The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Loss in SAFF Cup
Indian football in limbo

India’s defeat in the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Cup final has, understandably, led to outrage and lamentations among fans and former players. That India lost the final to Afghanistan, a devastated, war-torn nation, is cited as the surest sign that Indian football is doomed. Indeed, it does seem that the future is far from bright. The Indian team is now ranked 155th in the world — below tiny nations like Tahiti, Malta, Belize and St Lucia, to name only four. In this year's SAFF Cup, India were beaten by Nepal and held to a 1-1 draw by Bangladesh before being stunned 2-0 by Afghanistan in the final.

It is unfair, of course, on everyone to judge a team on its results in a single tournament. Indeed, the Indian team is in transition. Several regulars have retired and 14 of the 20 squad members had played fewer than 20 matches. In the final, India did not start with Sunil Chhetri, their best player; Robin Singh was the only striker. Yet, the Indians created several chances and, with a bit of luck, could have drawn the game. Afghanistan are not really a bunch of amateurs from a bombed-out country, either. Most of the Afghan players are based in Germany. India does not allow dual citizenship, and their top players play in the mediocre Indian leagues. In fact, Afghanistan were ranked higher than India (139th to India’s 145th) before the tournament.

The bigger picture, though, remains dismal. For far too long India have been stuck among the weaklings of world football. There is no improvement. The hope of competing even within Asia has long receded. Over the last two years, the Indians have been hammered by Palestine, Myanmar, Tajikistan, Oman, Tajikistan, the Philippines, Bahrain and South Korea. Now they're being beaten or held by their seven immediate neighbours too. The loss to Afghanistan — a team India beat 4-0 in the previous SAFF Cup final in 2011 — only reinforces the pessimism of India’s football fans.

The face on the bicycle
Good deeds, not pictures, count

Narcissism, one thought, was an exclusive prerogative of page-3 people who often go to ludicrous extents to ensure their pictures are splashed all over. However, in India our political class is as afflicted by the “I, me, myself” syndrome. Rarely do they spare any photo-op and love to see their beaming visages smiling down from all conceivable angles and positions. Nothing it seems can deter them to chin up and pose for the perfect shot. Not surprising, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal’s photo enthusiasm too shows little signs of ebbing.

In fact, a Union minister’s warning to have his picture removed from the National Rural Health Mission's ambulances seems to have pushed him into a more active gear. Not only has the Punjab government adamantly refused to remove his photograph from ambulances, a move that is likely to cost the public exchequer Rs 3.5 crore, but nearly 1.5 lakh bicycles to be given to girls under the Punjab government’s ambitious Mai Bhago Vidya scheme will also carry the Chief Minister’s photo.

Perhaps, few one can have issues with the scheme itself launched to empower women. The initiative to provide free bicycles to girls studying in Classes XI and XII certainly has its uses. In states like Bihar bicycles have proved to be a game-changer in the field of education and have enabled young girls to attend schools with greater regularity. So when Mr Badal reiterates that with or without funds from the Centre, brakes will not be applied on free cycles for girls, his intentions can't be entirely faulted. Welfare schemes might often be devised with a keen eye on vote banks but can prove to be beneficial. However, Mr Badal would do well to remember in the final reckoning of elections it's not in-your-face gestures but good governance that counts. Besides, Mr Badal doesn't need cycle parts and ambulances to remind his voters who their Chief Minister was.

Thought for the Day

It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear. —Dick Cavett

ARTICLE

Arrest of ISI-backed jihadis
India should patiently deal with Pakistan
by T.V. Rajeswar

Sayed Zabiuddin Ansari, alias Abu Jundal, who was a native of Beed district in Maharashtra, was one of the high-profile jihadis deported from Saudi Arabia on June 25, 2012 ,and was arrested at the International Airport, New Delhi, and later taken in remand for interrogation. Ansari held a Pakistani passport and two Pakistani identity cards, which clearly pointed to Pakistan's involvement. During interrogation it was established that Jundal went to Pakistan around 2005 where he was given terror training and attached to Lashker-e-Taiba headed by Hafiz Saeed. Jundal later moved to Saudi Arabia, apparently at the instance of Lashker-e-Taiba and Pakistan’s ISI. While in Saudi Arabia, he was on the lookout for Indians domiciled there and got the willing victims indoctrinated in jihadi affairs. The Saudi Arabian authorities, who were watching the activities of Jundal, decided to deport him to India, even though Pakistani’s ISI exerted considerable pressure to prevent Jundal being handed over to India.

