[sacw] SACW #1 | 18 March 03

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire #1 |  18 March,  2003


#1. The Vagina Monologues takes message to Pakistan (Victoria Burnett)
#2. The gallant woman (Navid Shahzad)
#3. Announcing A Writing Contest:  Women's Voices In War Zones
#4. War for hegemony, not justice - Stand up for peace! (Praful Bidwai)
#5. One Million, One Opinion (Kamal Mitra Chenoy)
#6. To have any meaning, the UN must limit the absolutism of the US 
(Partha Chatterjee)
#7. Citizens and Denizens: Ethnicity, Homelands, and the Crisis of
Displacement in Northeast India (Sanjib Baruah)
#8. By the Rivers of Babylon (Vijay Prashad)
#9. M.N.Roy  Memorial Lecture : 2003
The Crescent in Crisis -  After September 11 (21st March, 2003, New Delhi)

-----------------------------------

#1.

The Globe and Mail
Monday, March 17, 2003 - Page A11

The Vagina Monologues takes message to Pakistan

By VICTORIA BURNETT

ISLAMABAD -- From Manhattan to Mexico City, it has raised eyebrows 
and challenged perceptions of a part of the female anatomy that in 
most societies remains taboo. But The Vagina Monologues opened a new 
frontier over the weekend in its mission to spread its message of 
sexual liberation and women's rights.

In a discreet hotel conference room in the Pakistani capital, an 
audience wept, gasped and screamed with laughter as a cast of eight 
women, clad in scarlet saris, salwar kameez (loose shirts and baggy 
pants) and red-painted toenails, performed Eve Ensler's award-winning 
play.

"I cried like mad," said Sheherbano Burki, a management consultant in 
Islamabad who was seeing the play for the first time. "It was very 
emotionally exhausting."

The play, which explores the issues of sexuality, repression and rape 
through a series of explicit monologues that are touching, funny and 
sickening by turn, would be deemed risqu=E9 in almost any society. But 
in a country where a deep-rooted tribal culture and strict 
interpretation of Islam means limited liberties for most women, the 
play breaks every taboo in the book.

The majority of Pakistani women do not show the tops of their heads 
in public, let alone discuss what is underneath their loose-fitting 
clothes.

"In Pakistan, the flesh of your arm is a controversial place," said 
Nadia Jamil, a well-known actress from the ancient Mogul city of 
Lahore, who volunteered to perform. "Vaginas are a place [that] you 
just don't go there."

Ms. Jamil and the other cast members, including Ms. Ensler, were 
brought together by Nighat Risvi, co-founder of AMAL, a local 
non-governmental organization that promotes human development. The 
audience of 150 was by invitation only -- it was considered too risky 
to open the performance to the general public -- and mostly female, 
with the exception of a few male relatives. Hotel security guards 
hovered outside the door.

The performance formed part of a circuit of events sponsored by 
V-Day, an organization Ms. Ensler set up as an offshoot of the play. 
The non-profit group donates funds to organizations that work to stop 
violence against women and girls. Hibaaq Osman, a Somali Muslim who 
is the special representative for V-Day, said she had been keen to 
put on the play in an Islamic country.

"I know if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere," said Ms. 
Osman, who rechristened the Pakistani capital "Vaginabad."

"Having these Pakistani women talking about vibrators -- that's what 
it's all about."

It wasn't just the shock factor that lent the Pakistani performance 
of the famous play its intensity. The play's darker monologues -- 
that of an abused child, of a Serbian woman who is raped by a group 
of soldiers, or of an Afghan woman whose world is reduced to a living 
death under her burqa -- have a keen resonance in a country where the 
concept of rape is tenuous and so-called honour killings claim 
hundreds of lives every year. Honour killings are intended to punish 
behaviour deemed to be immoral, such as extramarital sex.

Given women's treatment in Pakistani society, the performance itself 
was an audacious one, Ms. Ensler said.

"The fact that women were prepared to get up this evening and do this 
was so brave and so profound. It's about breaking down walls," she 
said. "It was very difficult doing this in the U.S. at first. It 
wasn't like 'Yeah! The vaginas are here!' There is no place in the 
world where there aren't walls to be broken down."

