*SPAM* SACW | 1-4 July 2006 | Sri Lanka: peace industry and war; Pak-India: tit-for-tat;

Harsh Kapoor aiindex at mnet.fr
Mon Jul 3 19:42:18 CDT 2006


South Asia Citizens Wire | 1-4 July, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2267


[1]  Sri Lanka: Disaster capitalism, peace 
industry and a return to war (Darini Rajasingham 
Senanayake)
[2]  South Asia's Escape from Freedom (Hassan N. Gardezi)
[3]  Pakistan - India: Changing a Pavlovian response (Praful Bidwai)
[4]  India - Gujarat: A balancing act (Harsh Mander)
[5]  Letter to the Indian Prime Minister  (Navaid Hamid)
[6]  India: NBA Demands Shunglu Committee Report Be Made Public  
[7]  Upcoming Event:
a cross-border seminar on the murders of women in 
the name of honour (Mumbai, October 2006)


___


[1]

Himal
July 2006

DISASTER CAPITALISM, NEO-LIBERAL PEACE AND A RETURN TO WAR

With the end of peace in Sri Lanka, the time has 
come for a massive re-appraisal of the 
international community's successes, failures and 
outright incompetencies in the name of 
rehabilitation, reconstruction and peace-building.

by  Darini Rajasingham Senanayake


Waiting for post-Tsunami aid, January 2005

Peace in Sri Lanka is increasingly an 
international legal fiction - an assumption 
contrary to ground realities. The ebb of peace in 
the palm-fringed, tourist-friendly island is 
indexed in the return of 'dirty war', a rising 
body count, trickle of refugees to South India, 
as well as suicide bombings and barricades in 
Colombo. For the first time, there have been 
coordinated attacks on international aid 
agencies. As the head of the Scandinavian peace 
Monitoring Mission noted recently, there is an 
ongoing low-scale, low-intensity war.

Even though neither the Liberation Tigers of 
Tamil Eelam (LTTE), nor the government has 
formally withdrawn from the Ceasefire Agreement 
(CFA), the new war continues the spiral of the 
(para-) militarisation of civil society, with a 
'war economy' sustained by terror, taxation and 
international post-conflict and post-Tsunami 
reconstruction assistance. These trends point to 
the possibility that the current conflict may 
also achieve a self-sustaining momentum beyond 
ethnic minority grievances as it has done in the 
past.

In this context, it is important to analyse the 
role of the international community, which, 
though a set of apparently external observers, 
has become intrinsically embedded and intertwined 
in Sri Lanka's conflict and peace process over 
the past decade. Given the massive international 
aid industry and bureaucracy in the country, the 
return of war despite the best efforts of Norway 
raises fundamental questions about their 
relevance and impact on conflict transformation.

A recent study of peace processes has noted that, 
of 38 internationally mediated peace efforts in 
the decade between 1989-1999, 31 had returned to 
conflict within the first few years. 
International assistance in low-intensity armed 
conflicts and peace processes may either 
ameliorate or become part of a renewed conflict 
cycle. As such, the attempt here is to develop a 
structural analysis of the three principal actors 
in Sri Lanka - the government of Sri Lanka, the 
LTTE and the international community - and their 
relationship, based on study of the political 
economy of the international aid industry and 
bureaucracy.

The war, peace and reconstruction industry
Not too far back, in 2003, Sri Lanka was 
projected in international reconstruction and 
development conference circles and media as a 
test case of 'liberal peace building and 
reconstruction'. After the Norwegian-brokered 
Ceasefire Agreement in 2002, three separate 
international pledging conferences for Sri Lanka 
were held in Oslo, Washington and Tokyo. The 
conferences ended with the promise of USD 4.5 
billion for post-conflict reconstruction. Four 
co-chairs were appointed to Sri Lanka's peace 
process - Norway, Japan, the EU and US. The World 
Bank, having positioned itself to lead the 
expanding international reconstruction industry 
and bureaucracy in the island, was appointed 
custodian of the North East Reconstruction Fund 
(NERF).

Given donor emphasis on the privatisation of 
development assistance, international 
consultants, private companies and I/NGOs 
competed for lucrative reconstruction contracts 
in Sri Lanka in the peace interregnum - from 
de-mining, to road building, to peace education 
and advertising. More recently, the December 2004 
Asia Tsunami disaster drew a large number of 
volunteers and technical experts, unfamiliar with 
local languages, institutional structure and 
culture. Despite this, reconstruction has been 
painfully slow, primarily due to the fact that 
the international aid industry has snatched away 
local and regional ownership of the recovery 
operation. This is in stark contrast to India and 
Thailand, which refused most forms of 
international assistance after the Tsunami, but 
are far ahead in the task of reconstruction.

Over the past half-century of war and natural 
disaster, Sri Lanka's politicians and 
policymakers have developed a culture of 'aid 
dependency', even though ground-level facts point 
to the necessity of a different approach - the 
country is no longer a least-developed county, 
has an almost 90 percent literacy rate, a number 
of under and unemployed graduates, and it exports 
technical skills overseas. There are several 
questions that need to be asked about the 
reconstruction effort: why is national expertise 
marginalised in reconstruction? Do aid pledges 
materialise? And how much of the assistance 
actually reaches the country or the communities 
affected by war, natural disaster and poverty?

There have been few systematic reviews of donor 
assistance and its impact. There is the Strategic 
Conflict Assessment for Sri Lanka - commissioned 
and launched by the World Bank, the Department 
for International Development of the UK (DFID), 
the Asia Foundation and other donors - that was 
recently released. That report did not meet the 
need for a transparent analysis of the assistance 
coming into Sri Lanka. Arguably much of the aid 
pledged and disbursed for peace and 
reconstruction in the country is 'phantom aid', 
defined by the relief organisation ActionAid as 
"aid that never materialises to poor countries, 
but is instead diverted for other purposes within 
the aid system" (see box).