During interrogation by security agencies, it was revealed that Jundal was very active on the internet. He admitted to have recruited several cadres from India. He used several chat forums like Islamic chat. He was also on Facebook looking for recruits. Jundal was also familiar with the Karachi project, headed by Major Zakir-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, under which jihadi attacks in India were planned. The most important revelation of Jundal is that the Karachi project jihadis like Lakhvi were planning more attacks on the lines of the Mumbai attacks at some other places in India.

Syed Abdul Karim Tunda, who was from a village in Pilkhwa district in Uttar Pradesh, was a carpenter by profession. He later went to Pakistan and promptly got recruited by the ISI, which put him in touch with a bomb-maker. He was trained on the fabrication of explosives, particularly IEDs. He was also attached to Hafiz Saeed of LeT. Tunda was sent to India to carry out bomb blasts during the Commonwealth Games in 2010, but the plan did not work out. However, Tunda was instrumental in masterminding bomb blasts in Mumbai, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Hyderabad and Surat.

Tunda was arrested from the Nepal border on an FBI tip-off on August 16, 2013. Tunda was having a Pakistani passport issued on January 23, 2013. Tunda confirmed Dawood Ibrahim's presence in Karachi and that he was being protected by ISI guards. Tunda also met Hafiz Saeed and Zaki-ur-Lakhvi. He also disclosed that the ISI attached him to Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief. Tunda was suspected in the Chhattisgarh Express bomb blast near Ghaziabad railway station in 1994. Tunda was among the prominent activists who extended the LeT network in Jammu and Kashmir.

The latest jihadi terrorist arrested by Indian intelligence agencies is Yasin Bhatkal along with Asadullah Akhtar. Yasin Bhatkal was born Ahmed Siddihapa in the coastal town of Bhatkal on the south-western sea coast of Karnataka. Bhatkal is the ancient home of some famous archeological marvels. Yasin Bhatkal joined Indian Mujahideen reportedly after he heard the news of the alleged killing of a large number of Muslims in Ahmedabad in 2002. He emerged as an active terrorist with specialisation in making bombs.

In September, 2008, he was instrumental in several bomb blasts in Delhi, where 30 people were killed and over 100 injured. In the same year, he carried out nine blasts in Jaipur, causing the death of about 90 people. He was also instrumental in at least 20 blasts in Ahmedabad which killed 26 people. Later in July 2011, Bhatkal was instrumental in the blasts which rocked Zaveri Bazar and Opera House in Mumbai in which 27 people were killed and 130 were injured. Bhatkal was also responsible for planting a bomb in German Bakery in Pune in February 2010 in which 17 people were killed. In February 2013, Bhatkal carried out two blasts in a crowded market area of Hyderabad city in which 60 people were killed and about 80 injured. In the Mumbai and Hyderabad blasts the CCTV footage clearly showed Bhatkal planting the bombs and slipping away.

A former DGP of Maharashtra, D Sivanandan, has narrated how Yasin Bhatkal was indoctrinated by the ISI and later attached to Masood Azhar, a jihadi who was released and handed over to Pakistanis at Kandahar after the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight by the ISI men in Kathmandu. Sivanandan has described Yasin Bhatkal as a cool-headed, multi-tasking terrorist, who acted as a motivator, fund-raiser, trainer, bomb assembler and planter. Yasin Bhatkal is probably the most wanted jihadi terrorist who was arrested in recent months.

Yasin Bhatkal, who was hiding in Nepal proceeded to Raxaul on the Nepal-Bihar border to meet his friend, Asadullah Akhtar. It turned out Asadullah Akhtar was also a jihadi terrorist. Both of them had earlier met in Dubai at the instance of the ISI. Asadullah Akhtar, alias Haddi, turned out to be an active operative and a member of the Indian Mujahideen. He is a native of Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh which is known to be home to many other jihadi and militant activists.