While the audience was enrapt, the performers recognized that the 
play was not to everybody's taste. Bilquis Tahira, an activist and 
cast member, said one friend told her it was "vulgar."

______


#2.


The Daily Times, March 18, 2003

The gallant woman

Navid Shahzad

They lay wreaths at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. They award 
Nishans, crosses and medals for gallantry which bristle on manly, 
uniformed chests at ceremonial occasions. National heroism is 
eulogised in song, poem and narrative. The men who fell in wars 
instigated, fought, lost and won by them are idolised. The women who 
kept the factories going, who lit the hearths and fed the children, 
who tended the cattle and seeded the land, who waited for their men 
to return and went back to the drudgery of jobs when they did not, 
are the ones that their nations forgot. The eighth of March each year 
marks a very special day ostensibly to celebrate womanhood.
In keeping with the spirit of the day and because we love slogans so 
much, 2003 has been designated as the Madr-e Millat year. Post-March, 
most of our time will be taken up with doing little more than paying 
lip service to a remarkable woman. Functions and seminars apart, 
things will go their merry way with women shouldering 
responsibilities, working in non-conducive environments, bringing up 
families and ageing before they have bloomed.
These, the women of Pakistan are the unsung heroines of a system 
which treats them shamelessly as a burden, grants them constitutional 
status and fails to implement an iota of what is their right, kills, 
maims and mistreats and finally abandons them. The eighth of March 
therefore holds a special significance because it re-emphasises the 
cruel inequality that exists between its citizens on the slender 
basis of gender.
As a shy, ugly teenager growing up in a household of handsome boys, 
one was constantly bypassed by people other than my parents. Constant 
and cruel comparisons with my mother who was a beauty and my dashing 
elder brother served only to pulverise me into a state of introverted 
isolation until I had garrisoned myself against true friend and 
perceived foe alike. My closest companions were the children who 
lived in the servants' quarters.
Jeena and Parveen, both sisters and barely older than myself were 
married at the ripe old age of fourteen in a double wedding. Slender 
and in Parveen's case, positively pretty, they were barely 
recognisable the next time they came to visit. Jeena was enormously 
pregnant with her first child and Parveen's amber eyes were 
constantly tear-filled. She had failed to conceive after a whole year 
and her husband was contemplating a second wife. We moved house and I 
never saw them again but even if we had run into each other I doubt 
if I would have recognised them. The spirit that had until recently 
played at hop scotch, peethu garam and kolra chappaki had gone, 
replaced by a heavy weightiness that bound them to a back-breaking 
cycle of smoky stoves, dirty clothes, animal waste, and periodic 
abuse. They had travelled a distance in less than a year that would 
never be bridged and we met as strangers.
Ironically, women have been victimised as much by men as they have 
been by their own sex and both, the urban and rural woman finds 
herself at a disadvantage. In addition to the endemic indifference of 
men towards their spouses, the proverbial cruelty and insensitivity 
of the mother-in-law makes good copy wherever it is discussed. With 
the appearance of younger mothers-in-law on the scene, a healthier 
change in attitudes appears to be in the offing. But when 
insensitivity is expressed by educated women, it is entirely 
unforgivable. The utter crassness with which a socialite sniffed 
disapproval at working women being granted six weeks maternity leave 
before and six weeks after confinement was more reprehensible since 
it came from an otherwise sensible person. Not having worked a single 
day in her life, the attitude served only to illustrate the utter and 
complete isolation of privileged women from the vast majority. The 
latter are destined to be jostled in buses on their way to work, 
pinched in bazaars, harassed by bullying husbands and still expected 
to be home in time to cook hot chappatis for the family meal. No 
swishing to work in large air-conditioned cars for them, only the 
ferocity of the relentless summer sun as it steams up dusty bus stops 
and rickshaw stands.
With an alcoholic husband who beats her with as much regularity as 
the local muezzin's call to prayer, Zubeda is a teacher in one of the 
more prestigious public-sector schools. Her weekends are spent 
washing the entire family's personal clothing as well as the bed 
linen. With four sons and an ailing, ageing mother-in-law she has no 
one to share the burden of housework with. Reprimanded twice this 
week for coming late by an eagle-eyed Headmistress, she is on 
probation for late submission of students' assignments. Her workday 
averages 14 hours of mental and physical labour. In this respect, 
life has changed little for the majority of women in Pakistan.
Despite the fact that a new, more confident, financially more 
empowered female has emerged in recent years, women remain on the 
fringe of development activity. If men had to fetch water, 
accessibility to water sources would have seen dramatic development. 
If men had to cook, the standards of stove safety would have been 
greatly ensured. If men had to do the laundry, the local washing 
machine would have been better priced. As it stands, women's work is 
still considered non-economic activity since it confines itself 
largely to within the home.
And yet, remarkable creatures that they are, they continue to live 
out each day with a modicum of dignity which is an obvious by-product 
born of stoicism and enormous reserves of strength. Their resilience 
in the face of enormous difficulties stands testimony to that. Why 
after all is it that men should find it so much easier to cut and run 
when faced with heavy odds? Not so the women. Tahira's husband 
abandoned her after she gave birth to twins suffering from Down's 
Syndrome. The boys are now in their late 20s and she has worked as a 
secretary to provide for them. It helped that she knew typing and 
shorthand in an age when computers were an unknown commodity in the 
country. The church and the community were equally supportive in 
helping with babysitting while she was at work. The husband has 
lately made overtures for reconciliation after having heard about 
Tahira's Provident Fund benefits.
These are not isolated stories picked up for effect. These women are 
as real as the men who fight for the country; only their battles are 
fought with the rising of each sun. They take their defeats and routs 
to bed every night only to rise fresh-faced next morning and face a 
new day's trials. It is fortunate that some excellent documentation 
is now available courtesy the fine work of Aurat Foundation and 
Shirkat Gah, while economic activity has received a tremendous boost 
from organisations such as Mrs. Karamat's Behbood.
Given the entrepreneurial skills of women, boutiques, beauty parlours 
and catering have mushroomed in the informal sector while banking, 
law and business management have begun to supplement the primary 
areas of women's activity, i.e. education and medicine. While Aurat 
=46oundation prepares a comprehensive introductory programme for the 
recently elected Union Counsellors and ASR works towards the 
education of women, the Government of the Punjab carries on blithely 
with its patriarchal leanings. Far be it for Punjab to take a leaf 
out of Sindh's book in appointing a woman secretary of culture, we 
wait for the next pronouncement of the young education minister with 
baited breath. Refreshing as some of his ideas are, we would 
(perversely) know why men are not banned as chief guests at women's 
institutes? If the sight of young women dancing as part of a school 
presentation injures male sensibilities we would rather not have them 
present. It is tragic that the energy of the State should focus on 
trivia rather than the essentials of good governance. One of the 
basic tenets of which is egalitarianism.
The writer is currently the consultant for the upcoming Beacon House 
National University, Lahore. Her e-mail address is: 
navidshahzad@hotmail.com

