SACW | 27 Jul 2004

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire    |  27 July,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1]   Pakistan- India: Making Weapons, Talking 
Peace (Zia Mian, A H Nayyar, M V Ramana)
[2]   Bangladesh: Projects of Mass Destruction (Anu Muhammad)
[3]   Washington To Waziristan: The Frontier Journey (Iftikhar H. Malik)
[4]   India: The missing link [Needed a full 
scale inquiry into the Gujarat Pogrom] (A.G. 
Noorani)
[5]   India: [Rioters resume the spectacle in Gujarat. . .]


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

[1]

The Economic and Political Weekly
July 17, 2004
Commentary

MAKING WEAPONS, TALKING PEACE
Resolving Dilemma of Nuclear Negotiations

Advice on nuclear issues in both Indian and 
Pakistan is dominated by the nuclear weapons 
complex, the military and the foreign ministries 
- institutions that have a vested interest in 
maintaining their power, influence and funding. 
To find a way forward both governments would do 
well to seek out other perspectives, find people 
outside government to develop new ideas, and 
encourage public debate.

[by] Zia Mian, A H Nayyar, M V Ramana

It is talking time again. Hardly a day goes by 
without a report of Pakistani and Indian 
officials, foreign secretaries or foreign 
ministers meeting and talking. This a welcome 
respite from the past several years of tension 
interrupted by crises and threats of war. While 
talking is better than fighting, it is important 
to remember that India and Pakistan have met and 
talked many times since the 1999 Lahore summit, 
where the prime ministers claimed that they 
shared "a vision of peace and stability between 
their countries, and of progress and prosperity 
for their peoples".1

However, stripped of the rhetorical commitments 
to 'peace and stability', the Lahore agreements 
were little more than limited transparency 
measures. The goal then was to assure the 
international community that having tested their 
nuclear weapons, India and Pakistan would behave 
as 'responsible' nuclear weapons states. But what 
followed Lahore was not peace or stability but 
the Kargil war, the armed stand-off in 2002 after 
'jihadis' attacked India's parliament, spiralling 
military spending, missile test after missile 
test, and the consolidation of nuclear strategies.

If the current round of nuclear talks is to offer 
anything better than leaders and the public in 
India and Pakistan will have to get serious about 
changing their ways of thinking about nuclear 
weapons, and recognise the need for concrete 
measures that help slow the momentum towards ever 
larger and more destructive nuclear arsenals. 
This is necessary to set the stage for any kind 
of nuclear disarmament: unilateral, bilateral, 
regional or global. An inevitable part of this 
process will be to break the monopoly of the 
nuclear weapons community, the scientists, 
strategic thinkers and pundits, military forces, 
and bureaucrats who shape nuclear policy. They 
have brought us the bomb and now seek to keep it, 
because it keeps them.2

Challenging Nuclear Assumptions

Leaders in Pakistan and India are of two minds 
when it comes to their nuclear arsenals. On the 
one hand, they recognise that these weapons cast 
a dark, potentially fatal shadow over the future 
of both countries. India's new foreign minister 
Natwar Singh recently declared "To me personally, 
the most important thing on our agenda should be 
the nuclear dimension".3 General Musharraf 
claimed that "we have been saying let's make 
south Asia a nuclear-free zone" and added that 
"If mutually there is an agreement of reduction 
of nuclear assets, Pakistan would be willing".4 
These are hopeful indications.

At the same time, officials and leaders on both 
sides seem bewitched by the power of the bomb. 
They each believe that the threat of massive 
destruction represented by their nuclear weapons 
is a form of protection, and so a force for good. 
Lost in this nuclear logic, they are forced to 
concede that the possession of nuclear weapons by 
the other state serves the same purpose. This is 
reflected in the joint statement released after 
the expert-level talks on nuclear confidence 
building measures held in New Delhi on 
June 19-20, which claimed: "Recognising that the 
nuclear capabilities of each other, which are 
based on their national security imperatives, 
constitute a factor for stability."5 This 
formulation was repeated in the statement after 
the meeting of the two foreign secretaries in New 
Delhi on June 27-28.


[Full Text at URL: 
www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2004&leaf=07&filename=7426&filetype=html 
]



_____

[2]


The Daily Star
July 27, 2004

PROJECTS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Anu Muhammad

Facing another flood, another experience of human 
disaster, where should we look? People in general 
are taught to consider floods as a curse of fate. 
The ruling class is happy to describe flooding as 
a natural disaster. But, in reality, flooding is 
a close associate of the "development" festival 
drama. In other words, the flooding is closely 
linked to grabbing of waterways and filling them 
with shopping plazas and multistoried housing, 
and to big irrigation and flood control projects.