Stephen P Cohen, who has been described as a “guru of gurus”, but more importantly a great student of the subcontinent affairs, was in Delhi recently. During a discussion on the subcontinent, Stephen Cohen spoke about the state of affairs in Pakistan. He referred to Hafiz Saeed and said it was outrageous of him to parade himself there. Left to him, Cohen said, he would like to send a missile against Hafiz Saeed. He went on to say that the danger was that Pakistan was perhaps too weak to do anything. Pakistan was now struggling with the problem of Afghanistan. Cohen added that the two countries were so different, and clubbed together, they would not succeed in the next two hundred years.

The problem is, Cohen added, Pakistan is a nuclear power and perhaps has more nukes than India. Many people feel that Pakistan is a failed state. And if Pakistan broke apart, millions of Pakistanis would like to go back to their ancestral home in India which would create a huge problem for India. Cohen's suggestion was that India should patiently deal with Pakistan. India has to deal with Pakistani jihadis as it would deal with any other terrorists and send them to the court of law to whatever dispensation the court might decide. The lesson for India is that it has to live with troubles from Pakistan and deal with them as the situation arises.

MIDDLE

Border blues
by P. C. Sharma

Fear, they say, makes monsters of men, but it can also make monsters of mole-hills. All wars, all boundary disputes — in the Freudian sense — are a consequence of a fear psychosis nursed by both the mighty and the meek.

The current boundary disputes that India is facing with its neighbours recall to mind a boundary problem that I had faced years ago on the Assam-Nagaland border. I was posted in an Assam Armed Police battalion deployed on the border having a thick forest and a rocky surface. The Nagaland police was guarding its side of the border. There was something like Mahabharat in reverse about the two ‘adversaries’. In Mahabharat the Kauravas and the Pandavas used to fight during the day time and meet each other amicably at night. On the Assam-Nagaland border we visited each others’ camps during day and took positions at night. The day-time discussion stressed the dire need for cooperation since the existing boundary was not defined and any arbitrary claims were vehemently challenged. That boundary disputes cannot be resolved through armed conflicts was accepted by both sides and promises of maintaining peace and amity were proclaimed loudly.

At night the wind blowing from the forest generated all kinds of fears like a stealthy attack, nightly intrusions into unguarded patches etc. Their nerves being tense, the battalion boys used to take positions in bunkers without having any clear perception of the danger. Fear reigned supreme. It was my job to visit each bunker and debunk all fears of any attack.

But a night came with all the nightmares. I was on a visit to some other post away from my company headquarters. News came that an exchange of fire had started between the two forces in which LMG and rifle grenades were also being used. I ventured to return to the post at night. The sound of bullets and the firing of grenades amid darkness and heavy rain turned the apprehensions of fearsome monsters almost real.

On entering the post I perceived the danger of this madness and the consequences it would entail. Assisted by the platoon commanders, we decided to walk along the perimeter trench and see for ourselves what was happening. A caring platoon commander kept on pushing me down lest I should be hit by a bullet. Command and control was intact and we succeeded in stopping the firing. But at a particular position we found one ‘brave’ jawan, with his head down, fiercely firing at an unknown object. It was only by a full-throated shout that I made this combatant remove his finger from the trigger. He was completely in the grip of fear but holding his LMG firmly.

When asked why he was firing, he stated that a Naga sepoy was crawling towards the camp. When he saw some of us standing behind him, he got up too and pointed towards his target. The night was slowly wrapping up its pall of darkness. At dawn the firing stopped from both sides. We ventured to jump out of the perimeter defence and approach the ‘Naga jawan’. A rock in the forest designed by nature to have close likeness to the human figure was the ‘intruder’ which aroused the wrath of our 'brave soul'. When we saw it and he saw it too - an acute realisation of the follies that we committed out of fear in darkness dawned on us.

During the day time we again engaged in our peace-keeping ‘parleys’ and condemned the nightly exchange of fire and made loud promises of maintaining peace and amity. This episode led to the appointment of a Boundary Commission whose recommendations are yet to be implemented.