______


#3.

ANNOUNCING A WRITING CONTEST:  WOMEN'S VOICES IN WAR ZONES

Since Sept. 11, 2001 there has been constant public reference to 
 concepts of terror, war, and security, but little debate about their 
meaning, which differs from place to place and person to person.  And 
the voices of women and girls, both within the US and in the rest of 
the world, have been conspicuously absent from the discussion.

To bring forward women's ideas on this subject, and enable them to be 
heard in the public arena, Women's WORLD, a global free speech 
network of feminist writers,  is initiating a writing contest which 
will be co-sponsored by the The Nation Institute, whose mission is to 
defend freedom of expression and strengthen the independent media. 
The subject is Women's Voices in War Zones.  

Eligibility:  All women are welcome to participate; age and 
citizenship are no barrier.  We are particularly interested in seeing 
work from writers, activists, students, and immigrants or refugees. 
 Rules:  Submissions must be previously unpublished personal essays 
of 1000 words or less, in English, that address one or more of the 
following questions:

What does the term "war zone"  mean to you?  Do you live in a war 
zone or state of terror?  Is it personal or public?  Who is or are 
the aggressors?  How do you resist?  What keeps you going?  Where 
does your hope or security lie?  How do you imagine bringing this 
 terror to an end?  Does your government or society or family provide 
you with security or is it a source of  your unease?

We will read only one entry per person.