In May 2006, the donor co-chairs estimated that 
of the USD 4.5 billion pledged to Sri Lanka, USD 
3.4 billion "had been provided based on Tokyo 
pledges and Tsunami funds, and more than 20 
percent of that allocated to the north and east, 
including LTTE-controlled areas". No disclosure 
is made of how much of this aid was in the form 
of loans. Phantom aid in disaster situations, 
where the usual development project safeguards 
are waived due to an emergency situation, may be 
as high as 80-85 percent of donor assistance. In 
this context, the fact that Sri Lanka's aid 
absorption rate remains at around 17-20 percent 
while donors continue to pledge ever-larger sums 
for development assistance is not mysterious.
The international peace and development 
bureaucracy in the past decade in Sri Lanka has 
clearly gained its own self-sustaining momentum. 
This has happened at a time when aid may become 
increasingly irrelevant in a world where 'trade 
not aid' is seen as the way forward, particularly 
for countries that are no longer in the 
least-developed category. The development 
bureaucracy requires and absorbs most of the aid 
targeted for development, conflict resolution and 
poverty reduction.

Moreover, international humanitarian aid has 
become, as one academic termed it, "a means 
without end". It tends to lack an exit strategy 
until the money runs out, is often mistargeted, 
distorts the local economy, and aggravates 
inequality, poverty and the underlying structures 
of a conflict. In the long run, it develops aid 
dependency and aggravates conflict. The 
conflicting parties often blame each other for 
aid that never materialised. International aid 
may increasingly morph into the war dynamic in 
the conflict zones of the global South, even as 
it expands through processes of bureaucratisation.
At the same time, it is important to note that 
that the Norwegian mediators, who have often been 
held responsible for peace and reconstruction 
policy failures that originate in the World Bank- 
and UN-centric international development 
bureaucracy, are but a miniscule part of the 
international peace and reconstruction aid 
industry. Moreover, the Norwegian government that 
came to power in 2005 decided not to partner with 
the Bank in cases where structural adjustment was 
required as part of a peace and reconstruction 
package.

A bureaucratic peace
Sri Lanka's peace process has been termed a 'no 
war, no peace' process. Arguably, the formalistic 
and 'legal-bureaucratic' approach of 
international peace building and reconstruction 
largely accounts for this phenomenon. Consider, 
for instance, the resources, energy and experts 
spent on legal drafts and re-drafts of an Interim 
Governing Authority for the North and East 
(ISGA), the World Bank's North East 
Reconstruction Fund (NERF), Post Tsunami 
Operational Mechanism (P-TOMS), three 
international donor pledging conferences, 
Multilateral Needs Assessments, and the hundreds 
of MoUs for large infrastructure reconstruction 
projects in the past four years for Sri Lanka. 
The internationalisation and bureaucratisation of 
the peace process resulted in too much time spent 
on international development agendas, conferences 
and timeframes that were often at odds with the 
needs and priorities of those affected by the 
conflict.

Clinton and Bush, February 2005

This approach effectively eschews seeing 
track-one peace building as a social process. It 
has stemmed from, among other things, the large 
number of international players and the peace and 
reconstruction bureaucracy in the island, and the 
attendant coordination burden. Of course, all 
three actors in the conflict and peace dynamics 
in Sri Lanka - the LTTE (seduced by the legal 
fiction of 'equality or parity of the parties'), 
the Colombo government and the international 
community bent on implementing a 'neo-liberal' 
peace - have contributed to the legal 
bureaucratic approach of peace building.
Arguably, the time spent on legalese would have 
been better spent in the creative implementation 
of actually existing possibilities for power and 
resource sharing, enshrined in the Constitution 
under the 13th Amendment, and proper targeting of 
aid to improving the livelihoods of communities 
from whom fighters are recruited. There has also 
been a tendency to overburden an already 
over-determined peace process by linking 
everything, including natural disasters like the 
Tsunami (aid), to power sharing. There appears to 
be a need to de-link these issues and have a more 
balanced approach to peace and development.

The peace building approach of dialogue in 
various international capitals, rather than 
analysis of substantive issues and implementation 
at the ground level, seems to derive from 
Euro-American analytical frameworks that 
privilege state-centric theories of conflict 
resolution, developed out of Cold War inter-state 
conflict mediation experience. However, 
intrastate conflicts where resource and 
ethno-religious identity conflicts tend to be 
intertwined and are often the outcome of 
post-colonial state building, and require 
different approaches from peace builders. They 
require engagement with social realties within 
the country, and attention to internal 
complexities at the local and sub-national 
levels. Where the challenge of reconciliation is 
within countries, and between asymmetric parties 
(eg, state actors and non-state actors), peace 
building necessitates a less legal-bureaucratic 
approach.

The emphasis on legal mechanisms and processes 
has also obscured another picture closer to the 
ground - the reality of the emergence and 
existence of a dirty war in northeast Sri Lanka. 
The morphing of the peace process into war is 
evident when we move away from formalistic frames 
and focus on non-verbal speech acts - in other 
words, when we 'read between the said, the meant 
and the done'.

In this context, adding another layer of 
international bureaucracy in the form of Bill 
Clinton or some other UN Envoy to Sri Lanka will 
only deflect from the focus on substantive 
issues. Rather, a new peace process led perhaps 
by the Norwegians would need to thin the 
international aid bureaucracy and agencies, and 
focus on substantive issues, including improving 
poverty reduction among conflict and 
Tsunami-affected communities. In short, an exit 
strategy, rather than extended time frames, for 
aid is necessary for much of the international 
aid industry in Sri Lanka. This would enable a 
more locally owned and hence sustainable peace 
process.