This is an old story, filled with lies, 
hypocrisy, cheating, intellectual fraud, and 
all-out plunder.

After the floods of 1954, Water and Power 
Development Authority (WAPDA) was established in 
1959, and several flood control and irrigation 
projects were conceived. This was the beginning 
of a new era of massive 
intervention-injection-construction on the 
waterways of Bangladesh. Since then we have had 
plenty of projects for erecting embankments and 
other structures. Not coincidentally, perhaps, we 
have since then experienced increased intensity 
of flooding.

The time gaps between massive floods have been 
narrowing with the increase of flood prevention 
projects: 1954 to 1974: 20 years, 1974 to 1987 
and 1988: 13-14 years, 1988 to 1998: 10 years, 
and 1998 to 2004: 6 years. It is a linear 
progression!

In 1964, a 20-year master plan for water 
resources development was initiated, and after

independence, the government endorsed this 
approach quite uncritically and took steps to 
carry the programme further. More than 8,200 kms 
of embankments were constructed under these 
projects. In addition, more than 4,700 kms of 
irrigation canals, 3,400 kms of drainage 
channels, more than 9,000 hydraulic structures 
(such as sluice gates and regulators), 4,300 
bridges and culverts, 96 pump houses and two 
barrages were built.

In 1972, the World Bank seemed critical about 
some of the projects that had been started in the 
60s. It termed many of the projects as "poorly 
conceived" and "ill-suited" to the particular 
needs of the country. It categorically named one, 
the Ganges-Kobadak irrigation and flood control 
project as "an example of a poorly selected and 
prepared project."

But by then $132 million had been spent on it. 
According to the Bank, "after 16 years of 
construction, redesign, and reconstruction, the 
project failed to perform at even 50 percent of 
the original design standard." Nevertheless, the 
same institution kept itself busy continuing 
similar old big projects and formulating similar 
new ones.

Repeatedly, the Bank and other "development" 
missions have noted the great potential for using 
ground water for domestic and agricultural needs 
and therefore advocated for its more intensive 
use. Many water projects, such as Brahmaputra 
right bank embankment project, Pabna project, 
Dakatia and Halda project, Barisal project, 
Ganges-Kobadak Kushtia project, Chenchuri and the 
Barnal, Salinpur-Bashukhali projects in the 
Khulna area, Surma-Baulai Haor and the Knowai 
River projects in Northeast region, River 
training, Chandpur riverbed stabilization 
project, Chilmari project, and Kurigram project 
came into being.

To name a few, Chalan Beel, one of the richest 
wetland areas of Bangladesh, is now almost ruined 
by water projects. Due to construction of 
ill-conceived embankments and regulators, 
drainage has been impeded and water-logging has 
become a serious problem in Atrai-Hurasagar 
drainage basin. In Beel Dakatia, a huge area has 
been waterlogged for about twenty years as a 
result of big water projects.

After nearly thirty years of "successful" and 
intensive tapping of groundwater, nearly 35 
million people in Bangladesh are now facing 
deadly threat from arsenic poisoning. Experts 
opine that arsenic in the groundwater has links 
with indiscriminate use of groundwater. Now, 
again, the Bank has taken the lead in conducting 
million dollar projects related to "managing" the 
arsenic problem.

The ADB also played a significant role in 
formulating and supporting similar programmes. 
While numerous documents describe the processes 
leading to the initiation of flood control, 
drainage, and irrigation (FCDI) projects, few 
exist that critique a project's completion or 
post-project evaluation. The Bank and the ADB 
were the largest actors in these FCDI projects. 
The share of these two institutions of the 
projects in the sector has been more than 70 
percent.

Alan C. Lindquist, in a UNDP sponsored 
agriculture sector review, reported that while 
the ADB prepared "project completion reports upon 
completion of its projects" there was a "lack of 
completion of ADB projects in Bangladesh, even 
though some were begun ten years ago." In fact, 
he continued, "ADB-Dhaka was not able to show me 
a single project completion report for one of 
their water projects." Lindquist, citing another 
review of ADB water projects in Bangladesh, 
stated "only 3 out of the ADB projects attempted 
since 1973 have been completed and, on average, 
those took 72 percent longer to complete than 
projected."

Consultants, local and imported, have been the 
major beneficiaries of these projects. Since 
these were all "aided" projects, appointment of 
"donor" preferred foreign consultants has always 
been compulsory. Irrespective of qualification, 
consultant fees have been a significant share of 
the project costs. Another study showed that, 
"foreign consultants cost 6.8 to 25 times as much 
as local Bangladesh consultants, and 57 to 73 
times as much as their BWDB counterparts." Often 
"aided" water sector projects have been 
considered by both local and foreign 
consultants/engineers/bureaucrats/suppliers as 
something highly desirable irrespective of 
relevance or results.

