrested Hindu suspects had alleged links with the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) and other allied organisations has given rise to fresh allegations regarding Hindu terrorism. Prominent office-bearers of the RSS have done well to dissociate their organisation from the alleged acts of terrorism of the arrested individuals and express their support for the investigation against them to move forward vigorously.
4. Retaliation by a State against a State sponsoring acts of terrorism through surrogate terrorist organisations and against terrorist organisations which let themselves be used by a State are permitted under many UN resolutions against State-sponsorship of terrorism against another State. Such acts by a State are categorised as amounting to indirect aggression. There are instances of States retaliating against another State or in the territory of another State in order to make the sponsorship of terrorism by a State or acts of terrorism by an organisation from the territory of another State prohibitively costly.
5.The US air strikes in Libya in 1986 were an act of State retaliation for the terrorist attack on some US soldiers in a West Berlin discotheque by suspected terrorists allegedly sponsored by Libya. The US Cruise missile attacks on suspected Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and the Sudan in 1998 were acts of State retaliation against a terrorist organisation for its suspected involvement in the explosions of August 1998 outside the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam. There have been such acts of retaliation by Israel too.
6. While such acts of selective retaliation against another State and terrorist organisations in their foreign hide-outs can be justified depending on the circumstances which led to the retaliation, no law----domestic or international---permits an act of retaliation by a State or organisation or individuals in one's own territory against one's own co-citizens.
7.There has been no universally accepted definition of terrorism, but it is agreed by terrorism analysts that the indiscriminate killing of civilians by using an explosive device in a public place is an act of terrorism. Thus, the members of the Hindu community who have been arrested and are presently under investigation have indulged in acts of terrorism against Muslims if the facts alleged against them are proved in a court of law.
8. Calculations of what we call vote bank politics ---- electoral dividend or the lack of it---- should not be allowed to come in the way of the thorough investigation of the charges against the arrested persons There are two kinds of violence under the law----- violence in the heat of the moment in exercise of the right of self-defence and pre-meditated and pre-planned acts of violence. There is no excuse under the law for pre-meditated and pre-planned acts of violence-----whether they amount to terrorism or not.
9. Any perception that the investigation against the arrested Hindus is not being done as vigorously as the investigation against Muslims suspected of terrorism would weaken our case against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism and provide an excuse to organisations such as the Indian Mujahideen (IM) for indulging in more acts of terrorism. The statement disseminated by the IM before its blasts in Uttar Pradesh in November 2007, alleged that the Indian criminal justice system is unfair to the Muslims. Any perception of a lack of thoroughness in the investigation against the arrested Hindus would add substance to this allegation of the IM.
10. It is in the interest of the RSS and allied organisations to strongly support such a thorough investigation and make it abundantly clear that they do not support acts of retaliation in our territory against our co-citizens. ( 18-6-10)
( 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 )
ANNEXURE
Paper no. 2892 24-Oct.-2008
Anti-Muslim Reprisal Terrorism? - International Terrorism Monitor--Paper No. 460
by B. Raman
"Some sections of the Muslim community suspected that this attack ----like the other attacks targeting members of their community--- must have been the responsibility of Hindu extremist elements. There was no basis for their suspicions, but they persist. The only way of removing their suspicions is through a thorough investigation and the definitive identification of all those involved. The many missing links in the investigation of this strike as well as in the terrorist attack on the Mumbai suburban trains should be a cause for concern. Targeted attacks on innocent Muslims by Al Qaeda and other jihadi organizations is nothing new. Such attacks take place often in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. But, in those countries, the attacks on Muslim civilians are generally due to one of two factors. Either the targeted Muslims belonged to a rival sect (Sunni vs Shia or Deobandi vs Barelvi) or rival organization or were perceived as collaborators of the Government and hence apostates. None of these factors applied in the case of the Muslims----Indians and Pakistanis--- who were traveling by the Samjotha Express. The conventional wisdom was that the Muslims were now being deliberately targeted by the jihadi organizations in order to provoke them against the Government and the Hindus. I do not subscribe to this wisdom. It is important to keep an open mind while investigating these targeted attacks on Indian Muslims and one should not jump to the conclusion that the LET or the HUJI must have been involved. We owe it to our Muslims, most of whom have kept away from Al Qaeda and other pan-Islamic organizations, to see that these cases of targeted attacks on Muslims are thoroughly investigated instead of coming to a facile conclusion that jihadi organizations must be behind them."
-----My comments on the terrorist strike in the Samjotha Express in my book "Terrorism---Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow" published in June, 2008, by the Lancer Publishers of New Delhi (www.lancerpublishers.com)
"While there are grounds for suspecting that the blast of Delhi and those of Agartala might have been carried out by the IM ( Indian Mujahideen) and its associates from the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) in Delhi and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) of Bangladesh in Agartala, the blasts in Modasa and Malegaon seem to stand apart. Though the Gujarat Police are reported to have detained some members of the Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) during their investigation of the Modasa blast, the Modasa and Malegaon blasts do not carry any unique signature. More evidence will be required before one could analyse as to who might have been responsible. "----From my article of October 2, 2008, titled "Mushrooming Terrorism: Now Agartala" at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers29/paper2866.html
-----------------------------
In the last three years, we have had at least seven terrorist strikes in different parts of the country in which the perpetrators seemed to have targeted innocent Muslim civilians. Those seemed to be not indiscriminate attacks on all civilians, but targeted attacks on Muslims. There were two such incidents in Malegaon in Maharashtra and one each in New Delhi, Hyderabad, in the Ajmer Sharif in Rajasthan, in the Samjotha Express to Pakistan and in Modasa in Gujarat.