The economics of peace
Though fisheries are arguably Sri Lanka's 
greatest natural resource, given the unpolluted 
ocean and rich breeding grounds that surround the 
country, international development assistance 
over the decades has not focused on the need to 
target and up-scale the fisheries sector for 
poverty alleviation and conflict de-escalation in 
the north or south. Throughout the peace process, 
the north and east coastal fisheries communities 
continued a subsistence economy. Sri Lanka's two 
main donors, Japan and Norway, both have highly 
industrialised fisheries sectors.

The most influential number of combatants in the 
LTTE hail from impoverished coastal fisheries and 
rural agricultural communities in the northeast. 
In fact, the LTTE sank a Chinese fishing trawler 
perceived to be poaching on local fishing grounds 
in 2003. To transform the conflict, it is crucial 
to develop the fisheries sector and industry to 
enable viable livelihoods for poor communities 
from which fighters are recruited. The 
impoverished fishing communities of the north and 
east and the socially marginalised caste groups 
on the coast have been the most radicalised in 
the years of conflict, and provide the foot 
soldiers. The Tamil elites and Vellala or high 
castes have tended to eschew the LTTE's brand of 
nationalism, and the LTTE in turn has fought to 
overthrow the caste hierarchy in Tamil society.

However, the post-conflict and post-Tsunami aid 
industry experts have systematically overlooked 
the importance of enabling sustainable 
livelihoods for such impoverished communities. 
The Multilateral Needs Assessment for Tokyo and 
the Tsunami Needs Assessment study, conducted by 
the World Bank in collaboration with the Asian 
Development Bank and Japan's official aid agency, 
pegged the loss borne by the tourism industry at 
USD 300 million, versus only USD 90 million for 
the fishing industry, even though fisheries 
communities were far more affected. The 
researcher and human rights scholar Vasuki Nesiah 
points out that the ideological assumptions 
embedded in an assessment methodology that rates 
a hotel bed bringing in USD 200 a night as a 
greater loss than a fisherman bringing in USD 50 
a month have far-reaching consequences.

With reconstruction measures predicated on this 
kind of accounting, we are on a trajectory that 
empowers the tourism industry to be an even more 
dominant player than it was in the past, and, 
concomitantly, one that dis-empowers and further 
marginalises the coastal poor. Many have noted 
the bias towards big business and tourism in the 
needs assessments of the multilateral agencies 
and the government, where the up-scaling of 
fisheries infrastructure is ignored.

The donor-people disconnect
For the first time since the conflict erupted 25 
years ago, coordinated grenade attacks were 
carried out on three international aid agencies 
in Sri Lanka recently. These attacks were in the 
wake of widespread rumours of sexual exploitation 
and harassment of local women by foreign staff of 
INGOs in the Tsunami- and conflict-affected 
areas. Local women were instructed not to work 
with international agencies, which, it was 
claimed, were violating Tamil and Muslim 
'culture'. There is a sense among common people 
that the aid industry has not delivered, but 
rather consumed and lived off the funds.

At the root of the critique of the aid industry 
is the fact and perception of gross inequality 
between those who came to help and the receivers 
of assistance, as well as the erosion of basic 
humanitarian ethics and values evident in the 
operational style of INGOs. What people see are 
extravagant lifestyles, lack of transparency and 
increased aid dependency, with a concomitant 
failure of donors to deliver on projects. The 
fact remains that the majority of large 
international aid agencies have not performed, 
and even at times blocked, local philanthropists 
and the business community, which did much of the 
work in the immediate aftermath of the Tsunami 
and have a far better 'delivery rate'. Exit 
strategies and deadlines for the large agencies 
also seem to have become anachronistic.

The attacks on aid agencies must be 
contextualised in the broader setting. Militants 
who lack access to information, technical 
critique and evaluations respond to real and 
perceived corruption in the aid industry with 
violence. Such attacks are a matter of great 
concern to those who believe that competent 
international assistance is necessary for 
conflict de-escalation and reconstruction. 
Critics however fail to acknowledge and address 
the general disenchantment with international aid 
and INGOs that has become widespread in the 
country since the Tsunami.

The International Federation of the Red Cross 
(IFRC) in Sri Lanka represents a case study of 
the manner in which these agencies generate high 
expectations but fail to deliver due to a host of 
reasons. Having raised almost USD 2 billion for 
post-Tsunami reconstruction, 183 expatriate 
'volunteers' came to Sri Lanka, each worth over 
USD 120,000 but with little technical expertise, 
knowledge of society, politics or culture, local 
languages or institutional structures. Having 
pledged to reconstruct 15,000 houses, it had 
built a mere 64 one year after the Tsunami. The 
IFRC and the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society together 
make up the largest pledged housing donor, and 
have set the bar very low. The blame for this is 
placed on the government's buffer zone policy or 
alternatively on the condition of the land.

The latest government estimates are that 21 
percent of the required housing after the Tsunami 
is complete. That means that several hundred 
thousand Sri Lankans are still without permanent 
homes, by government estimates. Some 33,000 
families, or at least 150,000 people, remain in 
transitional shelters. Others are living 
temporarily with relatives or friends.
The Red Cross was given 67 plots of land, out of 
which about a third had problems. But several 
questions arise: why did it not build homes on 
the remaining land? Should a relief agency such 
as the Red Cross have taken up long-term housing 
construction given the absence of expertise and 
experience, simply because it had managed to 
raise the funds? The Reconstruction and 
Development Agency in Sri Lanka, unlike the 
government of Tamil Nadu in India, has failed to 
evaluate the INGOs and ask under-performing INGOs 
to leave the country, so that others may help.

