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Victory in the Maldives New President has a tough task The Maldives has a new President, Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom, who led a coalition of parties to electoral victory in the presidential poll runoff. He comes to power at a time when his nation needs political stability, which will go a long way in ensuring economic development. The long and sometimes acrimonious election process has ended the political turmoil that followed the forced resignation of former President Mohamed Nasheed in 2012. The victor, after two months and six attempts at polls that suffered delays, annulments and obstruction, was the coalition that gave Yameen 51.60 per cent of the votes, as opposed to his primary opponent Nasheed's 48.61 per cent. Yameen's winning the election may have come as a surprise to opposition leaders and they have taken their defeat gracefully, but given their numbers, they are likely to provide a robust opposition in parliament.
Lahore,
Thursday, November 20, 1913
Relief
all over as Kayani is set to retire
When
size zero hit ‘Bharat Sarkar’
Assuming
responsibility without direction
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Victory in the Maldives The
Maldives has a new President, Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom, who led a coalition of parties to electoral victory in the presidential poll runoff. He comes to power at a time when his nation needs political stability, which will go a long way in ensuring economic development. The long and sometimes acrimonious election process has ended the political turmoil that followed the forced resignation of former President Mohamed Nasheed in 2012. The victor, after two months and six attempts at polls that suffered delays, annulments and obstruction, was the coalition that gave Yameen 51.60 per cent of the votes, as opposed to his primary opponent Nasheed's 48.61 per cent. Yameen's winning the election may have come as a surprise to opposition leaders and they have taken their defeat gracefully, but given their numbers, they are likely to provide a robust opposition in parliament. The new President is an economist. He has been a member of parliament for four terms and is also a businessman. Former Maldives President Abdul Gayoom, who ruled the archipelago for 30 years, is his half-brother. Gayoom is likely to cast a shadow over the regime, since the new Cabinet has drawn on his associates. The new Minister of Foreign Affairs is the former President's daughter, Dunya Maumoon, who had served as the State Minister for Foreign Affairs under former President Mohamed Waheed Hassan. Other Cabinet members too have served in Waheed's Cabinet. India, which has a special interest in the Maldives, will be relieved at the end of political uncertainty there. Business ties between the two nations took a hit after Hassan's government cancelled a $500 million airport project, signed in 2010, given to GMR Infrastructure during Nasheed's tenure. The case is under arbitration in Singapore and the new government is expected to resolve the issue. The External Affairs Ministry, too, would be well advised to inject fresh vigour into projects that have been on the backburner for some time. India's strategic interests demand that India continues to provide adequate assistance to the Maldives.
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Lahore,
Thursday, November 20, 1913 Glowing examples of help for the tyrannized and persecuted Indians in South Africa are coming in to show that the heart of humanity has begun to stir. A case has come to our notice of a large-hearted English missionary who brought in his savings of Pounds 300 and placed them at the disposal of the Honourable Mr Gokhale. As might be expected, Mr Gokhale declined to accept the amount, and was ultimately persuaded to accept a contribution of a thousand rupees. Such an example of whole-hearted philanthropy should serve as a fresh incentive to Indians. A wanton insult
The Principal of a School at Vancouver in Canada is stated to have ordered three Sikh students reading in the institution not to attend the School in turbans, and to wear hats on pain of admission being refused. The order betrays a gross ignorance of the sentiments and practices of the Sikh community which, in a part of the British Empire itself, is to say that least inexcusable. It constitutes a gratuitous and wanton insult to a brave and loyal community which the Imperial Government should not tolerate for one moment. The Kanya Mahavidyalaya, Jullunder
The disastrous effects of the recent bank failures have been widespread and many-sided, but perhaps in no direction have these been more baneful than in taking away or locking up the monies of the various educational and philanthropic institutions. One such is the excellent institution at Jullunder, the Kanya Mahavidyalya, whose claims to the support of the whole Province have been widely recognised. All the cash it had was involved in the failures leaving nothing to meet even the current expenses.
