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Sharif nails Zardari lie
Telecast code
Mockery of justice |
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Terrorism a common threat
A thing of beauty
An honest diplomat
Looking back home in pain
Chatterati
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Sharif nails Zardari lie PAKISTAN President Asif Ali Zardari should at least now stop repeating the lie that the Mumbai attackers were not Pakistan nationals. His demand that India should provide him proof about the Pakistani identity of these terrorists has no meaning. There can be no more authentic proof than former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif admitting that Ajmal Amir Aman Qasab, the only surviving terrorist involved in the Mumbai carnage, belongs to Faridkot village in Pakistan’s Punjab province. Mr Sharif clearly told Pakistan’s Geo news channel that “I have checked myself. His (Ajmal Qasab) house and village have been cordoned off by security agencies. His parents are not allowed to meet anybody.” Mr Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (N) heads the coalition government in Punjab which has Mr Zardari’s PPP as a major constituent. Earlier, Qasab had disclosed in his confessions that he came from Faridkot village in Pakistan. His father later on verified to visiting journalists that the terrorist in India’s custody was indeed his son, who had run away from his house a few years ago. A senior Pakistani journalist, Ahmed Rashid, has described those behind the Mumbai mayhem as “homegrown terrorists”, who are part of a global jihad. There remains no shred of doubt that these “non-state actors” were Pakistanis, trained and armed in Pakistan to wreak havoc on India. Thus, Pakistan is guilty of allowing its territory to be used for terrorism despite having promised to the contrary. It definitely deserves to be punished for not honouring a solemn commitment made to India as well as the rest of the world. The action Pakistan claims to have taken against terrorist outfits like the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the new name for the Lashkar-e-Taiyaba, is only cosmetic in nature. There is no serious attempt to eliminate these dangerous entities and their infrastructure. The institutions they ran to use them as a camouflage to implement their terrorist designs are intact. The world is being fooled shamelessly. The Zardari regime’s behaviour is a threat to stability in Pakistan too. That is why Mr Nawaz Sharif has pointed out that “Pakistan presents a picture of a failed and ungovernable state”. The situation calls for urgent attention of the international community.
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Telecast code
Covering
the Mumbai terror attack was an acid test for the visual media and it was found woefully wanting. In a mad rush to enhance their TRP ratings, many channels did the unthinkable, outraging not only the government but also the public. Sensitive information about the commando operation was given out, which could have come as free intelligence for the handlers of the terrorists. Rumours were palmed off as gospel truth and gory details about the dead and the injured, which many found horrifying, were beamed into the drawing-rooms. This was one time when even those who swear by the freedom of the Fourth Estate cried out for more maturity and moderation from breathless reporters who thought nothing of chasing hostages who had just emerged from a trauma and asking them how they were feeling. With the government mulling an emergency protocol, the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) has come out with self-regulatory guidelines relating to armed conflict, internal disturbance, communal violence, public disorder and other such situations. Broadly, it ordains that details of the security operations would not be given while reporting live hostage situations or rescue operations. No publicity would be given to a terrorist or militant outfit or its ideology. Hostages would not be identified and media would avoid live contact with the victims or security and technical personnel involved or perpetrators during the course of the incident. Unnecessary repeated or continuous broadcast of archival footage that may tend to agitate the viewers must be avoided. This kind of self-regulation is not just desirable but mandatory. The TV channels must realise that the public interest is far more important than attracting viewership. The guidelines drafted by Chairman of the News Broadcasting Standards Redressal Authority J.S.Verma, former Chief Justice of India, are broad parameters and not exhaustive. It will be in the media’s own interest to adhere to their spirit as well as the letter.