It is increasingly apparent that privatisation of 
post-disaster reconstruction, given information 
asymmetries and endemic market imperfections in 
the sector, is a mistake. As long as such a 
large, incompetent and costly international 
bureaucracy remains in the island, substantive 
and sustainable peace building and development 
will be elusive. There is by now extensive 
literature on how international peace building, 
humanitarian and reconstruction assistance may 
contribute to sustain low-intensity wars in 
Africa, Asia and other parts of the global South, 
because such aid constitutes a large and complex 
industry and bureaucracy in itself and for 
itself. There is a clear need for reform of the 
international aid architecture and practices in 
the context of what writer Naomi Klein has termed 
'disaster capitalism', to enable accountability 
to beneficiaries and affected communities.

Neo-liberal aid
Even as the government and the LTTE are the 
principal actors in the conflict, it would be 
naïve to downplay the role of the international 
community in the peace process in Sri Lanka. The 
extent of international investment in Sri Lanka's 
'peace and reconstruction' has made official 
acknowledgement of the return to war difficult. 
But the peace process, in the best of times, 
enabled merely a repressive tolerance. This was 
by no means only due to the inability of the two 
main armed actors to engage on difficult issues - 
principally the need to democratise the LTTE and 
Colombo government, and to professionalise and 
humanise the military. The international peace 
builders colluded with the main actors in 
deferring the core social, political and economic 
issues that structure the dynamics of the 
conflict, in order to promote a neo-liberal 
economic reconstruction agenda that is integral 
to the (phantom) aid industry.

With the wisdom of hindsight, this approach 
undermined the Norwegian-brokered CFA. The 
promise of USD 4.5 billion for reconstruction 
came with a policy requirement of structural 
adjustments (SAPs), and liberalisation favoured 
by the World Bank. Very little of this reached 
the communities affected by the disasters, and 
from which the majority of combatants are 
recruited. A recent Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission 
Report notes on the subject of child recruitment: 
"some underage children freely volunteer to leave 
their families due to economic reasons to join 
the LTTE." Mis-targeted aid translated into an 
economic bubble, a dramatic rise in the cost of 
living, increased inequality and poverty in the 
communities from which soldiers are recruited, 
and further erosion of the welfare state. In a 
very short time, the government that signed the 
peace agreement with the LTTE was voted out of 
power - and the rest is history. The tide in the 
affairs of men that may have led to fortune, even 
to peace in Sri Lanka, had turned.

Since Sri Lanka is not considered a 
least-developed country, the county's donor 
dependence is directly related to the armed 
conflict and the need for external mediation. 
International development agencies have recently 
recognised the profitability of working with 
rather than around social conflict in the 
post-9/11 world, increasingly focusing on 
projects "for democratisation, governance and 
conflict resolution", as the Strategic Conflict 
Assessment notes. Sri Lanka's strategic location 
and the over-capitalisation of its post-Tsunami 
reconstruction means that the country remains 
creditworthy and an attractive place for the 
international lending institutions and the aid 
industry, despite stories of donor fatigue.

Given the aid bureaucracy's embeddedness in the 
political economy of peace and conflict in Sri 
Lanka, it cannot be seen as a neutral actor or 
set of actors. This fact has particular relevance 
for much of the technical assistance and 
development 'knowledge' produced and 
sub-contracted by development agencies. There is 
ample evidence that the macro-polices of the 
Washington Consensus exacerbates intra-group and 
inter-group inequality and poverty that fuels 
(identity) conflicts in fragile states in the 
global South.

There is a fundamental problem with a peace and 
reconstruction policy approach that claims to 
link 'conflict-sensitivity to development' 
without assessing the dominant neo-liberal 
development paradigm, and policy that tends to 
generate inequality and conflict within and 
between countries. The Strategic Conflict 
Assessment does precisely this, though it hints 
at the need for such a critique. Ironically, the 
international aid industry and bureaucracy and 
technical experts may be a key impediment to the 
production of knowledge frames that could lead to 
more sustainable peace building in Sri Lanka and 
other conflict-affected parts of the global South.

Looking ahead
For the sake of peace and development in Sri 
Lanka, it is important that policy-makers and 
others draw lessons from the past experience of 
international involvement. What is needed 
immediately is an evaluation of the performance 
of the various aid agencies in the country. This 
could then form the basis for retaining only the 
efficient ones, which have contributed to the 
task of post-conflict and -Tsunami reconstruction 
at the ground level. This would in turn reduce 
the coordination burden, and help streamline and 
effectively target development assistance. The 
Indian authorities' approach to international aid 
and experts, especially in the wake of the 
Tsunami, is a good example in this regard.

It is also important to reduce phantom aid and 
debt burden; and to demand greater transparency, 
disclosure and accountability from the 
international financial institutions, the UN 
agencies and the various donor countries 
regarding aid programs (loans or grants), the 
extent to which the aid is aid, and technical 
assistance. INGOs should be required to disclose 
budgets, qualifications of staff, and in-country 
spending on projects, operation and transaction 
cost.

The connection between resource and identity 
conflicts is often not adequately acknowledged in 
peace processes. A new peace process will need to 
grasp the connection between resource and 
identity conflicts, as well as the intra-group 
dynamics of the inter-ethnic conflict. This 
requires deepened social analysis that is not to 
be confused with the notion of 'social capital' 
that post-conflict advisors and specialists 
promote at the knowledge bank. Peace mediators 
and international development actors will need to 
be attentive to the discourse on inequality and 
poverty, and link track-one discussions to deeper 
social conflicts and intra-group inequalities.

