SACW - 3 Sep 2014 | Bangladesh: Assault on CHTC member Pakistan: Dharna Democracy / A Teacher in Kabul / Sri Lanka: against deportation of asylum seekers / India - Pakistan: What next? / Adieu Bipan Chandra & Balraj Puri; Hindutva propaganda against love marriages/ France's Troubled / The New Cold War

Tue Sep 2 16:24:54 EDT 2014

South Asia Citizens Wire - 03 September 2014 - No. 2832 
[since 1996]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contents:
1. Bangladesh: Attack on Coordinator of International Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission (CHTC): Press Statements
2. Pakistan: Civil-military ties, not back to square one | Nazish Brohi
3. Pakistan: Statement released by Women's Action Forum, Karachi on Dharna Democracy
4. Pakistan: Rules of the game | Zubeida Mustafa
5. Pakistan: Civil Society statement urges the protesting parties to enter into a meaningful dialogue with government
6. What is the most blatant lie taught through Pakistan textbooks?
7. Inhumane and illegal deportation of asylum seekers from Sri Lanka should be stopped
8. Sherry Rehman: Modi’s Greta Garbo Moment on Kashmir
9. India - Pakistan: What next? | A G Noorani
10. M K Bhadrakumar: The real reason why India scuttled Pakistan talks
11. India: Stop new Babri movement against churches | S A Aiyar
12. India: Homeless are compelled to risk their lives for few hours of sleep | Harsh Mander
13. India: Citizens For Democracy Seeks the Arrest of Yogi Adityanath for Making Inflammatory Statements
14. Mr. Modi, come and see us before you clinch nuclear deal: Fukushima resident responds to Indian PM's tweet in Japanese
15. India: Adieu Professor Bipan Chandra: Reports, Tributes and Selected Writings
16. India: Tribute to Balraj Puri | N. D. Pancholi
17. India: Sarasvati Theories & the Constraints of Geography | Zahoor Ali Khan
18. India: Right To Choose and ’Love Jihad’ - Press Statement by Womens Activists
19. Video: Ananya Vajpeyi on Hindu Nationalism
20. India: Michael Specter’s ’Seeds of Doubt’ and Vandana Shiva’s Response
21. India: Fact finding report on the road accident involving 13 homeless Kashmere gate, on 18th August 2014
22. India: Text of Jharkhand High Court Order Seeking Probe On Health Deformities Near Jadugoda Uranium Mines

+++++FROM THE ARCHIVES @ sacw.net +++++
23. Communalism and the Writing of Indian History: Essays by three celebrated historians
24. India: Aligarh Riot of October 1978 - A Report to People’s Union for Civil Liberties
25. India of the Early 1980’s and the Clampdown on Workers rights
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

26. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
 – TV debate in India: Love Jihad - A false propaganda by patriarchal groups? [in Hindi]
 – Panchjanya the RSS Paper special number with hateful propaganda about Love Jihad (sept 2014) [in Hindi]
 – Quote, unquote Najma Heptullah on Hindus and Indians
 – India: Muslims and NDA Government: Emerging Trends from the First 100 Days
 – What is the scale of the problem of far-right extremism in Europe? (Video)
 – Delhi civic bodies play safe on illegal shrines
 – Bharat Bhushan on 100 Days of the Modi Govt
 – India: Interview with civil rights activist Dr John Dayal
[ . . . ]

::: FULL TEXT :::
27. A Teacher in Kabul | Kathy Kelly
28. In Afghan Election, Signs of Systemic Fraud Cast Doubt on Many Votes | Carlotta Gall
29. Bangladesh’s Traveling Pain | Tahmima Anam
30. France's Troubled Liberation | Alan Riding
31. The new cold war | Serge Halimi

=========================================
1. BANGLADESH: ATTACK ON COORDINATOR OF INTERNATIONAL CHITTAGONG HILL TRACTS COMMISSION (CHTC): Press Statements
=========================================
CHTC condemns attack on its Coordinator in Bandarban allegedly by Somo Odhikar Andolon members; calls for investigation and prosecution and punishment of culprits
http://www.sacw.net/article9439.html

=========================================
2. PAKISTAN: CIVIL-MILITARY TIES, NOT BACK TO SQUARE ONE |  Nazish Brohi
=========================================
The trajectory of civil-military ties will remain dialectical. It may be push and pull, two steps forward one step back, but it's not back to square one.
http://www.sacw.net/article9454.html