All entries must also include either a one page vita with contact 
information, or a short biographical statement with the writer's full 
name and contact information: mailing address, phone or fax numbers, 
and email address.

Submissions can be sent by email to the following address: ratna 
@wworld.org; or by fax or post to Women' WORLD, 208 w. 30th St., 
#901, New York NY 10001.  fax 212-947-2973.  Email submissions are 
preferred.  Deadline:  Submissions must be received by 5 p.m (Eastern 
Standard Time) on May 1, 2003.   Winners will be announced in early 
June.

Prizes:  Prizes will be given to women in three categories: 1) 
residents of the US; 2) residents of other countries; 3) immigrants 
or refugees in any country. There will be three first prizes of $250, 
and three second prizes of $100.  Winning essays will be published on 
the The Nation website and the websites of Women's WORLD and its 
affiliates; announced to the press; and circulated to global email 
lists. Copyright:  By sending us an essay, contestants automatically 
give Women's WORLD the right to publish it in any form and to license 
others to do so, whether or not the essay wins a prize. Judges:  The 
judges will be a diverse panel of three established writers.

--Meredith Tax, President
Women's WORLD
208 W. 30th St., #901New York NY 10001
Tel. 212-947-2915
=46ax: 212-947-2973
Email: wworld@igc.org or meredith.tax@verizon.net
http://www.wworld.org

______


#4.

The Daily  Star
March 18, 2003

War for hegemony, not justice
Stand up for peace!
Praful Bidwai, writes from New Delhi

LAST month, the Blair government flagrantly plagiarised a journal 
article and claimed the information in it was based on British 
intelligence and proved Iraq's involvement in global "terrorism". The 
intention was to damn Iraq-- and justify war.

Now, it transpires that Anglo-American allegations about Iraq's 
attempts to buy uranium from Niger are also based on crude forgery, 
according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

IAEA chief Mohammed El-Baradei has also confirmed that there's no 
evidence Iraq has been pursuing illegal nuclear activities. He 
examined the aluminium tubes, which the Americans allege, amidst much 
a hullabaloo, were used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. He 
found no such "indications".

Thus, some of the critical "evidence" cited for claiming that Iraq 
has weapons of mass destruction (WMD) remains unsupported even after 
inspections at more than 3,000 sites.

After UNMOVIC chief Hans Blix reported that a "pro-active" Iraq has 
undertaken a "substantial measure of disarmament", it's impossible to 
construct a plausible case for war. As Mr Blix put it: "We are not 
watching the destruction of toothpicks. Lethal weapons are being 
destroyed."

Yet, it is on this flimsy factual basis that the US is rushing into 
war. Nearly 300,000 US and British troops are in the Gulf. If 
Washington and London cannot muster the required nine votes (out of 
15) for the "second resolution", they may bypass the Security Council 
and launch war any time.

The moral case for war on Iraq is non-existent. According to Just War 
theory, any use of force must follow the exhaustion of all other 
means. War's goals must be just. Force must not be excessive nor 
indiscriminate.

None of these conditions is fulfilled in Iraq's case. What lacks a 
casus belli (rationale for war) cannot be a war for justice. It can 
only be a war to establish hegemony.

How does Mr George Bush rationalise war? First, he wanted to disarm 
Iraq of WMD. Next, he said Mr Saddam Hussein is a tyrant; hence, 
"regime change" is imperative. Now he declares: "I will not leave the 
American people at the mercy of the Iraqi dictator ... if we need to 
act, we will act. And we really don't need ... UN approval to do 
so..."

Mr Bush rants: "My job is to protect America, and that's exactly what 
I'm going to do... I put my hand on the Bible and took that oath, and 
that's exactly what I am going to do..." He cited 9/11 eight times in 
his press conference.

This is perverse. For one, there's no link whatever between Iraq and 
9/11. For another, Mr Bush's three rationales are mutually 
contradictory. And for a third, it's preposterous to claim that Iraq 
"threatens" America and it cannot be deterred except by war.

Nobody sane can believe that a badly impoverished, sanctions-battered 
Iraq with its crude first-generation missiles (with a range of 
150-180 km and without even a guidance system) poses a serious threat 
to the US from 8,000 km away!

America's real war objectives have to do with oil, Israel, and 
Islam-- re-making the Middle East through "moderate-Islamist" (read, 
pro-US) regimes. They derive from the ambition to dominate the world.