2. On the basis of the available reports, I had myself stated after five of these strikes---- but not after the Malegaon and Modasa incidents of September 29,2008--- that they seemed to have been carried out by terrorists belonging to jihadi terrorist organisations. I had also referred to instances of jihadi terrorists deliberately targeting innocent Muslims in many countries in pursuit of their agenda.
3. Some months after the Ajmer Sharif incident, a young Muslim officer of the Indian Police Service (IPS) had met me privately and expressed his doubts as to whether Muslims would have been involved in these incidents. He strongly believed that no Muslim however extremist he might be and to whichever jihadi organisation he belonged would have planted a bomb in or near the Ajmer Sharif.
4. I did not feel convinced, but felt somewhat troubled by what he said. I felt that as a senior (though now retired) officer of the IPS, I owed it to him and other young Muslim officers of the IPS to take note of what he said and re-open my mind. It was in pursuance of this that I made the above-mentioned observations in my book.
5. Who carried out the pre-September 29, 2008, terrorist strikes, which seemed to have mainly targeted innocent Muslims? Where they the acts of the usual jihadi organisations or are they the precursor to acts of reprisal terrorism against members of the Muslim community by some irrational elements in the Hindu community? These questions, which were already being raised by sections of the public----Muslims as well as non-Muslims--- even before September 29, have re-surfaced following the publication or dissemination by some sections of the media of reports claiming that the Anti-Terrorism Cell (ATS) of the Mumbai Police have detained three Hindus in connection with their investigation into the recent Malegon blasts. The ATS itself has neither officially denied nor confirmed these reports.
6. The matter is in the initial stages of the investigation. To instill confidence in our Muslim community, the ATS should see that the investigation against these Hindus and any others associated with them is carried out thoroughly irrespective of their organisational affiliation. Religion is not a mitigating factor in deciding on the culpability of a person suspected of involvement in a criminal act. If they are proved to have participated in the acts of terrorism in Malegain and Modesa, the fact that they are Hindus would not make them any the less criminal or terrorist.
7. Indian criminal laws----the Indian Penal Code, the Indian Evidence Act and the Criminal Procedure Code--- do not talk of the majority or the minorities or even of Indian citizens or foreigners. Their provisions apply to anyone who commits an offence in Indian territory---whether he or she is an Indian national or a foreigner, whatever be his or her religion, language or ethnicity. The arrested persons must be investigated and proceeded against without worrying about their background or organisational affiliation.
8. Do these arrests strengthen the case for a ban on the Bajrang Dal or any other organisation to which they might have belonged? Or do they at least call for a characterisation of such orgainsations----even if they be of Hindus---as terrorist organisations? To characterise an organisation as a terrorist organisation and to take legal action against it ----and not merely against its members---- two types of evidence are required. Firstly, that its constitution or manifesto advocates the resort to violence amounting to terrorism for achieving its objective. Secondly, that it has been involved in repeated acts of pre-meditated violence which amount to terrorism. One has to wait and see whether such evidence surfaces during the investigation.
(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, June 16, 2010
BRINGING UP THEIR PANCHEN LAMA
B.RAMAN
The so-called Panchen Lama nominated by the Chinese Government in 1995 after they had imprisoned the Panchen Lama chosen in accordance with the Tibetan Buddhist traditions under the guidance of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, generally lives in Beijing where he has been studying under the control of the Chinese Communist Party and Government.
2. He does not stay in Tibet. Nor does he go to any Tibetan school. His Buddhist teachers are Beijing-based and chosen by the Party and the Government. However, once a year during the vacation in Beijing he is taken to Lhasa and nearby places by the Chinese authorities who organize religious interactions between him and selected Tibetans in order to give him a public exposure and give the impression of his playing an increasingly active role as a religious leader responsible for providing spiritual guidance to the Tibetan Buddhists and for supervising the maintenance of the religious places in Tibet.
3. However, the Chinese take two precautions while organizing the spiritual tours for him. Firstly, his visits are confined to the Tibet Autonomous Region. They avoid taking him to other Tibetan-inhabited areas lest by doing so they unwittingly strengthen the Dalai Lama’s claim for a Greater Tibet. The Chinese project their Panchen Lama as the religious leader of only the Tibetans of the Tibet Autonomous Region and not of all Tibetans, wherever they may be residing. Secondly, they avoid any pronouncements of a political nature during his organized tours. Since they deny any political hat for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, they do not want to create in their Panchen Lama a religious leader with a political role.
