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The Rice testimony Chasing third front |
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In deep waters
When office is a perk
A silent end
The future of Jihad Life returns to Chernobyl
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The Rice testimony The planned hearings on the Indo-US nuclear deal at the two most powerful Congressional committees began in Washington on Wednesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defending the decision of the two great democracies of the world in a forceful manner. The arguments she gave during her first appearance before these committees were as convincing as could be expected of a person in her position. The opponents of the civilian nuclear deal in the US may now find it difficult to continue their drive to scuttle a deal which, as Ms Rice asserted, is designed to benefit not only the US and India but also the cause of the world peace. Happily, former Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry and two influential Senators — Co-Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Joseph Biden and Co-Chairman of the House International Relations Committee Tom Lantos — have been won over. Their offer of support may make the Bush Administration’s job somewhat easier in the Senate, if not in the House of Representatives. Obviously, no deal between two sides is a one-way affair. Opening the door for India to the international civilian nuclear energy market will, no doubt, help it reduce its dependence on the hydrocarbons for its fast growing power requirements. But in the process the US companies in nuclear trade too will get business from India. The new jobs — in thousands, according to Ms Rice — that will be created will only go to the Americans. No US Congress member can deny this reality, which will begin to unfold itself in the course of time. The truth is that most of the non-proliferation ayatollahs are Democrats, who are reluctant to allow the Republican Administration of President George W. Bush to claim a major foreign policy success with the signing of the deal with India. Their problem is the next year’s Congressional elections. But their opposition to the nuclear cooperation agreement on flimsy grounds may only harm them politically. The efforts to bring in India’s relations with Iran show how unfair and unreasonable they can be. If countries like Italy, Japan, China and Russia can have close relations with Iran, what is wrong with India having dealings with Teheran. Indeed, the way India voted in the IAEA could not have pleased the Iranian government. It is quite likely that the Rice testimony will persuade the US Congress not to block the nuclear deal. |
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Chasing third front The mere announcement of a third front — as made by the Samajwadi Party and the Telugu Desam on Thursday —does not necessarily bring such a formation into existence, nor attest to its sustainability as a political force. This is not to deny the case for a third front on the scene that is dominated by the Congress and the BJP. There are credible arguments in favour of such a formation that is equidistant from the BJP and the Congress. However, experience shows that a third front without any strings to the Congress or the BJP does not survive except as a forgettable experiment. The National Front-Left Front led by Mr V.P. Singh in 1989 and the United Front led by Mr H.D. Deve Gowda and Mr I.K. Gujral were both third fronts, but neither could survive when the BJP and the Congress party, respectively, chose to withdraw support. These precedents reinforce the lesson that a much larger coalition founded on a deeper realignment of political equations is a precondition for any optimism about the success of yet another third front. The situation is far from conducive for such an effort, and the proponents would have to wait at least until the runup to the next general election. As of now Mr Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh is, among others, dependent on Congress support while Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP has not severed all its ties with the NDA. The other potential constituents of a third front, such as the Left, AIADMK, DMK, AGP are preoccupied with the upcoming assembly elections and unlikely to pitch in now. To rally all these regional parties is one challenge. More important is to ensure that they can form a cohesive front without drifting towards the BJP or the Congress in the aftermath of election results, which has proved to be a tougher challenge. Unless that option is altogether ruled out — which none of these parties are in a hurry to do — no third front can be viable. The idea is not new, but its time is yet to come. |
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In deep waters It was generally suspected that the waters are murkier than the government would like to admit in the Navy “War Room” leak case which surfaced in August last year. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has now arrested several people, including civilians and retired naval officers, after conducting raids in as many as 17 places. When the Navy preferred to invoke the “President’s pleasure” doctrine to dismiss three naval officers in October, including the Director of Naval Operations, eyebrows were raised. A court martial would have perhaps brought more facts to light. There was also an unseemly delay in ordering a CBI inquiry. It was only in February this year that the case was handed over, after allegations of kickbacks in the Scorpene mega deal surfaced. Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee continues to maintain that the leak had nothing to do with operational matters or the Scorpene negotiations, and that no kickbacks were paid in the deal. But there have been reports suggesting that the sensitive material downloaded into the now notorious pen drive from a computer in the Directorate of Naval Operations, the War Room, did indeed pertain to the Navy’s Project 75. The project envisions the acquisition of 24 submarines over the next three decades. It also factors in the Advanced Technology Vessel, which is India’s long delayed attempt at building our own nuclear submarine. Considering that the Scorpene deal, which covers only six submarines, itself costs in the region of Rs 15,000 crore, we are not only talking big money, but a crucial component of national security. It is thus very important that those with integrity and commitment to the nation’s security, in the Navy and the government, pull out all stops in getting to the bottom of an affair that has taken on seriously worrying proportions. The culprits, whoever they are, should not be able to use either the privileges of high office or the shield of strategic sensitiveness, to get away. They are not only playing with the taxpayer’s money and compromising defence preparedness, but violating the nation’s honour. |
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Role modelling is the most basic responsibility of parents.