The need for deeper analysis, however, should not 
to be confused with or used as a legitimacy 
clause for extending project delivery timeframes. 
Extended aid timeframes make for even less 
accountability among aid agencies, who tend to 
delay on project delivery and extend costly 
contracts, while generating a culture of aid 
dependency. This was clearly evident with the 
Tsunami recovery operation. It is important to 
devise exit strategies for aid agencies and to 
stick to the schedule.
Finally, it is to be hoped that the lessons from 
the peace process in Sri Lanka may serve as a 
turning point for a 'structural adjustment' of 
the international peace and development industry, 
and ensure accountability to communities and 
countries affected by conflicts. This requires 
getting beyond the toolkit approach to 
post-conflict reconstruction, with its 
predictably damaging macro-economic policies of 
structural adjustments that undo the work of 
peace mediators. These steps, coupled with local 
ownership of the peace process, may provide the 
way out of Sri Lanka's present quagmire.

Phantom aid

The international peace and development industry 
that is by now entrenched in most parts of the 
global South is believed to be the fifth-largest 
industry in the world. Conflict situations 
present significant 'opportunities for growth' to 
international aid experts and bureaucracy, 
exported from the Euro-American world to these 
regions. However, the utility of this 
ever-growing donor assistance to 
conflict-affected countries and communities is an 
open question. At odds with local development 
priorities, the international aid bureaucracy is 
seen to have its own self-sustaining logic that 
is increasingly irrelevant to either the poverty 
or the conflict on the ground.

A June 2005 report on aid effectiveness by the 
relief organisation ActionAid, titled "Real Aid: 
Making Aid More Effective", estimated that 61 
percent of all international donor assistance is 
'Phantom aid'. As opposed to 'real aid', phantom 
aid includes funds that are: a) tied to goods and 
services from the donor country; b) overpriced 
and ineffective technical assistance - by far the 
largest category of phantom aid, accounting for 
USD 13.8 billion; c) spent on excess 
administration; d) poorly coordinated and high 
transaction costs; e) aid double-counted as debt 
relief; f) assistance not targeted for poverty 
reduction; g) amounts spent on 
immigration-related costs in donor countries, etc.

The report further notes that, "eighty cents of 
every dollar of American aid is phantom aid, 
largely because it is so heavily tied to the 
purchase of US goods and services, and because it 
is so badly targeted at poor countries Š Just 11 
percent of French aid is real aid. France spends 
USD 2 billion of its aid budget each year on 
Technical Assistance Š In real terms, the 
Norwegians are nearly 40 times more generous per 
person than the Americans, and 4 times more 
generous than the average Briton."

_____


[2]

SOUTH ASIA'S ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM
by Hassan N. Gardezi

(Keynote address at World Peace Forum 2006, Asia Regional Conference)
June 25, 2006, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

http://sacw.net/free/july06Gardezi.html

_____


[3] 

The News
July 1, 2006

CHANGING A PAVLOVIAN RESPONSE
by Praful Bidwai

The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a 
researcher and peace and human-rights activist 
based in Delhi

What is it about us Indians and Pakistanis that 
compels us to respond spontaneously to each other 
as if we were destined to be mortal enemies -- 
even at a time when we are meant to be talking 
peace? Last fortnight threw up at least three 
instances of such entrenched hostility, which has 
been imbibed through an almost 60 year-long 
history of a continuous hot-cold war between our 
two countries, punctuated by many unpleasant 
incidents.

First, Pakistan's immediate response to India's 
announcement that it would back Shashi Tharoor 
for the post of secretary-general of the United 
Nations was to look for a Pakistani rival 
candidate. The second response was to note, with 
some glee, that an Indian's bid for the job 
suggests that India is no longer interested in 
becoming a permanent member of the Security 
Council. By convention, only small or mid-sized 
countries put up candidates for the secretary 
general's job; none of the P-5 has ever done so.
It's far from clear if a Pakistani candidate 
would have a half-way respectable chance of 
winning what has become a complex, multi-cornered 
context for a supposedly 'Asian seat'. (Ideally, 
a majority of Asian countries should have put up 
a joint candidate to claim the position after a 
34-year hiatus.)

The Americans are known to favour -- from a Cold 
War hangover -- an Eastern European candidate -- 
in violation of the regional-representation 
convention. Their second choice may be former 
Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, whom the 
Chinese too may back. However, logical reasoning 
about such possibilities becomes irrelevant when 
one is fired by an urge to outmanoeuvre and 
punish 'the enemy'. In this case, the enemy's 
'edge' maybe exaggerated, even non-existent.

Thus, a rational calculation would show that 
India stands to gain very little from having an 
Indian as the secretary general. Even if he wins, 
Tharoor won't be able to do much for India -- 
unless the P-5, in particular the Americans, want 
to do so. The secretary general is not exactly an 
independent actor. And barring Dag Hammarskjold, 
no secretary general has really attempted to play 
such a role, especially in the teeth of Big Power 
opposition.

Besides, India should know that the pursuit of 
prestige (usually, false or flimsy prestige) 
could be costly. In 1996, India made a bid for a 
non-permanent Security Council seat against 
Japan. Despite mounting a full-throttle campaign, 
India lost miserably by 40:142 -- and eroded its 
own global standing.

Consider the second instance: denial of a visa to 
Indian poet-lyricist Javed Akhtar to attend a PTV 
programme featuring Bollywood stars to raise 
funds for Pakistan's earthquake victims. This was 
again a case of cussedness and bloody mindedness 
so evident in the subcontinent's bureaucrats. The 
Pakistani authorities unconvincingly denied that 
they refused Akhtar a visa. It now emerges that a 
visa was issued, but cancelled. It couldn't have 
been reissued in time for the event. The event 
was cancelled.

The third instance pertains to India's nuclear 
deal with the United States and her energetic 
effort to have it cleared quickly in Congress. 
The inking of the deal provoked a knee-jerk 
reaction from Pakistan: it suddenly discovered 
the virtues of nuclear electricity and demanded a 
similar agreement from Washington (or, failing 
that, Beijing). Never mind the possibility that 
such agreements, which legitimise nuclear weapons 
and block progress towards disarmament, might not 
be in either country's interests!

