The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

	Honour killings Delay but don’t drop legislation THE Haryana Chief Minister’s opposition to a new and more stringent law to deal with ‘honour killings’ comes as no surprise. Mr Bhupinder Singh Hooda has consistently held that Haryana’s somewhat infamous khap panchayats or caste panchayats play no role in ‘honour killings’, which are perpetrated by members of the aggrieved family. As a result, he has always maintained that the existing laws are sufficient to bring the culprits to book. Sections 302 and 120 (B) of the Indian Penal Code provide for suitable punishment for crimes like murder and criminal conspiracy and the Chief Minister merely reiterated his well-known stand on Wednesday before the Group of Ministers entrusted to study the subject. Mr Hooda’s opposition would seem to have effectively stalled the possibility of the Centre introducing a new Bill during the current session of Parliament, which was actually promised by Union Home Minister P Chidambaram in the Lok Sabha. It is, however, significant that the Union Cabinet had concluded that merely amending the existing laws would not be enough to curb the rising tide of so-called ‘honour-killings’. It is equally significant that but for Haryana, the other two states, namely Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan consulted by the GoM , have raised no objection to a fresh law. Mr Hooda is possibly right when he says that khap panchayats do not order any killing. Under the existing laws, therefore, they can never be held guilty of either murder or abetment to murder or suicide. But the fact remains that the khap panchayats in Haryana have accorded legitimacy to such killings by ‘honouring’ the perpetrators and by raising funds to defend them in courts of law. They have not done anything to stop these killings either. While couples who dare to defy customs do so with the knowledge that they run the risk of being disowned by their families and being ostracised by society, neither individuals nor groups can be allowed to take law into their hands and mete out medieval justice. Khap panchayats are unfortunately guilty of encouraging the trend. A case does exist, therefore, in favour of a fresh law to rein in such behaviour. While a more dispassionate study of the subject is called for, law alone cannot act as a deterrent. Law, after all, is meant for the people and not the other way round. Also, law and order being a state subject, a new law would require consent of the states. The GoM, therefore, should take time to evolve a consensus rather than rush with its recommendation.
	Babudom at it! Vishwanathan Anand turns a ‘foreigner’ MEN are believed to be from Mars and women from Venus. But where are the sarkari babus from? Some planet beyond the solar system, may be? That is the only conclusion one can draw from the way they turned world chess champion Vishwanathan Anand into a foreigner and made sure that the University of Hyderabad could not confer its honorary degree on him. Now anybody who knows something about India would know that Anand has been playing under the Indian Flag all along and is the pride of the country. His only “fault” was that he remains largely abroad for taking part in various chess tournaments and also maintains a home in Spain. That was enough for some pen-pushers to block the whole honouring procedure. Not only that, mandarins of the Union Human Resource Development Ministry later also tried to lay the blame at the door of the university saying that it blundered by referring Anand’s case to it as one of a foreign recipient. Even if the university goofed, wasn’t it their responsibility to correct the faux pas? Such lists are forwarded months in advance. But instead of applying their minds, everybody followed the rut blindly. For argument’s sake, even if Anand was a foreigner, what was the hitch in conferring an honorary degree on him? Haven’t so many Indian personalities received such degrees from foreign universities? Why is it that we have to create hurdles where there are none? Minister Kapil Sibal did apologise after a public outcry but the damage has been done, which is no less than what had happened in a similar case the other day when Lady Nadira, the wife of Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul, visited the Indian High Commission in London for a Person of Indian Origin card for the author. The officials there told her that Naipaul could get the card only if he travelled to Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh to find a tehsildar or magistrate willing to certify that he was indeed a person of Indian origin. A common man faces such harassment day in and day out. Any apology would be genuine only if the government finds a way to ensure that such absurdities are not perpetrated.
	Thought for the Day Human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves; when that right is pre-empted it is called brainwashing. — Germaine Greer
	Corrections and clarifications Instead of the headline “Knife-edge seats keep Australians waiting” (August 25, Page 15) which fails to tell what the news item is all about, “No clear verdict in Australian poll” would have been appropriate. “Bus station” and not “bus stand” should have been used in the headline “Bus stand turns cricket ground” (Chandigarh Plus, August 26, Page 3). Instead of word “upgrade” in the headline “Upgrade of primary schools embroiled in controversy” (Chandigarh Plus, August 26, Page 3) “Upgradation” should have been used. “Saroori refuses to quit” would have been appropriate instead of “Saroori does not quit” (August 26, Page 18). Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them. This column appears twice a week — every Tuesday and Friday. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error. Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com. Raj Chengappa Editor-in-Chief