— Stephen R. Covey
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When office is a perk
What has come to be known as the “offices of profit” controversy has unmasked the ugly face of politicians in every party. Today, there is a tremendous disconnect between the people and political parties. Every major political party is in power either at the Union level or in some State. Politicians in almost every party are beneficiaries of the bounty of offices of profit bestowed by their respective governments. The whole game now is for every party to save the jobs of their members. The States are already competing with each other in rushing to pass legislation in unseemly hurry to exempt all and sundry offices from disqualification. The Governors will have to be very careful in assenting to Bills which may be against the spirit and letter of the Constitution. The constitutional principle behind debarring holders of “offices of profit under the government” from membership of Parliament is that Parliament has to represent the people, to lay down policies, to make laws, to exercise financial control and to oversee the functioning and ensure the accountability of the executive. If the members themselves come to occupy positions with executive powers, become part of the executive, drive benefits from the government or are obligated to the government for an office, they can no more remain independent to perform their basic duties of keeping control over the executive. But, unfortunately, a situation has been reached where legislators are more interested in exercising executive powers than merely laying down policy and making laws. Part of the problem had its source in the Constitutional Amendment following the Constitution Commission recommendation to limit the size of Councils of Ministers. Many of those in the States who lost their ministerships had to be appointed to posts of equivalent if not better status, perks, position and power as chairpersons of boards etc. at public expense. Doing so often became a political imperative for survival of the government. In the media debate on the controversy, too much emphasis has been put on profit or pecuniary benefit. But question of disqualification arises only if the office is “under the government”. The brief facts, precipitating the present controversy are: (i) A not-much-known Congress party member petitions the President to disqualify an M.P. of the Samajvadi Party for holding an office of profit under the U.P. government. After receiving the opinion of the Election Commission as required under Article 103, the President decides to unseat the member. Immediately, all hell is let loose. Other similar cases pending with the Election Commission are talked about and many more fresh complaints are filed regarding influential legislators of all parties at the Union and State levels enjoying offices of profit under Government A, B or C. Several of the complaints stand referred by the President’s office to the Election Commission. According to media reports, the list included the name of the President of the Congress Party who was also the Chairperson of the National Advisory Council in the rank of a Cabinet Minister with a large contingent of government paid officers, a full-fledged Secretariat and the power to “monitor” the implementation of the Common Minimum Programme. Some proceedings are known to have commenced, process of examination is on and the Election Commission is expected to pronounce its verdict on the disqualification issue. In such a scenario, the NAC Chairperson’s resignation from the NAC as also from the Lok Sabha in an astute tactical move to wriggle out of an extremely uncomfortable position. The Speaker promptly accepts the resignation. The questions that remain are: l whether a person can be allowed to take an escape route through the backdoor, avoid the likely stigma and other consequences of disqualification and package his subterfuge of resignation as an act of sacrifice? Could the resignation be accepted before the proceedings were concluded by the Election Commission and decision announced by the President? l As at present, one wonders what happens to the NAC? It is difficult to imagine anyone else occupying that chair. It is already announced that after resignation, the same seat will again be contested to return to the Lok Sabha. In the meantime the NAC chair may be exempted by law and all will be well as it was. If so, why all this drama and mountebankery at public expense? l What happens to the period during which the alleged office of profit has been held, authority exercised and benefits drawn? Even after resignation, should the question not be settled by the Election Commission whether the position of the NAC chair was an office of profit under the government enough to disqualify a Lok Sabha member? It may be recalled that in 1951 when Jawaharlal Nehru moved a motion in the Provisional Parliament for the expulsion of a Congress Member, H. G. Mudgal, the latter at the end of his speech resigned from membership and walked out. It was held that the fact that the member had resigned in the midst of proceedings could not bring the case against him to a close. The House deprecated the attempt of the member to circumvent the effect of the motion under consideration by resorting to the resignation route and resolved that by resigning, Mudgal committed contempt of the House and aggravated his offence. To constitute a disqualification, the office in question must be one of profit and it should be ‘under the government”. A case may be made out that even if the NAC chair was held to be an office of profit, it could not be said to have been under the government. For, in public perception that office was ‘above’ the government. The NAC was an authority that was extra constitutional and in a way above the Constitution. The Constitution makes the Council of Ministers as the supreme advisory body to aid and advise the President in whom all executive power vests and in whose name it is to be exercised. It is difficult to visualise the constitutionality of another super Advisory Council funded by the government to be above the Council of Ministers and monitor its work. For all the parties and beneficiaries of governmental offices of profit, the options are two — one based on constitutional morality and political principles whereunder the office of profit under the government should be strictly defined and clearly delimited in the Constitution itself and holding any such office other than that of a Minister or some parliamentary office, should invariably disqualify the holder from membership. Alternatively, the Union Parliament and all the state legislatures should accept the ground realities and bring legislation to protect holders of all such offices from disqualification. The second option is likely to prevail because politicians in all parties would like to continue to profit from the loot of public exchequer. This kind of consensus for sharing the booty may be a blatant fraud on the Constitution and on We, the people of India, who are completely insensitised to assert and speak up or are still docile and subservient subjects and have yet to graduate to citizenship of an independent country.