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Mockery of justice THE manner in which the Delhi High Court has reduced the jail term of Sushil Ansal and Gopal Ansal from two years to one year in the Uphaar cinema fire tragedy case is shocking and most unfortunate. Indeed, Justice Ravinder Bhatt’s ruling is a big blow to justice. Surely, the people will lose faith in the judiciary if criminals and abettors are not given appropriate punishment as prescribed under the law. In this horrendous fire tragedy 11 years back, as many as 59 persons were killed and over a hundred injured. The people died of suffocation in the cinema hall when a fire in the faulty transformer turned the hall into a gas chamber with no safe exits. Yet, the main culprits have not been given the maximum punishment of 10 years under Section 304 of the Indian Penal Code. The facts of the case and the Ansal brothers’ callous attitude to the safety norms warranted maximum punishment under the law. The Tribune had earlier voiced its concern in these columns when the trial court found the Ansal brothers guilty under Section 304 (A) and sentenced them to just two years of imprisonment. We had maintained, then, that it was too minor a punishment and hence failed to meet the ends of justice. What should one say when the High Court has now reduced even this minor punishment to one-year jail for the Ansal brothers? While reducing their sentence, Justice Bhatt ruled that the Ansal brothers were “educated, respectable members of society with no previous criminal records”. However, the law does not provide for different yardsticks for different people. Nor does it distinguish between an educated and uneducated criminal. Shockingly, the High Court has overlooked the track record of Ansal brothers ever since the tragedy in June 1997. The Supreme Court had cancelled their bail for tampering with case records and for threatening the victims’ families fighting the case. The only option left before the Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy (AVUT) now is to knock at the doors of the Supreme Court for a review of the High Court ruling. Surely, it is a fit case for the apex court to review and correct the major infraction of justice.
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Man is only a reed, the weakest thing in nature: but he is a thinking reed. — Blaise Pascal
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Terrorism a common threat Violence
and instability in Afghanistan are at a peak, up by 500 per cent since the end of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001. President George Bush is right in saying that Afghanistan had changed - for better or worse - in eight years. This month, the Taliban used a 13-year-old boy to trigger a suicide attack in Helmand province and demolished five US/ISAF logistics convoys in one week inside Pakistan, marking a new low in security on both sides of the the Durand Line. It is now clear that Pakistan and Afghanistan are together the epicentre of terrorism. Also described as the incubator of extremism, Pakistan’s clinical reference as an “international migraine” is equally apt. The Mumbai carnage is a direct offshoot of this collective instability sparking yet another India-Pakistan crisis, the seventh since 1984 and the second after the attack on Parliament in 2001. It is no accident that the eastward path of the suicide bomber has left its trail from Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan stopping short of the Radcliffe Line and India. Only an integrated regional approach can end the periodic turmoil and convulsions rooted in the crucible of violence to our west. Any number of conferences on Afghanistan and Pakistan have recognised this central fact: that without treating Pakistan, the region will continue to suffer from bouts of epilepsy. Pakistan created the Taliban and the jihadis - they openly admit now - to achieve strategic depth in Afghanistan and Kashmir. After 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, Islamabad’s strategic focus shifted from the east to the west of the country, according to some, India no longer being enemy No 1. Unfortunately, jihadis and co have turned inwards, creating a two-and-a-half-front situation for Pakistan for which they had not bargained. Worse, the Pakistan Army and its unguided missile, the ISI, are unwilling and unable to disown these groups. The spillover of instability stemming from the insurgencies along both sides of the Durand Line and their ripples in the hinterland flow into India also. The multiple wars against foreign occupation in Afghanistan, numerous tribal and inter-gang conflicts, sectarian wars and counter-insurgency operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda and other shades of Taliban in Pakistan are confined to the border lands crisscrossing the diminishing Durand Line. The writ of neither state runs there. It is the survival of the fittest. Any black and white characterisation of the conflicts is an oversimplification of the complex situation. The Army is involved in selective operations like in Bajaur, but