Hugh Brammer, associated with water sector 
projects in Bangladesh for a long time, wrote in 
2002, that he witnessed an incident "where a 
chief engineer simply crossed out the word 'not' 
from the recommendation that certain soils were 
'not suitable for irrigation' in the draft report 
on a detailed soil survey of a proposed 
irrigation project area. The authority was 
successful in obtaining funds from the donor to 
implement the project -- which was a disaster." 
He also observed that, "Bangladeshi consultants 
hired to carry out such surveys (and also project 
appraisals) were aware that 'happiness reports' 
were more likely to ensure their future business 
than strictly objective reports on their 
findings."

All these highly expensive huge structural 
measures could not save Bangladesh from 
disastrous floods in 1987 and again in 1988. 
Nevertheless, the water resources programmes were 
intensified and pursued with more rigour. The 
Bank continued to pursue similar projects. It 
went for a comprehensive programme to "control 
flood" and "water management."

After easy negotiations between local-global 
partners, the Bank gave birth to another big 
project of mass destruction (PMD): the Flood 
Action Plan which "would be the first step in the 
implementation of a comprehensive long-term 
programme for flood control and drainage in 
Bangladesh." According to the Bank, "embankments 
must be seen as elements of a comprehensive water 
control system planned and designed to modify the 
water regime in the interests of more profitable 
land use in an environmentally sound manner."

It is easy to see that the Bank always advocates 
structural solutions to the flood problems that 
involve huge costs. Expensive projects have 
always been preferred, probably because expensive 
projects ensure a nice windfall to the parties 
involved. In 1990, the Bank expressed its 
satisfaction with the impressive record of 
construction of the Bangladesh Water Development 
Board and its predecessor agency, with some 5,000 
water control structures and over 6,000 km of 
embankment.

Subsequently, however, the Flood Action Plan was 
virtually abandoned in the face of criticism from 
home and abroad. But it was later replaced by the 
WARPO, which was basically the same programme 
under a new name. In 1998, another massive flood 
brought huge material loss and severe human 
sufferings. Again similar and bigger projects! 
And eventually we have now reached to 2004 flood.

A number of studies have examined the 
environmental impact of the water management 
projects. The beneficial effects were found to 
be: increased flood-free secured land for 
agriculture, livestock, settlement, industry, and 
infrastructure; all-year accessibility; higher 
rice yields in both wet and dry season; expansion 
of cropping areas and the extension of the 
cropping period due to improved drainage; 
opportunity for fish culture in ponds; and 
reduced hazards from extreme floods and tidal 
surges.

These beneficial effects, however, are often much 
lower in magnitude than the estimated benefits 
shown to justify the projects. Moreover, the 
benefit in project area in short term is not seen 
keeping long term effect in the area as well as 
in the area outside the project under 
consideration. Therefore, the benefits cost more 
per capita than shown in project proposals.

There are comparatively fewer studies to 
understand the costs and negative impact. Some 
studies found detrimental effects of those 
projects as follows: increased drainage problems 
behind embankments; reduced residual moisture in 
the dry season, especially on higher ground, 
hence reducing cropping options; deterioration of 
soil physical properties in water-logged areas; 
potentially greater loss of crops under 
conditions of extreme flooding and embankments 
failure; loss of formerly flooded habitats for 
major capture of fishery species; changes in 
hydrological regimes of remaining habitats; 
increased agrochemical runoff and contamination 
of surface waters; restriction of water-borne 
transportation by physical structures and 
siltation; increased depth of flooding, higher 
flood velocities and erosion of char and other 
unprotected active flood plains; loss of 
livestock grazing areas; increase in the 
incidence of diseases, such as cholera and 
malaria, as a result of reduced flushing of 
polluted water sources. There is no evidence of 
the global institutions who sponsored these 
projects accepting responsibility for all these 
detrimental effects. Not surprising.

Despite all that has been done to make a country 
of free-flowing abundant water into one that is 
water-logged, it seems that the water sector has 
become an increasingly more lucrative field for 
profit making investment of corporate bodies and 
beneficiaries. To them, projects are not meant to 
solve the problems which lead to disaster, but 
are a permanent system of monitoring and studying 
the phenomenon that give connected parties a 
permanent way of making wealth. Floods, just like 
poverty, give them immense opportunity to ensure 
fat lives at home and abroad.