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A silent end
MY father died while trying on a new pair of shoes. His end was like a light going out. Endless traffic moved indifferently as dusk fell on the street where he died. He was 76. When he used to come up to see us in Shimla where my sisters and I went to school, he made it a point to visit the Chinese shoe shops on the Mall. Indeed, he was exceptionally fond of high-quality footwear. At the time that he died he had over 60 pairs, all kept in racks, neatly lined in rows. And when one pair was discarded, he would replace it without delay. But coming to think about it, he did this with his shirts and his suits as well as with his roses and pet dogs. We had kept a number of dogs at our house which was situated outside the city — an Alsatian, a New Foundland and two Labradors. I remember one summer when we left for Shimla with our mother leaving behind my father. In summers he liked sleeping out in the open. Though an early riser, on that fateful day he woke up late with the sun almost blinding him, only to discover he had been drugged by a band of thieves who had raided our house, poisoned the dogs and decamped with his full collection of impeccably tailored jackets, leaving behind only the trousers. Later he had to invest in a whole new wardrobe. From that day onwards he found a substitute for his beloved dogs — he fell in love with roses. Every rose carefully planted by him was purchased from far and wide, the choicest variety one could imagine. And in a few years our garden had about eighty varieties which he was very proud to show off to his guests. His interest in his roses, his vast library and sartorial elegance were perhaps responsible for his glowing health. On the day he died, I remember I was a little unwell reading a book in bed. He admonished me for being lazy. I remember he joked about how young he was looking. I had never seen him unwell all my life. Cycling was another passion, so much so that he often rode his black bicycle to functions were he was the chief guest. We, as self-conscious children, would implore him to take his car, but he would vehemently point his finger at us: “Do you want to kill me 10 years too soon?” Not surprisingly, the condition of his car battery constantly remained feeble. Some old friends from his days in Sialkot had come to take his help in buying shoes from one of his much preferred cobblers. And when they had made their pick, he decided to try on a pair he took fancy to. But when the cobbler attempted to put the new shoe on his foot, he observed that my father had not lifted his foot. On looking up he saw his eyes shut. The next moment my father slowly lay down on the bench he was sitting on. In the distance one could hear the loud laughter of a bunch of girls making their way to the city
centre.
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The future of Jihad Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq form the three sides of the jihadi triangle within which the jihadi force and energy are concentrated. Somalia is the base of this triangle while Afghanistan and Iraq are its two arms. The jihadis’ globalisation of the war against the United States started in Somalia where they claimed to have killed over 200 American soldiers. It was in Somalia that the Al Qaida and its affiliates started studying from up close the nature of the American soldier, the lines of the American military doctrine, and the nature of the American retaliation. The jihadis were fed by their scholars’ analysis that they had supplanted the Soviets as far as the US was concerned. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US had suddenly become bereft of an enemy. The Americans, according to jihadists’ scholars, were looking for a while for an enemy that would grant them a justification to live. After all, there was no meaning to the United States if there was no Soviet Union to hate, the argument went. The jihadists suddenly found themselves catapulted into a hot seat, an enviable role of being a potent adversary to the only superpower in the world. So they granted the Americans what they wished for and turned into that enemy. But, unfortunately for the Americans, the jihadists were not the traditional, visible enemy they expected, and hence they managed to achieve what the Soviets could never achieve: instill a sense of fear, anxiety and uncertainty in an average American’s mind. Nothing demonstrated this better than the September 11 attacks on American soil. This led the Al Qaida and its affiliates to embark on another kind of a war in Afghanistan, a traditional guerrilla warfare in an area which was better known to the Islamists than to the Americans. The Americans reacted by cobbling up an international coalition, including Muslim states, against the Islamists. This gave the Islamists an opportunity to act against the United States from within societies that hate their own governments as well as the Americans.
