*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formally withdrawn from the Ceasefire Agreement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 Just 11
percent of French aid is real aid. France spends
USD 2 billion of its aid budget each year on
Technical Assistance 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
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Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
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