The US will easily win the war. But winning the peace is another 
matter. War will kill massively and unleash uncontrollable forces in 
Iraq. This will send shockwaves through three key countries: Saudi 
Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan.

These societies are boiling with discontent against rulers who are 
seen as despotic and slavishly pro-Western. Heightened turmoil is 
liable to take on a religious-fundamentalist form. This will poison 
the Middle Eastern and South Asian climate. Ultimately, it will make 
even Americans more insecure.

That's why the US Establishment figures like former President Jimmy 
Carter, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and countless 
former generals oppose war on Iraq. They warn against its likely 
damage to the United Nations, and to the US's own alliances.

Imperial arrogance has isolated the US as never before. America has 
pressured a number of states, including the six uncommitted Third 
World countries on the Security Council, to build a "Coalition of the 
Willing"-- in fact, a Coalition of the Coerced.

However, not even one major state has joined the US-led alliance. 
Turkey has defied Washington by refusing to station troops-- despite 
the offer of $30 billion and half of Iraq's territory.

Not one of the Security Council's "fence-sitters" has declared 
support for the "second resolution". The US needs five of their six 
votes, and no veto. But Pakistan is abstaining, and Chile, Guinea and 
Cameroon seem intractable.

This is history's most unpopular war. It's sending tremors through 
governments-- witness Labour in Britain where ministers are 
revolting. This war was opposed for months before it began-- for the 
highest moral reasons.

Countries like India can contribute to the global anti-war effort. 
But the Vajpayee government is hesitant, being tempted by the promise 
of crumbs from post-war Iraq's reconstruction.

On March 10, Mr Vajpayee opposed a Parliament resolution on Iraq. He 
refused to commit India not to provide military assistance to the US.

But two days later, he suddenly declared that India stands for peace 
and opposes external aggression to effect a regime change in Iraq. He 
also said the weapons inspectors should be given more time and warned 
against "puppet regimes".

But in the UN, India's vacillating stand on Iraq has further softened 
despite Mr Blix's March 7 report, which demolishes the argument for 
war. No wonder US ambassador Blackwill has expressed "satisfaction" 
with India's UN position.

This must change. New Delhi should take a harmonised stand based on 
sound moral principles, multilateralism, and informed public opinion. 
In a Hindustan Times opinion poll in Delhi, 87 percent of people say 
war on Iraq isn't justified; only five percent say India should offer 
military support to the US.

It's a safe bet that this view is shared countrywide. Official policy 
must reflect it.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.


______


#5.

Asian Age, 13 March 2003                                       

One Million, One Opinion
--Kamal Mitra Chenoy

The anticipated war against Iraq has led to unprecedented popular 
protest even more than during the Vietnam War, and the halcyon days 
of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament [CND] in Europe. Millions 
have marched in London, Rome and Spain, and hundreds of thousands 
elsewhere in the US itself, the rest of Europe and Asia. But why in 
support of a regime headed by the much reviled President Saddam 
Hussain, which used poison gas against its own Kurds? Because war is 
unwarranted, and the reasons for it are dishonest. Iraq it is 
claimed, implicitly also in the US-pushed Security Council resolution 
1441, has weapons of mass destruction [WMDs], nuclear, biological, 
chemical. But there is no proof only suspicion, and a flurry of 
unsubstantiated allegations by the US and its allies. A much earlier 
Security Council resolution 687 called for the whole of the Middle 
East to be WMD free including Israel. Years ago an Israeli nuclear 
whistleblower Mordecai Vanunu publicly exposed the Israeli nuclear 
programme. He was kidnapped by Israeli intelligence in Europe, 
drugged, smuggled back to Israel and put in solitary confinement. The 
Israeli nuclear arsenal is now public knowledge.

