The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Sowing diversification
Serious money, planning needed

Diversification of agriculture in Punjab has been receiving lip service for the past nearly two decades. All this while, the minimum support price (MSP) for paddy kept rising, and new tubewells kept getting installed and sunk deeper. It is, however, only now that all three parties involved — the state and Central governments and the farmer — seem to agree that diversification has to move beyond academic discussion. Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has announced a few measures to promote alternatives such as agro-forestry and animal husbandry. If this was a demonstration of intent, it is good. On October 4, a Central team is visiting Punjab to discuss this and other agriculture-related issues. A momentum seems to be building in the right direction; it is the responsibility of the state and its farmers not to let it flag.

All that has been said or done thus far can only be seen as talk. The shift from high-paying paddy to alternatives — no one is yet sure what those should be — is not about just motivating the farmer. He needs to be presented options that are equally paying, doable and reliable. Farmers are a conservative community, and not open to much experiment. Many of them can’t afford to lose even a single crop. Alternatives won’t be easy to decide. Some like pulses just don’t pay enough, and those like dairying can’t be practised at the scale required to replace paddy. Any system based on subsidies would not be sustainable. It could possibly be a combination of various crops, including vegetables, but worked out just right so the farmer does not burn his fingers. In case that happens, an opportunity would have been lost for a long time.

It is thus not a matter to be settled in a hurry with quick meetings. The Centre will have to invest a serious amount of money, for this would be no less than a second Green Revolution — from research to dissemination of new practices. The state government will have to step in with a marketing set-up, promotion of agro-industry, education of farmer, and, most importantly, avoid the temptation of making it a ‘Centre versus state’ issue. Farmer and food are the concern.

Facing consequences
Protesters pay for damaging property

ALL too often a grouse nursed by a group of people becomes an excuse to damage public property. Political workers as well as other groups of people target whatever comes in their way as they go on the rampage. This happens with distressing frequency in various states, be it Maharashtra, Haryana, West Bengal or Kerala. More often than not, the miscreants manage to avoid facing the consequences of their actions.

In one such case in Punjab, more than 15 buses, four coaches of trains and some public property were damaged in Moga district in a protest. The police arrested 35 persons, all followers of a particular sect, under various provisions of the law, including Sections 307, 427, 436, 124-A, 186 and 149 of the IPC and Sections 25, 27, 54 and 59 of the Arms Act. Now, 34 of them have been held guilty of damaging public property and rioting by the district and sessions court of Moga. Such action by the criminal justice system sends out a really strong message that such behaviour is unacceptable. The conviction will surely have a deterrent effect on others who may want to vent their rage on public property. Causing destruction to public property is an anti-national act and should be treated as such. Often cases filed by the police after such acts of violence are eventually withdrawn due to political pressure. However, in recent years, courts have taken a tough stand and this has shown results.

Vandalism by the public is not tolerated anywhere. We only have to look at the firmness with which the British authorities have handed out prison sentences to the 1,292 persons convicted of the 2011 riots that shook Great Britain, and that too within a year of the riots. The Indian criminal justice system too needs to make it clear that it is the public’s duty to ensure that public property is safe, even during protests and demonstrations when emotions run high.

Thought for the Day

It’s a recession when your neighbour loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose your own.

— Harry S. Truman

ARTICLE

New alignments in South Asia
Pakistan and Russia edge closer
by Harsh V. Pant

IN an attempt to refashion Russian South Asia policy and to showcase a new proactive stance in global politics, Russian President Vladimir Putin will be visiting Pakistan in early October. This will be the first visit of a Russian President to Pakistan, ever, and as such will be loaded with significance. Putin will also participate in a quadrilateral meeting on Afghanistan with leaders of Tajikistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

As the NATO forces prepare to leave Afghanistan, new alignments of regional powers are emerging. Pakistan-Russia ties are also taking a new turn and this holds great significance for India and the South Asian region.

Pakistani efforts to improve their relationship with Russia in the wake of the deterioration in relations between Pakistan and the US have been evident for some time. Islamabad finds itself with few friends across the globe. Even China has been circumspect in what it can offer to its ‘all weather friend.’ Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari visited Russia in May and the nation’s Army Chief, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, will be in Russia this month.

Pakistan hopes Russia will start selling it more substantial defence equipment as well. Both countries are also trying to increase their presence in Central Asia. Russia wants stability in its Central Asian periphery and Pakistan remains critical in managing the region. Moscow’s outreach to Islamabad is an attempt to get a handle on this regional dynamic. The Russian President’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov’s visit to Pakistan earlier this year in June laid the groundwork for Putin’s visit.

