SACW | Nov 26-27, 2009 / Sri Lanka's Detained / Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan / Bombay Terror -1 year on / Act Now on Liberhan Report
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at gmail.com
Fri Nov 27 06:46:18 CST 2009
South Asia Citizens Wire | November 26-27, 2009 | Dispatch No. 2670 -
Year 12 running
From: www.sacw.net
[ SACW Dispatches for 2009-2010 are dedicated to the memory of Dr.
Sudarshan Punhani (1933-2009), husband of Professor Tamara Zakon and
a comrade and friend of Daya Varma ]
____
[1] Sri Lanka: Free All Unlawfully Detained: Respect Rights of Those
Not Slated for Release (Human Rights Watch)
[2] Bangladesh: Do not allow political space to extremists (Shahedul
Anam Khan)
[3] Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan (Jeremy Scahill)
[4] Reflections on First anniversary of November 2008 Terror Attacks
in Bombay
- From Karachi, with love (Rafia Zakaria)
- Mumbai attacks remain unpoliticised (Faisal Devji)
- Comment by Veena Das
- Comment by Arvind Rajagopal
[5] India: Liberhan Commission Report and After - Resources For
Secular Democrats
(i) Politics of Babri Masjid (Kuldip Nayar)
(ii) Anhad Statement on the Liberhan Commission Report - 25
November 2009
(iii) CPI(M) Statement on Liberhan Commission Report - 25
November 2009
(iv) The cycle of violence (Antara Dev Sen)
(v) Will perpetrators of heinous crime be punished
(Editorial: kashmirtimes.com)
[6] Announcements:
(i) A Sufi music evening with Mukhtiar Ali (Bangalore, 6 December 2009)
(ii) 12th International Conference on Sri Lanka Studies (Colombo,
March 2010)
_____
[1] Sri Lanka:
Human Rights Watch, November 24, 2009
SRI LANKA: FREE ALL UNLAWFULLY DETAINED: RESPECT RIGHTS OF THOSE NOT
SLATED FOR RELEASE
The government’s promise to release displaced civilians from
camps is welcome, though long overdue. The government has been
holding many Tamils for alleged involvement in the LTTE without
providing them basic rights due under Sri Lankan and international
law. The release of displaced persons should not be an excuse for
another wave of arbitrary detentions.
Brad Adams, Asia director
(New York) - As it prepares to allow the 130,000 internally displaced
persons detained in camps to decide whether to stay or leave, the Sri
Lankan government should ensure that no additional persons are
subject to arbitrary detentions, Human Rights Watch said today.
On November 21 the government announced that the camps would be
opened by December 1. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly called on the
Sri Lankan government to release displaced civilians and to restore
their full freedom of movement. Human Rights Watch said that the
decision to release the people in the camps is a positive step, but
also expressed concern that the authorities would step up the
arbitrary detention of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
suspects in violation of international law.
Human Rights Watch has learned that the authorities have been
notifying some camp residents that they will be moved to other
detention camps instead of being released. Additionally, the
government currently detains without charge more than 11,000 persons
on suspicion of LTTE involvement in so-called "rehabilitation
centers." Human Rights Watch called upon the government to either
bring charges against these security detainees or release them.
"The government's promise to release displaced civilians from camps
is welcome, though long overdue," said Brad Adams, Asia director at
Human Rights Watch. "The government has been holding many Tamils for
alleged involvement in the LTTE without providing them basic rights
due under Sri Lankan and international law. The release of displaced
persons should not be an excuse for another wave of arbitrary
detentions."
According to information received by Human Rights Watch, the
authorities have started notifying some people that they will not be
able to leave the camps on December 1, but that they instead will be
transferred to one of the Manik Farm detention camps, which will be
designated as a "rehabilitation center."
The government has denied security detainees fundamental rights to
challenge the lawfulness of their detention and to obtain legal
counsel. In many cases, the government has failed to inform relatives
of the whereabouts of detainees, raising fears of enforced
disappearances and ill-treatment. It is unclear what criteria the
government uses to determine who should be released, who should
remain in "rehabilitation," and who should be prosecuted.
In an illustrative case, the authorities detained "Aanathan" together
with dozens of others from a camp in Manik Farm on October 5. His
wife told Human Rights Watch:
When they came to detain him on October 5, they did not tell me
anything; they only said that he would be interrogated and then he
would come back in a couple of days. When I did not hear anything
from him, however, I went to the CID [police Criminal Investigation
Department office in the camp]. I cried and I begged them to return
him to me, but they only told me to leave.
Aanathan's wife only found out about her husband's whereabouts 15
days later, when she received a letter from him. By that time she had
been released from Manik Farm camp and was able to visit him in the
Pampaimadhu camp, where he was being held. She told Human Rights Watch:
He does not know how long he will have to stay there. They have not
told him anything. When I went there the day before yesterday [mid-
November, more than five weeks after his detention], he had still not
been brought before a judge and he had not had access to a lawyer.
Human Rights Watch also called on the government to ensure that all
displaced persons are able to return to their homes voluntarily, in
safety and with dignity. People who are not able or willing to return
to their home villages and towns should be able to resettle where
they wish or remain in open camps.
Since August, the authorities have returned about 140,000 people to
their home areas or to host families. But Human Rights Watch has
received information that they often do not have any real choice in
terms of where to go when they are released and at least some of the
returns have been forced.
Human Rights Watch is particularly concerned about continuing
government restrictions on access to the return areas. While the
government has granted UN agencies access to Mullaitivu and
Kilinochchi districts, it has barred access for other international
humanitarian organizations even though the infrastructure is
shattered and there is a great need for basic support such as food,
water, shelter and health facilities.
"By denying access of international aid organizations to those
returning home, the government is putting the health and well-being
of these people at additional risk," said Adams. "Donors funding
reconstruction work should reject the government's attempt to isolate
the returnees and insist on free access for independent observers."
_____
[2]
The Daily Star, November 26, 2009
DO NOT ALLOW POLITICAL SPACE TO EXTREMISTS: No pandering to militancy.
Shahedul Anam Khan
IS the method of combatting terrorism any different from addressing
the issue of extremism? How does one relate the issue of human
security to the issue of extremism; is it too simplistic to suggest
that once all the factors that militate against human security are
removed, and by empowering the less endowed, we will be able to
reduce the chances of extremism finding roots? These were some of the
issues that international scholars of the region and from Japan had
been delving in last week under the auspices of the BIISS.
Extremism, terrorism, radicalism are fungible words and the less
perspicuous may be forgiven for using it as such. It would not be
wrong to suggest that while the term radicalism is not normally
considered pejorative there is little substantive difference between
extremism and terrorism.
It provides little comfort to be told that while all terrorists
resort to violence, that is not necessarily the main expedient of the
extremists. Our views of extremism have been shaped by our experience
of various extremists groups in Bangladesh and the region of South
Asia, which compels us to believe that there is little to choose
between the two when it comes to their method of operation.
Extremism had been glorified in the past and that perhaps may
validate the premise on which the "non-violent" attribute of
extremism is situated. Clearly the US Republican candiate's comment
in 1964, that extermism in the defence of liberty is no vice;
moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue, relied on the
passive aspect of the phenomenon to justify the defence of a good cause.
However, while extremism resides primarily in the realm of the mind
it tends to be exclusive and intolerant. And that possibly drive
extremists to find acceptability of the majority, and finding little
resonance of their position in the psyche of the common people
violence becomes the only means of imposing their conviction.
Therefore, the line, that apparently separates the two, is breached
more often out of compulsion if not conviction.
In our effort to devise countermeasures it would also stand us well
not to be bogged down in conceptual discourse and hair splitting on
categorisation of extremism. Extremism is not a singular construct
and the motive force may differ, but the ultimate aim remains the
assumption of political power or attaining enough clout to achieve
parity with other state actors to influence politics and policies.
The purpose of mapping extremism is to use the findings to formulate
appropriate responses. Therefore, the focus should be on why it
occurs in the first place i.e. the root causes, and certainly that
would differ from country to country and with the types of extremism.
And the point that one would like to stress here, when the focus is
on human security as a vehicle to counter terrorism, is the "poverty-
conflict trap." It is a universal argument that poverty resists good
governance, which in turn generates extremist tendencies. While not
in anyway downplaying the impact of poverty, it will be worth our
while to look at other regions of the world which were more endowed
in resources and more affluent yet suffered the wrath of violent
extremism.