The floods today in 2004, therefore, are both a 
product of the flood control projects and also a 
good reason to prepare more projects in similar 
line. With the money taken from people's pocket, 
the flow of water is blocked, rivers are 
destroyed, the overflow of water become 
disastrous, water-logging become permanent, and 
the results are all around us.

Anu Muhammad is a Professor of Economics, Jahangirnagar University.


_____

[3]

WASHINGTON TO WAZIRISTAN: THE FRONTIER JOURNEY

by Iftikhar H. Malik

[July 20, 2004]

Saturday:  The security check at the Baltimore 
International Airport has been smooth despite the 
apprehensions of being spread-eagled followed by 
a battery of questions. The curiously smiling 
U.S. immigration official saw the red British 
passport and ignoring my tallness, a Muslim name 
or even my Pakistani origins, allowed me to 
proceed with an accompanying quip: "Professor 
Malik, looks like you have been to several 
interesting places!" Reciprocity entailed a smile 
and a short response: "Including six lovely years 
in your country-long, long time back though!"
Sunday: A sunny Baltimore is quiet like any other 
city on Sunday yet its harbour affords a chance 
to look at the historic Chesapeake, one of the 
earliest U.S. ships, built under the orders of 
President George Washington. It saw action 
against the Barbary foes, and Britain during the 
War of 1812. This city of Frederick Douglass 
boasts of the oldest Catholic Church in North 
America; has a simple but impressive Holocaust 
Memorial, and is home to another historic 
landmark: the Mount Vernon Place with an 
imperious Washington riding a white stallion. The 
Aspen Institute, my destination--located miles 
away from the familiar urban and suburban 
concrete sprawl--is surrounded by the herds of 
Angus steers grazing with a typical reserve while 
a majestic Wye River crisscrosses the estate. In 
one of the cottages, about seventy invited 
academics, area specialists and Washington 
officials deliberate on the labyrinthine politics 
of South Asia. Of course, Afghanistan, the future 
of Indo-Pakistani relations and, most of all, the 
Pakistani-U.S. military operation in the Frontier 
areas of Waziristan -known as hammer and anvil 
strategy-are the subject matter. My paper urges 
for a U.S.-UK rethink of the current policies 
towards West Asia in particular and to the Muslim 
world in general. There is more to that world 
other than Musharraf, Osama, Taleban, Saddam 
Hussein, or the BJP, and great care and repair 
are needed if the hearts and minds are to be won, 
even at this late stage. The Wye Center also 
takes one's imagination to the failed 
Barak-Arafat parleys, and as disclosed recently 
by James Bamford, David Hirst and Amos Malka, 
Israelis were already intent upon destroying them 
by apportioning all the blame on the 
Palestinians. Clinton's My Life squarely puts the 
entire blame on Yasser Arafat for disallowing him 
a global pre-eminence. To Clinton, Arafat could 
not transform himself from a revolutionary to a 
statesman. For Israelis, naturally the former 
U.S. President has all the kudos!
Tuesday: I fly back from Baltimore on the way to 
Heathrow worrying about the train timings from 
Paddington to the West of England. Like the 
pivotal Western factor operative in the Muslim 
world, the fate of my Wednesday teaching in Bath, 
symbolically depends upon the First Great 
Western. Certainly, I made it in good time.
Saturday-Tuesday: Armed with ninety essays and a 
laptop I am on my way to Kipling's city of 
Lahore. The short Break is devoted to travelling, 
interviewing and lecturing before it gets too hot 
on the Sub-continent. Right across from Kim's Gun 
on The Mall and next to the Museum, I confer with 
some colleagues from the National College of 
Arts--formerly the Mayo School of Arts--the 
oldest of its kind in South Asia. Here, Lockwood 
Kipling held his forte underneath the redbrick 
domes while looking over the Museum next door. 
After a quick hello to the owner of the Kim's 
Bookshop, I visit the Government College 
University, a splendid piece of architecture with 
dreaming spires rivalling the neighbouring red 
domes of the old Punjab University and the High 
Court, also built during the British era. 
Established in 1864, GC, as it is commonly known 
among its old and new Ravians, is one of the 
earliest academic institutions and is also my 
alma mater. I am deeply inspired by about one 
hundred young students sporting red and golden 
neckties who are eager for my lecture on Islam 
and the West, especially after 9/11. Many of them 
are desirous of better relations with India 
though in the recent cricket series, their team 
has not done well. Some of them tell me with a 
wink that it is all due to their hospitality to 
let India win first time on their soil. I guess 
inwardly they are disappointed in their own 
players.
--Thursday-Saturday: Following a presentation at 
the Lahore University of Management Sciences--a 
private sector elite institution--I am on the old 
Grand Trunk Road on the way to Pakistan's ultra 
modern capital, Islamabad. I have been to the 
fourth holiest Sikh Gurdawara-the Dera Sahib-- 
adjoining the elegant Mughal Mosque, the Lahore 
Fort and Sir Muhammad Iqbal's simple but 
impressive tomb. This historic square, near the 
Old City, is an amazing blend of red, white and 
green. Luckily, the colleagues from the College 
of Arts are vigilantly preserving some of the 