Russia has taken note of Indian foreign policy’s changing priorities and also the recent downturn in US-Pakistan ties. The US-India rapprochement has been problematic for Russia. As India moves away from Russia, especially as its dependence for defence equipment decreases, Moscow is also looking for alternatives. Moscow also recognises the importance of Pakistan in restoring stability to a post-2014 Afghanistan and the larger Central Asian region. So there are various factors at work here in this outreach.

It was Putin who had publicly endorsed Pakistan’s bid to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and had offered Russian help in managing Pakistan’s energy infrastructure. He went on to suggest that Russia views Pakistan as a reliable and very important partner. Russia’s Gazprom wants to invest in the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline. Meanwhile, though Russia has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the externalities from the US-India civilian nuclear energy cooperation pact, there have been rumblings in Moscow regarding the manner in which the Kudankulam project has been handled so far by NewDelhi.

After deciding to ignore Pakistan for decades in its arms sales matrix, Moscow has now decided to gradually start weapons sales to Pakistan. Russia is the world’s second largest arms exporter with a 24% share of the global arms trade, surpassed only by the United States, which controls almost 30% of the global arms market. India continues to account for over 50% of Russian arms sales but New Delhi has diversified its suppliers.

As arms market becomes a difficult place for Russia to navigate with China deciding to produce its own weapons rather than procuring them from Russia, Moscow needs new buyers. India’s move away from Russia has been gradual but significant. The MMRCA deal was as big a setback to Russia as it was to the US. Defence sales to Pakistan can open up a potentially new and open-ended market for Russia as the appetite in Washington to sustain Pakistan’s military-industrial relations declines dramatically. The defence cooperation as envisaged by the two sides may involve joint military exercises, exchange of personnel and defence sales.

But there are clear limits here. Moscow can never substitute Washington in so far as aid and defence dependence of Pakistan is concerned. It is severely constrained in what it can do and Pakistan’s needs are huge. It is unlikely that Russia will emerge as a major benefactor. But Pakistan wants to show the US that it has other options.

Moscow had always in the past been critical of the Pakistan military establishment’s propensity to use extremist groups to further the nation’s strategic ends. And it remains worried about this tendency, so the pressure of Pakistan will continue to be there. The Russian establishment also feels strongly about the possibility of nuclear technology falling into the hands of extremists in Pakistan and has been very vocal about this threat.

Moscow will also be cautious in sharing its defence technology with Pakistan as it would not like to alienate India, one of its largest markets for defence equipment, even further. Russia deals with India on a number of levels, including BRICS, and that partnership could be in jeopardy if Pakistan becomes a major priority for Moscow.

India will be looking at this development with great interest but something big will have to come out of these meetings for New Delhi to be worried. India’s ties with Russia are historic, wide ranging and well institutionalised. Russia will do its best to assuage Indian concerns and New Delhi should largely be satisfied with it. It depends on the future trajectory of Russia-Pakistan ties as to how it will ultimately impinge on Indian interests. The US-China-Pakistan ‘axis’ was India’s biggest headache during the Cold War years. Unless managed carefully, a Russia-China-Pakistan ‘axis’ may emerge as an even bigger one in the coming years.

The writer teaches at King’s College, London

MIDDLE

Thank you, uncle ji
by V.S. Chaudhri

THE word uncle is meant to denote a father’s brother or a mother’s brother but it is commonly used for both as well as for any elderly person, even a stranger. When prefixed to the word judge, it makes an interesting combination of uncle-judge.

An elderly lady can be addressed as an auntie; even a spinster can be called an auntie! The word cousin has nothing to do with gender. A male or a female both can be your cousin. A boy-friend or a girl-friend is often introduced as a cousin.

After retirement, I settled at a place which was neither my native place nor a place where I had an opportunity to be posted in my service career. I was a complete stranger here. People in the locality got curious to know my past. They would address me as ‘sir’ or ‘janab’ but with the passage of time they started addressing me as ‘uncle ji’. By and by, not only the neighbours and acquaintances but the sweeper, maid-servant, the milk-man, the barber, the grocer, all now call me “uncle ji”. I have now become accustomed to it. My wife sometime makes a nagging face when any middle-aged person addresses her as auntie but she reconciles when I tell her that if I was uncle to somebody she was legitimately his or her auntie.