=========================================
3. PAKISTAN: STATEMENT RELEASED BY WOMEN'S ACTION FORUM, KARACHI ON DHARNA DEMOCRACY
=========================================
WAF reminds the dharna democrats that democracy is a long term, incremental process, and not the result of a particular election. Street Spectacles while legitimate for protesting grievances can never be a substitute for Parliamentary representation with its built-in self-correctives. The many Islamist militant and sectarian groups in Pakistan are evidence of the difference between street power and parliamentary representation and the worth of both.
http://www.sacw.net/article9448.html

=========================================
4. PAKISTAN: RULES OF THE GAME | Zubeida Mustafa
=========================================
It was quite an extraordinary way of celebrating the 67th anniversary of Pakistan’s independence last week. Believing that they could usher in freedom/revolution by bringing their supporters out on the street, Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri succeeded only in creating polarisation and instability in a crisis-ridden country.
http://www.sacw.net/article9416.html

=========================================
5. PAKISTAN: CIVIL SOCIETY STATEMENT URGES THE PROTESTING PARTIES TO ENTER INTO A MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE WITH GOVERNMENT
=========================================
We consider the two dharnas by the supporters of Imran Khan of the PTI and Dr. Tahir ul Qadri of PAT in front of the Parliament and other sensitive offices of the country in Islamabad as “illegal” and their demands as “unconstitutional”. We urge them to immediately call off these protests and enter into meaningful negotiations with the government. The sooner a dialogue is held, the better it will be for democracy and the country.
http://www.sacw.net/article9417.html

=========================================
6. WHAT IS THE MOST BLATANT LIE TAUGHT THROUGH PAKISTAN TEXTBOOKS?
=========================================
The distortion of historical facts has in turn played a quintessential role in manipulating our sense of self. What’s ironic is that the boldest fallacies in these books are about the events that are still in our living memory. Herald invited writers and commentators, well versed in history, to share their answers to what they believe is the most blatant lie taught through Pakistan history textbooks.
http://www.sacw.net/article9405.html

=========================================
7. INHUMANE AND ILLEGAL DEPORTATION OF ASYLUM SEEKERS FROM SRI LANKA SHOULD BE STOPPED
=========================================
As Sri Lankan citizens and Sri Lankan civil society organizations, we are appalled by the recent arrests and deportation of asylum seekers from Sri Lanka. According to the UN, 108 Pakistanis have been deported as of 14th August. According to the UNHCR, this included at least 11 women and 8 children and families have been separated, including a pregnant woman that had been left behind after the husband was deported.
http://www.sacw.net/article9404.html

=========================================
8. SHERRY REHMAN: MODI’S GRETA GARBO MOMENT ON KASHMIR
=========================================
While no one expected breakthroughs in bilateral talks, either blocked or desultory since 2009, prospects for change were part of the cautious hope in the air ever since Modi and Sharif met in Delhi in a cloud of cold-peace warmth. [and now] the cancellation of secretary level talks [. . .]. But then that’s typical India and Pakistan. One day biryanis and bonhomie, the other two days muscle and war-memes.
http://www.sacw.net/article9418.html

=========================================
9. INDIA - PAKISTAN: WHAT NEXT?
by A G Noorani
=========================================
Heads of missions in New Delhi have been visiting Srinagar and meeting Kashmiri leaders there as well as in New Delhi. Is this process to be ended and a fundamentally new stance adopted? No country is an island by itself. Diplomatic pressures will mount. Some day the dialogue will resume; but at a loss of prestige. Is a new Kashmir policy in the offing?
http://www.sacw.net/article9460.html

=========================================
10. M K BHADRAKUMAR: THE REAL REASON WHY INDIA SCUTTLED PAKISTAN TALKS
=========================================
The Indian decision to call off the foreign secretary-level talks with Pakistan scheduled for the coming Monday is simply appalling. The justification being proffered — that Pakistan’s ambassador in Delhi inviting members of the separatist Kashmiri separatist Hurriyat Conference meet up with him — belies logic and lacks credibility. The motives of the Narendra Modi government are highly suspect and patently lame excuses are being touted as justification.
http://www.sacw.net/article9414.html