elsewhere it is paramilitaries and local Lashkars who are fighting. No Great Game has succeeded here - neither for the British nor the Soviets nor evern Pakistanis; the same is true about the US-led NATO forces. Historian Olaf Caroe had rightly observed: “all wars in Afghanistan start after they have ended”. The Taliban are fast closing in on Kabul. Already this year, there have been 129 suicide attacks, some using multiple bombers. Air-strikes have caused more than 400 civilian deaths and Western troop casualties are the highest during the last two years. With a new US President and Military Commander, a grand new strategy is expected for the region. The buzzword is “surge” --- not just military but political and economic too. An additional 30,000 US troops, dialogue with the “reconcilable” Taliban and converting the Durand Line into an economic gateway are elements of a regional strategy which seeks an honourable exit, preserving the gains. The key to any strategy on Afghanistan is Pakistan, given the Al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries on its territory in FATA, the NWFP and Baluchistan and the logistics lifeline for the US/ ISAF from Karachi straddling these areas to Afghanistan. After the recent pounding of the convoys Americans are considering alternative routes for supplies from the north and west through Central Asia. Feeding Pakistan’s insecurity is Indian investment and intelligence activities in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s assurance to secure the supply lines is as half-hearted as its commitment to fight Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Barring sketchy counter-insurgency operations in Baluchistan and the Northern Areas in the past, the Pakistan Army, trained to fight the Indian Army, has little appetite or expertise to fight unconventional operations. It says it has lost 1200 soldiers in recent battles on the western border in Bajaur and other tribal areas. After the Red Mosque fiasco last year, a demoralised Army has become the target for Pakistan’s Taliban and its other denominations. It does not realise that Pakistan faces an existential threat from Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It is in a Catch-22 situation: in spite of the government accepting the ownership of the war on terror, people in the western frontier areas believe it is the spillover of the US war in Afghanistan that the Army is fighting. Making matters worse, the jihadis have infiltrated Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. For better compliance from Pakistan, the incoming US regime is toying with inducements on Kashmir, Afghanistan and aid tied to performance. Kashmir is a red herring, as even after it is resolved the Kashmiri jihadis will remain unconsummated. Pakistan’s real concerns are the settlement of the Durand Line, a friendly regime in Kabul, access to Central Asia and India’s role in Afghanistan. The question Americans are asking is: can India be restrained in Pakistan’s perceived backyard? Delhi feels it is engaged in legitimate intelligence and diplomatic activity. Pakistan is the source of terrorist violence in both Afghanistan and India. It is Pakistan, not India, that has to be restrained in Afghanistan. The Kabul attack on the Indian Embassy was masterminded by the ISI. Pakistan is facing a huge backlash from the jihadis it nurtured. Now, after the Mumbai carnage, there is international condemnation, including a UN fiat to ban terrorist groups like the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Jihadi heat has been unleashed through 68 suicide attacks in Pakistan this year, half of which were in the NWFP with violence bordering Peshawar. Limitations of a weak civilian government with notional control over the Army, and still less over the ISI, are no secret. The Army decides the policy on India, Afghanistan and nuclear assets. Restoring democracy is key to stability but only when the Army decides to step under civilian control. Together with the ISI it is using a combination of lashkars and peace deals to fight the Taliban. Till it gets its combat act together and launches full throated counter-insurgency operations against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban instead of attacks involving aircraft and artillery, which the Indian Army has almost never used, it will never get from the US the approval rating it seeks. It may be the ultimate indignity for the Pakistan Army that New Delhi could offer to help it train and launch counter-insurgency operations. The two armies have worked and fought together on several UN peacekeeping missions in Africa; so why not in Afghanistan? At present Pakistan has 18 brigades meant for the east operating along the Durand Line. Pakistan should feel free to move more troops to quell the violence on the western borders. Even after the Mumbai tragedy, India can reassure Pakistan that it will not fish in troubled waters. Stability in Pakistan is key to stability in Afghanistan and India. The threat to all three is not from one another but from terrorism. As far as possible, keep the US out of
this.