4. Buddhist leaders in Tibet should restrict themselves to religious activities and should have nothing to do with politics and governance. That is their basic principle for the management of Tibet. They take care to see that the Panchen Lama created by them does not acquire a dual image as a monk wearing two hats----religious and political.
5. The Chinese intend using their Panchen Lama in an attempt to provide legitimacy to the process by which the Chinese Government intends selecting the next Dalai Lama when His Holiness is no more. For this purpose, in their calculation, it is necessary for their Panchen Lama to acquire a credibility as the foremost religious leader of the Tibetans in the absence of His Holiness with authority to guide and supervise the process for the selection of the next Dalai Lama. The Chinese expect/apprehend that Buddhists in the Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh could play an important role in the selection of the successor according to the Tibetan Buddhist traditions. They, therefore, want their Panchen Lama to be known and revered by the Buddhists on the Indian side of the border too.
6. For achieving these purposes, they have expanded the areas covered by their Panchen Lama during his annual visit to Tibet this year. In addition to interacting with the people of Lhasa and visiting religious places in the capital as he normally does, he has also been touring in the interior, including in areas adjacent to the border with India in the Arunachal Pradesh sector.
7.The Chinese utilised the session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) held in Beijing in March last to give their Panchen Lama a greater political exposure without giving him a political role. Their Panchen Lama was one of the 13 new members nominated to the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a top advisory body with no legislative powers. During the session he avoided making any statement of a political nature. They have not given him any role in their periodic talks with representatives of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. His Holiness projects these talks as covering the future set-up of Tibet as an autonomous part of China. The Chinese authorities project these talks as merely meant to discuss the future of His Holiness as an individual religious leader should he desire to return to die in Tibet. They do not seem to see any role for their Panchen Lama in these talks. ( 16-6-10)
( 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 )
The so-called Panchen Lama nominated by the Chinese Government in 1995 after they had imprisoned the Panchen Lama chosen in accordance with the Tibetan Buddhist traditions under the guidance of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, generally lives in Beijing where he has been studying under the control of the Chinese Communist Party and Government.
2. He does not stay in Tibet. Nor does he go to any Tibetan school. His Buddhist teachers are Beijing-based and chosen by the Party and the Government. However, once a year during the vacation in Beijing he is taken to Lhasa and nearby places by the Chinese authorities who organize religious interactions between him and selected Tibetans in order to give him a public exposure and give the impression of his playing an increasingly active role as a religious leader responsible for providing spiritual guidance to the Tibetan Buddhists and for supervising the maintenance of the religious places in Tibet.
3. However, the Chinese take two precautions while organizing the spiritual tours for him. Firstly, his visits are confined to the Tibet Autonomous Region. They avoid taking him to other Tibetan-inhabited areas lest by doing so they unwittingly strengthen the Dalai Lama’s claim for a Greater Tibet. The Chinese project their Panchen Lama as the religious leader of only the Tibetans of the Tibet Autonomous Region and not of all Tibetans, wherever they may be residing. Secondly, they avoid any pronouncements of a political nature during his organized tours. Since they deny any political hat for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, they do not want to create in their Panchen Lama a religious leader with a political role.
4. Buddhist leaders in Tibet should restrict themselves to religious activities and should have nothing to do with politics and governance. That is their basic principle for the management of Tibet. They take care to see that the Panchen Lama created by them does not acquire a dual image as a monk wearing two hats----religious and political.
5. The Chinese intend using their Panchen Lama in an attempt to provide legitimacy to the process by which the Chinese Government intends selecting the next Dalai Lama when His Holiness is no more. For this purpose, in their calculation, it is necessary for their Panchen Lama to acquire a credibility as the foremost religious leader of the Tibetans in the absence of His Holiness with authority to guide and supervise the process for the selection of the next Dalai Lama. The Chinese expect/apprehend that Buddhists in the Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh could play an important role in the selection of the successor according to the Tibetan Buddhist traditions. They, therefore, want their Panchen Lama to be known and revered by the Buddhists on the Indian side of the border too.
6. For achieving these purposes, they have expanded the areas covered by their Panchen Lama during his annual visit to Tibet this year. In addition to interacting with the people of Lhasa and visiting religious places in the capital as he normally does, he has also been touring in the interior, including in areas adjacent to the border with India in the Arunachal Pradesh sector.
7.The Chinese utilised the session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) held in Beijing in March last to give their Panchen Lama a greater political exposure without giving him a political role. Their Panchen Lama was one of the 13 new members nominated to the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a top advisory body with no legislative powers. During the session he avoided making any statement of a political nature. They have not given him any role in their periodic talks with representatives of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. His Holiness projects these talks as covering the future set-up of Tibet as an autonomous part of China. The Chinese authorities project these talks as merely meant to discuss the future of His Holiness as an individual religious leader should he desire to return to die in Tibet. They do not seem to see any role for their Panchen Lama in these talks. ( 16-6-10)
( 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 )
CHINESE INTEREST IN HAMBANTOTA, CHITTAGONG PORTS---AN UPDATE
B.RAMAN
China, which is already meeting in the form of a soft loan from its Ex-Im Bank 85 per cent of the cost of construction ( US $ 360 million) of the first phase of the Hambantota port in Southern Sri Lanka, has agreed to give another soft loan of US $ 200 million towards the cost of construction of the second phase due to start early next year. An agreement in this regard was signed by the concerned officials during the visit of Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang to Colombo from June 10 to 12,2010. With this, the total Chinese funding for the project will come to about US $ 500 million, out of its total estimated cost of US $ one billion. The project being undertaken in three phases is expected to be completed by 2023. It is too early to say whether China will substantially fund the third and last phase too.