ARTICLE

Iran’s N-programme
Implications of Israel’s pre-emptive attacks
by P. R. Chari

THE strategic community is agog, anticipating an Israeli attack on the Iranian nuclear power plant in Bushehr, which has been constructed by the Russians, and is being fuelled currently. Hawks in Israel and the United States have urged that the Bushehr facility be attacked immediately. Once the reactor starts working, an attack on it would lead to the radioactive fuel, besides the reactor spent fuel containing plutonium and other transuranic elements, getting dispersed and causing extensive “collateral damage”. A strategic rationale has thereby been provided to justify this pre-emptive attack.

In truth, pre-emptive attacks are Israel’s hallmark strategy. It launched a lightning air attack and annihilated the Egyptian air force on the ground in the Six-Day war in 1967. Again, it conducted a daring rescue operation in July 1976 and freed its citizens from Entebbe airport in Uganda, where they were held hostage by Idi Amin. But the most spectacular of Israel’s pre-emptive attacks was in 1981 on the Osiraq reactor in Iraq. In 90 seconds, eight Israeli F-16s demolished the Osiraq nuclear reactor in a textbook operation. Before this attack, Israeli officials had attempted diplomatic, overt and covert steps for several years to stop Iraq’s nuclear activities.

Concurrently, Israeli leaders had planned its state-of-the-art military operation. Detractors point out that over the longer term the Osiraq operation was counter-productive. It persuaded Iraq and other aspirant nuclear proliferators to disperse and conceal their nuclear facilities in “hardened” underground sites to make detection and attack very difficult. However, Israel once again successfully attacked a suspected Syrian nuclear site in 2007.

Israel argues that it cannot permit its neighbors in the Middle-East and the Gulf region to acquire nuclear weapons, since they jeopardise Israel’s national security. Being a small nation situated in a much larger hostile neighborhood, Israel’s logic is only sustainable if one equates national security with military security, and not with negotiations and seeking political accommodation with hostile neighbours. Israel, incidentally, has a nuclear arsenal, but has not chosen to conduct a nuclear explosion to demonstrate its capabilities. It deploys both nuclear-capable aircraft and missiles to provide its delivery vehicles. Israel’s conventional forces are comparatively small in numbers, but are rated very high in terms of operational and organisational skills. Israel has repeatedly thwarted attempts by its hostile neighbours to overwhelm it with their conventional forces. Israel’s nuclear capabilities provide an additional deterrent for use as its last resort weapon.

Reverting to the Bushehr nuclear reactor, which is in danger at present, its construction by German companies began in 1975. Work halted when the United States imposed an embargo on hi-tech supplies to Iran after its 1979 revolution. The site was damaged during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. In 1998 the project was revived with Russian help, using Russian designs. Originally two reactors were to be constructed in Bushehr, but only one 1,000 MW reactor has been completed. Russia will supply the nuclear fuel, and Iran is bound by contract to return all spent fuel rods to Russia. This has eased concerns that Iran could reprocess the spent fuel to extract weapons-grade plutonium. But Tehran has muddied these waters by asserting its right to enrich uranium indigenously.

"Enrichment (of uranium) for producing fuel for the Bushehr plant and other plants will continue," Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation head Ali Akbar Salehi said. "The Bushehr plant has a lifespan of 60 years and we plan to use it for 40 years. Suppose we buy fuel for 10 years from Russia. What are we going to do for the next 30 to 50 years?" Such declarations are bound to raise doubts about Iran’s true intent for obtaining the Bushehr plant from Russia. It could be worked for a few years under the present contract and later abrogated, and the reactor could be used thereafter for military purposes.