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A thing of beauty WHILE feasting his eyes over nature’s bounty, an ecstatic poet pours forth, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever”. These comely blossoms kept flashing back on his mind all his life to be “bliss of his solitude”. Beauty of any sort has a mesmerising effect on our minds. Our doctrine of “Satyam, Shivam, Sundram” also takes due note of this phenomenon. Human female is very much a part of this pageant of nature. She has been provided a face and figure that are matched only by the poetry, paintings and sculptures that these have inspired over the ages. This truth was quietly brought home to me when we went after some suspected Naxalite insurgents in a small village of Srikakulam district in Andhra Pradesh way back in 1969. I was then officiating as the second-in-command of a C.R.P. Force unit deployed in the area. An anonymous letter was received at our headquarters naming three villagers involved with the extremists. We could not place much reliance on this information. Yet, we could not ignore it either. So, I marched to the village at the head of a company. The villagers were asked to assemble at one place. They readily complied. I told the gathering that we had come looking for some suspects. When nobody responded to the three names disclosed by me, search parties were sent to get hold of any villagers who might have chosen to be in hiding. After a while, Sub-Inspector Virender Singh, appeared with a young lady in tow. There was an air of innocence and freshness about her. She was by no means an unworldly beauty. Still, with the likes of her around, one felt good without even knowing the reason. She innocently pointed to her husband in the gathering before me. This man happened to be one of the three that we were looking for. By trying to hide himself in the crowd the man had invited some more suspicion on himself. So, I decided to take him along for interrogation. This sent a wave of shock among the villagers. His handicapped grandmother crawled to my feet begging that no harm should come to him. The lovely lady, his wife, now looked deeply embarrassed at the turn of the events. In the end, the village elders undertook to produce all the three suspects before us for verification the next day. Thus, I agreed not to take him with us right then. Before, however, we could turn our back, I got a glimpse of Virender Singh confronting the man just spared by us. The S.I. warned him in all seriousness that if he beat his young wife for giving him out, he would be back to give him hell. Our Virender was a happily married and a well-intentioned person. Still the beauty of the lady seemed to have worked its own magic on him some way. As for me, I also took note of her. But, the nature and society had been kind enough to accommodate my very first choice in the matter of marriage. Thus, I always felt that my eyes had lost all their right to rove long time
back.
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An honest diplomat Mrs. Indira Gandhi was under tremendous pressure to initiate talks with the agitating Akalis and the band led by Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. Many secret and not-so-secret talks had failed and the reputation of many leaders had got sullied. Mrs. Gandhi then brought one of the most sober, intelligent public men, Swaran Singh, to the fore. The idea was to break the impasse and talk to all factions of the Akalis. An astute politician of the standing of Swaran Singh could do this delicate yet tough job. For this tall and wiry former foreign minister who had held the fort for 23 long years as a cabinet minister with three prime ministers, it was at one level a chance to prove his mettle as a meaningful negotiator and also to save his home state, Punjab, from further destruction. How would this astute diplomat move was a subject of animated discussion in the country. I met him to understand his moves at his Jalandhar residence and had some fair idea of his commitment and sincerity. He was asking more questions from a journalist than answering. On the appointed day, I along with another colleague was with Bhindranwale at the parapet of Guru Nanak Niwas in the precincts of the Golden Temple, the fortified bastion of the maverick Sant. Swaran Singh came to the adjacent building of Teja Singh Samundari Hall, dressed in his usual white chudirdar pajama and kurta. He aligned from a car, there was just one more person and the driver. No caravan and no publicity. He went straight to meet Sant Harchand Singh Longowal. At the parapet, Bhindranwale discussed with us how he should treat the guest about to visit him. He offered no one a chair. Either you could stand and talk to him as he sat crossed-legged at a huge bed or you could sit on the carpet spread on the floor. It was suggested that the gentleman who was about to visit him on an important mission was one of the tallest of the Punjab leaders and should be treated appropriately. He readily agreed and a sevadar was asked to