=========================================
11. INDIA: STOP NEW BABRI MOVEMENT AGAINST CHURCHES | S A Aiyar
=========================================
When the demolition of the Babri Masjid was threatened in 1991, Parliament en acted a law prohibiting the conversion of any place of worship of one religion into that of another, the only exception being the Babri Masjid itself. Back then, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad sought to demolish 3,000 mosques, claiming these were once temples.This threatened 3,000 more clashes of the Babri Masjid variety, stoking communal carnage and destroying Indian secularism. The Masjid was ultimately demolished, but the new law helped prevent the disease spreading to other places of worship. The problem has returned in unexpected fashion in Aligarh. It must be tackled before it can grow.
http://www.sacw.net/article9459.html

=========================================
12. INDIA: HOMELESS ARE COMPELLED TO RISK THEIR LIVES FOR FEW HOURS OF SLEEP | Harsh Mander
=========================================
One more blood-drenched road accident. Another soul-numbing statistic. A drunken man, driving at night at crazy speeds, loses control, lunges on to a road divider, crushing 13 sleeping men. Newspapers report, the driver is arrested but released on bail next day. People forget, until the next crash. In Delhi, there were three accidents involving homeless men in one week.
http://www.sacw.net/article9458.html

=========================================
13. INDIA: CITIZENS FOR DEMOCRACY SEEKS THE ARREST OF YOGI ADITYANATH FOR MAKING INFLAMMATORY STATEMENTS
=========================================
Citizens For Democracy strongly condemns the communal sensitive remarks made by Yogi Adityanath in a programme ‘Aap ki Adalat' on ‘India TV' on Saturday the 30th August, 2014. In that programme which is reported in various newspapers, he has publicly blamed the Muslim community for being responsible for instigating the riots. He has publicly declared that where there are more than 35 persons Muslims, there is no place for non-Muslims.
http://www.sacw.net/article9457.html

=========================================
14. MR. MODI, COME AND SEE US BEFORE YOU CLINCH NUCLEAR DEAL: FUKUSHIMA RESIDENT RESPONDS TO INDIAN PM'S TWEET IN JAPANESE
=========================================
A response from a resident of Fukushima, Yukiko Takahashi, to the Indian PM Narendra Modi's bid to finalise a nuclear agreement in Japan.
http://www.sacw.net/article9437.html

=========================================
15. INDIA: ADIEU PROFESSOR BIPAN CHANDRA: REPORTS, TRIBUTES AND SELECTED WRITINGS
=========================================
Reports and tributes after the passing away of the historian Bipan Chandra in Delhi
http://www.sacw.net/article9455.html

=========================================
16. INDIA: TRIBUTE TO BALRAJ PURI
by N. D. Pancholi
=========================================
In the sad demise of Shri Balraj Puri at Jammu India has lost a great champion of human rights and a political analyst of high repute. He was 86. He was participant in momentous political events such like ‘Quit India Movement’ of 1942’ and ‘Quit Kashmir Movement’ of 1946’ in association with Sheikh Abdullah and Pt. Prem Nath Bazaz against Dogra Ruler Maharaja Hari Singh. He did his utmost to prevent outbreak of communal violence or check its spread in Jammu in 1947 and on many occasions thereafter- even at the risk of his life.
http://www.sacw.net/article9476.html

=========================================
17. INDIA: SARASVATI THEORIES & THE CONSTRAINTS OF GEOGRAPHY | ZAHOOR ALI KHAN
=========================================
This article seeks to raise certain questions essentially by examining the geographical implications of certain statements made in, as academically reputed a work as a Memoir of the Geological Society of India, under the title Vedic Sarasvati: Evolutionary History of a Lost River of North Western India, Bangalore, 1999. Basically the article is concerned only with the claims made relating to the Holocene, beginning c. 8000 BC, within which the Vedic corpus is placed by all whose contributions were published in that volume, including the late V S Vakankar, who would push the Rigveda back to 8000 BC. Secondly, the implications are examined only in regard to (a) the possibility of the higher Himalayas feeding any river between the Sutlej and the Yamuna during the Holocene; and (b) the topographical possibilities of either the Yamuna or Sutlej feeding streams in the upper part of the Indus-Gangetic divide.
http://www.sacw.net/article9441.html

=========================================
18. INDIA: RIGHT TO CHOOSE AND ’LOVE JIHAD’ - PRESS STATEMENT BY WOMENS ACTIVISTS
=========================================
Every year, hundreds of young men and women fall in love in India. They defy their parents, caste and religious considerations and traditions. Many of them elope and get married; some others also give in to family pressures and fall back into traditionally more acceptable roles. The bollywood film industry thrives on such stories. We have laughed and cried with these couples on screens. The Supreme Court of India has repeatedly come to the protection and aid of just such couples. We would like to appeal to all those who believe that, love is natural & not a mission, those who value love, gender equality, peace and humanity above the man-made differences of faith, caste, region, sex, language etc. to join us to voice against all such attempts of building an exclusive society by the communal forces.
http://www.sacw.net/article9438.html