An attack by Israel on Iran’s Bushehr reactor at the present juncture would necessarily involve Russia. It is, therefore, unlikely that the United States will support any such adventure with its arms control negotiations with Russia at a delicate stage. Apart from Bushehr, moreover, Israel would need to attack several other nuclear sites in Iran to halt its nuclear programme like Qom and Natanz, where significant nuclear activities are proceeding. Israel could reasonably anticipate counter-attacks by Iranian militant groups, which might include the United States and its NATO allies. And the world would need to accept a disruption in oil supplies and consequent increase in oil prices.

Taken altogether, an Israeli attack on the Bushehr reactor would not serve Israel’s own best interests. But, if objective circumstances change, and Iran continues on its path to uranium enrichment and gains control over the Bushehr reactor, a new situation would arise. How will Russia, the United States and Israel recalculate their options towards Iran?

Hopefully, matters will not reach this pass.

The writer is associated with the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi.

MIDDLE

Be your best self
by I.M. Soni

YOU have been troubled by inferiority feelings which are often based on memories or on remarks made by others.

These feelings lead to self-concepts that are flagrantly wrong, but as long as you believe in them, you are influenced by them.

Therefore, it is important for you to keep telling yourself that you are a much better individual than you are made to believe by envious people.

If you accept this as a fact, it will begin to influence your life because what you do with yourself life depends on your own self-concept.

Your self-concept makes real thigns happen to you. You may say: “I can do this” and “I can’t do that,” simply because of remarks that other have made about you.

You underestimate your own abilities. Your inherent abilities are much greater than those you actually use. No one ever gives his best, is not a joke. Henry Ford once said, “Everyone can do more than he thinks he can.”

No matter what your abilities are, they can be developed only if you choose to develop them. It is up to you.

Accordingly to Prescott Lecky, every human being strives to be a consistent whole. He rejects what he thinks contradicts his self-image. Sometimes he rejects traits that would be greatly to his advantage, because in a thoughtless moment, someone has told him that he was very dull.

If he accepts this, it becomes part of his mental picture of himself, and from that time he behaves accordingly.

A poor speller, for example, can be turned into a good one by changing his idea about his ability. When he changed his opinion of himself, a high school student, who had previously misspelled 55 words out of 100 and had failed in most of his school subjects, became one of the best spellers in his school, and got a general average of 90. He overcame his “disability” and became proficient.

Self -concept may be compared to building houses. If a man, in a fit of alcoholism, builds up an image of himself that has no basis in reality, he’s building a mental house of straw.

A daydream that has no follow-up can be blown away as easily as a house of straw.

You can build your mental house out of sticks, and it can also be blown down. If you build your self-concept on casual remarks made by others, you are building it out of sticks.

If you build your mental house out of bricks, who can knock it down? Bricks that build your self-concept show what you can do and achieve.

If you have personal experience in succeeding at something, small or big, you can build a house of your self-esteem on what you have done. Forget the failures you have met both. Build your life and career on what you have already done successfully. Success breeds success.

Nietzsche says: “Become what thou art!” He knew that if we only became as great as we really are we would all be better than we dream.

You have potentialities that are never realised. The first step in changing your life is to believe that you can change. Here are some suggestions:

Accept yourself. In a study of a group of college students, it was found that those who were mentally healthiest accepted themselves with all their faults as naturally.

Don’t tear yourself apart because you do not think you are worthy.

You should try to be at your best.

Believe in yourself. You have some talent. If you do not know what your talent is, that does not mean you do not possess one. Keep seeking till you find out what your talent is.

Think of how to make yourself better. If you spend too much time wondering whether or not you are good, you won’t be.

Keep your hands and your mind occupied. A man is nothing if not a worker.

Keep recreational activities in your life. Always have an activity that will be fun for the sake of it.

Make others comfortable and at ease. When you meet someone for the first time, concentrate on trying to make him feel at ease. That will keep you from feeling self-conscious. If you concentrate on thinking about the other person, you are not self-centered.

Do something about your negatives. If you have some worries you cannot do anything about, accept the situation sans resentment.