In trying to assess the footprints of extremism in South Asia one is
faced with some very interesting realities. Not only do the scope and
intensity vary from country to country, the potential to impact on
politics is more severe in some countries than others.
Looking at Pakistan, it seems that the extremists are no longer going
only after soft targets but making the centre of power their objects
of attack. They are now being engaged in classical combat by the
Pakistan army and only time can tell whether they will meet the same
fate as the LTTE. Do they have enough in terms of military resources
to put up a protracted fight? But the issue is not their military
defeat alone. It is their ideological position that has many
supporters within the Pakistan army, which will determine the future
of Taliban and the nature of politics in Pakistan.
The Indian picture is equally alarming. The fact the politico-
religious extremists have found firm roots in Indian politics through
political parties is indeed frightening. Extremist organisations like
the VHP and the RSS are represented in Indian politics through the
BJP; that they backseat-drive the party is no secret, and the BJP had
held the powers in the centre and is the ruling party in certain
states in India.
Sri Lanka has defeated the LTTE in battle, but the point at issue
remains unresolved.
As for Bangladesh, there is suspected link between the religious
extremists and certain religion-based parties. While the extent is
yet to be ascertained, these parties have never been voted to power
as a party but have managed to assume state power through electoral
alliances.
It would do well for the mainstream political parties to remember
that extremism thrives because of political space they are afforded,
wittingly nor unwittingly. Preventing that must be the top priority.
Brig. Gen. Shahedul Anam Khan, ndc, psc (Retd) is Editor, Defence &
Strategic Affairs, The Daily Star.
_____
[3] Pakistan:
The Nation, November 23, 2009
BLACKWATER'S SECRET WAR IN PAKISTAN
by Jeremy Scahill
At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special
Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi,
members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a
secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of
suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-
value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan,
an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives
also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US
military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-
documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source
within the US military intelligence apparatus.
The source, who has worked on covert US military programs for years,
including in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has direct knowledge of
Blackwater's involvement. He spoke to The Nation on condition of
anonymity because the program is classified. The source said that the
program is so "compartmentalized" that senior figures within the
Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be
aware of its existence.
The White House did not return calls or email messages seeking
comment for this story. Capt. John Kirby, the spokesperson for Adm.
Michael Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Nation,
"We do not discuss current operations one way or the other,
regardless of their nature." A defense official, on background,
specifically denied that Blackwater performs work on drone strikes or
intelligence for JSOC in Pakistan. "We don't have any contracts to do
that work for us. We don't contract that kind of work out, period,"
the official said. "There has not been, and is not now, contracts
between JSOC and that organization for these types of services."
The previously unreported program, the military intelligence source
said, is distinct from the CIA assassination program that the
agency's director, Leon Panetta, announced he had canceled in June
2009. "This is a parallel operation to the CIA," said the source.
"They are two separate beasts." The program puts Blackwater at the
epicenter of a US military operation within the borders of a nation
against which the United States has not declared war--knowledge that
could further strain the already tense relations between the United
States and Pakistan. In 2006, the United States and Pakistan struck a
deal that authorized JSOC to enter Pakistan to hunt Osama bin Laden
with the understanding that Pakistan would deny it had given
permission. Officially, the United States is not supposed to have any
active military operations in the country.
Blackwater, which recently changed its name to Xe Services and US
Training Center, denies the company is operating in Pakistan. "Xe
Services has only one employee in Pakistan performing construction
oversight for the U.S. Government," Blackwater spokesperson Mark
Corallo said in a statement to The Nation, adding that the company
has "no other operations of any kind in Pakistan."
A former senior executive at Blackwater confirmed the military
intelligence source's claim that the company is working in Pakistan
for the CIA and JSOC, the premier counterterrorism and covert
operations force within the military. He said that Blackwater is also
working for the Pakistani government on a subcontract with an
Islamabad-based security firm that puts US Blackwater operatives on
the ground with Pakistani forces in counter-terrorism operations,
including house raids and border interdictions, in the North-West
Frontier Province and elsewhere in Pakistan. This arrangement, the
former executive said, allows the Pakistani government to utilize
former US Special Operations forces who now work for Blackwater while
denying an official US military presence in the country. He also
confirmed that Blackwater has a facility in Karachi and has personnel
deployed elsewhere in Pakistan. The former executive spoke on
condition of anonymity.
His account and that of the military intelligence source were borne
out by a US military source who has knowledge of Special Forces
actions in Pakistan and Afghanistan. When asked about Blackwater's
covert work for JSOC in Pakistan, this source, who also asked for
anonymity, told The Nation, "From my information that I have, that is
absolutely correct," adding, "There's no question that's occurring."
"It wouldn't surprise me because we've outsourced nearly everything,"
said Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin
Powell's chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, when told of Blackwater's
role in Pakistan. Wilkerson said that during his time in the Bush
administration, he saw the beginnings of Blackwater's involvement
with the sensitive operations of the military and CIA. "Part of this,
of course, is an attempt to get around the constraints the Congress
has placed on DoD. If you don't have sufficient soldiers to do it,
you hire civilians to do it. I mean, it's that simple. It would not
surprise me."
The Counterterrorism Tag Team in Karachi
The covert JSOC program with Blackwater in Pakistan dates back to at
least 2007, according to the military intelligence source. The
current head of JSOC is Vice Adm. William McRaven, who took over the
post from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC from 2003 to 2008
before being named the top US commander in Afghanistan. Blackwater's
presence in Pakistan is "not really visible, and that's why nobody
has cracked down on it," said the source. Blackwater's operations in
Pakistan, he said, are not done through State Department contracts or
publicly identified Defense contracts. "It's Blackwater via JSOC, and
it's a classified no-bid [contract] approved on a rolling basis." The
main JSOC/Blackwater facility in Karachi, according to the source, is
nondescript: three trailers with various generators, satellite phones
and computer systems are used as a makeshift operations center. "It's
a very rudimentary operation," says the source. "I would compare it
to [CIA] outposts in Kurdistan or any of the Special Forces outposts.
It's very bare bones, and that's the point."
Blackwater's work for JSOC in Karachi is coordinated out of a Task
Force based at Bagram Air Base in neighboring Afghanistan, according
to the military intelligence source. While JSOC technically runs the
operations in Karachi, he said, it is largely staffed by former US
special operations soldiers working for a division of Blackwater,
once known as Blackwater SELECT, and intelligence analysts working
for a Blackwater affiliate, Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS), which
is owned by Blackwater's founder, Erik Prince. The military source
said that the name Blackwater SELECT may have been changed recently.
Total Intelligence, which is run out of an office on the ninth floor
of a building in the Ballston area of Arlington, Virginia, is staffed
by former analysts and operatives from the CIA, DIA, FBI and other
agencies. It is modeled after the CIA's counterterrorism center. In
Karachi, TIS runs a "media-scouring/open-source network," according
to the source. Until recently, Total Intelligence was run by two
former top CIA officials, Cofer Black and Robert Richer, both of whom
have left the company. In Pakistan, Blackwater is not using either
its original name or its new moniker, Xe Services, according to the
former Blackwater executive. "They are running most of their work
through TIS because the other two [names] have such a stain on them,"
he said. Corallo, the Blackwater spokesperson, denied that TIS or any
other division or affiliate of Blackwater has any personnel in Pakistan.
The US military intelligence source said that Blackwater's classified
contracts keep getting renewed at the request of JSOC. Blackwater, he
said, is already so deeply entrenched that it has become a staple of
the US military operations in Pakistan. According to the former
Blackwater executive, "The politics that go with the brand of BW is
somewhat set aside because what you're doing is really one military
guy to another." Blackwater's first known contract with the CIA for
operations in Afghanistan was awarded in 2002 and was for work along
the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
One of the concerns raised by the military intelligence source is
that some Blackwater personnel are being given rolling security
clearances above their approved clearances. Using Alternative
Compartmentalized Control Measures (ACCMs), he said, the Blackwater
personnel are granted clearance to a Special Access Program, the
bureaucratic term used to describe highly classified "black"
operations. "With an ACCM, the security manager can grant access to
you to be exposed to and operate within compartmentalized programs
far above 'secret'--even though you have no business doing so," said
the source. It allows Blackwater personnel that "do not have the
requisite security clearance or do not hold a security clearance
whatsoever to participate in classified operations by virtue of
trust," he added. "Think of it as an ultra-exclusive level above top
secret. That's exactly what it is: a circle of love." Blackwater,
therefore, has access to "all source" reports that are culled in part
from JSOC units in the field. "That's how a lot of things over the
years have been conducted with contractors," said the source. "We
have contractors that regularly see things that top policy-makers
don't unless they ask."