=========================================
19. VIDEO: ANANYA VAJPEYI ON HINDU NATIONALISM
=========================================
Video recording of Ananya Vajpeyi speaking to Justin Vogt on censorship, freedom of speech and Hindu nationalism in India as we transition into a new right-wing political dispensation.
http://www.sacw.net/article9430.html

=========================================
20. INDIA: MICHAEL SPECTER’S ’SEEDS OF DOUBT’ AND VANDANA SHIVA’S RESPONSE TO THE NEW YORKER ARTICLE
=========================================
The most persistent objection to agricultural biotechnology, and the most common, is that, by cutting DNA from one species and splicing it into another, we have crossed an invisible line and created forms of life unlike anything found in “nature.” That fear is unquestionably sincere. Yet, as a walk through any supermarket would demonstrate, nearly every food we eat has been modified, if not by genetic engineering then by more traditional cross-breeding, or by nature itself. Corn in its present form wouldn’t exist if humans hadn’t cultivated the crop. The plant doesn’t grow in the wild and would not survive if we suddenly stopped eating it.
http://www.sacw.net/article9421.html

=========================================
21. INDIA: FACT FINDING REPORT FOR THE ROAD ACCIDENT INVOLVING 13 HOMELESS OF NIGAM BODH GHAT, KASHMERE GATE, ON 18TH AUGUST 2014
=========================================
On the 17th of August, (Sunday) at 10:10 pm, an SUV automobile (XYLO, with no. DL7CM1368) on its way from Kashmere Gate towards Jamuna Bazaar [New Delhi], swerved towards a road divider and injured 13 people, some of whom are till today, in a critical condition.
http://www.sacw.net/article9420.html

=========================================
22. INDIA: TEXT OF JHARKHAND HIGH COURT ORDER SEEKING PROBE ON HEALTH DEFORMITIES NEAR JADUGODA URANIUM MINES
=========================================
Jharkahand high court in a suo moto action, issues orders re Jadugora Mines. asks the state owned Uranium Corporation of India Ltd to disclose radiation levels and the presence of any heavy metals in soil and water in a cluster of villages with reports of unusual numbers of deformed and sick children. The text of the court order is posted below
http://www.sacw.net/article9408.html

+++++ From The Archives @sacw.net ++++++
=========================================
23. COMMUNALISM AND THE WRITING OF INDIAN HISTORY: Essays by three celebrated historians
=========================================
Papers by three of India’s best known historians that were written for a seminar in 1968 on Communalism in India. They have since then been regularly reproduced jointly as a little booklet, for wide diffusion. This booklet has now long been out of print. [This document been digitised by sacw.net in public interest]
http://www.sacw.net/article9415.html

=========================================
24. INDIA: ALIGARH RIOT OF OCTOBER 1978 - A REPORT TO PEOPLE’S UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES
=========================================
The 1978 report for PUCL (Delhi State) on the Aligarh Riot of 1978 has long been out of print it was scanned as part of sacw’s digital archive.
http://www.sacw.net/article9347.html

=========================================
25. INDIA OF THE EARLY 1980’S AND THE CLAMPDOWN ON WORKERS RIGHTS
=========================================
[This report was produced in the mid 1980s by Committee For the Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR) - a human rights organisation based in Bombay. The report has long been out of print and has been scanned in public interest by sacw.net]
    The National Security Act (NSA) received the assent of the President on 27th December, 1980; the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) came into force on 23rd September,1981; the Union Finance Minister wrote the Letter of Intent to the International monetary Fund on 28th September 1981 making a formal request for the loan amounting to Rs 5,025 crores which would be released over a period of three years starting from November,1981 and ending in June, 1984. New, three bills have been placed before Parliament The Hospitals and other institutions (Settlement of Disputes) Bill; (ii) The Industrial Disputes (Amendment) Bill; (iii) one Trade Unions (Amendment) Bill.
http://www.sacw.net/article9406.html

++++++++++++++

=========================================
26. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
=========================================
available at: http://communalism.blogspot.in/