India's insistence on being treated as a 
singular, one-time exception to the global 
nuclear order translated into intense lobbying on 
Capitol Hill to have certain clauses written 
into, or deleted from, the draft legislation 
before the House International Relations 
Committee. This past Tuesday, the Committee 
'marked up' the Bill for the full House in such a 
way that the legislation cannot be extended to 
Pakistan.

The conditions stipulated by the 'sense of 
Congress' part of the resolution say that the 
cooperating country must be a democracy and have 
an unblemished non-proliferation record. As a 
commentator who has been unabashedly rooting for 
the India-US deal put it, New Delhi should be 
'pleased' by this -- a consolation for various 
non-operative clauses in the Bill that 'might 
irritate' it. Another reported 'quite 
satisfaction' in the South Block.

Such examples of competitive rivalry, sometimes 
self-destructive rivalry driven by irrational 
suspicion and blind hatred, can be multiplied. 
The rivalry's persistence amidst the dialogue 
process -- which has considerably slowed down -- 
speaks of a distressing fact: namely, state-level 
hostility cannot be cured or greatly mitigated by 
expanding people-to-people contacts.

People-to-people contacts have risen impressively 
-- to a level unimaginable only three years ago. 
The Indian government estimates that in 2005, 
about 100,000 Indians travelled to Pakistan while 
its high commission in Islamabad issued some 
92,000 visas to Pakistanis.

In the past six months alone, about 1.7 lakh 
Indians and Pakistanis travelled across the 
border. About 84,000, or half the total, 
travelled by air, and nearly 50,000 by train. 
Visas issued for cricket matches and religious 
festivals/pilgrimages are only one factor that 
explains this heartening trend. In general, there 
is greater exchange and interaction across the 
border in countless fields, including the 
mass-entertainment industry, the performing arts, 
software development, etc. This calls for a 
celebration.

Yet, this is not enough to alter ossified 
mindsets. The disconnect between multiple 
closures at the official level and greater 
openness at the citizen level has never been more 
complete. This is a terrible comment on the 
failure of our bureaucracies and even our 
political leaders to promote normalisation of 
India-Pakistan relations, to which they are 
committed by official agreements. Their role is 
largely negative, obstructive and reactionary. 
The burden it imposes on the development of the 
common interests of the two peoples could not 
have been greater.

However, there are a few silver linings to the 
dark official cloud. Although there has been no 
breakthrough on issues like Siachen, Wular/Tulbul 
and the Sir Creek boundary, there has been no 
regression either. Officials have refused to term 
the talks a failure.

For the first time in three years, Pakistan has 
granted land transit rights for 35 trucks of 
Indian make to drive across the Wagah border to 
Kabul as part of India's humanitarian assistance 
programme, which includes the donation of 240 
trucks to Afghanistan. The last time Pakistan 
granted such transit facilities to India was in 
2003, when 400 buses gifted by India to 
Afghanistan were allowed to cross the border. One 
can only hope this will eventually lead to 
regular transit rights, not just clearance on a 
case-by-case basis.

Perhaps the most important positive development 
is that the two establishments do want to make a 
go of the peace process. Two senior government 
representatives, Satinder K. Lambah and Tariq 
Aziz, are reportedly holding 'back-channel' talks 
in Abu Dhabi to 'save' the composite dialogue. 
They have received helpful 'fresh briefs' from 
their leaders. They are also discussing the 
possibility of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh 
visiting Pakistan in October or November.

One can only wish Lambah and Aziz well. If they 
achieve a breakthrough in their backroom talks, 
they will help defuse at least some, perhaps the 
worst, of the hostility that attends our official 
exchanges, and thus pave the way for more 
productive talks. That will surely win them our 
publics' gratitude.

_____


[4] 

Hindustan Times
July 2, 2006

A BALANCING ACT
by Harsh Mander

Like the sites of all great catastrophes and 
suffering, Gujarat abounds with thousands of 
untold stories. But not all these are tales of 
massacres, of hate, fear, despair and mass 
graves, of blood congealed on streets and poison 
in hearts. The stories even less told are those 
of most extraordinary human compassion and 
courage surviving intense assaults. For every 
narrative of cruelty and oppression that people 
recount of those tempestuous days of 2002, there 
are at least two or three untold stories of the 
generosity and kindness of ordinary people, 
risking their lives and homes to save innocent 
lives and helping betrayed and shattered people 
heal and rebuild.

In Koha, a village not far from Ahmedabad, more 
than 110 women, men and children cowered many 
hours in fields of standing crops. They were all 
of Muslim faith, all of working class families -- 
landless workers, lorry drivers, tailors in 
readymade shirt factories -- and all mortally 
terrified. In the wake of rumours that people of 
their faith had burnt a train compartment of 
Hindu pilgrims in neighbouring Godhra, armed 
mobs, including their neighbours, had looted and 
torched their homes.

As darkness fell, they made their way to the 
thatch and earth home of Dhuraji and Babuben 
Thakur at the edge of their small seven-acre 
farmland. With lowered eyes, they begged for 
shelter for just one night. Neither Dhuraji nor 
Babuben hesitated even for a moment and opened 
their doors and hearts for all 110 of their 
traumatised, wearied, now homeless neighbours. 
The next morning they offered to leave for the 
relief camp, but their hosts would not hear of 
it. "This is your home," they assured them. "As 
long as God has given to us, we will share 
whatever we have with you." Their entire stores 
of rice and bajra for the whole year were opened, 
and they ensured that all were fed for the full 
10 days that they lived in the sanctuary of their 
home. The women of the family brought out all 
their clothes, and would form a human wall around 
their well as the women bathed each day.