According to the source, Blackwater has effectively marketed itself
as a company whose operatives have "conducted lethal direct action
missions and now, for a price, you can have your own planning cell.
JSOC just ate that up," he said, adding, "They have a sizable force
in Pakistan--not for any nefarious purpose if you really want to look
at it that way--but to support a legitimate contract that's
classified for JSOC." Blackwater's Pakistan JSOC contracts are secret
and are therefore shielded from public oversight, he said. The source
is not sure when the arrangement with JSOC began, but he says that a
spin-off of Blackwater SELECT "was issued a no-bid contract for
support to shooters for a JSOC Task Force and they kept extending
it." Some of the Blackwater personnel, he said, work undercover as
aid workers. "Nobody even gives them a second thought."
The military intelligence source said that the Blackwater/JSOC
Karachi operation is referred to as "Qatar cubed," in reference to
the US forward operating base in Qatar that served as the hub for the
planning and implementation of the US invasion of Iraq. "This is
supposed to be the brave new world," he says. "This is the Jamestown
of the new millennium and it's meant to be a lily pad. You can jump
off to Uzbekistan, you can jump back over the border, you can jump
sideways, you can jump northwest. It's strategically located so that
they can get their people wherever they have to without having to
wrangle with the military chain of command in Afghanistan, which is
convoluted. They don't have to deal with that because they're
operating under a classified mandate."
In addition to planning drone strikes and operations against
suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan for both JSOC and
the CIA, the Blackwater team in Karachi also helps plan missions for
JSOC inside Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan,
according to the military intelligence source. Blackwater does not
actually carry out the operations, he said, which are executed on the
ground by JSOC forces. "That piqued my curiosity and really worries
me because I don't know if you noticed but I was never told we are at
war with Uzbekistan," he said. "So, did I miss something, did
Rumsfeld come back into power?"
Pakistan's Military Contracting Maze
Blackwater, according to the military intelligence source, is not
doing the actual killing as part of its work in Pakistan. "The SELECT
personnel are not going into places with private aircraft and going
after targets," he said. "It's not like Blackwater SELECT people are
running around assassinating people." Instead, US Special Forces
teams carry out the plans developed in part by Blackwater. The
military intelligence source drew a distinction between the
Blackwater operatives who work for the State Department, which he
calls "Blackwater Vanilla," and the seasoned Special Forces veterans
who work on the JSOC program. "Good or bad, there's a small number of
people who know how to pull off an operation like that. That's
probably a good thing," said the source. "It's the Blackwater SELECT
people that have and continue to plan these types of operations
because they're the only people that know how and they went where the
money was. It's not trigger-happy fucks, like some of the PSD
[Personal Security Detail] guys. These are not people that believe
that Barack Obama is a socialist, these are not people that kill
innocent civilians. They're very good at what they do."
The former Blackwater executive, when asked for confirmation that
Blackwater forces were not actively killing people in Pakistan, said,
"that's not entirely accurate." While he concurred with the military
intelligence source's description of the JSOC and CIA programs, he
pointed to another role Blackwater is allegedly playing in Pakistan,
not for the US government but for Islamabad. According to the
executive, Blackwater works on a subcontract for Kestral Logistics, a
powerful Pakistani firm, which specializes in military logistical
support, private security and intelligence consulting. It is staffed
with former high-ranking Pakistani army and government officials.
While Kestral's main offices are in Pakistan, it also has branches in
several other countries.
A spokesperson for the US State Department's Directorate of Defense
Trade Controls (DDTC), which is responsible for issuing licenses to
US corporations to provide defense-related services to foreign
governments or entities, would neither confirm nor deny for The
Nation that Blackwater has a license to work in Pakistan or to work
with Kestral. "We cannot help you," said department spokesperson
David McKeeby after checking with the relevant DDTC officials.
"You'll have to contact the companies directly." Blackwater's Corallo
said the company has "no operations of any kind" in Pakistan other
than the one employee working for the DoD. Kestral did not respond to
inquiries from The Nation.
According to federal lobbying records, Kestral recently hired former
Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger
Noriega, who served in that post from 2003 to 2005, to lobby the US
government, including the State Department, USAID and Congress, on
foreign affairs issues "regarding [Kestral's] capabilities to carry
out activities of interest to the United States." Noriega was hired
through his firm, Vision Americas, which he runs with Christina
Rocca, a former CIA operations official who served as assistant
secretary of state for South Asian affairs from 2001 to 2006 and was
deeply involved in shaping US policy toward Pakistan. In October
2009, Kestral paid Vision Americas $15,000 and paid a Vision Americas-
affiliated firm, Firecreek Ltd., an equal amount to lobby on defense
and foreign policy issues.
For years, Kestral has done a robust business in defense logistics
with the Pakistani government and other nations, as well as top US
defense companies. Blackwater owner Erik Prince is close with Kestral
CEO Liaquat Ali Baig, according to the former Blackwater executive.
"Ali and Erik have a pretty close relationship," he said. "They've
met many times and struck a deal, and they [offer] mutual support for
one another." Working with Kestral, he said, Blackwater has provided
convoy security for Defense Department shipments destined for
Afghanistan that would arrive in the port at Karachi. Blackwater,
according to the former executive, would guard the supplies as they
were transported overland from Karachi to Peshawar and then west
through the Torkham border crossing, the most important supply route
for the US military in Afghanistan.
According to the former executive, Blackwater operatives also
integrate with Kestral's forces in sensitive counterterrorism
operations in the North-West Frontier Province, where they work in
conjunction with the Pakistani Interior Ministry's paramilitary
force, known as the Frontier Corps (alternately referred to as
"frontier scouts"). The Blackwater personnel are technically
advisers, but the former executive said that the line often gets
blurred in the field. Blackwater "is providing the actual guidance on
how to do [counterterrorism operations] and Kestral's folks are
carrying a lot of them out, but they're having the guidance and the
overwatch from some BW guys that will actually go out with the teams
when they're executing the job," he said. "You can see how that can
lead to other things in the border areas." He said that when
Blackwater personnel are out with the Pakistani teams, sometimes its
men engage in operations against suspected terrorists. "You've got BW
guys that are assisting... and they're all going to want to go on the
jobs--so they're going to go with them," he said. "So, the things
that you're seeing in the news about how this Pakistani military
group came in and raided this house or did this or did that--in some
of those cases, you're going to have Western folks that are right
there at the house, if not in the house." Blackwater, he said, is
paid by the Pakistani government through Kestral for consulting
services. "That gives the Pakistani government the cover to say,
'Hey, no, we don't have any Westerners doing this. It's all local and
our people are doing it.' But it gets them the expertise that
Westerners provide for [counterterrorism]-related work."
The military intelligence source confirmed Blackwater works with the
Frontier Corps, saying, "There's no real oversight. It's not really
on people's radar screen."
In October, in response to Pakistani news reports that a Kestral
warehouse in Islamabad was being used to store heavy weapons for
Blackwater, the US Embassy in Pakistan released a statement denying
the weapons were being used by "a private American security
contractor." The statement said, "Kestral Logistics is a private
logistics company that handles the importation of equipment and
supplies provided by the United States to the Government of Pakistan.
All of the equipment and supplies were imported at the request of the
Government of Pakistan, which also certified the shipments."
Who is Behind the Drone Attacks?
Since President Barack Obama was inaugurated, the United States has
expanded drone bombing raids in Pakistan. Obama first ordered a drone
strike against targets in North and South Waziristan on January 23,
and the strikes have been conducted consistently ever since. The
Obama administration has now surpassed the number of Bush-era strikes
in Pakistan and has faced fierce criticism from Pakistan and some US
lawmakers over civilian deaths. A drone attack in June killed as many
as sixty people attending a Taliban funeral.