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Relief all over as Kayani is set to retire
PAKISTAN Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani's announcement to retire on November 29 was a lead story in his country's media. Some newspapers had bannered it. Opposition leader Syed Khurshid Shah welcomed the statement. In fact, there has been relief all over, including in India, that Kayani had announced his exit. This was primarily because Kayani was considered an ambitious General. Moreover, it was believed that there might be another coup because such had been the practice in the past. But, fortunately, Kayani has come out in the open on what his plans are. "I am grateful to the political leadership and the nation for reposing their trust in me and the Pakistan Army at this important juncture of our national history. However, I share the general opinion that institutions and traditions are stronger than individuals and must take precedence." The perception about Pakistan is that the Army can walk in whenever it likes. The coups first by Gen Mohammad Ayub, then by Gen Zia-ul-Haq and finally by Gen Parvez Musharraf have given the impression that although the Army goes back to the barracks, its influence does not wane. This is true as well because even Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who has said that the PM is the 'boss', has been careful not to lessen the pre-eminence of the army. Since the Prime Minister, after election through a democratic process, was thrown out by General Mushrraf, Nawaz Sharif is understandably respectful to the Army Chief. Both the PM and Kayani are reportedly discussing who should succeed Kayani, a job which in a democratic country is settled by the government. Most pictures I see in newspapers show Kayani by the side of Nawaz Sharif. Therefore, there was surprise as well as a sense of satisfaction when there was a cryptic press release from the Inter Services Public Relations that the Chief of Army Staff will retire on November 29, when his extended tenure ends. In fact, when Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gilani gave Kayani three years’ extension, there were rumours that Gilani had no choice as if the extension was at the point of gun. There was nothing like that. Gilani wanted a professional head to depoliticise the Army, something which Mushraff had not done during the eight and a half years that he stayed in power. Whether Kayani’s retirement in a regular manner is enough of evidence to infer that there would never be a coup in Pakistan is not easy to say. But chances will lessen as the days go by because the people have more and more vested interest in the election process. I find the leading politicians of different parties going on record as saying that the people would come on to the streets if ever the Army tries to take over. I wish it would be true. But my experience is different. When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto assumed power in the wake of the Bangladesh liberation war, he told me that “we have learnt from history” and that the Pakistanis would revolt and hit the streets to stop the tanks if they ever came out. This was proved wrong when Musharraf took over. The Pakistanis, like we Indians, want to rule themselves. But with almost a span of 50 years of military rule since the 66-year-old Independence, democracy has not taken roots in the country. The people are too afraid. Today the situation has worsened because the Army is the only force which has the wherewithal to fight the menace called Taliban. The challenge will become bigger when the Western forces leave Afghanistan next year. I am intrigued by more or less the farewell statement that Kayani has made. He has said: “It is important that the military leadership in future also continues to play its unreserved role for (the) strengthening of (the) democratic system in the country.” That Kayani made the statement on October 12 to coincide with the military coup in which the elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was thrown out is significant. He announced his retirement on October 6 but delayed the statement by six days. I do not know what message he was trying to convey. But Kayani's use of words like the military's "unreserved role" for the strengthening of the democratic system conveys it all. The "unreserved role" means that the military is expected to act in a manner which is not written in any Constitution, nor defined otherwise. The role is important to "strengthen (the) democratic system" but not spelled out. Kayani has been concentrating on Kashmir. He has removed the demand for plebiscite and forsaken Musharraf's proposal to make the borders of Jammu and Kashmir irrelevant. During Kayani's time the violations of the ceasefire have increased to as many as 100 in the last few weeks. Kayani's vague words remind me of what General Zia-ul-Haq told me during his dictatorial regime. General Zia-ul Haq argued that the Army had every right to intervene if the situation went bleak. I told him "you have come in whenever you wanted to do. Where did the worsening of the situation arise and where was the justification?" Kayani should know that the elected government has the final word. Most of Pakistan's problems are the doings of the military. The Taliban whom it is trying to eliminate in its own country is because of the military's thinking that the group fired by the ideology of jihad will come in handy to keep India on its toes. Today Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has become such a Frankenstein that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has promulgated an ordinance of special powers to confront the Taliban. Kayani's farewell advice to his successor, yet to be named, to back democracy is unsolicited and uncalled for. Kayani should realise that democracy is not a gift, definitely not from the armed forces. What he is saying from experience is that the Pakistanis are not prepared for another military rule. This has had a salutary effect of Mushraff's failure and people's loss of faith in military rule. It is a plus point for democracy in Pakistan.