Agenda of hatred An important strategic victory scored here by bin Laden and company was the globalisation of Islam and their ability to stand above the nationalist dimension. It enabled them to be released from all the limits of the regional perceptions that paralysed many of the other Islamic groups. On November 30, 2002, an Islamic scholar, Lewis Atiyyat Allah published an interesting article which purportedly provides a tunnel vision from bin Laden’s own eyes on global jihad and its future. The article, which was circulated in several Islamist websites, titled: “The New World Order as written by Osama bin Laden,” reviewed the development of Al Qaida, and the culture and future of global Jihad, as if bin Laden himself was sketching his lines of thinking. The article written in the first person, is unusual in its attempt to enter bin Laden’s mind in such a direct manner. Yet, it might really reflect the future plans and policies of Al Qaida and its front groups. The author portrays bin Laden as a kind of a new prophet. Bin Laden’s immigration — Hijrah — is to Afghanistan, and his worst period of ignorance — Jahiliyyah — is the American “invasion” of Arabia in 1990-91: “the most sinful crime in the history of Arabia… and the biggest high treason in Islamic history…which was blessed by a unanimous, categorical, Islamic Fatwah that said that these forces came for the defence of the purity of Islam, and whoever fights them is a fighter against Allah.”
The spider’s web The present conflict between the Islamist radicals and the West is perceived by Lewis Atiyyat Allah as the first stage, yet there are three other stages. The next phase and first priority of the global jihad for the near future as presented in this analysis, is to defeat the Arab governments. The second stage entails imposing upon the American administration direct cooperation with the jihadis. This is the stage when the United States itself will remove the legitimacy of the so-called Arab “cartoon states” and the American direct involvement in the affairs of the Muslim world would be grossly limited. The Arab states would become irrelevant so as to pave the way for a direct confrontation between the Americans and the jihadis. The third stage — the “stage of isolation” — would be even worse for the Americans. Here the Islamists would seek to isolate the American administration from its own citizens on the one hand, and from its allies, on the other. This may sound too good to be true for the jihadist-sympathisers. But their logic, as put across by Lewis Atiyyat Allah, is simple: “At first, we did not know how we could arrive at this stage due to the war against us. But, the American political stupidity of the Bush administration gave us the answer, when it started recruiting the world towards the war against Iraq.” The jihadis of tomorrow would inevitably learn a great deal from the jihadis of today, in comparison to what today’s jihadis learnt from their yesteryears counterparts. Tomorrow’s terrorist networks will take the form of a multihub spider’s web design. Tomorrow’s terrorist networks would have cores and peripheries, with members playing varied, specialised roles. Like a spider’s web, they would have multiple centers and peripheries. The more redundant and resilient they become, the harder it will be for the security agencies to defeat them. The spider’s web is already being spun. It will take shape in months and years to come. It does not appear unlikely that the jihadi leadership develops a swarm-like doctrine in the near future. A doctrine which would essentially feature a campaign of episodic, pulsing attacks by various nodes of this futuristic terror network. Strikes at locations sprawled across global time and space will become a rule rather than an exception. Such strikes have inherent advantages for seizing the initiative stealthily and setting the agenda before the international community. This is what bin Laden and company attempted to do some years ago when they conceived of the Bojonka Plot. The plan of downing eleven American aircraft in international skies simultaneously in different countries was nipped in the bud. But the international security agencies may not be lucky next time. The American experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated that the concept of “counter-leadership targetting” — which was tried against Moammar Qaddafi in 1986, Saddam Hussein in 1991, Mohamed Aidid in 1993, and against bin Laden himself in 1998 — has failed miserably. While this concept need not be abandoned and the aging counter-terrorism notions of strategic bombardment may still be continued, the international community will have to think out-of-box to deal decisively with terror.