In August, the New York Times reported that Blackwater works for the
CIA at "hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the company's
contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-
guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft." In February, The
Times of London obtained a satellite image of a secret CIA airbase in
Shamsi, in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan, showing
three drone aircraft. The New York Times also reported that the
agency uses a secret base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to strike in
Pakistan.
The military intelligence source says that the drone strike that
reportedly killed Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, his wife
and his bodyguards in Waziristan in August was a CIA strike, but that
many others attributed in media reports to the CIA are actually JSOC
strikes. "Some of these strikes are attributed to OGA [Other
Government Agency, intelligence parlance for the CIA], but in reality
it's JSOC and their parallel program of UAVs [unmanned aerial
vehicles] because they also have access to UAVs. So when you see some
of these hits, especially the ones with high civilian casualties,
those are almost always JSOC strikes." The Pentagon has stated
bluntly, "There are no US military strike operations being conducted
in Pakistan."
The military intelligence source also confirmed that Blackwater
continues to work for the CIA on its drone bombing program in
Pakistan, as previously reported in the New York Times, but added
that Blackwater is working on JSOC's drone bombings as well. "It's
Blackwater running the program for both CIA and JSOC," said the
source. When civilians are killed, "people go, 'Oh, it's the CIA
doing crazy shit again unchecked.' Well, at least 50 percent of the
time, that's JSOC [hitting] somebody they've identified through
HUMINT [human intelligence] or they've culled the intelligence
themselves or it's been shared with them and they take that person
out and that's how it works."
The military intelligence source says that the CIA operations are
subject to Congressional oversight, unlike the parallel JSOC
bombings. "Targeted killings are not the most popular thing in town
right now and the CIA knows that," he says. "Contractors and
especially JSOC personnel working under a classified mandate are not
[overseen by Congress], so they just don't care. If there's one
person they're going after and there's thirty-four people in the
building, thirty-five people are going to die. That's the mentality."
He added, "They're not accountable to anybody and they know that.
It's an open secret, but what are you going to do, shut down JSOC?"
In addition to working on covert action planning and drone strikes,
Blackwater SELECT also provides private guards to perform the
sensitive task of security for secret US drone bases, JSOC camps and
Defense Intelligence Agency camps inside Pakistan, according to the
military intelligence source.
Mosharraf Zaidi, a well-known Pakistani journalist who has served as
a consultant for the UN and European Union in Pakistan and
Afghanistan, says that the Blackwater/JSOC program raises serious
questions about the norms of international relations. "The immediate
question is, How do you define the active pursuit of military
objectives in a country with which not only have you not declared war
but that is supposedly a front-line non-NATO ally in the US struggle
to contain extremist violence coming out of Afghanistan and the
border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan?" asks Zaidi, who is
currently a columnist for The News, the biggest English-language
daily in Pakistan. "Let's forget Blackwater for a second. What this
is confirming is that there are US military operations in Pakistan
that aren't about logistics or getting food to Bagram; that are
actually about the exercise of physical violence, physical force
inside of Pakistani territory."
JSOC: Rumsfeld and Cheney's Extra Special Force
Colonel Wilkerson said that he is concerned that with General
McChrystal's elevation as the military commander of the Afghan war--
which is increasingly seeping into Pakistan--there is a concomitant
rise in JSOC's power and influence within the military structure. "I
don't see how you can escape that; it's just a matter of the way the
authority flows and the power flows, and it's inevitable, I think,"
Wilkerson told The Nation. He added, "I'm alarmed when I see execute
orders and combat orders that go out saying that the supporting force
is Central Command and the supported force is Special Operations
Command," under which JSOC operates. "That's backward. But that's
essentially what we have today."
From 2003 to 2008 McChrystal headed JSOC, which is headquartered at
Pope Air Force Base and Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where
Blackwater's 7,000-acre operating base is also situated. JSOC
controls the Army's Delta Force, the Navy's SEAL Team 6, as well as
the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment and 160th Special Operations Aviation
Regiment, and the Air Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron. JSOC
performs strike operations, reconnaissance in denied areas and
special intelligence missions. Blackwater, which was founded by
former Navy SEALs, employs scores of veteran Special Forces
operators--which several former military officials pointed to as the
basis for Blackwater's alleged contracts with JSOC.
Since 9/11, many top-level Special Forces veterans have taken up
employment with private firms, where they can make more money doing
the highly specialized work they did in uniform. "The Blackwater
individuals have the experience. A lot of these individuals are
retired military, and they've been around twenty to thirty years and
have experience that the younger Green Beret guys don't," said
retired Army Lieut. Col. Jeffrey Addicott, a well-connected military
lawyer who served as senior legal counsel for US Army Special Forces.
"They're known entities. Everybody knows who they are, what their
capabilities are, and they've got the experience. They're very
valuable."
"They make much more money being the smarts of these operations,
planning hits in various countries and basing it off their experience
in Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia, Ethiopia," said the military
intelligence source. "They were there for all of these things, they
know what the hell they're talking about. And JSOC has unfortunately
lost the institutional capability to plan within, so they hire back
people that used to work for them and had already planned and
executed these [types of] operations. They hired back people that
jumped over to Blackwater SELECT and then pay them exorbitant amounts
of money to plan future operations. It's a ridiculous revolving door."
While JSOC has long played a central role in US counterterrorism and
covert operations, military and civilian officials who worked at the
Defense and State Departments during the Bush administration
described in interviews with The Nation an extremely cozy
relationship that developed between the executive branch (primarily
through Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld) and JSOC. During the Bush era, Special Forces turned into a
virtual stand-alone operation that acted outside the military chain
of command and in direct coordination with the White House.
Throughout the Bush years, it was largely General McChrystal who ran
JSOC. "What I was seeing was the development of what I would later
see in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Special Operations forces would
operate in both theaters without the conventional commander even
knowing what they were doing," said Colonel Wilkerson. "That's
dangerous, that's very dangerous. You have all kinds of mess when you
don't tell the theater commander what you're doing."
Wilkerson said that almost immediately after assuming his role at the
State Department under Colin Powell, he saw JSOC being politicized
and developing a close relationship with the executive branch. He saw
this begin, he said, after his first Delta Force briefing at Fort
Bragg. "I think Cheney and Rumsfeld went directly into JSOC. I think
they went into JSOC at times, perhaps most frequently, without the
SOCOM [Special Operations] commander at the time even knowing it. The
receptivity in JSOC was quite good," says Wilkerson. "I think Cheney
was actually giving McChrystal instructions, and McChrystal was
asking him for instructions." He said the relationship between JSOC
and Cheney and Rumsfeld "built up initially because Rumsfeld didn't
get the responsiveness. He didn't get the can-do kind of attitude out
of the SOCOM commander, and so as Rumsfeld was wont to do, he cut him
out and went straight to the horse's mouth. At that point you had
JSOC operating as an extension of the [administration] doing things
the executive branch--read: Cheney and Rumsfeld--wanted it to do.
This would be more or less carte blanche. You need to do it, do it.
It was very alarming for me as a conventional soldier."
Wilkerson said the JSOC teams caused diplomatic problems for the
United States across the globe. "When these teams started hitting
capital cities and other places all around the world, [Rumsfeld]
didn't tell the State Department either. The only way we found out
about it is our ambassadors started to call us and say, 'Who the hell
are these six-foot-four white males with eighteen-inch biceps walking
around our capital cities?' So we discovered this, we discovered one
in South America, for example, because he actually murdered a taxi
driver, and we had to get him out of there real quick. We rendered
him--we rendered him home."
As part of their strategy, Rumsfeld and Cheney also created the
Strategic Support Branch (SSB), which pulled intelligence resources
from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA for use in sensitive
JSOC operations. The SSB was created using "reprogrammed" funds
"without explicit congressional authority or appropriation,"
according to the Washington Post. The SSB operated outside the
military chain of command and circumvented the CIA's authority on
clandestine operations. Rumsfeld created it as part of his war to end
"near total dependence on CIA." Under US law, the Defense Department
is required to report all deployment orders to Congress. But
guidelines issued in January 2005 by former Under Secretary of
Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone stated that Special
Operations forces may "conduct clandestine HUMINT operations...before
publication" of a deployment order. This effectively gave Rumsfeld
unilateral control over clandestine operations.