pre-British buildings in the Old Lahore through 
all the possible means. We take a quick look the 
Mughal Shahdara by the Ravi River, where like the 
Taj Mahal, two great royal lovers are buried, 
though similar to Agra the surroundings here have 
also turned congested with a haphazard 
construction. The graves of Emperor Jahangir and 
Queen Noor Jahan, unlike the mausoleum of Emperor 
Shah Jahan and Queen Mumtaz Mahal, are at some 
distance from each other. Asaf Khan, Noor Jahan's 
brother and Mumtaz Mahal's father, also lies 
buried in Shahdara, though his tomb is massive 
yet too simple in a Central Asian style.
  Soon, we leave the Kim's GT Road and find 
ourselves on the new motorway meandering across 
the vast and lush green fields of the Punjab, 
irrigated through a complex system of canals, 
mostly dating from the Raj era. The Chenab, the 
epicentre of the old Indus Valley romances, Sufi 
traditions and the main artery of today's Bhangra 
music, was flowing quietly until the Monsoons 
would cause the proverbial ferocity. Several of 
these romances are about the liaisons between 
daring Turkish princes and beautiful Punjabi 
maidens displaying valour and resolution against 
societal snubs. The Punjab not only received 
invaders, it also welcomed lovers, Sufis, Gurus 
and Bhagats. Ibn Batauta, the well-known thirteen 
century Moroccan globe trotter, found it enticing 
and got married a couple of times besides owning 
a jagir near Bhakar. Further heading west, I seek 
a glimpse of serenely flowing Jhelum before we 
enter the Salt Range. Here, by this river at 
Jalalpur, Alexander had defeated Raja Porus and 
his elephants in a famous battle and this has 
been the route of all the invaders, lovers and 
fortune seekers on the way to Gangetic plains, 
certainly with the exception of the British who 
came in by sea. Al-Beiruni wrote his Kitabul Hind 
at the nearby Nanda, a few miles further down 
from Tilla Jogian, Bhaun and Pir Kattas, the 
ancient Hindu holy sites..
Saturday-Sunday: The early morning flight over 
the mighty River Indus in a moaning Fokker 
deposits me in Peshawar, the gateway to the 
Khyber Pass and the entry point to the tribal 
regions and Afghanistan. The visit to the Afghan 
refugee camps is once again a painful experience 
of a continued dislocation and lost hopes. 
Several refugees are gone back, while a few were 
loading their belongings on the typical long, 
colourful Afghan lorries, decorated with the 
pictures of the Bollywood actresses. A few of 
them displayed the portraits of the turbaned 
Pushtun warriors, yet found no Osama or Mullah 
Omar among them. In the miles and miles of these 
crumbling mud huts there are more women and 
children as many men, excepting a few hawk-nosed 
bearded and turbaned babas, have been killed in 
the decades-long warfare in that unfortunate 
country. Peshawar's pre-1947 multi-storey 
residential buildings are being preserved 
especially in the Old City where once the 
enterprising Sethis pursued trade with the 
Czarist Russia through the Afghan and Central 
Asian Jewish merchants. These houses are the 
masterpieces of a dying art that blended bricks 
with an intricate wooden jali work, and were 
mostly owned by Hindu and Muslim merchants. Like 
the old Jewish quarters in Seville or narrow 
lanes in Cordova, these houses, other than being 
quite secure, ensured circulation of fresh cool 
air during the scorching heat. This has been 
always a city of tough souls, spies, storytellers 
and snuff.
Modern Peshawar dates from the Raj with its 
Edward's College, Islamia College, the Balahissar 
Fort, Lady Reading Hospital, train station, 
Cantonment, and of course, the Museum, all of 
them similar to domed, red-brick buildings in 
Lahore and Delhi with a generous use of marble. 
Like the fabled railway line winding through the 
Khyber Pass, these imposing structures were meant 
to exude power, awe and authority but are now 
sternly surrounded by an unending suburbia. The 
Museum was originally the Queen Victoria Darbar 
Hall, built in the late ninetieth century where 
the hardy men serving on the Frontier and 
pursuing the Great Game, danced their evenings 
away while drowning the dust and loneliness on a 
neat Scotch. The dance hall was converted into 
the Museum of the Gandhara-Buddhist Art, mostly 
excavated from the neighbouring valleys in the 
early Twentieth century. Despite the population 
explosion, anarchic traffic and fuming pollution, 
the building still retains its original décor and 
proudly displays its valuable collection on the 
ancient Peshawar Valley. The rising tide of 
religious sentiment has never allowed itself to 
object to countless, diverse and even explicit 
figures of Buddha and of the Hindu gods and 
goddesses.
In the old, winding lanes of the Old City near 
the Mughal Mahabat Khan's grand Mosque, I 
relished the traditional qahwa (green tea) in the 
Bazaar of Story Tellers (Qissa Khawani), while my 
daughter promptly bought the gem stones, brought 
in from the Hindu Kush and Karakoram mountains. I 
chatted with the old hakims (traditional medicine 
men) offering herbal panaceas with the eager 
wide-eyed tribals sitting around absorbing a 
flowery Pushtu narrative on male sex potency. The 
evenings in Peshawar, like elsewhere in South 
Asia, come alive with throngs of people eating or 
simply using an endless supply of snuff. Unlike 
Delhi and Karachi, Peshawar and Lahore are known 
for their robust eateries. It is time to visit 