Dhuraji gathered his extended family from the 
village, to mount constant guard for their 
guests, for 10 nights and days, armed only with 
their peasant sickles.

The women and children were persuaded to sleep 
inside the home, while the Thakur women slept in 
the open fields and the Thakur men kept vigil 
through the long cold nights. They were unshaken 
by threats from their Hindu neighbours, who sent 
them bangles to taunt them, set fire to their 
haystacks, and one night even stole in through 
the darkness to set aflame their house, a 
conflagration they all doused just in time.

Still, Dhuraji and his wife Babuben were perfect 
hosts, as though these were just normal times. 
They tried to meet every need of their guests, to 
make them feel constantly welcome. Dhuraji's 
grown sons would set out in their tractors and 
bring back large stocks of bidis for the men, tea 
for the women and milk for the children. Years 
later, those whose lives they saved remembered 
fondly that seeing them in gloom, Dhuraji even 
hired a VCR and showed them Hindi films to buoy 
their spirits!

At the end of 10 days, it was they who insisted 
that they must finally shift to the relief camp. 
Their hosts tried to persuade them to stay as 
long as they could not return to rebuild their 
own homes. Dhuraji finally organised tractors and 
a police escort. He safely took them to the camp. 
He used to visit them regularly at the camp as 
well, and the women recall that his eyes would 
often well over with tears when he saw their 
children lose weight in the austere rigours of 
the camp and stand in lines for watery tea.

Four years later, when I met Dhuraji and Babuben, 
they were embarrassed that I thought what they 
had done was magnificent. When I pressed them 
about why they did what they did, Dhuraji thought 
a long time before he replied simply, "How could 
I bear it that people of my village are treated 
this way?" He added firmly, "This village belongs 
to the Muslims as much as it belongs to me."

I asked if they regretted that they lost their 
entire year's stock of grain in 10 days. Dhuraji 
replied, "God ensured that we get a good harvest 
after our guests left, and since that day, our 
grain stocks have never fallen empty." Babuben 
added, "Their good wishes and prayers have 
strengthened us. Don't you see greenery 
everywhere?"

I did.

A few hundred kilometres away, in a remote 
village Nanaposhina in Sabarkantha district, 
white-haired Walibhai, a stubborn and ageing 
agricultural worker, was helplessly enraged when 
his house was looted and burnt by his young 
neighbours, boys who had grown before his eyes. 
He fiercely insisted on remaining in the village 
to guard the shell of scorched walls which was 
all that was left of his home, although he forced 
his grown sons, who drive jeep taxis, and his 
wife Mariam to the safety of a relief camp.

He sat awake weeping the whole night in the 
shadow of his collapsed home. The next morning, 
it hit him afresh that overnight he was reduced 
to a pauper: he owned nothing, not even a lota or 
water pitcher to go to the fields. A Thakur boy 
who walked past felt sorry for the old man and 
quietly gave him his lota and left without a 
word. Walibhai recalls that it was with this 
small act of kindness that he was able to begin 
his life again.

His neighbour, a Patel, called him shortly after 
to say that there was a phone call for him. His 
daughter-in-law informed him that she had had a 
son the night before. "We have lost everything," 
he cried to her. She contradicted him firmly, 
"You are saved. This means we have everything."

He found a broken piece of an earthen pot on 
which to make himself some rotis, refusing to 
hide any more, glowering at people as they 
threatened him. But the wife of his Patel 
neighbour insisted that she would feed him, and 
for eight days she defied the angry opposition of 
many in her village to openly bring him food and 
tea as he stood guard at his home. "What has 
happened is wrong," she said simply to everyone 
who protested.

Four years later, when we visited him, the walls 
of his home were still burnt, but there were 
shining corrugated sheets screwed on to the roof. 
"See my good fortune," he said to me. "Rambhai 
Adivasi was not even a close friend. We only used 
to sit and talk together sometimes. But when he 
saw my burnt house some months later, he cried. 
Without a word, he went home, bought these sheets 
for Rs 6,000, hired workers and a tractor to 
transport these here. The workers told me they 
had instructions to not heed my objections, and 
to fix the iron sheets. That is how I have a roof 
over my head today! Look at my good fortune, my 
friend."


_____


[5] 

SOUTH ASIAN COUNCIL FOR MINORITIES (SACM)

Letter to the Indian Prime Minister


Respected Prime Minister Saheb,
I take this privilege to write about an important,
crucial and sensitive issue which has started
appearing in section of the print media.

Since last month or so there are speculations and
discussions in the political circles about the
possibility of Indian forces being sent by the Indian
Government to Afghanistan to help and aid the American
led forces, fighting the Taliban on the one hand and
facing the resistance from smaller Afghan nationalist
groups, on the other, on the request of the
American-led alliance and the European Union.

The hawks favoring the deployment of Indian forces may
have numerous arguments but as an ordinary citizen of
this great nation, which has a long history of
championing and supporting resistance to foreign
occupations and non-alignment, the undersigned
strongly feels that the move would be disastrous,
politically and historically, to align with the forces
which are messed up in the situation created by their
misadventures in the troubled nation.