 – TV debate in India: Love Jihad - A false propaganda by patriarchal groups? [in Hindi]
 – Panchjanya the RSS Paper special number with hateful propaganda about Love Jihad (sept 2014)
 – Quote, unquote Najma Heptullah on Hindus and Indians
 – 29th Annual Dr. Ramanadham Memorial Lecture: Caste, Equality and Democratic Rights (Delhi, 6 September, 2014)
 – India: Muslims and NDA Government: Emerging Trends from the First 100 Days
 – What is the scale of the problem of far-right extremism in Europe? (Video)
 – Delhi civic bodies play safe on illegal shrines
 – Bharat Bhushan on 100 Days of the Modi Govt
 – India: Interview with civil rights activist Dr John Dayal
 – Calcutta: A novel protest of Sanjay Mitra by observing Roza for 21 years
 – “Love jihad” — the Sangh Parivar’s sexual politics by another name | Anjali Mody 
 – The BJP’s aggressive plans for Kashmir’s assembly polls | Showkat A. Motta
 – TOI interviews inter-faith couples
 – India: Two cops who probed Ishrat, Sohrab cases shunted
 – India: The Hate “Foreigner” Jihad of Hindu Nationalist Organisations Part - I (Irfan Engineer)
 – The current campaign of the Hindu Right on 'love jihad' similar to Hindu revivalist projects in the 1920s in UP
 – BJP has a Hindutva plan for UP bye elections - Amita Verma
 – India: Troubled Times for the Constitutional Republic - Badri Raina
 – India: A Latter-day Fascism? | Radhika Desai
 – Arrest Yogi Aditya Nath for Making Inflamatory Statements on TV - Demands Citizens For Democracy
 – India: Narendra Modi meets Shinzo Abe in Japan
 – India: Medha Patkar seeks high level probe in Kandhamal riots
 – India: NDTV programme - 'Love Jihad' - BJP On the Wrong Track?
 – Mein Aman Pasand Hoon, Mere Sheher Mein Danga Rehne Do [Hindi Poem]
 – Distress sale: Muslim homes go cheap in riot-hit Muzaffarnagar
 – India: ‘liquor-free-Kerala’ takes a communal turn
 – India: India's Right Wing VHP members booked for wielding swords and daggers at golden jubilee celebrations
 – India: Controlling the party - Editorial, The Hindu
 – India - Muzaffarnagar: The economy of fear - Dipankar Ghose
 – For an India of Equal Liberty | Martha C Nussbaum
 – Good days are here for the Hindu Right Wing - Samjhauta train bombing accused Swami Aseemanand Out on Bail
 – India: Women activists speak up against so called 'love jihad' - We are quite alarmed at the way the right wing is using ‘Love Jihad’ to polarize people and spread hatred between communities
 – India: Bharat Bhushan on Modi Government's Hundred Days
 – India: NDTV programme on Yogi Adityanath's Hindutva Rant
 – Sangh Parivar members in a unit of the CPM and their Ganeshotsavam
 – Annnounced: Two day international Conference on The Religious Right (11-12 October 2014)

::: FULL TEXT :::
=========================================
27. A TEACHER IN KABUL
by Kathy Kelly
=========================================
(ZNet - August 26, 2014)
Here in Kabul, one of my finest friends is Zekerullah, who has gone back to school in the 8th grade although he is an18-year-old young man who has already had to learn far too many of life’s harsh lessons.

Years ago and miles from here, when he was a child in the province of Bamiyan, and before he ran away from school, Zekerullah led a double life, earning income for his family each night as a construction crew laborer, and then attempting to attend school in the daytime.  In between these tasks the need to provide his family with fuel would sometimes drive him on six-hour treks up the mountainside, leading a donkey on which to load bags of scrub brush and twigs for the trip back down. His greatest childhood fear was of that donkey taking one disastrous wrong step with its load on the difficult mountainside.

And then, after reaching home weary and sleep deprived and with no chance of doing homework, he would, at times, go to school without having done his homework, knowing that he would certainly be beaten.  When he was in seventh grade, his teacher punished him by adding ten more blows each day he came to school without his homework, so that eventually he was hit sixty times in one day.   Dreading the next day when the number would rise to seventy, he ran away from that school and never returned.

Now Zekerullah is enrolled in another school, this time in Kabul, where teachers still beat the students.  But Zekerullah can now claim to have learned much more, in some cases, than his teachers.

Much to the surprise of his environmental studies teacher, Zekerullah has a strong grasp of issues related to the environment.  For the past two years, living with the Afghan Peace Volunteers, he has occupied himself with presentations and conversations about global warming, climate change, and environmental degradation.  He cares deeply about the issue.  Last winter, I was with him as he watched the entire BBC Blue Planet series of videos, and realized that he hungers for more information and deepened understanding about issues hitting far beyond his own beleaguered country.