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When size zero hit ‘Bharat Sarkar’ My pleasantly talkative driver was trying to answer all my queries about the mounds and ruins that came on the way, when suddenly, he brought the cab to a screeching halt! An old Ambassador with “Bharat Sarkar” written on its bulging white back in red was hit by a feather-weight scooty. Before the sturdy Ambassador, a property of the mighty “Sarkar”, the tiny scooty was like a fly, but it hit the car all the same. In this reversal of roles, the scooty came from a wrong side, hitting the righteous “Bharat Sarkar” vehicle. Added to this, the scooty driver, a young woman, had no helmet on her head and ditto was the pillion rider. The bang made the pillion rider fall and tumble a few times, stopping before a scooter that came to a screeching halt just before hitting her. She looked stupefied. Both girls looked so thin, they almost acquired indescribability. The Ambassador, driven by a “sarkari” driver with the Saheb ensconced on the back seat, proceeded on its forward journey without a scratch. The wrong-doers were left dazed and dry. The girl who was driving the scooty gathered herself quickly, but the pillion rider could not move. My driver stopped the car and went out to help. He tried to shake up the girl, who had collapsed. He lifted her like one lifts a baby and stopped a passing-by auto-rickshaw, made a few phone calls, which brought a policeman to the spot. Within 15 minutes, he was back on his driving seat after sending the girls to hospital with the policeman. He mumbled, “These modern girls don’t eat. Had this girl some weight on her body, she wouldn’t tumble like a weightless ball filled with air.” I was zapped by this new interpretation of gravity. “Even fat people meet fatal accidents, it’s just a chance that she tumbled," I countered. He showed compassion for my ignorance. “No no, if you fall you will not tumble on the road.” I felt obliged for this rare encouragement for gaining weight. “How could she faint by just a fall? A well-fed girl won't faint.” “Do you have a daughter of the same age?” I asked. “No, I have four sons and I dread getting a modern 'bahu' who would faint by the drop of a hat. All these Kareena Kapoors and Priyankas get paid to starve, and these foolish girls faint.” The next day, I was looking for a cab. He walked up to me. “Her life has been saved, but she has a head injury,” he said with concern. “Oh!” I had nothing to add. “I thought you must be worried about the girls,” he explained. I was meeting exciting people at the music festival I had gone to report and had almost forgotten the girls. They were nondescript. But not for the driver!