The Jewish state is also the biggest 'rogue' state violating some 62 
Security Council resolutions, including 242 that required it to move 
back to its pre-June 1967 War boundaries. Its atrocities amounting to 
genocide against the Palestinian people are the staple of daily news. 
Yet, the US and its allies defend the Israelis and their current 
militarist leader Ariel Sharon despite all flagrant violations of 
international law and the UN Charter. In contrast, Iraq has been 
subjected to unparalleled sanctions leading to the deaths of half a 
million children. Of course, the Iraqi regime is not democratic but 
how many in the region are? In any case, Iraq allowed UN inspectors 
from 1991 to 1998. All its existing and potential WMDs were 
destroyed. It itself provided the UN with detailed information about 
its al Samoud missiles which have the potential of exceeding the 150 
kilometre limit and despite the imminent war when it needs weapons to 
defend themselves, has started implementing the UN command to destroy 
them. It has allowed private interviews with its scientists, and 
whatever else the UN has demanded. Then why the US and its allies' 
insistence on war, and why have traditional NATO allies like France 
and Germany broken ranks and joined China and Russia in opposing the 
war, insisting instead on extended inspections? Why has the 
intra-NATO rhetoric become so fierce with the chairman of the French 
foreign affairs committee dubbing Britain the US's 52nd State [Israel 
dubbed the 51st] on BBC?

The great power opposition to the Iraq war is not just over US plans 
to recolonize the country and control its oil supplies under the 
pretext of 'regime change.' It is over the fear of US hegemonic 
strategy aimed at making the US the sole superpower in a unipolar 
world. During the collapse of the Soviet Union, the American 
journalist Charles Krauthammer writing in the influential Foreign 
Affairs proclaimed that "the unipolar moment" had come with the US as 
the international hegemon. A little later in 1992, President George 
Bush proclaimed, "A world once divided into two armed camps now 
recognizes one sole and preeminent power, the United States of 
America." With typical arrogance he went on to state, "And they 
regard this with no dread. For the world trusts us with power, and 
the world is right."  Unfortunately, for the younger Bush and his 
advisors, this is not true. The opposition from the policy elites in 
=46rance and Germany within NATO, and China and Russia without, is 
because all these powers are committed to strategies for a 
multi-polar world. President Yeltsin's illusions that US-directed 
foreign direct investment would reconstruct the transitional Russian 
economy have been rudely dashed. In joint meetings the Chinese and 
Russians have called for a multi-polar world, and former Russian 
Prime Minister Primakov called for a trilateral alliance between 
China, Russia and India.

These fears have been heightened by various unilateral policy 
measures by the Bush administration. The National Missile Defense 
[NMD] [popularly called 'son of star wars'] and Theatre Missile 
Defense [TMD] programmes are a clear reversal of the nuclear 
restraint measures agreed to by earlier US administrations, including 
that of President Reagan, the original proponent of 'Star Wars.' They 
are clearly directed at establishing US nuclear domination including 
over a middle range nuclear power like China. The US unilateralist 
positions on the Kyoto protocol, the Rio biodiversity convention, the 
International Criminal Court, its conflicts with the EU in WTO, and 
its blatant attempts to browbeat the UN and Secretary Generals like 
Boutros Boutros Ghali [who was denied a second term] and Kofi Annan, 
have led to increasing disquiet in more and more quarters.

So did the attack on Afghanistan. There was no proof that the Taliban 
connived at the Al Qaeda September 11 attack on the US. American 
journalists like John Cooley have documented how the US created Osama 
Bin Ladens' terrorist group to fight the Soviet-backed Afghan regime. 
This and other groups were funded by CIA-directed drug smuggling out 
of Afghanistan. Pakistan was allowed to arm, train, and militarily 
back the Taliban that then took over Afghanistan displacing 
squabbling factions, and instituted a particularly savage Islamic 
fundamentalist regime. But in the absence of proof of the Taliban's 
involvement, Afghanistan was bombed with more than 3,500 civilian 
casualties, more than the US itself had suffered. This war too, like 
the 1991 Gulf War was in violation of the conditions laid down in the 
UN Charter. The new purportedly democratic and humane dispensation 
under Hamid Karzai was installed sidelining the more popular King 
after, according to US newspapers, over $2 billion were paid as 
bribes to members and factions of the Loyla Jirga. The deputy defence 
minister Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum has the notorious reputation of 
punishing enemies by crushing them under tank tracks. In the 
meanwhile Mullah Omar, Osama Bin Laden and other senior leaders of 
the Taliban and Al Qaeda still roam free, some apparently hiding out 
in Pakistan, the US's staunch ally in the 'global war against 
terrorism.'