The military intelligence source said that when Rumsfeld was defense
secretary, JSOC was deployed to commit some of the "darkest acts" in
part to keep them concealed from Congress. "Everything can be
justified as a military operation versus a clandestine intelligence
performed by the CIA, which has to be informed to Congress," said the
source. "They were aware of that and they knew that, and they would
exploit it at every turn and they took full advantage of it. They
knew they could act extra-legally and nothing would happen because A,
it was sanctioned by DoD at the highest levels, and B, who was going
to stop them? They were preparing the battlefield, which was on all
of the PowerPoints: 'Preparing the Battlefield.'"
The significance of the flexibility of JSOC's operations inside
Pakistan versus the CIA's is best summed up by Senator Dianne
Feinstein, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
"Every single intelligence operation and covert action must be
briefed to the Congress," she said. "If they are not, that is a
violation of the law."
Blackwater: Company Non Grata in Pakistan
For months, the Pakistani media has been flooded with stories about
Blackwater's alleged growing presence in the country. For the most
part, these stories have been ignored by the US press and denounced
as lies or propaganda by US officials in Pakistan. But the reality is
that, although many of the stories appear to be wildly exaggerated,
Pakistanis have good reason to be concerned about Blackwater's
operations in their country. It is no secret in Washington or
Islamabad that Blackwater has been a central part of the wars in
Afghanistan and Pakistan and that the company has been involved--
almost from the beginning of the "war on terror"--with clandestine US
operations. Indeed, Blackwater is accepting applications for
contractors fluent in Urdu and Punjabi. The US Ambassador to
Pakistan, Anne Patterson, has denied Blackwater's presence in the
country, stating bluntly in September, "Blackwater is not operating
in Pakistan." In her trip to Pakistan in October, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton dodged questions from the Pakistani press about
Blackwater's rumored Pakistani operations. Pakistan's interior
minister, Rehman Malik, said on November 21 he will resign if
Blackwater is found operating anywhere in Pakistan.
The Christian Science Monitor recently reported that Blackwater
"provides security for a US-backed aid project" in Peshawar,
suggesting the company may be based out of the Pearl Continental, a
luxury hotel the United States reportedly is considering purchasing
to use as a consulate in the city. "We have no contracts in
Pakistan," Blackwater spokesperson Stacey DeLuke said recently.
"We've been blamed for all that has gone wrong in Peshawar, none of
which is true, since we have absolutely no presence there."
Reports of Blackwater's alleged presence in Karachi and elsewhere in
the country have been floating around the Pakistani press for months.
Hamid Mir, a prominent Pakistani journalist who rose to fame after
his 1997 interview with Osama bin Laden, claimed in a recent
interview that Blackwater is in Karachi. "The US [intelligence]
agencies think that a number of Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders are
hiding in Karachi and Peshawar," he said. "That is why [Blackwater]
agents are operating in these two cities." Ambassador Patterson has
said that the claims of Mir and other Pakistani journalists are
"wildly incorrect," saying they had compromised the security of US
personnel in Pakistan. On November 20 the Washington Times, citing
three current and former US intelligence officials, reported that
Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, has "found
refuge from potential U.S. attacks" in Karachi "with the assistance
of Pakistan's intelligence service."
In September, the Pakistani press covered a report on Blackwater
allegedly submitted by Pakistan's intelligence agencies to the
federal interior ministry. In the report, the intelligence agencies
reportedly allege that Blackwater was provided houses by a federal
minister who is also helping them clear shipments of weapons and
vehicles through Karachi's Port Qasim on the coast of the Arabian
Sea. The military intelligence source did not confirm this but did
say, "The port jives because they have a lot of [former] SEALs and
they would revert to what they know: the ocean, instead of flying
stuff in."
The Nation cannot independently confirm these allegations and has not
seen the Pakistani intelligence report. But according to Pakistani
press coverage, the intelligence report also said Blackwater has
acquired "bungalows" in the Defense Housing Authority in the city.
According to the DHA website, it is a large residential estate
originally established "for the welfare of the serving and retired
officers of the Armed Forces of Pakistan." Its motto is: "Home for
Defenders." The report alleges Blackwater is receiving help from
local government officials in Karachi and is using vehicles with
license plates traditionally assigned to members of the national and
provincial assemblies, meaning local law enforcement will not stop them.
The use of private companies like Blackwater for sensitive operations
such as drone strikes or other covert work undoubtedly comes with the
benefit of plausible deniability that places an additional barrier in
an already deeply flawed system of accountability. When things go
wrong, it's the contractors' fault, not the government's. But the
widespread use of contractors also raises serious legal questions,
particularly when they are a part of lethal, covert actions. "We are
using contractors for things that in the past might have been
considered to be a violation of the Geneva Convention," said Lt. Col.
Addicott, who now runs the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's
University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas. "In my opinion, we
have pressed the envelope to the breaking limit, and it's almost a
fiction that these guys are not in offensive military operations."
Addicott added, "If we were subjected to the International Criminal
Court, some of these guys could easily be picked up, charged with war
crimes and put on trial. That's one of the reasons we're not members
of the International Criminal Court."
If there is one quality that has defined Blackwater over the past
decade, it is the ability to survive against the odds while
simultaneously reinventing and rebranding itself. That is most
evident in Afghanistan, where the company continues to work for the
US military, the CIA and the State Department despite intense
criticism and almost weekly scandals. Blackwater's alleged Pakistan
operations, said the military intelligence source, are indicative of
its new frontier. "Having learned its lessons after the private
security contracting fiasco in Iraq, Blackwater has shifted its
operational focus to two venues: protecting things that are in danger
and anticipating other places we're going to go as a nation that are
dangerous," he said. "It's as simple as that."
_____
[4] Reflections on First anniversary of November 2008 Terror Attacks
in Bombay:
The Hindu, 26 November 2009
FROM KARACHI, WITH LOVE
by Rafia Zakaria
Last year’s catastrophic attack in Mumbai broke the heart of many
children raised by its ghosts in Karachi.
The Karachi I grew up in was haunted by memories of Mumbai. My
father, grandparents and aunts had all left Mumbai in the decades
after Partition, chasing jobs and the promises sold to the Muslims of
the subcontinent. At every dinner table conversation, every afternoon
tea reminiscence, and every late night stroll, we were accompanied by
the omnipresent ghost of Mumbai. Against the mythic Mumbai of their
memories, Karachi always fell short: the fish was fresher in Mumbai,
my father sighed, and the nights were cooler, my grandmother complained.
The imagined Mumbai that punctuated my Karachi childhood was an idyll
of fresh food, better infrastructure, kinder people and those
glorious Bollywood movies that lit up our screens courtesy of
borrowed VCRs. Impressionistic remembrances muted all dissonance. The
imagined Mumbai my father brought with him had been delivered of the
daily annoyances that everyday life in the city would undoubtedly
have had.
The Karachi of my childhood thus existed very much in relation to and
in conversation with a Mumbai whose reality for me was only defined
by other people’s recollections. Saddened by the discontent of the
transplanted grown-ups, I wanted to exorcise the ghost that seemed to
be the ever present lament of my father that inevitably distanced him
from loving Karachi, the only city I knew and loved. How could he
love me and not love Karachi, I wondered? My twin brother and I,
united in our devotion to Karachi would mount vehement arguments in
its favour. Our childish reasons for loving Karachi were constructed
both from our childlike love for the only home we knew and the
propaganda about India that we were regularly fed at school.
Karachi may have fallen short against the idealisations of my
father’s memory, but it offered much to the children. My brother and
I both went to Zoroastrian schools that had helped form pluralistic
core of the city more than a hundred years before Pakistan had ever
been in existence. I grew up in classrooms where religious pluralism
was not an abstract concept but an everyday reality. Close
friendships between the Muslim, Hindu, Parsi and Christian children
who shared classrooms were so commonplace that writing about them as
exercises in diversity seems somewhat odd. We went to separate rooms
to pray in the morning and during religious classes, but our shared
personal dramas and competitive hysteria over tests defined us as
similar in a way that could not be divested by our religious
differences. Karachi’s locale, and its conglomeration of migrants
from all over India and Pakistan, offered a cornucopia of culture and
cuisine. Chapli kebabs in Shah Faisal Colony, Dahi baras in Hyderabad
Colony and delicious dossas near the Agha Khan Jamatkhana became the
varied flavours of our childhood.