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Assuming responsibility without direction In his latest book India’s Military Conflicts and Diplomacy: An Inside View of Decision Making, former Army Chief General Ved Prakash Malik has shed fresh light on the internal workings of the government on matters relating to defence while recounting major incidents in India’s recent military history The
Indian armed forces, notably the Army, are among the world’s busiest and most experienced. From nation consolidation starting from the day the country was partitioned and accorded Independence by the British colonialists to post-Independence nation sustenance operations that have continued for the last 66 years, the Indian armed forces have participated in a wide range of military engagements, both internal and external. But then, nation sustenance operations too had started with the Army being pushed into internal security operations in tribal Nagaland during the mid-1950s. Since then, the Army has fought rebels, insurgents and separatists in most of the north eastern states that have included Manipur, Mizoram and Assam in addition to Nagaland, and terrorism in Punjab. For almost two-and-a-half decades now, the Army continues to fight Pakistan’s insidious low cost proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian armed forces have fought wars with China and Pakistan; been wrongfully pushed into fighting another country’s war in Sri Lanka; been deployed in 46 UN peace support operations; and been ordered to conduct controversial operations with grave consequences such as Operation Blue Star that involved storming the Golden Temple to evict an armed militia headed by a man who once enjoyed the patronage of some key members of the ruling political party (Congress) at the Centre . In almost all cases, India’s internal wars have been the result of, to put it mildly, political and administrative mismanagement for which both politicians and civil administrators have unfairly gone unaccounted. And yet it is the armed forces which have had to pay a price each time. For, hundreds of Army soldiers have lost their lives and limbs in numerous internal and external military engagements over the last 66 years. Such is the irony in the land of the Buddha and ahimsa that more soldiers have died in internal wars and insurgencies than in fighting foreign armies. In addition to these internal wars, the Army has been engaged in numerous other internal security duties and aid to civil power duties – all consequences of substandard governance – that have ranged from quelling communal riots to maintaining essential services such as water supply, telephone communications and civil air traffic control in the wake of strikes by government staff. Civil military disconnect But where do the armed forces stand in their own country? Recounting several recent events in the country’s contemporary military history starting with the Indian armed forces’controversial military engagement (Operation Pawan) in Sri Lanka from July 1987 to March 1990, General Malik has drawn from his first hand experiences to provide an inside view of some key military events and the lessons that are to be drawn from it. He has then gone on to most importantly analyse key issues afflicting India’s decision making mechanism all of which would be of interest to policy makers, defence analysts, political scientists, students of defence and security studies and the public at large. Sadly, but not surprisingly to any keen observer of Indian defence matters, the issues remain the same notwithstanding India’s long and intense post-Independence history of military engagements. The fundamental issue remains the same – a serious disconnect and dysfunction in civil-military relations, i.e. between the political executive and the armed forces and between the civilian bureaucracy and the armed forces. Referring to Jawaharlal Nehru’s well known disdain and distrust of the military and neglect of defence planning, General Malik points to how India has managed to develop a ‘unique system’ of bureaucratic control over the military through civilian bureaucrats in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) resulting in the steady erosion of involvement of the armed forces leadership in higher defence management and policy planning. General Malik refers to India’s foremost defence analyst (incidentally a former IAS officer), the late Krishnaswamy Subrahmanyam, who once summed up India’s civil-military structure as one where ‘politicians enjoy power without responsibility, bureaucrats wield power without any accountability, and the military assumes responsibility without any direction’. Flawed strategic culture Along with this is the issue of India’s strategic culture. General Malik points to strategic blunders that have had long standing consequences for the country’s defence – India approached the United Nations during the 1947-48 Kashmir war and agreed to a ceasefire without first evicting all Pakistanis from the state; misjudged the security threat from China’s military takeover of Tibet and then went on to lose the war with China because the assertive political positions were not backed by credible military strength,; returned the strategically important Haji Pir Pass to Pakistan after the 1965 war; returned 93,000 prisoners to Pakistan without an adequate quid pro quo; sent the armed forces into Sri Lanka and put them into harms way without sufficient deliberation, thought and objective only to make them fight against the very people who India had trained; dithered for 24 years before conducting nuclear tests in 1998, and launched a ten month long Operation Parakram in 2001 without a clear objective in the wake of attacks on the Indian Parliament by Pakistani trained terrorists. General Malik brings out how the armed forces were kept in the dark about two strategic issues – the