2.The first stage due to be ready by end 2010 will allow three ships to berth. The final stage, for which there is no offer of funding yet from China, is planned to accommodate more than 30 ships, which is the present capacity at Colombo. President Mahinda Rajapaksa is trying to develop Hambantota in his home district into another Colombo with its own port as big and as modern as Colombo, its own international airport at Weerawila, its own oil storage facilities and refinery, its own tourist hub, its own international conference hall and its own complex of sports stadia to enable it to bid for the Asian Games one day. He is hoping that the Chinese will ultimately fund the major part of the cost of his Hambantota dream. He has also sought South Korean funding for the proposed international conference hall.
3. While China has readily expanded its financial commitment for the Hambantota project, it is still to make up its mind on the request from Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh, made during her visit to China in March last for Chinese financial and construction assistance for the expansion and modernization of the Chittagong port. While the Chinese have agreed to consider her request sympathetically, they have not yet come out with a concrete project. Expectations that they would make a firm announcement during the just-concluded visit (June 13 and 14,2010) to Dhaka by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping have been belied.
4. Local news agencies did report that during his talks with Sheikh Hasina, Mr.Xi “proposed to give assistance to Bangladesh for building a deep seaport in Chittagong and installing the country's first space satellite” and that “Beijing also agreed to quickly disburse its assistance for the Pagla Water Treatment Plant and the Shahjalal Fertiliser Factory”, but there was no official announcement. Briefing reporters on the outcome of the talks, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said the Chinese side assured more investment in Bangladesh, and promised to reduce the bilateral trade imbalance by allowing more Bangladeshi products to have duty-free access to the Chinese market. She added that the Chinese agreed to help Bangladesh in ensuring food security and in combating militancy and terrorism. She also said that China also agreed to extend cooperation for the development of telecommunication and infrastructure in Bangladesh. While there was thus a mention of Chinese assistance for the development of infrastructure, there was no specific reference to the proposal for Chinese assistance for the expansion and modernization of the Chittagong port. The issue was formally raised by Sheikh Hasina with the Chinese leaders only in March and it is perhaps too early for the Chinese to come out with a formal proposal.
5. After Gwadar on the Mekran coast of Pakistan, the first phase of which has already been completed and the port commissioned, their focus has been on the early completion of the first phase of the construction of the Hambantota port and its commissioning by the end of this year and the start of the second phase. They are attaching equal priority to the timely completion of the Kyakpyu port off the Arakan coast in Myanmar, the construction of which started last year. While they are interested in taking up the project for the expansion and modernization of the Chittagong port, it does not as yet seem to enjoy the same priority as Gwadar, Hambantota and Kyakpyu,, which, in their view, are important for ensuring their energy flows from West Asia and Africa. They do not seem to attach the same urgency to the Chittagong project from the point of view of their energy flows.
6.There are so far no indications of a Chinese interest in a naval base at Hambantota or Kyaukpyu or Chittagong. Their interest in a naval base at Gwadar remains strong. Retired Chinese naval officials have been underlining the importance of rest, refueling and re-stocking facilities for Chinese ships deployed in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. Gwadar is attractive in this regard, but if the internal security situation in Balochistan where Gwadar is located remains unsatisfactory, Hambantota could become their fall-back choice.( 16-6-10)
( 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 )
China, which is already meeting in the form of a soft loan from its Ex-Im Bank 85 per cent of the cost of construction ( US $ 360 million) of the first phase of the Hambantota port in Southern Sri Lanka, has agreed to give another soft loan of US $ 200 million towards the cost of construction of the second phase due to start early next year. An agreement in this regard was signed by the concerned officials during the visit of Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang to Colombo from June 10 to 12,2010. With this, the total Chinese funding for the project will come to about US $ 500 million, out of its total estimated cost of US $ one billion. The project being undertaken in three phases is expected to be completed by 2023. It is too early to say whether China will substantially fund the third and last phase too.
2.The first stage due to be ready by end 2010 will allow three ships to berth. The final stage, for which there is no offer of funding yet from China, is planned to accommodate more than 30 ships, which is the present capacity at Colombo. President Mahinda Rajapaksa is trying to develop Hambantota in his home district into another Colombo with its own port as big and as modern as Colombo, its own international airport at Weerawila, its own oil storage facilities and refinery, its own tourist hub, its own international conference hall and its own complex of sports stadia to enable it to bid for the Asian Games one day. He is hoping that the Chinese will ultimately fund the major part of the cost of his Hambantota dream. He has also sought South Korean funding for the proposed international conference hall.