The foundation of tolerance that was such a part of our lives was
valued because it was often tested. In the early nineties, Karachi
was torn and bleeding from ethnic violence between migrants from
India and indigenous Sindhis over control of the city. Karachi was
rocked with shootings that often killed hundreds in the span of a
week. Curfews would be imposed in various parts of the city and
schools like ours in the centre of the city would often be closed.
The first bomb blast I remember as a child was one that hit Bohri
Bazar, a market in the heart of the city in the late eighties. It had
hit a store called Liberty Uniforms, where we had purchased our first
school uniforms a few weeks earlier. The charred, inside stairway,
suddenly exposed because of the blown up store front, was an image
that would soon define the city. As the first democratic governments
of our lifetimes sputtered in the face of ethnic identities, violence
and Karachi became a compound word. That ubiquitous question, “what
are you”, became a part of Karachi children’s vocabulary. It
defined our allegiances, our origin and for some others who saw our
transplanted parents as suspect, also our loyalties. This period of
violence defined Karachi’s break from Mumbai: the calcification of
ethnic identities, the hatred toward the transplanted “other”
entrenched violence into Karachi’s political landscape just as
surely as the Arabian Sea defined its geographical one.
As I write this today, the irony of my childhood consternation at my
father’s memories of Mumbai does not escape me. I make my home far
from Karachi, in the United States but am haunted by its pain as I
watch my native country all but unravel in the face of insurgent
terror. It is a curious exercise for Karachiites when they have to
digest the news of bomb blasts in other Pakistani cities. Reactions
are complex. Some scoff at the fear of our fellow Pakistanis while
we, oddly proud of having already borne nearly every sort of terror,
can make a spectacle of our resilience. Others, point optimistically
to our having learned by necessity the lessons of security decades
before the rest of the country, where ethnic contiguity inured then
from the ravages that plagued Karachi. The latter point to the fact
that going through metal detectors and having our cars searched are
all old hat to Karachi, a city that has never been able to take peace
for granted.
Changing climes
But the tough-guy badness that makes Karachiites wear their war
ravaged history as a badge of resilience cannot hide the weight that
the current conflict is having on the emotional and spatial psyche of
the city. Women’s bodies, always a mirror of the politico-religious
landscapes of a city have again become testaments of these changing
climes. In years past, women in burqas existed side by side with
women in brightly coloured shalwar kamiz but the latter are now
harassed by the former. My mother, who has worn shalwar kamiz without
covering her hair her whole life, was lectured by another woman at a
park about how she ought wear a hijab. A cousin was spat upon at a
traffic light because she has short hair. Another friend was
threatened with an acid attack for wearing capris in a crowded
market. The onslaught has begun here; in a place where diversity of
religious practice, if not ethnic diversity, was heretofore taken for
granted. Women swathed in black are everywhere; and while it is
difficult to tell whether their new garb is the product of
intimidation or choice it is tangible presence pointing to the
constriction of psychological and cultural vibrancy which was such a
trademark of Karachi.
Mumbai’s ghost remains ever-present in this new Karachi; whether it
is the sweet shops that sell delicacies from there, or the Bollywood
blockbuster screened at one of the new cinemas or the many boutiques
that promise clothes straight from Bombay. Last year’s catastrophic
attack in Mumbai broke the heart of many children raised by its
ghosts in Karachi; children who have envisioned Mumbai as a
realisation of all they hope for in their own city. Perhaps also it
made those who live in Mumbai also realise how the ravages of terror
have harangued its estranged twin where a second generation is now
growing up with terror and insecurity as a historical constant. There
is much that Karachi and Mumbai have in common, megacities peopled by
those fuelled as much by dreams and ambition and food and water; they
both tread the tightrope between the harshness of survivalism and the
tempering kindness of strangers in crowds. Yet as their political
narratives fall farther apart and the generation that kept the ghost
of Karachi alive fades into the past, their estrangement threatens to
become a permanent break. It is this possibility; so proximately
real, that represents the most terrible tragedy to befall both
Karachi and Mumbai.
(Rafia Zakaria is a Director of Amensty International, U.S.A.)
o o o
The Guardian, 26 November 2009
MUMBAI ATTACKS REMAIN UNPOLITICISED
A year on it's still unclear what motivated the attacks, but unlike
the US after 9/11, India has not sought political capital
by Faisal Devji
One year after the Mumbai attacks, journalists, diplomats and
security experts have set in place a narrative of Indian incompetence
and apathy. We are told that attempts to hold Pakistan responsible
for the murderous events, or bring those of its citizens implicated
in them to justice, have all been infinitely delayed if not entirely
stymied not least because of Pakistan's importance in the Afghan war.
As if this were not bad enough, these pundits complain that not
enough has been done to improve security in cities such as Mumbai,
and even worse, that the Indian public has itself become apathetic
about the issue.
However true or false this narrative, more interesting is the
question of why the attacks seem to have had no political
consequences in India, despite the efforts made by certain opposition
parties to drum up American-style hysteria about the government's
failure in guaranteeing the nation's security. Both in the provincial
elections that were occurring while two of Mumbai's greatest hotels
were under siege, and in the federal elections held shortly
afterwards, terrorism proved to be of little concern for voters,
including the middle and upper classes whose favourite haunts had
been targeted in Mumbai, and who are otherwise so vocal about
security matters.
Instead of attributing this lack of interest to an epidemic of apathy
that has infected India's government and people alike, we should
recognise the truth of an argument made by Ashis Nandy, one of the
country's most eminent intellectuals, a number of years ago, to the
effect that terrorism has rarely been a political issue for Indians.
While they have suffered from its effects so often the citizens of
this great democracy appear to have realised that terrorist strikes
such as those in Mumbai last year were not political acts of any
serious kind, but a set of provocations and murderous gambles whose
aims remain unclear even in the account of the surviving gunman now
in custody. For even as Ajmal Kasab offered his captors a stereotyped
tale of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e Taiba's arrangements to strike
at its old enemy for the umpteenth time, he also revealed that he had
joined the outfit a short time before only so that he might have
access to arms in order to embark upon a career of robbery in his own
country.
Whether it was intended as a provocation to India, a message to the
US, or simply a self-serving global spectacle, the attack on Mumbai
accomplished many things, none of them, however, being political in
the sense of supporting a particular interest or pushing an agenda in
any meaningful way. And it is because no such aim is clearly
identifiable that the event remains the subject of speculation and
rumour.
In refusing to politicise the attacks, then, Indians have displayed a
maturity that contrasts with America's response not only to the
devastating strike that was 9/11, but to far lesser threats as well.
For 9/11, too, was not a political act in any international sense,
given the insignificant abilities and resources of its perpetrators,
but instead was politicised only by the US reaction that followed it.
Is this contrast due to the fact that as an emerging power, India
uses such attacks to bolster its military role in the region, while
as a gradually declining one the US scrambles to take advantage of
such incidents so as to renew its global dominance, if only by
engaging in high-risk gambles?
Whatever the case, both India's enmity with Pakistan in the
international arena, and the mutual enmity of Hindus and Muslims in
the domestic one, are based on a politics of intimacy in which each
is seen as being all too familiar with the other. Because of its very
closeness, such a relationship can result in the kind of violence
born from the feeling of a fraternity betrayed, as much as it can
lead to the amity of a brotherhood restored. And if Indian society
tolerates the violence of those seen as enemies, it does so in the
same proportion as it tolerates violence against them, recognising in
this way that justice might exist on both sides. This tolerance
suggests that violence is not always viewed as political, and can
even be ignored when no clear interest or agenda is involved. The
aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, I believe, tell us that it is
possible to set limits to what counts as politics, and in doing so to
deal with terrorism in a less paranoid and more productive way than
is seen in the west today.
o o o
Posting on http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/category/mumbai-1126/
Veena Das, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology, Professor of
Humanities, Johns Hopkins University
It would be a fatal error to cast the Mumbai attacks last year in the
same model as the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in
New York. The New York events led to a sea of change in the way U.S.
security policy came to be formulated and how the USA saw its
relation to the world. To India’s credit it did institute a normal
legal trial of the one surviving man from the group of attackers,
despite the demands from many Hindu right-wing groups that there was
no need for a regular court trial, since the evidence of terror was
there for all to see. An analysis of the slow shifts that are
occurring in the legal realm and the relation they bear to the many
non-legal practices utilized in dealing with terrorism, especially
police encounters and the use of torture, need to be understood as
part of the problem of reforming and making government accountable.