May 1998 nuclear tests until just two days prior even though the armed forces are meant to be the user in the event of a nuclear war. Then again, the armed forces were unaware that India had manufactured chemical weapons until the MoD issued a press release announcing that it had destroyed its stock following the signing of the Chemical Weapons Convention. India’s questionable military industrial complex and lack of self reliance is all too evident with the defence research and development organisation (DRDO) remaining high on promise and low on delivery. He has subtly also pointed to problems within the armed forces, notably the Army, and occasions when military advice has not been sound. He recounts the ignorance in which he functioned while posted in the military operations directorate prior to the signing of the accord with Sri Lanka when General Krishnaswamy Sundarji was the Army chief. He quotes Jyotindra Nath Dixit, a former National Security Advisor and also foreign secretary, who in his book Assignment Colombo has revealed how General Sundarji overconfidently stated to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi that the LTTE would be dealt with in a matter of a few weeks in case the latter reneged from the accord with Sri Lanka. Incidentally, General Sundarji’s perceived overconfidence has been discussed in a book by General Vijay Kumar Singh, a recently retired Army Chief who has courted much controversy over his age row and his propensity to make controversial public statements. Systemic defects Yet, notwithstanding the flaws, General Malik also points to events where even the existing system has worked. One was Operation Cactus in 1988 wherein the armed forces were tasked at very short notice to fly into Maldives to quell a coup attempt. The operation was a resounding success. The second was during the Kargil war when near complete synergy was evident between the politicians, the bureaucrats and the services. Yet, two very important lessons that come out from these two operations is (a) the need for credible intelligence and (b) that capability cannot be bought with money or built overnight. The Kargil war exposed the lack of preparedness compelling General Malik, who was Army chief at that time, to ‘famously’ say that ‘if a war is thrust upon us we will fight with whatever we have’. The situation was not qualitatively better two-and-a-half years later when the Army was mobilised against Pakistan in December 2001 following the attack on parliament. Like most defence analysts and military officers, General Malik makes a serious case for the need to reform the higher defence management system. Reports prepared by successive committees headed by Arun Singh, K. Subrahmanyam, the Group of Ministers and Naresh Chandra have all pointed to serious flaws in defence management. Yet, these reports remain consigned to the shelf with few recommendations being implemented. Jaswant Singh, a former defence and external affairs minister, explains the problem somewhat bluntly in his book Defending India when he candidly states that the MoD has become the principal destroyer of the military’s morale; the sword arm of the state is being blunted by the state itself; and that all attempts to reform the system have floundered against ‘a rock of ossified thought’ due to deep mutual suspicions, inertia and antipathy. General Malik is replete with suggestions for reform and cites interesting examples from case studies ranging from the armed forces’ operations in Sri Lanka and the Maldives, the May 1998 nuclear tests, the 1999 Kargil war, UN operations in Sierra Leone and several instances of military diplomacy, which again is not being optimised or sufficiently understood by policy makers. The fact is that the Indian armed forces are full of heroics which compare the same if not superior to advanced militaries. Yet, their sacrifices and tales remain understated. How about a Bharat Ratna for the Indian soldier who spends his life paying for the mistakes of the very politicians and administrators who are entrusted with good governance and yet fade away anonymous, unsung and taken for granted. Incredibly, the responsibility for India’s
defence, including preparation for defence by the three services, has been vested in the defence secretary, a civilian bureaucrat from the Indian Administrative Service who is posted usually close to retirement and who may never have previously served in the defence ministry. During the Kargil War, the then defence secretary was ignorance personified when he asked General Malik how the Army could be complaining of weapon shortage when he had seen stacks of rifles during a recent visit to an ordnance factory in
Jabalpur. His question reflected the pathetic lack of understanding of how wars are fought. In
1998, the pettiness of the bureaucracy came to fore when they refused to treat military officers posted on an assignment of strategic importance to Tajikistan as a foreign posting. The matter was resolved after it was raised with the external affairs minister, who incidentally was a former defence officer.
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The Army’s nation consolidation operations that lasted for the first 14 years after India attained Independence started with handling communal violence of horrific proportions the moment the country was partitioned on 14th August 1947. Three months later, a truncated post-Independence Indian Army was pushed into fighting a tribal invasion backed by the Pakistani Army in Jammu and Kashmir (1947-48). Alongwith, the Army was entrusted with force posturing against the Nawab of Junagadh (1947) and a ‘police action’ against the Nawab of Hyderabad (1948) after both the nawabs refused to join the dominion of India. The nation consolidation phase ended in 1961 with the armed forces evicting Portuguese colonisers from Goa following a brief military action.