3. While China has readily expanded its financial commitment for the Hambantota project, it is still to make up its mind on the request from Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh, made during her visit to China in March last for Chinese financial and construction assistance for the expansion and modernization of the Chittagong port. While the Chinese have agreed to consider her request sympathetically, they have not yet come out with a concrete project. Expectations that they would make a firm announcement during the just-concluded visit (June 13 and 14,2010) to Dhaka by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping have been belied.
4. Local news agencies did report that during his talks with Sheikh Hasina, Mr.Xi “proposed to give assistance to Bangladesh for building a deep seaport in Chittagong and installing the country's first space satellite” and that “Beijing also agreed to quickly disburse its assistance for the Pagla Water Treatment Plant and the Shahjalal Fertiliser Factory”, but there was no official announcement. Briefing reporters on the outcome of the talks, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said the Chinese side assured more investment in Bangladesh, and promised to reduce the bilateral trade imbalance by allowing more Bangladeshi products to have duty-free access to the Chinese market. She added that the Chinese agreed to help Bangladesh in ensuring food security and in combating militancy and terrorism. She also said that China also agreed to extend cooperation for the development of telecommunication and infrastructure in Bangladesh. While there was thus a mention of Chinese assistance for the development of infrastructure, there was no specific reference to the proposal for Chinese assistance for the expansion and modernization of the Chittagong port. The issue was formally raised by Sheikh Hasina with the Chinese leaders only in March and it is perhaps too early for the Chinese to come out with a formal proposal.
5. After Gwadar on the Mekran coast of Pakistan, the first phase of which has already been completed and the port commissioned, their focus has been on the early completion of the first phase of the construction of the Hambantota port and its commissioning by the end of this year and the start of the second phase. They are attaching equal priority to the timely completion of the Kyakpyu port off the Arakan coast in Myanmar, the construction of which started last year. While they are interested in taking up the project for the expansion and modernization of the Chittagong port, it does not as yet seem to enjoy the same priority as Gwadar, Hambantota and Kyakpyu,, which, in their view, are important for ensuring their energy flows from West Asia and Africa. They do not seem to attach the same urgency to the Chittagong project from the point of view of their energy flows.
6.There are so far no indications of a Chinese interest in a naval base at Hambantota or Kyaukpyu or Chittagong. Their interest in a naval base at Gwadar remains strong. Retired Chinese naval officials have been underlining the importance of rest, refueling and re-stocking facilities for Chinese ships deployed in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. Gwadar is attractive in this regard, but if the internal security situation in Balochistan where Gwadar is located remains unsatisfactory, Hambantota could become their fall-back choice.( 16-6-10)
( 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 )
Monday, June 14, 2010
VIOLENCE IN KYRGYZSTAN: CONCERN IN BEIJING
B.RAMAN
Concerned over reports of isolated attacks on the members of the Chinese community in the Osh region of southern Kyrgyzstan, the Chinese Government has started evacuating its citizens frm the area. Two planes were sent by the Chinese Government to Osh on June 14,2010, to airlift about 600 Chinese nationals out of the area which has seen violent attacks on Uzbeks by mobs of Kyrgyz youth, resulting in the death of over 120 persons, the majority of them Uzbeks. Over 40,000 Uzbeks are reported to have fled the area into the bordering Uzbekistan.
2. The Kyrgyz-Uzbek clashes are attributed to the eruption of tensions between Kyrgyz supporters of former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was overthrown in a poular revolt in April and Uzbek supporters of a provisional Government headed by by Roza Otunbayeva. The support of the Uzbeks for the provisional Government and allegations----denied by the provisional Government--- that in return for the support extended by the Uzbeks in the overthrow of Bakiyev, the provisional Government intended permitting the formation of ethnic parties added to tensions between the two communities. Ethnic parties are banned at present and the Uzbeks, who constitute about one million out of the total population of 5.4 million, are not allowed to have their own political party.
3. The tensions initially led to violence in the town of of Jalalabad in southern Kyrgyzstan on May 19 during which two were killed and many injured and subsequently spread to Osh on June 10. An analysis of the May 19 incidents prepared by the London-based Institute For War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) headed by Saule Mukhametrakhimova stated as follows: " Crowds of young Kyrgyz men surged towards a university associated with the Uzbek community on May 19. They got past a police cordon ringing the entrance gates, but were prevented from entering the university building after security guards put up stiff resistance. Shots were fired at this point, although it was unclear whether by one or both sides. An eyewitness on the scene told IWPR that this prompted the crowds to fall back. “When the first casualties happened, the crowd came out of the gate,” he said. Kyrgyzstan’s interim government declared a state of emergency and a night-time curfew in Jalalabad city and the nearby Suzak district, and accused allies of former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, ousted during mass protests last month, of masterminding the disturbances. Bakiyev is in exile in Belarus, but the authorities who replaced him believe his supporters are still trying to stage a coup. They have charged a number of Bakiyev-era officials for disturbances , when protesters briefly seized control of local government buildings in Jalalabad and Osh, the south’s biggest urban centre. “The interim government will not allow civil war,” said government member Temir Sariev, in remarks quoted by the online news agency 24.kg. Referring to Bakiyev supporters, he said, “At first they tried to confront the interim government, but when we resisted them, they began employing inter-ethnic conflict.” Events in Jalalabad represent a dangerous shift towards trouble between ethnic Kyrgyz and the sizeable Uzbek community.There were signs of trouble brewing on the morning of May 19, as thousands of people gathered at a race-track a couple of kilometres from the city. Among the eyewitnesses interviewed by IWPR, a local man said most of the people at the race-track were young, of Kyrgyz ethnicity, and as far as he knew, not local to the area. A correspondent with RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) said protesters were chanting slogans directed against Kadirjan Batirov, a businessman and politician regarded as the Uzbek community’s uncrowned leader, and an ally of the new government."