Swarming attacks Counter-terrorism agencies worldwide will have to think like terrorists and come out with suitable techniques. Swarming can be one such technique. If terrorists can conceive of swarming attacks, what prevents international agencies from executing similar, trans-national, trans-continental, coordinated military strikes against terrorists’ bases? Such actions are waiting to be launched at different terrorism theatres in the world – Waziristan in Pakistan, Khost in Afghanistan, Aceh in Indonesia, Fallujah in Iraq, Casablanca in Morocco, just to name a few. Presently, this seems to be a tall order. That is because the international community is either divided or parochial and short-term strategic imperatives for governments do not permit even conceiving such synchronised, swarming military strikes across the globe, let alone executing these operations. There are several States which are crucial allies in the global war against terror but are not actually dependable when it comes to delivering. They have their own agendas. They are running with the hare and hunting with the hound. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are two live examples. Pakistan remains unwilling till date to jettison its active role in fomenting terrorism in India and elsewhere in the name of jihad. This Pakistani long-practised strategy directly challenges American interests in diminishing the capacity of terrorist networks and degrading their projection capabilities. The US-led international community must seize the initiative by applying pressure on any states that harbour or sponsor terrorists. After all, there is nothing like a good terrorist or a bad terrorist.—
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Life returns to Chernobyl The world’s worst nuclear accident created a radiation-soaked wasteland, covering an 18 mile radius in modern day Ukraine. But nature has pushed its way through the cracked concrete. Near what is left of Chernobyl’s ill-fated fourth reactor, a pair of elks is grazing nonchalantly. In nearby Pripyat, an eerie husk of a town where 50,000 people used to live before they were forced to flee on a terrifying afternoon in 1986, a Soviet urban landscape is rapidly giving way to wild European woodland. Radiation levels remain far too high for human habitation but the abandoned town is filled with birdsong and the gurgling of streams forged by melting snow. 20 years after the reactor exploded on 26 April 1986, during an ill-conceived “routine” Soviet experiment, the “dead zone” area, is not looking so dead after all. It is a corner of Europe associated with death and alarming yet nebulous stories of genetic mutation, a post-nuclear badland that shows what happens when mankind gets atomic energy wrong. The reality, at least on the surface, is starkly different from the mythology, however. The almost complete absence of human activity in large swaths of the zone during the past two decades has given the area’s flora and fauna a chance to first recover and then — against all the odds — to flourish. It is a paradox that has disturbed opponents of nuclear power who point to the appalling, still unknown, human cost of the tragedy and the terrifying invisible pollution that looks likely to blight the area for centuries. That something remotely good could come of something so obviously awful does not fit with orthodox thinking about nuclear power and its all too apparent risks. The picture is further complicated by the fact that the true human cost of the tragedy and the damage wreaked on people’s health by the radioactive cloud emitted after the explosion may never be fully known. Estimates of human fatalities, both direct and indirect, vary wildly, from 41 in the immediate aftermath to tens of thousands in the years that followed. It is estimated that five million people were exposed to radiation in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia and that the radiation fallout - equivalent to 400 Hiroshimas - triggered an epidemic of thyroid cancer that has yet to abate. Doctors claim convincingly that cancer rates are far higher than they were before 1986 and that thousands of Ukrainians and people in neighbouring Belarus (worse affected than Ukraine because of the wind direction at the time) may have died prematurely as a result. In the dead zone’s so-called Red Forest, a pine forest that took the brunt of the radioactive explosion, radiation levels today can be as high as one roentgen, more than 50,000 times normal background levels. Elsewhere, however, levels are much lower — to the point where large animals such as elks, wild horses and wild boars appear to be enjoying normal life spans. Ecologists say the return of large predators such as wolves is a sure sign that things are moving in the right direction. The few studies that have been done have exposed minor genetic changes in small animals and birds such as mice and barn swallows, including depressed fertility. By arrangement with
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From the pages of H.G. Wells in Bombay Mr H.G. Wells, who is on his way to Australia, spent a few hours in Bombay, going places. It is said he evinced great interest in the ceremonies that were being conducted in a local temple. Mr Wells produces romances as a juggler produces rabbits from a hat; it will not be a surprise if his visit to the temple leads to the production of another fantastic book. Mr Wells gave an interview to the press which was quite characteristic of the author of “The Shape of Things to Come”. “What about the future? What are you doing in India, 400 millions of you? Have you got something constructive or do you want to go back to the past?” These are some of the questions he hurled at the people who besieged him. In any case he hoped that Indians were not going to leave it to someone else’s brains to do things for them. It is because India wants to do the things herself that she wants self-government. It is the solemn duty of men like Mr Wells, who believe in self-determination and justice, to extend their powerful support to India’s cause. |
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The jihadis of today are increasingly locking horns with the US-led Western world. They have long realised two things: (i) there is no chance in changing the situation of the Islamic world unless the role of the United States is singled out; and (ii) the United States cannot be defeated by an army or by any traditional military confrontation.