The other day I found my telephone bell ringing and when I lifted the receiver a sweet voice enquired, “Am I speaking to so and so?” When I said yes, the lady at the other end started as if she was delivering a recorded message: “Uncle ji, I am from such and such insurance co. I am proud to inform you that your name has been selected by our system for a product which has been specially designed for you. If you pay Rs 1 lakh now you will get back five lakh after ten years plus the benefit of full insurance cover during this period. Uncle ji, if anything goes wrong to you during this period, your heirs will get this amount without any deduction.” She would go on non-stop to prove her ‘binomial’, using the words “uncle ji” at least twice in one sentence.

When she finished her floppy-like recitation, she would suddenly wake up and ask, “By the way, uncle ji what is your age?”

Now it was my turn. I would say, young lady if I told you my age, you would drop the receiver and I would be deprived of the pleasure of listening to your sweet voice. She would feel flattered and say, “no, no uncle ji”. I would then say that I am 75+ and not eligible for any of your smart product. She would immediately return to her subject and say, “Uncle ji, I have another scheme for you.”

Before she would start a new story, I would interrupt her and say, “Sorry dear, I am not interested in any of your schemes and here is a piece of advice for you, free of cost, for the time you have wasted on me. Never address a customer as “uncle ji” on your first encounter with him. Always address him as sir. Make it a rule of business”.

Before I finish my sermon, the lady at the other end would say, “Thank you, UNCLE ji” and slam the telephone receiver.

OPED — WORLD

The last stand of a notorious army
The militant wing of the Somali Council of Islamic Courts that took over most of southern Somalia in 2006 (al-Shabaab) suffered military reversals recently, but it is too soon to say that the fighters have been wiped out
Daniel Howden

An internally displaced woman waits for food aid at a centre in Ubeyd camp in Mogadishu. Reuters photo

Abdirahim Sheikh joined al-Shabaab after they visited him on his farm in southern Somalia to tell him that “foreign invaders” were abusing the Islamic militia were unimaginably tough. There was frequent bloody action on the front line and little or no care for the wounded who died in large numbers. But his morale only started to drop when he heard that fellow jihadists had killed worshippers at a mosque.

“If someone who is praying in a mosque can be killed then al-Shabaab are the infidels,” said the 30-year-old. Standing in Mogadishu’s ruined stadium, which the militia used as a training base during their long battle for the Somali capital, the farmer has switched sides and joined the war against them. He decided to defect, he said, after seeing a friend executed in front of him. The man was accused of planning to defect and the commander slit his throat as a warning to the others. That warning backfired. “After that the defections became a flood,” said Abdirahim.

Losing the battle

It is just over a year since al-Shabaab abandoned the crumbling sports ground and the rest of the city, leaving behind them the huge rusted metal plates speckled with shrapnel where their gunners practised piercing the armour of the African Union forces. The bowels of the stadium are now occupied by their former foes and a handful of al-Shabaab defectors who fled across the lines of a battle that the Islamic extremists appear to be losing.

The retreat that began at the height of the Horn of Africa famine in August last year has now reached the militants’ once unassailable stronghold of Kismayo. The militant fighters last week trekked out of the historic port of Marka to the south of the capital. African Union forces have this year seized control of strategic towns like Afgoye outside the capital and Afmadow in the south. Now, the Islamists’ commanders are reported to have left Kismayo, with residents in the port city seeing the militants withdraw their heavy weapons and larger trucks this week.

Biding their time

The series of reverses has led some observers to question whether a military defeat of Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen is now within reach. Abdirashid Hashi a Somalia analyst with the International Crisis Group (ICG) said that he expects Kismayo to be recaptured but that the war will continue in another guise. “Al Shabaab has been deserting or retreating from towns and cities since last year. But their ideology and many of their fighters are still there,” he said.

“They are wounded and their strategy will now be to bide their time in the countryside and wait for the foreign forces to leave. They believe that time is on their side and they can fight a guerrilla war.” It is only six years since Ethiopian forces swept into Somalia with the political and military backing of the United States to topple the Islamic Courts Union, an Islamist movement which had taken control much of south and central Somalia after years of disastrous feuding between warlords.

Ethiopia’s vastly better-equipped forces quickly routed the youth militias loyal to the courts with hundreds killed or driven from the cities.

However, the Ethiopian intervention bolstered nationalist support for the courts’ military wing helping to create al-Shabaab in its current form.

Within a year the occupiers wearied of the guerrilla war and withdrew.