But policy analysts of the neo-realist school consistently argue that 
it is not in India's national interest to take a position critical of 
the US. This is because the US is predominant, a pro-war UN 
resolution will go through despite French and Russian threats of a 
veto, the Iraqi regime will be bombed out of existence, with few and 
short-lived repercussions throughout the world including the Middle 
East. So as the Americans say 'if you can't beat them, join them,' or 
'sup at the high table' under US preeminence. History will soon show 
how inaccurate these predictions are. But there are two other 
fundamental objections. Firstly, shouldn't people, the millions, have 
a decisive say in making foreign policy? Even in the 21st century is 
this to remain a secret domain of unaccountable policy experts? 
Secondly, shouldn't all countries, including emerging powers like 
India, actively work for a multi-polar world, rather converging with 
a unilateralist would be hegemon? All this is fairly obvious but 
rarely stated. Thus the tragic irony that in the land of Buddha, 
Asoka and Gandhi, we still have to rally around the slogan 'give 
peace a chance.'


______


#6.

The Telegraph, March 18, 2003

THE IDES OF MARCH
- To have any meaning, the UN must limit the absolutism of the US
PARTHA CHATTERJEE
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1030318/asp/opinion/story_1776815.asp

______


#7.

[ The full text of following article is available to all interested. 
Should you require copies write to <aiindex@mnet.fr> ]

o o o

Citizens and Denizens: Ethnicity, Homelands, and the Crisis of
Displacement in Northeast India

Sanjib Baruah

The US Committee for Refugees in its 2000 report estimated that there
were 157,000 displaced persons in northeast India. A large
number of 'tribal' people entitled to protective discrimination under
the Indian Constitution live in those states. The rights of
'non-tribals' to land ownership and exchange, business and trade
licenses and access to elected office are restricted. A number of
these tribal enclaves now are full-fledged states. One of the unintended
effects of this regime of protective discrimination is that the
notion of exclusive homelands for ethnically defined groups has become
normalized in the region. In a context of massive social
transformation that attracts significant numbers of people to the
region, this has generated an extremely divisive politics of insiders
and outsiders that have led to these displacements.

The article appears in the Journal of Refugee Studies, Volume 16, Issue
1, March 2003: pp. 44-66

A shorter version "Uprooted in the Northeast" is available at:
http://www.himalmag.com/2003/march/essay_2.htm

______


#8.

ZNet Commentary, March 15, 2003
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-03/15prashad.cfm

By the Rivers of Babylon
By Vijay Prashad

As a teenager I befriended a boy whose family had moved from Mumbai 
(India) to Canada. He told me an extraordinary story that has until 
now marked my sense of resources and the Gulf. His father, he said, 
once hired a series of ships that tugged an iceberg from the North 
Atlantic to West Asia to provide drinking water for the Emirates.

Whether the story is true or not, and given the exaggerations of 
youth it is probably false, it made the deserts of the Arabian 
peninsula come alive to me. If you look at a map, the large area to 
the south of the peninsula is called Rab al-Khali, the Empty Quarter. 
It has no people, but it is filled with sand.

Where does a desert get its water?

Well from the rivers of Iraq, of course!

=46rom 16 to 23 March the junior eminences from across the planet will 
gather in Japan at the Third World Water Forum. They will worry about 
the problems of population growth, increased irrigation demands for 
food production and ecological destruction of drinking water.

Many will take a Malthusian approach, bemoan the population growth 
rates in the darker corners and wash their hands of the crisis. 
Others will call for further privatization of water delivery, to make 
us all beholden to one or other of the big water firms (Vivendi, 
Suez, Coca Cola, Pepsi).

A few will rail against large dam projects that displace those who 
see no benefit from this kind of modernity. Just as at the two 
previous Water Forums, scholars and politicians will raise the 
problem of water for at least three west Asian states, Saudi Arabia, 
Jordan and Israel.

Israel, Jordan and the Occupied Territories receive the annual 
rainfall of Phoenix, Arizona, and house a combined population of 
almost fifteen million, while the entire state of Arizona only 
numbers just about more than five million. Israel relies upon 
aquifers, or underground rock formations that store water, that lie 
beneath the Occupied Territories of Gaza and West Bank for almost 
half its water needs.