But this is unrelated to the Mumbai attacks. There is no magical
solution to this task and one can only be grateful for the work of
various human rights groups, and especially lawyers, who ensured that
even in the reinstated POTA, confessions obtained in police custody
are not usable as evidence.
The second error that is implicit in the questions posed is the
notion that one can establish some kind of link between the
discrimination against Muslims as a minority that is embedded in
everyday operations of governmental institutions and of civic life
more generally, rather than enshrined in any legal rules, and the
attraction toward terrorist violence. The facts of discrimination
against Muslims, as well as against other categories of minorities,
including women and sexual minorities, are real and the state must be
constantly held accountable for them, regardless of terrorist acts or
not. The threats of terrorism have to be thought of in geopolitical
and transnational terms. I agree with Faisal Devji completely that
terrorism is not linked anymore to any political goals—nor is it
easy to understand what attraction acts such as suicide bombing hold
for young men, and sometimes women, despite a plethora of
explanations that are almost like the El Dorado of theory. One fact
is perhaps clearer to many politicians and senior administrators in
India now, and that is that an unstable Pakistan might become much
more difficult for India to live with than a strong and vibrant
Pakistan. For one thing, if Taliban-type rules become established in
Pakistan there will be huge migration to India that would not be easy
to contain. Already, in the bombing of girls’ schools in Swat by the
Taliban, it was clear that there are all these new desires for
education and for certain forms of modernity that cannot be
suppressed forever.
o o o
Posting on http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/category/mumbai-1126/
Arvind Rajagopal, Associate Professor of Culture and Communication,
Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development
The global war on terror has led to a realignment of the political
landscape in countries like India. Domestic politics in India has, at
least since the 1980s, been defined on a spectrum from secular to
Hindu nationalist. “Secular” corresponded to “liberal” or
“left” and “Hindu nationalist,” to “conservative”
politics—to describe it in the more familiar terms understood
elsewhere.
Secularism was cosmopolitan in the developmental context. It stood
for the claim to rise above caste and sect, region and religion, to
an inclusive sense of national identity. Hindu nationalists by
contrast argued that only under a Hindu rubric could the nation be
both Indian and free. Hindu nationalists have been perceived as
parochial and retrograde, and for various reasons they have also been
losing at the polls. But by a strange twist of circumstances, the war
on terror is being run on their terms. Meanwhile secularists have
come to be perceived as a security risk, and it is they who seem to
cling to obsolete superstitions and pieties. But in fact
“security” is as much a mantra as a determinable fact, and the
spell it has cast on its adherents is a strong one indeed.
Now, the prevailing etiology of terrorism imputes to it a force akin
to religious conversion, with acts of violence providing
“inspiration and instruction” for other “extremists,”
according to a 2009 Rand Corporation study on the “lessons of
Mumbai.”
This is not only true for “Islamic terrorism” however. For those
who subscribe to the tenets of the war on terror, a conversion
experience also seems to obtain. Seen from this perspective it is
easier to understand how the suspicion of terrorism becomes the light
guiding the behavior of police, judiciary, and media, while any
evidence contradicting the belief in terrorism is rendered doubtful.
Once the accusation has been made, the failure to discover any
conclusive proof that a given person is a terrorist is to be regarded
as temporary, and seldom disturbs the premise. Terrorism is
understood to be an overarching reality that trumps mere data, or to
comprise a threat so great that only potential danger is relevant,
while other information must be regarded as uncertain and subject to
confirmation. Terrorism is akin to a deep truth against which counter-
factual data is incidental, that is, superficial truth belonging to
the merely sensory realm, lay evidence subject to reinterpretation by
experts.
Such a conversion experience has material grounds. The politically
dominant form of cosmopolitanism today demands alignment with the
U.S. in the war on terror. For example, with President Obama’s
recent statement that the U.S.-India relationship will be one of the
21st century’s defining partnerships, together with the announcement
of a U.S.-India agreement on counter-terrorism and several other
issues, the pressure to assess domestic issues within India from a
U.S.-centric perspective receives an enormous boost.
A new sense of directional historical time in the chronology of
violence is part of this conversion experience. Ignoring the lengthy
history of similar violence in Mumbai alone, e.g., in March 1993
(where 257 were killed) and July 2006 (where 209 were killed), to
declare the November attacks (where 172 were killed) as “India’s
9/11” is to acknowledge, as the Rand Corporation study does, that
not the death toll alone, but the attention it accrued was crucial.
Stretched out over three days, the attacks proceeded not through bomb
blasts, which would have been more efficient if murder alone were the
objective. Instead they unfolded through a cinematic series of
strikes using small arms, targeting photogenic public sites. Renaming
the Mumbai 2008 episode as “India’s 9/11” translates it to the
realm of tele-globalization, where worldwide audiences track events
in real time, and commune without any sense of developmental lag.
Considerations of global security are now therefore fulfilling an old
dream of Hindu nationalists. The latter had always argued that
Muslims were latently or patently anti-national, and that restricting
their rights was not only patriotic, but also prudent. Today the
media, the police and the judiciary are tacitly observing the Code
Napoleon: terrorists are assumed guilty until proven innocent, and
accusations of guilt by private as well as public agencies are quick
to accrue force. The immense technological apparatuses of the media,
designed to accumulate and sift facts in the public interest, have
become akin to an enchanter’s wand, one that has only to point to
make its wish-image appear.
Meanwhile secularism is a creed that dare not speak its name, except
very softly, and many of its erstwhile advocates believe the war on
terror preempts their older concerns. Security is now the watchword,
impelled by the most rational and ecumenical motives, we are told.
But if we observe the systematic racial and ethnic profiling, as well
as the violence occurring in its name, we are justified in asking—
can security be secular? Can the considerations governing global
security themselves be submitted to rational and critical assessment,
not only of its methods, but as well of its serial outcomes?
_____
[5] India: Liberhan Commission of Enquiry Report and After -
Resources For Secular Democrats
(i)
The Daily Star, 27 November 2009
POLITICS OF BABRI MASJID
by Kuldip Nayar
LET the temple come up." This was the remark by Atal Behari Vajpayee
when I asked for his reaction to the destruction of the Babri Masjid
one day after the incident. I was surprised by his comment because I
considered him a liberal force in the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP).
Yet, I did not attach much importance to his remark. Now that the one-
man commission on the demolition, headed by Justice Manmohan Singh
Liberhan, has named Vajpayee as one of the collaborators in the
pulling down of the mosque, his remark falls into the slot. How could
he have reacted differently when he was a party to the "meticulously
planned" scheme to demolish the mosque?
That L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, the other two BJP leaders,
were co-conspirators was known on December 6, 1992, itself. The
surprising name for me is that of Vajpayee. I would have been
indulgent towards him if I had not seen a clip of his speech. A
television network showed it on the day a Delhi paper had published
the leaked report. Vajpayee said on December 5, one day before the
demolition of the masjid, at Lucknow that the ground would be
"leveled" and a yangya (religious celebration) held at that place.
The commission has said that the destruction of the masjid was
"preventable." Advani could have done it. But all of them, "pseudo-
moderates" as the commission has described them, knew about what was
happening and were "not innocent of wrongdoing."
The indictment has exposed our polity because all the three came to
occupy top positions in the country. Vajpayee became the prime
minister, Advani the home minister and Joshi, the human resources
development minister. If all the three were collaborators in the
demolition of the Babri Masjid, they were dishonest in taking the
oath of office which demanded that the oath taker would work for the
country's unity and uphold the constitution, which mentions
secularism in the preamble. The Liberhan Commission has said that
they were among the 68 who were "culpable" in taking the country to
the brink of "communal discord."
Not only that. The three leaders acted against the Supreme Court's
order "not to disturb the status quo." In other words, they made a
mockery of the country's judiciary and the constitution to which they
swore before assuming power. And they ruled for six years without a
tug of conscience.