Namak Mandi in the City to savour Charsi's naan 
and kebabs, as a visit to the Frontier is 
incomplete without trying a genuine tribal-style 
balti, locally known as karahi. This is the land 
where skewered lamb kebabs and karahi dishes 
originated whereas chappati region lies beyond 
the Indus across the historic Attock Fort. 
Charsi, literally meaning dopey, is not a 
habitual hashish smoker; it is just the way he is 
known among the locals, though the Frontier like 
elsewhere in Southwest Asia, still tolerates 
people inhaling odd joints, but only in the 
forlorn corners. Seating at Charsi's is on the 
carpeted floor or on charpoys, hemmed in by 
cushions as one joins bearded men wearing 
shalwaar and kameez narrating the stories of 
their recent visits to Kandahar, Kabul and 
Ghazni. These Pushtuns and Afghans are a far cry 
from the usual fundamentalists, so popular with 
the alarmist and often partisan media. As long as 
one understands and respects their traditions, 
they do not mean any harm. They are the best 
hosts and also the meanest enemies. The tribals 
amongst them have left their guns with the 
Pakistani officials at the check posts between 
the `settled' and `tribal' belts and when asked 
about Osama they simply laugh it off. To them, 
the Americans and now Pakistanis are proving to 
be the bad learners of history.
Waziristan, a fiercely independent mountainous 
region, lies within the semi-autonomous zone, 
about two hundred miles to the south. Parachinar, 
the closest point to Kabul on this side of the 
borders, is about a hundred and twenty miles to 
the west. Right across from Parachinar is the 
Tora Bora region though the memories of a visit 
in 1983 still reverberate with the images of 
orchards, lovely young children sitting on the 
boulders by the streams and odd sounds of gun 
shots resounding in the valleys. Twenty-one years 
ago, here I had jostled with the streams of 
Mujahideen fighting the Soviets and while posing 
for a picture, some of them had their Enfield 
rifles trained at my abdomen. It is in this 
neighbourhood where, in 1842, Afridis had wiped 
out an entire British regiment of 16,000 troops 
while allowing only Dr. William Brydon to escape 
to India to report on the massive calamity. Lady 
Elizabeth Butler, whose work has become a 
powerful document on the British retreat and is 
kept in the Tate, captured the arrival of this 
impoverished and marooned straggler on a haggard 
horse in Jalalabad on canvas. Calcutta and London 
were shocked and Peshawar's Qahwakhanas were 
astir with gossips. 
  The Mahsuds and Wazirs are the two main tribes 
in Waziristan--though Parachinar is inhabited by 
the Turis--whose ancestors confronted Persians, 
Greeks, Mongols, Turks, Uzbeks, Indians, British 
and the Russians. The Afridis of Tirah Valley and 
the Khyber Pass always kept the British on a full 
alert and the largest ever campaign by the 
British Army between the Crimean War and the 
First World War was the Tirah Campaign of 1895-6, 
so well recorded by Lord Methuen in an 
unpublished diary. This is the time when a young 
22-year old subaltern, Winston Churchill, on a 
six week leave from his regiment in Bangalore, 
had been reporting for The Telegraph from the 
Malakand Pass on the forays against the Mohmands 
and Yusufzais.  Even after the Second World War, 
the largest numbers of the British troops were 
concentrated on the Frontier where during the 
1930s the Royal Air Force frequently mounted 
aerial strikes on tribal hamlets. No wonder, 
Robert Byron a former Oxford graduate and a 
precursor of William Dalrymple and a contemporary 
of TE Lawrence, while reaching this part of the 
world, had exclaimed: "Here at last is Asia 
without any inferiority complex!" During my 
recent visit, the English press in Lahore and 
Peshawar buzzed with the news of T.E. Lawrence 
having been in Wana, Waziristan, apparently 
translating Homer into English in 1928. What a 
place for such literary pursuit but given 
Lawrence {by now TE Shaw) and his fondness for 
tribal rawness anything could have been possible! 
These tribals would like to be left on their own 
when it comes to culture though they certainly 
desire schools, hospitals, factories and jobs.
	Happy times expire rather quickly as the 
Break soon came to an end. I had been able to 
mark all the essays besides completing three 
entries for an encyclopaedia and a lecture at 
Pakistan Council of Social Sciences. Packing up 
my camera, computer and, most of all, my unending 
curiosity, I took the flight back to London. On a 
clear hot day, as the jet flew over the Suleiman 
Mountains with the tribal fortress-like houses 
clinging on to the mountainsides, I wondered 
about the grey-beard elders and their hospitality 
in a world where violence and individualism 
anchored on sheer self-interests rule the roost. 
Surely, this is an ugly exterior of the 
Janus-faced modernity!  Across Afghanistan, it 
was a dusty horizon until we flew over the 
Caucuses where snow-clad mountains remind a 
passenger that the brown and hot of West Asia 
were soon to be replaced by the wet and green of 
Europe! A few days later, sitting at the Bath 
train station listening to the Sufi music of 
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in the Sushi bar, the 
imagery of the West-East journey comes alive 
until the First Great Western chugs in with a 
droning voice announcing: "ŠChippenham, Swindon, 
Didcot ParkwayŠ" .