OPED PAKISTAN

66 years of slow motion
Over six and a half decades, it has taken four Governors-General and 11 Presidents to have a President who could complete a full term. There have been 17 PMs, but there is yet to be one who may have completed his term.
F.S. Aijazuddin

Watching Pakistan progress over the past sixty-six years has been like viewing a 16 mm movie – projected in slow motion. Each frame of its history inches forward, with images of technicolour democracy spliced between sepia sections of military rule, and occasionally interposed between them, short spurts of interim governments. The residual impression is one of disjointed sequences, put together by a ham-handed, unskilled editor.

Mamnoon Hussain (3L) taking the oath as President from Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (R) and former President Asif Ali Zardari (L) attend the ceremony in Islamabad. AFP

Over six and a half decades, it has taken four Governors-General and eleven Presidents (and two Acting Presidents) to have a president who could complete a full five-year term. It has taken seventeen prime ministers (excluding six who officiated on an interim basis) and there has yet to be one who has been able to or allowed to complete his term. Shaukat Aziz will claim that he was the exception, but his longevity as prime minister came less from a public mandate than the patience of his mentor General Pervez Musharraf.

And it has taken a number of Assemblies/Majlis-e-Shoora to reach a point of maturity where a National Assembly could complete its full five-year term. Pakistan’s political history can be summed up in a phrase: Democracy delayed or denied, or decried.

It has now, however, reached the level that India had in 1977 when Mrs Indira Gandhi, following her post-Emergency electoral defeat, handed over power (reluctantly) to the Janata Party, and three years later, in 1980, following its rejection at the polls by a disgruntled public, the Janata Party returned the favour.

Such orderly transitions are the litmus-test of democracy. ‘Any fool can hold elections,’ an Indian parliamentarian explained at the time, ‘that is simply a matter of logistics. The true test of our maturity as a democracy was when Mrs Gandhi lost and she handed the reins of government to the Janata Party, and then when Janata lost, they gave power back to her.’

In that sense, the Indians learned the finer lessons of Westminster-style parliamentary traditions comparatively quickly. It took the British themselves the decapitation of a king (Charles I), the deposing of another (his second son James II), and the abdication of a third (Edward VIII) to calibrate the relationship between the monarchy and Parliament to its present equipoise. And it took hundreds of years before MPs at Westminster learned to use parliamentary language without faltering into invective.

The General Elections of 2008 introduced an innovation in Pakistan’s parliamentary menu that had never been tasted before – the bitter herb of coalition. That has now become standard fare, at tables both at the Provincial and at the Federal level.

Coalitions are now unavoidable just as once, not so long ago, All Party Conferences were popular. These androgynous APCs were in fact a euphemism applied to Opposition parties that united temporarily to form an anti-Government front, either to confront the Government on a particular issue or in an attempt to oust it.

Such All Party congregations were understandable. Nothing can be more disheartening to a political party than not be able to see the horizon of government, especially if they have once been in power. ‘Opposition’, Roy Hattersley, a British politician whose Labour Party had experienced eighteen years (1979-1997) on the wrong side of the Despatch Box in the House of Commons, ‘is four or five years’ humiliation in which there is no escape from the indignity of no longer controlling events.’

The latest All Party Conference convened by Mian Nawaz Sharif’s government has nobler motives. It seeks to share responsibility at a multiparty level for decisions regarding national security and to discuss proposals for talk with the Taliban. It is a new twist to the concept of Collective Security, a phrase applied originally to geo-politics at an international level. The concept was that of a Roman fasces — the strength of a bundle of rods over one — or the motto E Unum Pluribus (out of many, One).

In a domestic context, all security is necessarily collective. It affects every part and every party in the country. In theory, therefore, collective decisions by the APC should coalesce disparate interests; in practice, they will be suspect, seen as a ruse by the government to share part of the blame.

The hardest task for the government will be to bring and retain all the parties on the same platform. The challenge for the political parties will be the extent to which they are prepared to subordinate their own interests to a common good.

Linked to the APC on Security is the recent metamorphosis of the former Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC) into a Cabinet Committee on National Security (CCNS). The mandate of the CCNS will be ‘to formulate a national security policy what will become the guiding framework for its subsidiary policies – defence policy, foreign policy, internal security policy , and other policies affecting national security.’

The CCNS will be fed policy options by specialised Sub-committees which will be able to draw upon the expertise of specialists and information gathered by intelligence agencies operating within and outside the country. It is the sort of radial power that President Vladimir Putin (once czar of the KGB) commands from the Kremlin across the Russian Federation.