Love as many persons as you can. If there are some you cannot help disliking, try to be fair to them. Look for their good points.

Believe in some power higher and greater than yourself.

Bury the past. Yesterday was a dream; tomorrow may never come. Use this fragment of time, as though it were your last day.

Work for your future. The beauty of the future is that it comes one day. And anybody can handle one day positively and creatively.

OPED — Neighbours

Prevent Taliban from staging a comeback in Afghanistan
Gurmeet Kanwal

THE recent Kabul conference was aimed at achieving lofty goals but it ended with nothing more than the usual pledges of additional aid. Almost nine years after the US and its allies effected a regime change in Afghanistan and six months after President Barack Obama decided to send 30,000 more American troops to the beleaguered nation, Afghanistan remains mired in instability. The Taliban may not be winning, but it is not losing either and the US and its NATO/ ISAF allies have little to show by way of lasting success in counter-insurgency operations.

The Lashkar-e-Toiyaba has joined hands with the Taliban-Al-Qaeda combine to fight the allies and wanton acts of violence are a daily occurrence. With neither side making major gains, the emerging situation is best described as a strategic stalemate. Consequent to President Obama’s carefully considered “surge”, there are now 93,000 US troops in Afghanistan. This figure is set to rise to 105,000 by the end of the summer, but even then the coalition forces will remain thin on the ground.

While it is too early to draw firm conclusions, success in recent operations has eluded the allies. The combined US and British operations in Helmand province — the nucleus of Afghanistan’s narcotics-driven terrorism — succeeded in driving the Taliban out of its strongholds but only temporarily, and the allies have had to once again launch fresh operations in Helmand. Violence continues to persist in Marja despite large-scale Marine Corps operations.

Major military operations in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar have been delayed. Inevitably, it will be a long and bloody exercise. The Indian experience has been that it takes a ratio of 1:30 — that is, the sustained deployment of 30 security forces personnel for every terrorist — to gain and maintain military control over an area affected by insurgency or rural terrorism.

As has been witnessed in the Kashmir valley, as soon as the troops pack their tents and go away to launch operations in another area, the terrorist groups make a triumphant comeback. They once again lay down the law through fatwas, collect “taxes”, extort money for unhindered trade and dispense their peculiar brand of justice. Since the Afghan state cannot effectively deliver governance and justice, the people grudgingly ask difficult.

Urban areas require an even more concentrated deployment and the local civilian police and para-military forces are much better equipped to handle these rather than regular armies. Despite the best efforts of the allies, the Afghan National Army (currently numbering 1,10,000; final target 2,60,000) and the Afghan Police have failed to acquire the professional ethos and motivation levels that are necessary to deal with jihadi extremism. Training standards in small counter-insurgency operations are low and cutting edge junior leadership is still lacking. They are also short on numbers as recruitment rates are low and desertions high.

Meanwhile, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda seem to have no difficulty in recruiting an endless stream of suicide bombers from the thousands of madarsas that astride the Af-Pak border. In fact, they pay them monthly wages. Crossed wires between the Obama Administration and President Hamid Karzai, and tensions between Karzai and the Pakistan leadership as well as the Pakistan Army’s and the ISI’s proclivity to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds have weakened the overall response to the constantly changing terror tactics of the opposing forces.

President Karzai has lost confidence in the US commitment to comprehensively defeat the Taliban. Consequently, he has begun negotiations with the Taliban and their Pakistani handlers. The Pakistanis are keen to include the Haqqani faction in the talks, but the Afghans and the US are firmly opposed to Sirajuddin Haqqani. All the international and domestic players involved in the complex web of Afghan politics want a direct role in the negotiations. Many are conducting their own negotiations

Taliban factions have noted with glee President Obama’s ill-advised, self-imposed deadline to begin withdrawing US troops in July 2011 after a review in December this year. Although high-level US civilian and military officials have said that a long-term American presence in Afghanistan is a certainty, the Taliban groups are convinced that the US no longer has the political will and the military staying power to sustain a large deployment.