(---Professor Iftikhar H. Malik, FRHisS, teaches 
international history at Bath Spa University 
College.)

_____


[4]

Hindustan Times
July 27, 2004

THE MISSING LINK
by A.G. Noorani
July 26

On January 29, 1999, the NDA government appointed 
a commission of inquiry headed by a sitting judge 
of the Supreme Court, Justice D.P. Wadhwa, to 
inquire into the killing of Graham Staines and 
his sons. The Gujarat pogrom merits equal 
attention. There are nine compelling reasons for 
appointing a central inquiry on the pogrom.

First, the state commission's terms of reference 
(ToR) are loaded. Second, its composition is 
uninspiring. Justice K.G. Shah, a former judge of 
the Gujarat High Court who was nominated by the 
Narendra Modi government, had sent nine men to 
the gallows in a case arising out of the 1995 
riots - on no evidence, as the Supreme Court 
found. Justice G.T. Nanavati, a former judge of 
the Supreme Court, was appointed later, on May 
22, 2002. He had served as an assistant 
government pleader and as judge of the state's 
high court. In interviews to the media on May 16 
and May 20, 2003, Justice Nanavati exonerated the 
state as well as the 'Bajrang Dal or VHP 
leaders'. They disqualify him.

Third, no state probe can reach Chief Minister 
Narendra Modi, a judicially certified 'Nero'. He 
had said, "It wasn't merely a communal riot but 
something like a mass agitation. There was 
already great anger against terrorism and 
anti-national activity. The Godhra episode 
symbolised that." He must be put in the witness 
box, under oath, to justify this.

Fourth, commissions of inquiry are serviced by 
the government that appoints them. The state 
police itself is under a cloud. Fifth, questions 
have been raised about the deployment of an arm 
of the Centre, the army. Sixth is the aspect of 
rehabilitation. Two years after the pogrom, its 
victims continue to remain in a pathetic state. 
This deserves to rank as a remit by itself. 
Seventh, the Gujarat pogrom was unique in many 
respects. It caught international attention of a 
kind no other flare-up had. Every impression of a 
cover-up must be removed.

The other two reasons are as compelling. Despite 
evidence, L.K. Advani still persists in alleging 
that Godhra was a "pre-planned" affair. As 
tirelessly, Atal Bihari Vajpayee persists in his 
infamous Goa thesis, of April 12, 2002, on Godhra 
and Gujarat; the latest was on July 4, 2004 at 
Lucknow. Let us have the whole truth about both 
ascertained by a central inquiry conducted by a 
sitting judge of the Supreme Court with two high 
court judges, one from outside Gujarat, and both 
nominated by the Chief Justice of India.