The success of the CCNS will depend largely on the attitude of General Kayani’s successor as COAS and the cooperation of Pakistan’s hydra-headed intelligence agencies. The CCNS’s failure could attract criticism as derisive as Dr Akbar Ahmed’s recent definition of post 9/11 US Governments - ‘the mediocre leading the confused in pursuit of the dubious.’

— By arrangement with Dawn, Pakistan

PML-N’s uninspiring start
Khawar Ghumman

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government completed its first 100 days last Friday, but the National Assembly, where the policies and vision of a ruling party take the shape of laws, passed that landmark five days earlier, on September 8.

Of course, it is too short a period to judge the potential of any government, or legislature. But the 100 days do work as a barometer for the political and economic analysts to watch for trends where the new rulers wish to take the country and its people and how — or simply what to expect from the new government during the next five years.

There is ample time to judge the performance and policies of the PML-N’s third term in power, and how its leaders use their heavy mandate individually for public welfare.

And the judgment could be merciless.

Unlike the previous National Assembly in which its rival PPP led a minority government with just 125 members, the PML-N not only enjoys simple majority but also support of parliamentary allies.

In the present lower house of 342 members, the PML-N occupies 187 seats of the Treasury Benches. Hence, the party was expected to make a headstart in the all-important National Assembly at least, if not at the government level.

That perceived failure is sharpened when compared with the defeated PPP, which had to take its ever-fractious coalition partners into confidence on every minor or major decision. Since the PML-N faces no such problems, the impression is that it has a slow beginning.

For example, formation of the standing committees, which form the backbone of the House’s working, are still incomplete. After missing the mandatory deadline of first 30 days for constituting the committees, their members have been announced but the election of their chairmen is still pending.

Consequently, the standing committees of the house remain non-existent for practical purposes.

It is being said that the chairmen of the committees will be elected during the National Assembly session set to begin on September 16.

Chapter 20 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the National Assembly 2007 deals with the constitution and functions of all committees. Its Rule 200 says: “Except and otherwise provided in these rules, each committee shall consist of not more than 17 members to be elected by the Assembly within 30 days after the ascertainment of the Leader of the House.”

For some not doing reflected on the interest Prime Minister Sharif and members of his Cabinet take in the affairs and proceedings of the House.

Former Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani might have been condemned as the most incompetent chief executive of the country who supervised an allegedly corrupt government, yet throughout his four-year tenure he regularly attended sessions of the two Houses of Parliament. Similarly, the attendance of the members of his Cabinet in particular, and PPP lawmakers in general, was comparatively far better than the PML-N’s.

As leader of the House, Prime Minister Sharif has graced House with his presence only when “necessary”, like its inaugural session, the joint sitting of Parliament for the presidential address, and election of the new president. The only exception was June 24 when he came to the National Assembly to announce that the government had decided to try former president General Pervez Musharraf on treason charges.

Opposition parties severely criticised the government during the fourth session of the current National Assembly that ended on August 30, for what they called Treasury Benches’ lack of interest in House proceedings. They particularly missed the absent ministers in the front rows.

And when the Assembly meets, it often does not follow the agenda of the day. Mismanagement of the proceedings once made veteran Baloch parliamentarian Mehmood Khan Achakzai respectfully request Speaker Ayaz Sadiq to “run the House as per rules”. Else, he said, he would consider stop taking part in its proceedings.

Too short or not to pass a judgement on its legislative work, Parliament has passed just one Bill in the first 100 days — that too because the Finance Bill had to be passed to give effect to the national budget for 2013-14 financial year. A second constitution amendment Bill, to extend quota system in the civil services of Pakistan, is, however, pending for voting.

Such slow pace provides a handle to the much-maligned PPP to take pride in its legislative record, including the 18th amendment, which is recognised by political analysts as a great tool in settling the thorny issue of provincial autonomy and in promoting a democratic order.

Only time will show when and how well the ruling PML-N utilises the active support its parliamentary opposition to the legislation that it itself had been pressing for while in opposition — such as a law to set up a National Accountability Commission to curb corruption that everybody agrees is rampant in the country.

— By arrangement with Dawn, Pakistan