The question is not only legal but also moral and political. How can
the planned demolition be squared up with the holding of office by
Vajpayee, Advani and Joshi? This is a matter that the nation must
debate to find an answer, at least for the future. Those who have no
clean hands should not be allowed to defile the temple of Parliament.
And if they do so, what should be the punishment when facts come to
light? True, the BJP came to power through the Lok Sabha election.
Would the party have won so many seats if the commission had
submitted its report before 1999, when the BJP led the coalition?
It is unthinkable that the commission should say that the centre
could not have interfered in the affairs of Uttar Pradesh until the
state governor had asked it to do so. This is an alibi. My experience
is that the governor adjusts his power to suit the convenience of
whichever party is at the helm of affairs in New Delhi. The governor
was bound to report according to the wishes of Prime Minister P.V.
Narasimha Rao, whom he personally knew because both belonged to
Andhra Pradesh.
Even otherwise, the centre has an overall responsibility to protect
the constitution. Rao could have easily acted before the demolition
took place. The proclamation to impose president's rule was ready a
fortnight earlier. It was awaiting the cabinet approval. The prime
minister did not convene the meeting. This means his connivance,
although in his book Rao mentions the pressure of his party men that
did not allow him to react in time. When the demolition began, there
were frantic calls to the Prime Minister's Office. He was said to be
at puja (prayer) and continued to be at it till the demolition was
over. What should one make out of this?
Even if the Congress were to deny the allegation against Rao, the
party should explain how a small temple was built overnight at the
site where the Babri Masjid stood a few hours earlier. The centre was
then in full control because UP had been put under president's rule
after dismissal of the state government. In any case, the Babri
Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute had transcended the state borders and
the centre was following the developments every day. The commission's
silence on Rao's behaviour is meant to cover up his complicity and
that of the Congress party.
One thing that Justice Liberhan has not explained in his 900-page
report is the span of 17 years between his appointment and the
submission of his findings. Though he has blamed it on the
commission's counsel for the delay, it is still difficult to
understand that the probe should have taken such a long time. A sum
of Rs.8 crore was spent on the commission and people have commented
that he was prolonging his job.
I expected the government's Action Taken Report to be precise and
meaningful. But it is too general and too vague. And it is shocking
that the government should say that there wouldn't be punitive action
against anybody. Some of the guilty are saying openly that they are
not repentant over what they have done. It would be tragic if those
who demolished the mosque went scot-free. They are also responsible
for the killing of 2000 people in the wake of the masjid's destruction.
The danger of communal discord confronts the nation in one form or
another. The Liberhan Commission has rightly underlined it: the basic
difference between those who want a pluralistic society and those who
are obsessed with Hindutva. The ideology of the BJP, or more so of
its mentor, the RSS, is clear. But those who are playing politics
over the demolition are doing the greatest disservice to the country.
The report parked at the home ministry a few months ago was waiting
to be scooped. It is the prerogative of journalists to do so. Why
should political parties make its publication an issue instead of
discussing how to punish those who conspired to pull down the mosque?
Significantly, all secular parties came to the rescue of the BJP when
the question of the report's leakage was raised. It was sought to be
made a privilege issue. This is one way to evade the real problem.
Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.
o o o
(ii) Anhad Statement on the Liberhan Commission Report - 25 November
2009
http://www.anhadin.net/article93.html
(iii) CPI(M) Statement on Liberhan Commission Report - 25 November 2009
http://bit.ly/4ZpdlO
(iv) THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE
by Antara Dev Sen
http://www.sacw.net/article1251.html
(v) GUILTY MEN OF BABRI OUTRAGE
Will perpetrators of heinous crime be punished
Editorial: kashmirtimes.com
http://www.sacw.net/article1254.html
_____
[8] Announcements:
(i) Subject: Sufi Music Concert on 6th Dec by Mukthiyaar Ali
Souharda Raaga
A Sufi music evening with Mukhtiar Ali
Sufi and Folk singer from Rajasthan
6.00pm onwards, 6th December 2009
St Joseph's Commerce College Auditorium
Brigade Road, Bangalore
Background
The demolition of the Babri Masjid by Hindu fundamentalists on
December 6, 1992 at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh exposed India’s ugly
communal, caste and majority politics. Dec 6th is remembered as a
black day as the destruction of the Babri Masjid was a symbolic
assault on the secular fabric of our society and failure of Indian
State's machinery to protect the minorities.
What followed babri demolition was a series of outburst of communal
violence throughout India particularly in Bombay, Ahmedabad, Surath
and many parts of the country. The South India which was relatively
free of communalism and communal violence began to experience
outburst of communal violence too.
In Karnataka communal tensions centred around the issues of Bababudan
giri, a sufi shrine in Chikkamangalur, flag hoisting issue in Hubli,
attacks on churches, attacks on minority communities and women in
Mangalore and the recent Mysore communal riots are result of rightist
forces' communal agenda.
In Karnataka attacks by rightist forces targeting Christians and
Muslims has raised to alarming levels in past one decade. We have
also seen that socio-cultural and educational spaces gradually come
under communal ideology.
Karnataka Komu Souharda Vedike has been one of the prominent voices
against communalization of Karnataka. Vedike has just not been a
space for protest against communal forces but also a space to
celebrate values of secularism, love and harmony. We are organizing
this program to reiterate our commitment to our values of creating a
harmonious society.
What is happening on Dec 6th 2009?
On this December 6th Vedike is organizing Souharda Raaga, a sufi
music evening by Mukhthiyar Ali, Sufi, folk singer from Bikaner,
Rajasthan. His music is a blend of mysticism, classicism and folk
idioms singing Kabir, Mira, Rumi, Bulleh Shah and many other Sufi poets.
Celebrating values of love and harmony we feel is the best way to
protest politics of hatred and violence that rightist forces believes
in.
Join us for this program
This is a request to all of you to contribute to this event. Vedike
is a coalition of more than 150 organisations, intellectuals,
writers, artists etc and entirely a non funded group, it requests you
to financially contribute to make this event successful
Please send your contributions to:
Karnataka Komu Souharda Vedike
51, 29th cross, 9th main, Banashankari II Stage Bangalore -70.
Cheques/DD’s can be sent in the name of SOUHARDA RAAGA
Contact: Uvaraj on 9448371389 OR Deepu on 9448367627for details or
write to us on: souharda.vedike(at)gmail.com
o o o
(ii) 12th International Conference on Sri Lanka Studies
A 12th ICSSL will be held in Sri Lanka at a time decisive to the
country. The country marked the end of the war that disturbed the
lives of people for more than 35 years. Scholars have gathered
knowledge of the processes that lead to continuation and ending of
the war. Use of this knowledge in planning the future prosperity of
the country is imperative. 12th ICSLS, following its long held
tradition of openness will provide a scholarly forum to debate and
to faciliate emergence of new knowledge useful in shaping the country
in the future. The conference will be held from 18th to 20th March
2010. Theme for the 12th ICSLS will be “ Sri Lanka after the War:
Prevention of recurrence, reaching for prosperity “.
The conference will also provide a forum to present and discuss in a
scholarly environment, studies conducted and thoughts to guide the
future directions of research in topics other than the theme on the
past, and contemporary society in Sri Lanka as well as the Sri Lanka
in a global context.
Scholars are invited to contribute by submitting papers. Individual
papers are invited from a wide variety of fields such as;
anthropology, archeology, architecture, culture and society, defense
studies, demography, development studies, diasporic studies, distance
learning; economics, education, ethnic studies, environmental
studies, fine arts, gender studies, geography, history, information
science, languages and literature studies, library and information
studies; management studies, media studies, philosophy, political
science, post-tsunami studies, psychology, religious studies, risk
studies, science and technology policy; and sociology.
For inquiries, Please contact:
Secretary to the National Organizing Committee
12th ICSLS
Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka
Mahaweli Center,
Ananda Coomaraswamy Mawatha,
Colombo 07 - 00700
Sri Lanka.
Telephone: +94-077-725-7020
Fax: +94 (011)-269-8249
http://www.slageconr.net/12thicslshome.html
E-mail: 12thicsls at slageconr.net
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. An offshoot of South Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
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