bring in a chair. No one was to be on the parapet, including his armed guards. When Swaran Singh had finished with Sant Longowal, he crossed over to the next building and went up the stairs. Here was diplomacy at its best. The Sant insisted that he take the chair and the former foreign minister quietly said that ordinary folks should not sit at an equal place before holy men and sat on the floor. What followed was that the Sant had lost his usual bluff and bluster and listened patiently to what the visitor told him. The impasse was broken and the effort for peace took wings. It is another matter that two other quarrelling yet powerful senior Congress leaders, Giani Zail Singh and Mr Darbara Singh, played as spoilers and Mrs. Gandhi helplessly watched as the situation drifted to violence, Operation Bluestar, her own gruesome killing and massacre of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere. No doubt, as a politician, Swaran Singh was India’s longest serving cabinet minister. He entered the cabinet of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in1952 and remained in the successive governments until he resigned in November, 1975. He served as India's foreign minister from 1964 to 1966, and again from 1970 to 1974. He also served as the Indian defence minister from 1966 to 1970, and again from 1974 to 1975. He was also President of the National Congress in 1977, and from 1978 to 1979. He was one of the main architects of the Tashkent Agreement, the Shimla Agreement and the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan. His competent handling of the treaty resulted in India getting a share of the Ravi waters. Swaran Singh was the chairperson of the committee entrusted with the responsibility of studying the Constitution in 1976 during the Emergency. Soon after the declaration of the Emergency, Mrs. Gandhi constituted a committee under his chairmanship to study the question of amending the Constitution in the light of past experience. He did law from Panjab University and started law practice. He was married in 1925 to Charan Kaur and had four daughters. He entered politics in 1946 when he was elected a member of the Punjab legislative assembly. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 1992.
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Looking back home in pain Thursday, November 27, 2008, was supposed to be just another day. I reached my clinic and checked my e-mail and the australian.com.au as well as tribuneindia.com. as usual. I was stunned to read about the Mumbai mayhem. It wasn’t the first time that terrorists had struck in India this year, but this one left me shaking like a leaf. The more I read, the more horrified I got as I had the mental imagery of gunmen shooting innocent men and women at hotels and railway stations, leaving bodies of people who were going on with their lives busily and happily mo-ments ago, the bullet shot injured lying on the ground, in pain and agony, helplessly watching the dance of death. At lunch, my Sri Lankan friend and colleague, Anthony, asked me the root cause of all this unrest, “I don’t know” was my short answer. I then told him about the Kashmir problem, Babri Mosque demolition, Mumbai 93 bombings, Godhra carnage and Gujarat “riots” (better termed as “mass murders” by Tehelka); the vicious cycle of hatred, which gets compounded with every Islamist extremist terror attack as well as Hindu fundamentalists’ shameless acts of violence. This one could also be a part of the bigger Islamist extremists’ “Jehad” against the West. What I failed to explain (and understand) was that how anyone with any cause could justify killing unarmed innocent civilians, whether that is Mumbai, Gujarat, New York or Baghdad. Anthony shared his country’s story with me — the Sri Lanka-LTTE conflict; the situation there wasn’t very different from India, probably worse at times. I started to tell him about my personal brush with “indiscriminate firing” by terrorists when I was a kid, but my voice chocked and I had to excuse myself. While driving back home in the evening, I had a flashback of that day, March 6, 1987, in Kapur-thala, walking to the local video games parlour with my cousins (all ranging from six to 13 years old), the sound of firing, people running in horror and chaos, our desparate efforts to stay together as we ran to save our lives, a stranger kindly sheltering us into his home as he spotted us kids running on the street, and the sight of pools of blood on the road, on our way back home. Those were the days when Sikh separatist movement for Khalistan was at its peak. Seven people were killed that day, and many more injured. And when we say injured, we only count those who are physically injured in such attacks; the psychological trauma never comes into any statistics. In the evening, after watching the Mumbai massacre on TV, I called my parents in Mohali and a friend in Mumbai. Among other things, my parents told me about Jasmine —the 22 years old girl from our street, studying hotel management in Delhi, who had gone