4. The British Broadcasting Corporation has reported as follows on the violence in the Osh area since June 10: "It is not yet fully clear what triggered the violence, but tensions have been high in the area since the toppling of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. When Mr Bakiyev was ousted in an uprising on 7 April 2010, his stronghold in the south became the centre of instability. Among the Kyrgyz population, pro-Bakiyev elements organised resistance to the interim government by seizing government offices and taking officials hostage. The sizeable Uzbek community displayed sympathy to the new government in Bishkek. As Roza Otunbayeva, the interim president, struggled to control the south, well-established criminal elements and drug dealers exploited the power vacuum. The spark for communal violence was provided by a clash between Kyrgyz and Uzbek gangs. It soon turned into street fighting among the youth in Osh. Fuelled by rumours of atrocities on either side, angry mobs from other towns and villages arrived in Osh, forcing large numbers of ethnic Uzbeks to flee. "
5. The BBC added: "The southern city of Osh is at the centre of a fertile plain known as the Fergana Valley. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the valley was divided between the three independent republics, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. This created minority populations and some enclaves. The uneasy co-existence of settled and relatively prosperous Uzbeks and traditionally nomadic but - since the creation of their state - politically more powerful Kyrgyz population was occasionally interrupted. The last serious outbreak of ethnic disturbance was put down by Soviet troops in 1990. Since then, the Kyrgyz part of the Fergana Valley has become a magnet for increasing trade with neighbouring countries, a thriving market for cheap Chinese goods and the centre of illicit drugs from Afghanistan on their way to the world markets. Successive Kyrgyz governments failed to deal with growing corruption and crime. Collapsing infra-structure and widespread poverty contributed to deep public resentment. The Fergana Valley is an area of largely devout Muslims as well as the recruiting ground for Islamist movements. The minority Uzbek population makes up 15% of Kyrgyzstan's five million people. In southern towns such as Osh, Uzbeks are a minority. In some areas of the Fergana Valley, they outnumber the Kyrgyz population. Among the Kyrgyz people of the area, the fear that the Uzbeks may want to grab Kyrgyz lands and to join Uzbekistan seems to be a significant factor in spiralling violence that we have witnessed in recent days."
6.The "China Daily" has reported as follows: "There have been no reports so far of casualties among Chinese nationals in the ethnic violence.
Some businesses owned by Chinese nationals in Osh have been looted, and the Chinese Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Wang Kaiwen, has urged Chinese nationals to stay at home. Gu Ping, another official at the Embassy, said a Chinese-run glass shop and an oil factory were raided, causing losses worth millions of US dollars. The number of Chinese living in Kyrgyzstan has been growing since the late 1980s. Embassy statistics show about 30,000 Chinese people are living in the country. More than 7,000, mostly businessmen, are in the violence-hit region.
On the outskirts of the capital Bishkek, there is a large Chinese market, described as a "city within a city," which has a hospital, mosques and apartment buildings. Migrants from China also work in the construction sector, especially on housing projects for low-income people."
7. It added: "It is unclear what triggered the clashes. Some officials have pointed to a conflict at a local casino or rumors of a dispute sparked by a taxi passenger who declined to pay his fare. Others have spoken of Kyrgyz girls being raped by Uzbeks. The ethnic violence raises the risk of a civil war or even a full-blown conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. If the interim government loses control, Kyrgyzstan could disintegrate and cease to exist as a single independent country. Moscow sent at least 150 paratroopers to Kyrgyzstan on Sunday ( June 13) to protect its own military facilities in the country and representatives of the Moscow-led security bloc of ex-Soviet republics known as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) gathered on Monday ( June 14) to discuss further steps. "We have gathered here to discuss the situation in Kyrgyzstan and discuss the ways to solve this crisis, to restore order, to stop the interethnic conflict," Russia's national security chief Nikolai Patrushev was quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as telling the meeting. "Today we have to work out a common position and concrete measures to react to the situation in Kyrgyzstan based on a CSTO mandate." The CSTO comprises Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.Kyrgyzstan's interim government, which assumed power after an April revolt that overthrew president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, has been unable to gain full control of the country's south, which is separated from the north by mountains. The renewed turmoil in Kyrgyzstan has fuelled concern in Russia and the United States. Washington uses an air base at Manas in the north of the ex-Soviet state, about 300 km from Osh, to supply forces in Afghanistan. Russia also has a military base in the country. "
8. There have been reports of attacks by Kyrgyz mobs on Pakistani students, many of whom reportedly study in an Uzbek university in Osh. There are so far no reports of attacks on Indian students. There are not many residents of Russian origin in southern Kyrgyzstan. Most of the Russian origin residents are concentrated in the North. There have been no reports of attacks on the Russian-origin residents. The interim Government which has imposed a State of Emergency in the South has sought the intervention of Russian troops to put down the violence, but Moscow seems to be disinclined to intervene on its own. It would prefer that any intervention is by the CSTO. Moscow's immediate concern is the strengthening of the security for the Russian military base and the protection of residents of Russian origin.