Section 3 (1) (b) of the Commissions of Inquiry 
Act, 1952 says that if a state government has set 
up a commission of inquiry, the Centre cannot 
appoint another "to inquire into the same 
matter". The Constitution empowers Parliament to 
amend S.3 and remove the curb (7th Schedule, List 
III, Entry 45). The Supreme Court interpreted 
this expression in the 'State of Karnataka versus 
the Union of India'. Anticipating a central 
probe, Chief Minister Devraj Urs appointed, on 
May 18, 1977, a commission of inquiry on 
transactions of his government. It was headed by 
a former judge of the state's high court and with 
anodyne ToR. Eight days later, the Centre 
followed suit but with deadly ToR to be probed by 
a former judge of the Supreme Court. Urs 
challenged its validity. The Supreme Court upheld 
it by a majority of 6-1 judges.

The state probe was confined to issues like 
"improper or excessive payment", "under favour", 
"misappropriation or fraud" on the part of a 
state PSU, breaches of rules in specified 
transactions and on, "who are the persons 
responsible for the lapses (sic.) if any, 
regarding the aforesaid and to what extent".

The Centre's probe covered charges made in a memo 
by MLAs addressed to the PM which were listed in 
two annexures to the ToR. The second explicitly 
excluded matters covered in the state inquiry. 
The Centre's ToR honed in on the CM explicitly.

Chief Justice M.H. Beg noted that "apart from 
their parts in certain lapses, the responsibility 
of the chief minister or any other minister of 
the government of Karnataka could not be inquired 
into by the commission appointed under the state 
notification". Justice Y.V. Chandrachud pointed 
out a "fundamental difference" between the two 
probes: the Centre's probe was concerned with 
matters related to "charges of corruption" 
against Urs. He made a comment which is very 
relevant to the Gujarat probe: "It is hardly ever 
possible, except in Utopian conditions, that the 
state government will appoint a commission to 
inquire into acts of corruption, favouritism and 
nepotism on the part of its chief minister."

The Nanavati Commission is directed to inquire 
into the "facts, circumstances and the course of 
events" of both the Godhra fire and the 
"subsequent incidents of violence in the state" 
besides the "adequacy of administrative measures" 
in both cases. While there is a specific remit on 
"whether the incident at Godhra was pre-planned", 
there was no remit on whether the "violence" in 
the state was organised or who was responsible 
for it.

Conspicuous by its omission is the remit which 
has, with variants, figured in all riot inquiries 
for the last 30 years since the Madon Commission 
on the Bhiwandi riots (1970): "Whether there is 
any organisation or group at the said places or 
outside which has fomented communal tension or 
directly or indirectly provoked these communal 
disturbances." The inquiry into the Ahmedabad 
riots (1969), headed by a sitting judge of the 
Supreme Court, was asked "to inquire into the 
causes and course of the communal disturbances".

Omission of "the causes" was deliberate. It would 
have brought in the kar sevaks who had 
notoriously misbehaved on all the stations 
between Faizabad and Godhra, and grossly at 
Godhra itself. That does not justify what 
happened there, nor does Godhra justify the 
pogrom that was organised. Thereafter, the 
central probe will not be on "the same matter" if 
it covers: (a) the conduct of the kar sevaks; (b) 
the role of hate groups as phrased for the Madon 
inquiry; (c) the culpability of Modi, his 
colleagues and senior officials; and (d) whether 
the "subsequent incidents of violence in the 
state" were organised and by whom. The Godhra 
remit of the Nanavati Commission must be left 
untouched.

Amendments to its ToR announced on July 20, 
designed to pre-empt a central probe, are mala 
fide. They cover "the role and conduct" of the 
CM, his colleagues, police officers and "other 
individuals and organisations" in the events. As 
also their "dealing with any political or 
non-political organisations which may have been 
found to have been involved in any of the 
events". Also covered are relief and 
rehabilitation and the recommendations of the 
NHRC. The conduct of the hate groups themselves 
and of the kar sevaks is not included. Gaps 
mentioned above still remain. Section 3 of the 
Act should be amended and a central probe 
instituted overriding the state probe. The 
extension of the deadline to December 2005 is a 
signal to the commission that it can carry on 
merrily.

______


[5]  [Rioters resume the spectacle . . .]

2 killed, 20 hurt in Gujarat riots
Times News Network [ Monday, July 26, 2004 05:50:56 Am ]
RAJKOT: At least two persons were killed, one of 
them in police firing, and 20 injured when an 
eve-teasing incident flared into a full-scale 
communal riot that engulfed the whole fishing 
port town of Veraval in Junagadh district on 
Monday.
URL: timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/791199.cms



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