About a quarter comes from the Sea of Galilee, still a disputed site 
with Syria. Israel, which tries to make the Levant into a piece of 
Europe, uses four times the amount of water than the Occupied 
Territories, even as its population of six million is less than 
double that of the Palestinians (about three and a half million). In 
the summer of 1999, Israel suffered a severe water crisis when the 
region came under a drought.

Yedidya Atlas, a senior correspondent for Israel National Radio, put 
the case squarely, "Withdrawing from Judea and Samaria, i. e. the 
Mountain Aquifer - or from the Golan Heights would create a situation 
in which the fate of Israel's water supply would be determined by Mr. 
Arafat's Palestinian Authority and the Syrians respectively. Either 
Israel has sole control of her national water sources or her very 
survival is threatened."

At the 2nd World Water Forum Yousef Habbab, the Palestinian 
ambassador to the Netherlands, turned to Mikhail Gorbachev, reminded 
him of their public conversation about water during the Madrid 
Palestinian-Israeli talks, and said, "You have touched t he 
untouchable in this conference," the "untouchable" being the problem 
of water for a permanent settlement in the region.

Such pronouncements are also frequent in the Saudi press. In July 
1997, King Faud said that water preservation "is a religious as well 
as a national and development duty." In November 2002, Riyadh Daily 
reported that Water Minister Ghazi Al-Gosaibi had told the press that 
the kingdom needed a "national plan for water" because of an increase 
in population and the deterioration of desalination plants.

Behind the US, the United Arab Emirates and Canada, Saudi Arabia 
boasts the fourth highest use of water per citizen. Such averages 
mean nothing because only ten percent of water goes for personal and 
commercial use, while the remainder is used in agriculture.

In the 1970s, when Saudi Arabia felt that its oil embargo might be 
met with a grain embargo, it tried to increase grain production. Oil 
profits went toward agricultural subsidies as the harvest increased 
to a high of five million tons in 1994. You have to imagine the 
alfalfa fields in Saudi Arabia, grown to prevent dependence on 
imported food for livestock.

I'm not a believer in the theory of comparative advantage, but what 
about some ecological sense about what the region can bear? The 
kingdom has since 1994 cut subsidies and reduced the harvest to just 
over a million tons of grain. Saudi Arabia now imports grain on a 
landmass of depleted water. The alfalfa fields continue to be tended.

How do the Saudi kingdom and the Israeli state expect to cover the 
water shortfall? In 1987, the Turkish government announced that it 
would build a "Peace Pipeline" that would pump about sixteen million 
square meters of water to these two countries, as well as Syria. 
Water from the Seyhan and Ceyhan river systems in south-eastern 
Turkey would be diverted to this pipeline and thereby draw water from 
the Euphrates that delivers water to the fertile plains of Iraq.

In 1957, the Turks started to build the Dam at Kiban, where the 
Euphrates meets the Murad with a catchment area of 30.5 billion 
square meters of water. That project began a long-standing dispute 
with Iraq. When Turkey started the Al Ghab dam project to irrigate 
the Harat plains as well as generate electricity, it intensified the 
problems in the region. These are flashpoints of the ongoing conflict.

If there were a pliable government in Baghdad, and eventually one in 
Amman, the power of both Riyadh and Tel Aviv would grow in the 
region, especially over such scarce commodities as fresh water. This 
is perhaps the hope of the Water Ministries in the oil rich and 
weapon rich countries in the region. Even as the war is about US 
hegemony, about oil, about the Bush family, don't forget the water. 
As Fortune put it so plainly in May 2000, "Water promises to be to 
the 21st century what oil was to the 20th century: the precious 
commodity that determines the wealth of nations."

By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept.


______


#9.

M.N.ROY  MEMORIAL LECTURE : 2003

By  Prof. Mushirul Hasan

On

The Crescent in Crisis -  After September 11

  At 5 PM  On Friday, the 21st March, 2003
At Speaker Hall, Constitution Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi [India]

Shri Ajit  Bhattacharjea to preside

  You are cordially invited

N.D.Pancholi
=46or Indian Renaissance Institute &
  Indian Radical Humanist Association
  Ph: 22622779, 23951911,
(M) 9811099532



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