African Union

Now the foreign forces — comprising troops from Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti and Sierra Leone, as well as Kenyans in the south — have some legitimacy under the umbrella of the African Union. After costly early mistakes, the AU force in the capital has restored some semblance of order enabling a freshly assembled parliament to elect a new president last month. The government of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, the surprise winner among the MPs, has UN backing but also, crucially, some support among Somalis themselves who were largely contemptuous of his predecessors in the corrupt and squabbling Transitional Federal Government — an administration that a UN report uncovered was stealing 7 out of every 10 dollars it received in aid. The relative security in Mogadishu has seen people and money pour in from the Somali diaspora. Something of a revival is clearly underway.

But there is mounting concern that a botched operation to recapture Kismayo could undermine support for the new government and for the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom). Thousands of residents have streamed out of the port city in recent days as Kenya’s navy has rained indiscriminate shellfire on the city.

“They are shelling everyone, everywhere,” a Kismayo resident told The Independent by telephone from the besieged city. “The people are now understanding that the Kenyans have no plans to save the people.” Kenya’s land forces, operating under the banner of Amisom, have advanced to within 40 kilometres of the city. They have so far ignored appeals to establish a humanitarian corridor. Witnesses in nearby villages said the troops are firing on “anything that moves in front of them”.

Power struggle imminent

An equal or greater threat to southern Somalia may come from an imminent power struggle for the port city between competing clans. Similar struggles between Somalia’s complex of clans and sub-clans were largely responsible for 20 years of civil war that followed the collapse of the last central government in 1991.

Al-Shabaab proved adept at managing the clan system in cosmopolitan Kismayo.

In recent days they have allowed hundreds of lightly armed fighters from the Hawiye clan to move into the city. A warlord from the rival Marihan clan, Barre Hiiraale, is reported to be bringing his fighters to the city with the backing of Ethiopia. Meanwhile, the Kenyan advance from the south has been achieved with the backing of the Ras Kamboni militia from another rival clan, the Ogadeni.

The convergence of forces could see a three-way fight between proxies of Ethiopia, Kenya and al-Shabaab, an outcome that could restore some nationalist support for the Islamic militants after a year at bay. — The Independent

What is al-shabaab?

THE Harakat Shabaab al-Mujahidin (al-Shabaab)—also known as al-Shabaab, Shabaab, the Youth, Mujahidin al-Shabaab Movement, Mujahideen Youth Movement, Mujahidin Youth Movement, and other names and variations—was the militant wing of the Somali Council of Islamic Courts that took over most of southern Somalia in the second half of 2006.

Although the Somali government and Ethiopian forces defeated the group in a two-week war between December 2006 and January 2007, al-Shabaab—a clan-based insurgent and terrorist group—has continued its violent insurgency in southern and central Somalia.

The group has exerted temporary and, at times, sustained control over strategic locations in southern and central Somalia by recruiting, sometimes forcibly, regional sub-clans and their militias, using guerrilla asymmetrical warfare and terrorist tactics against the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia and its allies, African Union peacekeepers, and nongovernmental aid organizations.

Al-Shabaab is not centralised or monolithic in its agenda or goals. Its rank-and-file members come from disparate clans, and the group is susceptible to clan politics, internal divisions, and shifting alliances. While most of its fighters are predominantly interested in the nationalistic battle against the TFG and not supportive of global jihad, al-Shabaab’s senior leadership is affiliated with al-Qa‘ida, and certain extremists aligned with al-Shabaab are believed to have trained and fought in Afghanistan.

Al-Shabaab has issued statements praising Usama Bin Ladin and linking Somalia to al-Qa‘ida’s global operations. The group has claimed responsibility for many bombings—including various types of suicide attacks—in Mogadishu and in central and northern Somalia, typically targeting Somali Government officials and perceived allies of the TFG. Al-Shabaab was likely responsible for a wave of five coordinated suicide car bombings in October 2008 that simultaneously hit targets in two cities in northern Somalia, killing at least 26 people, including five bombers, and injuring 29 others.

Al-Shabaab has also been accused by Ugandan officials of conducting the twin suicide bombings in Kampala, Uganda, on 11 July 2010 that killed more than 70 people. Al-Shabaab’s leaders also have ordered their fighters—which include Americans and other Westerners—to attack African Union peace-keeping troops based in Mogadishu.

Al-Shabaab is responsible for the assassination of Somali peace activists, international aid workers, numerous civil society figures, and journalists. The group gained additional notoriety by blocking the delivery of aid from some Western relief agencies during a 2011 famine that has killed tens of thousands and still threatens millions of Somalis.

The US Government designated al-Shabaab as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation on 29 February 2008, under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (as amended) and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Section 1(b) of Executive Order 13224 (as amended).

Source: National Counterterrorism Center, Washington.