In last 25 years or so, India's approach to the Afghan
crisis has not only created ill will amongst even
ordinary Afghans but also has given a clear wedge to
Pakistan, India's traditional foe in the region.
Having advantage of being a next-door neighbour to the
troubled nation, Pakistan has exploited the Afghan
crisis to fulfil its political ambitions to the
maximum and nobody can deny the hard fact that
Pakistan, being the mentor of the Taliban, has greater
influence over the majority of its leadership and also
over a large section of other small groups resisting
the American-led forces being regarded there as
occupation forces, even today.
I strongly fear that even the slightest reflection of
being with the American led forces in Afghanistan
would have severe consequences and would send
disastrous signals not only to common Afghans but also
to domestic population in India, apart from putting
minute Hindu and Sikh population in Afghanistan at
great risk.
Political activists in India shivers to recall the
events that followed with the Sri Lanka's mess up and
the backlash by our Tamil brethren to India's
intervention in Sri Lanka's affairs.
As an ardent admirer of your visionary leadership, I
am quite confident that all aspects would be in your
mind. I earnestly request you to kindly over rule the
hawks that are favoring the Indian forces deployment
in troubled Afghanistan.
with warm respectful regards
Navaid Hamid
Secretary, SACM


_____


[6]

Narmada Bachao Andolan
- 62 Gandhi Marg, Badwani, Madhya Pradesh, 451551. Telefax: 07290-222464
- c/o B-13 Shivam Flats, Ellora Park, Vadodara, 390023. Ph: 0265-2282232
- Maitri Niwas, Tembewadi, Dhadgaon, dist 
Nandurbar, Maharashtra. Ph: 02595-220620

SHUNGLU COMMITTEE SUBMITS REPORT TO PRIME 
MINISTER; NBA DEMANDS THE REPORT BE MADE PUBLIC 
IMMEDIATELY

TEST FOR THE UPA GOVERNMENT: ARE THEY AS TRANSPARENT AS THEY CLAIM?

Press Release

The Narmada Bachao Andolan got news that teh 
Shunglu Committee has submitted its report on 
rehabilitation of affected families in Madhya 
Pradesh to the Prime Minister. Earlier today, 
Medha Patkar and the NBA sent a letter to the 
Prime Minister by fax, requesting him to make 
public the report of the Shunglu Committee 
whenever it was submitted, and also for him to 
give a chance to affected people and their 
organisation to comment on the report.

The full text of the letter is below.


July 2, 2006

To,

Shri Manmohan Singh ji,
Prime Minister of India,
New Delhi

Respected Shri Manmohan Singh Ji,

You surely remember that the construction work at 
Sardar Sarovar Dam is on and reaching its target 
of 122 mts. The people from the valley numbering 
not less than 1.5 lakhs (35,000 families) 
continue to reside in the affected area if the 
rainfall is 1:100 years scale. But this rainfall 
can occur in any year as in 1994 (1:70 years) and 
in 1970 (1:100 years), when thousands of houses 
were affected without this, which is a further 
barrier, causing huge pondage. How tragic would 
be the monsoon and flooding remains to be watched 
by all and fought by the living human communities 
of farmers and laborers who haven't yet begin 
committing suicides.

Meanwhile the Oversight Group led by Mr. Shunglu 
must have submitted to you the Report that was 
due yesterday, June 30th which was also the 
deadline for the both- completing the R&R of all 
122 mts affected families (obviously not achieved 
at the time of the approval for the same nor one 
year before submergence the deadline stipulated 
by NWD Tribunal Award). We hope the Committee 
would also submit to you the report of NSS 
organization and the Over view reports of their 
individual surveyors, as well as the report of 
the private company, IDC, commissioned by the OSG 
to do verification of survey data. All of these 
documents are supposed to bring forth the ground 
reality in the Valley even if as a post facto 
exercise, to help you access the situation of 
legal compliance and justice ensured or denied to 
the oustees.

You will agree that this exercise initiated by 
your office is one related to the Constitutional 
rights of the oustee as individual citizen and 
generation old communities, the Gram Sabha and 
hence the above mentioned reports should be the 
documents in the public domain. With the 
oft-stated commitment of your government to 
transparency, it would be a sorry affair, if 
these reports affecting their rights are not made 
available to the people and the movement. We 
would surely be able to give our rejoinder to the 
reports as we have made a number of submissions 
to the oversight group and made certain* 
considered *comments on the research methodology- 
tools, processes, interpretations and 
correlations- submitted to OG and NSSO both. We 
therefore request you to make the above-mentioned 
reports (the final OG Report, the NSSO report and 
the Surveyors reports) available to us and 
consider our comments *before you make any 
decision based on the same* and before GoIs 
viewpoint is submitted to the Supreme Court. We 
trust that you would respond positively and 
promptly

We are also happy to submit to you a short report 
on Survey and factual data as gathered by 4 of 
the Gram Sabhas in the Valley, some educated 
volunteers as supporters for recording, reporting 
and translating assisted the community 
representatives. We have such data on many more 
villages and the same can be used by anyone who 
feels concerned for the truth amidst so much of 
politics and paraphernalia. We hope you would 
benefit of the same in your decision making, 
which needs to be utmost impartial and of your 
own as the authorized arbitrator as per the 
Supreme Court judgments (2000 to 2006). This is 
our appeal to you, at this critical time, when 
you have to decide finally on the Narmada issue 
and take a firm position on displacement, 
rehabilitation and its linkage to development 
plans.

May, I also take this opportunity to convey to 
you a need for a final consultation with the 
people's organizations on the newly drafted 
National Rehabilitation policy, before it goes to 
the Parliament or is approved at the Cabinet 
level. We who had contributed to the drafting 
process feel this very strongly.

Thanking you and with regards,

Yours Sincerely,

Sd/-
Medha Patkar

_____


UPCOMING EVENT:


The Pakistan India People's Forum for Peace and 
Democracy will be holding a cross-border seminar 
on the murders of women in the name of honour in 
Mumbai, India in October 2006.

Campaigners and activists in South Asia are 
invited to get in touch with PIPFPD; you can pass 
on your messages and requests through this 
website and we will forward them on your behalf.
<http://www.stophonourkillings.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=253>http://www.stophonourkillings.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=253




_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/

DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
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