for one week’s training to one of those hotels in Mumbai, and was shot dead. As I kissed my one-year-old daughter sleeping in my arms, I thought about the plight of Jasmine’s distraught parents, who had flown to Mumbai to get her body home and would be, perhaps, waiting to receive their daughter’s body in some hospital at the moment. Finally, I called my friend in Mumbai to make sure that he and his family were safe. They were alright, but he told me how upset he was at the effect this would have on the Sensex, India’s share index, while he had already lost millions of rupees in the global financial meltdown. I tried to empathise with him, but I couldn’t. It was a short phone call. In the days that followed, I read and saw that “terror came from Pakistan”, inflammatory statements from politicians and the tension across the border. I saw some people demanding war and revenge against Pakistan. It was with this background that I met my Pakistani friend Rafiq for coffee as I visited his hospital in Brisbane downtown for a meeting. The Mumbai attack was bound to figure in our conversation. He was as horrified as me by the Mumbai news as well as the consequent turnaround from the bilateral peace process to refuelled hostilities between the two countries. He expressed his anguish at the decades’ of bloody conflict within Pakistan, between the moderate civilians/leaders and hardliner extremists (and the army); Benazir Bhutto’s killing, 150 people who died in Bhutto’s welcome procession bombing last year, 60 who died in the Marriott bombing in Islamabad and so on. As he was talking, I was thinking that Anthony, Rafiq and I represented common people from three different countries and three different religions, but our miseries and worries were exactly the same. I wish I could convey our collective civilian sentiments from across the borders to all those who don’t know any way of dealing with terrorism and their own anger other than war and large-scale destruction. The writer is a doctor based in Brisbane, Australia
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Chatterati WE grew up on the stories of Romeo-Juliet and Heer-Ranjha. But now we have a new love story making headlines, that is, of Fiza and Chand Mohammed. The ex-Deputy Chief Minister of Haryana and son of the one-time magician of the Congress party, Bhajan Lal, is a Muslim now. Converting to Islam to marry Fiza (Anuradha Bali) was a calculated sacrifice. Fiza’s next agenda is politics for herself. This former Deputy Attorney General is no babe in the woods. With a smile she claims how unhappy and distressed a man her Chand was in his first marriage and also had a strained relationship with his father and brother. But this couple did manage to make it breaking news only because he as the Deputy Chief Minister missed office for a month. What he did in his personal life was anyway hidden for five years. Heading South After having made minor dents in Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, Mayawati seems to be heading South. She is now experimenting with her Brahmin-Dalit combination. She has poached into Jayalalithaa’s territory. She has got a senior Dalit IAS officer in Tamil Nadu to join the party and now she has got S. Shekhar, the one- time Amma’s favourite Brahmin MLA. But Mayawati is a worried lady because she expected to do a lot better in these five assembly elections but obviously the public is getting wiser. The public is also now a bit fed up with her arrogance and her petty behaviour towards her party colleagues. BJP bonding After the Delhi results the BJP is, of course, distressed. Shiela has snatched a victory from the jaws of those who had made dire predictions of BJP victory. Advani hosted a mono-act play “Goswami Tulsidas” by Shekhar Sen for his Sangh functionaries, chief ministers and other senior BJP leaders. It turned out to be an emotional evening. With eyes swelling with tears the guests also heard the Ram Katha and then saw a VHP film on Ram Setu. It seemed more like an evening of bonding in the days of gloom and loss for the Prime Minister-in-waiting. Security cut After the Mumbai tragic terrorist attack the review of security cover for VIPs is a relief for the common man. First came CM Hooda’s statement of reducing security for Haryana VIPs. Bravo! Anyway most of these guys only want a security cover and a status symbol. Now our new Union Home Minister Chidambram has refused a bodyguard and Z plus security. After this magnanimous gesture, security of VIPs has been downsized. The figures show if India cuts back on VIP security the Home Ministry could easily double its forces in Delhi and Bombay. Upon being congratulated by Brinda Karat, Home Minister P.C. said: “I appreciate your knowledge of criminal matters compared to finance matters.”
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IT was the summer of 1982; Punjab was on the boil. There was a daily run of killings, kidnappings and sleazy politics was to the fore. At the same time, there were all sorts of attempts to defuse the situation.