NATO countries and other allies of the US are keen to cut and run as their much smaller armies are facing rotational difficulties, and the war has lost popular support. The Pakistanis, who seek strategic depth in Afghanistan and consider the Taliban as their strategic assets, still harbour ambitions of installing a pliable government in Kabul. As most students of military history would readily concede, a prolonged stalemate between a large, well-armed and well-equipped modern force and a motley array of guerrillas or other non-state actors like terrorist groups has almost culminated in a victory for the underdogs. This happened in Vietnam. This has also been seen in Afghanistan earlier when the Afghan warlords defeated the erstwhile Soviet Union in the 1980s with help from the CIA and Pakistan.

If radical extremism is to be comprehensively defeated in the Af-Pak region, it is important for the US and its allies to stay the course as long as it takes. As they have no more troops to contribute to the effort, the net must be enlarged to include military contributions from Afghanistan’s regional neighbours, perhaps under a United Nations flag. The international community must stand united to ensure sustainable stability in Afghanistan. Under no circumstances should the Taliban be allowed to stage a triumphant comeback.

The writer is Director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies, Delhi

Window on Pakistan
Aid for flood-hit: reputation as a roadblock
Syed Nooruzzaman

THERE is a lot to learn from the unprecedented floods that have hit large parts of Pakistan. The most significant lesson is if a country’s reputation is bad the international community will not be forthcoming in helping it even during a crippling crisis like the one Pakistan has been faced with for the past few days owing to the floods in the Indus. Initially, there was very poor response to Pakistan’s appeal to come to the rescue of its marooned people. The situation has, however, changed now.

The devastation is so widespread that it is not within its means to manage the situation on its own. The floods have displaced millions, besides killing more than a thousand people. More may die due to the outbreak of diseases. The UN and the US had to intensify their efforts to make donor-countries come forward with aid more liberally.

Sindh is the worst affected province. Huma Yusuf, in her column in Dawn on August 22, quotes the Federal Flood Commission to say that the floods have inundated over 2000 villages in Sindh alone.

The devastating floods came in the wake of the exposure by the WikiLeaks website of Pakistan’s clandestine support for the Taliban in Afghanistan. This was intolerable for the international community, particularly the Americans. In an interesting lament in Dawn on August 18, US-based attorney Rafia Zakaria points out that “weeks into the devastating floods that hit so many parts of Pakistan, the international media concentrated on one aspect of the issue: what this would do to Islamic militancy and the Taliban.”

The reason is Pakistan’s reputation as “the breeding ground for the world’s most vexing problems”. Rafia quotes a Wall Street Journal/ NBC opinion poll, which revealed that only 4 per cent of the Americans had a “favourable view of Pakistan”.

According to The Daily Times, “The scale of challenge is so great that almost everything will have to be built anew. Apart from bridges, rail tracks and roads, standing crops have been destroyed, posing a risk to food security in the days to come.” While the kharif crop is lost, there is little hope of the rabi crop also giving sufficient yield. Food shortages will have to be met through exports, which will not be easy in view of the uncomfortable position of Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves.

Relief work by Taliban?

The government claims that it is not allowing the Taliban and other jihadi elements to participate in relief and rehabilitation work, but this may be only for the consumption of the international community. These elements must be there in the flood-hit areas working under a different banner. They use natural disasters for image building in which they had succeeded considerably during the massive earthquake in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir a few years back.

The relief-related activities of people with questionable credentials have alerted the international donors to shed their initial reluctance and take more interest in ensuring that Pakistan gets enough donations for its rehabilitation programme. “The turning point came”, as Dawn (August 25) says, “with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s visit (to Pakistan). He described the disaster as the worst he had ever seen.”

Sectarian killings again

As if the difficulties caused by the floods were not enough, Karachi’s sectarian problem came into sharp focus once again with the killing of a son of a religious leader a few days back. The incident has led to the gunning down of a number of persons in the city having a major concentration of the migrants (Mohajir) from India.

As The Nation pointed out in a recent editorial, “The culprits are actually trying to create conditions for sectarian and ethnic strife to break out by targeting important religious personalities and members of certain ethnic communities.” The target killers are not bothered about even the sanctity of the fasting month of Ramzan.