9. The Chinese have no military presence in Kyrgyzstan. There is an unestimated number of Uighurs in Kyrgyzstan who support the Islamic Movement of Eastern Turkestan (IMET). The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), whose leaders are based in North Waziristan in Pakistan, draws its recruits from the radicalised Uzbeks in the Fergana Valley.
10. If the ethnic violence is not controlled effectively, there is not only a danger of a civil war in Kyrgyzstan and a conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, but also a surge in the activities of the IMU and the IMET. The Chinese are, therefore, as concerned over the situation as the US and Russia. The Uzbek anger over the atrocities allegedly committed against them could have unpredictable consequences for regional peace and security. ( 15-6-10)
( 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 )
Concerned over reports of isolated attacks on the members of the Chinese community in the Osh region of southern Kyrgyzstan, the Chinese Government has started evacuating its citizens frm the area. Two planes were sent by the Chinese Government to Osh on June 14,2010, to airlift about 600 Chinese nationals out of the area which has seen violent attacks on Uzbeks by mobs of Kyrgyz youth, resulting in the death of over 120 persons, the majority of them Uzbeks. Over 40,000 Uzbeks are reported to have fled the area into the bordering Uzbekistan.
2. The Kyrgyz-Uzbek clashes are attributed to the eruption of tensions between Kyrgyz supporters of former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was overthrown in a poular revolt in April and Uzbek supporters of a provisional Government headed by by Roza Otunbayeva. The support of the Uzbeks for the provisional Government and allegations----denied by the provisional Government--- that in return for the support extended by the Uzbeks in the overthrow of Bakiyev, the provisional Government intended permitting the formation of ethnic parties added to tensions between the two communities. Ethnic parties are banned at present and the Uzbeks, who constitute about one million out of the total population of 5.4 million, are not allowed to have their own political party.
3. The tensions initially led to violence in the town of of Jalalabad in southern Kyrgyzstan on May 19 during which two were killed and many injured and subsequently spread to Osh on June 10. An analysis of the May 19 incidents prepared by the London-based Institute For War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) headed by Saule Mukhametrakhimova stated as follows: " Crowds of young Kyrgyz men surged towards a university associated with the Uzbek community on May 19. They got past a police cordon ringing the entrance gates, but were prevented from entering the university building after security guards put up stiff resistance. Shots were fired at this point, although it was unclear whether by one or both sides. An eyewitness on the scene told IWPR that this prompted the crowds to fall back. “When the first casualties happened, the crowd came out of the gate,” he said. Kyrgyzstan’s interim government declared a state of emergency and a night-time curfew in Jalalabad city and the nearby Suzak district, and accused allies of former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, ousted during mass protests last month, of masterminding the disturbances. Bakiyev is in exile in Belarus, but the authorities who replaced him believe his supporters are still trying to stage a coup. They have charged a number of Bakiyev-era officials for disturbances , when protesters briefly seized control of local government buildings in Jalalabad and Osh, the south’s biggest urban centre. “The interim government will not allow civil war,” said government member Temir Sariev, in remarks quoted by the online news agency 24.kg. Referring to Bakiyev supporters, he said, “At first they tried to confront the interim government, but when we resisted them, they began employing inter-ethnic conflict.” Events in Jalalabad represent a dangerous shift towards trouble between ethnic Kyrgyz and the sizeable Uzbek community.There were signs of trouble brewing on the morning of May 19, as thousands of people gathered at a race-track a couple of kilometres from the city. Among the eyewitnesses interviewed by IWPR, a local man said most of the people at the race-track were young, of Kyrgyz ethnicity, and as far as he knew, not local to the area. A correspondent with RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) said protesters were chanting slogans directed against Kadirjan Batirov, a businessman and politician regarded as the Uzbek community’s uncrowned leader, and an ally of the new government."
4. The British Broadcasting Corporation has reported as follows on the violence in the Osh area since June 10: "It is not yet fully clear what triggered the violence, but tensions have been high in the area since the toppling of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. When Mr Bakiyev was ousted in an uprising on 7 April 2010, his stronghold in the south became the centre of instability. Among the Kyrgyz population, pro-Bakiyev elements organised resistance to the interim government by seizing government offices and taking officials hostage. The sizeable Uzbek community displayed sympathy to the new government in Bishkek. As Roza Otunbayeva, the interim president, struggled to control the south, well-established criminal elements and drug dealers exploited the power vacuum. The spark for communal violence was provided by a clash between Kyrgyz and Uzbek gangs. It soon turned into street fighting among the youth in Osh. Fuelled by rumours of atrocities on either side, angry mobs from other towns and villages arrived in Osh, forcing large numbers of ethnic Uzbeks to flee. "
5. The BBC added: "The southern city of Osh is at the centre of a fertile plain known as the Fergana Valley. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the valley was divided between the three independent republics, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. This created minority populations and some enclaves. The uneasy co-existence of settled and relatively prosperous Uzbeks and traditionally nomadic but - since the creation of their state - politically more powerful Kyrgyz population was occasionally interrupted. The last serious outbreak of ethnic disturbance was put down by Soviet troops in 1990. Since then, the Kyrgyz part of the Fergana Valley has become a magnet for increasing trade with neighbouring countries, a thriving market for cheap Chinese goods and the centre of illicit drugs from Afghanistan on their way to the world markets. Successive Kyrgyz governments failed to deal with growing corruption and crime. Collapsing infra-structure and widespread poverty contributed to deep public resentment. The Fergana Valley is an area of largely devout Muslims as well as the recruiting ground for Islamist movements. The minority Uzbek population makes up 15% of Kyrgyzstan's five million people. In southern towns such as Osh, Uzbeks are a minority. In some areas of the Fergana Valley, they outnumber the Kyrgyz population. Among the Kyrgyz people of the area, the fear that the Uzbeks may want to grab Kyrgyz lands and to join Uzbekistan seems to be a significant factor in spiralling violence that we have witnessed in recent days."
6.The "China Daily" has reported as follows: "There have been no reports so far of casualties among Chinese nationals in the ethnic violence.
Some businesses owned by Chinese nationals in Osh have been looted, and the Chinese Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Wang Kaiwen, has urged Chinese nationals to stay at home. Gu Ping, another official at the Embassy, said a Chinese-run glass shop and an oil factory were raided, causing losses worth millions of US dollars. The number of Chinese living in Kyrgyzstan has been growing since the late 1980s. Embassy statistics show about 30,000 Chinese people are living in the country. More than 7,000, mostly businessmen, are in the violence-hit region.
On the outskirts of the capital Bishkek, there is a large Chinese market, described as a "city within a city," which has a hospital, mosques and apartment buildings. Migrants from China also work in the construction sector, especially on housing projects for low-income people."
7. It added: "It is unclear what triggered the clashes. Some officials have pointed to a conflict at a local casino or rumors of a dispute sparked by a taxi passenger who declined to pay his fare. Others have spoken of Kyrgyz girls being raped by Uzbeks. The ethnic violence raises the risk of a civil war or even a full-blown conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. If the interim government loses control, Kyrgyzstan could disintegrate and cease to exist as a single independent country. Moscow sent at least 150 paratroopers to Kyrgyzstan on Sunday ( June 13) to protect its own military facilities in the country and representatives of the Moscow-led security bloc of ex-Soviet republics known as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) gathered on Monday ( June 14) to discuss further steps. "We have gathered here to discuss the situation in Kyrgyzstan and discuss the ways to solve this crisis, to restore order, to stop the interethnic conflict," Russia's national security chief Nikolai Patrushev was quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as telling the meeting. "Today we have to work out a common position and concrete measures to react to the situation in Kyrgyzstan based on a CSTO mandate." The CSTO comprises Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.Kyrgyzstan's interim government, which assumed power after an April revolt that overthrew president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, has been unable to gain full control of the country's south, which is separated from the north by mountains. The renewed turmoil in Kyrgyzstan has fuelled concern in Russia and the United States. Washington uses an air base at Manas in the north of the ex-Soviet state, about 300 km from Osh, to supply forces in Afghanistan. Russia also has a military base in the country. "
8. There have been reports of attacks by Kyrgyz mobs on Pakistani students, many of whom reportedly study in an Uzbek university in Osh. There are so far no reports of attacks on Indian students. There are not many residents of Russian origin in southern Kyrgyzstan. Most of the Russian origin residents are concentrated in the North. There have been no reports of attacks on the Russian-origin residents. The interim Government which has imposed a State of Emergency in the South has sought the intervention of Russian troops to put down the violence, but Moscow seems to be disinclined to intervene on its own. It would prefer that any intervention is by the CSTO. Moscow's immediate concern is the strengthening of the security for the Russian military base and the protection of residents of Russian origin.
9. The Chinese have no military presence in Kyrgyzstan. There is an unestimated number of Uighurs in Kyrgyzstan who support the Islamic Movement of Eastern Turkestan (IMET). The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), whose leaders are based in North Waziristan in Pakistan, draws its recruits from the radicalised Uzbeks in the Fergana Valley.
10. If the ethnic violence is not controlled effectively, there is not only a danger of a civil war in Kyrgyzstan and a conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, but also a surge in the activities of the IMU and the IMET. The Chinese are, therefore, as concerned over the situation as the US and Russia. The Uzbek anger over the atrocities allegedly committed against them could have unpredictable consequences for regional peace and security. ( 15-6-10)
( 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 )
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