When his new teacher, a teacher accustomed to beating pupils, asked the class elementary questions about the environment, Zekerullah had definitely done his homework.  But among his other recent studies were the history of nonviolent movements, led by people like Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, to resist oppressive forces.   So without calling any attention to his plans, Zekerullah decided to join the line of students singled out for punishment, in his environmental studies class, even though he wasn’t at fault and didn’t deserve to be punished.  The teacher was befuddled.  Zekerullah so clearly knew the answers.

Zekerullah calmly explained to the teacher that he also knew, from experience, that beating students doesn’t help them learn, that he himself had lost four years of studies because he could no longer bear the beatings.  He respectfully asked the teacher to beat him instead of the next seven students in the row.

The teacher obliged, administering blows to Zekerullah while his fellow students began to wonder about and admire Zekerullah’s unusual stance.  Perhaps for the first time in a long while, everyone in that class was learning something.

For several weeks, the teacher was confronted with Zekerullah’s quiet insistence that he be allowed to take the blows in place of students who hadn’t studied.  The teacher tried to ignore him and belittle him. Once, the teacher punished him and a few others with the escalated punishment of using a rattan cane to inflict the blows.  Adding salt to the wound, the teacher even failed Zekerullah in the mid-year exams, though Zekerullah said he knew the answers and had no trouble finishing the exam.

I asked him what other students thought about his choices.  He said that some of them wanted to spare him from being punished, and so they began to study more and complete their homework. He isn’t sure what impact his actions have had. Zekerullah isn’t inclined to brag.  But he surely has affected me.

He is also affecting other vulnerable young Afghans.  Over the past two years, Zekerullah has worked hard to improve his studies, and with the literacy he has acquired, he now volunteers to teach a literacy class at the APVs Borderfree Center for about 20 street kids who have not had the opportunity to go to school regularly.  He and several companions have organized other aspects of the “Street Kids” program, visiting children in their homes and helping distribute oil and rice to each family so that the children can stop working on the streets.

Zekerullah tells me that the current education system in Afghanistan is not a good learning environment. His story alerts educators, officials and the international community to understand that the relatively small funds spent on badly-constructed new school buildings won’t suffice to provide a good education for the young Afghan population. Moreover, the predominantly militarized approach of aid and development, even in the field of education, reinforces the prevalent methods of teaching by force and punishment.

Zekerullah yearns for knowledge as well as justice, and he’s willing to sacrifice for both.  I want to learn from him.

Kathy Kelly (Kathy at vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence www.vcnv.org

=========================================
28. IN AFGHAN ELECTION, SIGNS OF SYSTEMIC FRAUD CAST DOUBT ON MANY VOTES
by Carlotta Gall
=========================================
(The New York Times, AUG. 23, 2014)
KABUL, Afghanistan — When the campaign team led by Manawar Shah came under threat on the day of the Afghan presidential runoff, it was not from the Taliban, he said, but from the people who were supposed to be keeping order: an alliance of government officials, security forces and supporters of the candidate Ashraf Ghani.

Beaten and prevented from using their video equipment and cellphones, Mr. Shah’s team members, working for the candidate Abdullah Abdullah in Khost Province, spent June 14 watching fraud but unable to document it. In one polling center, Mr. Shah said, they saw just 500 voters and election officials casting multiple ballots, for a total of 10,531 votes.

That episode and others like it led Mr. Abdullah to level accusations of a conspiracy by Mr. Ghani, election officials and President Hamid Karzai to rig the vote, plunging the country into crisis and creating a new threat of factional violence. After years of Western aid spent building it, the Afghan state is suddenly at risk of collapsing just as American troops are leaving.

Preliminary results of the June 14 presidential runoff showed Abdullah Abdullah trailing Ashraf Ghani by more than a million votes.
The impasse grew so grave that some senior Afghan officials considered imposing an interim government — a move tantamount to a coup, but one that the officials insisted might be needed to head off violence.

Mr. Ghani and Mr. Karzai have denied Mr. Abdullah’s accusations. But interviews with Afghan and international officials support some of the most serious of Mr. Abdullah’s claims, offering new details of a broad effort to push the runoff to Mr. Ghani, including a pressure campaign by election and palace officials and ballot-box stuffing orchestrated by an ally of Mr. Karzai. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid offending senior Afghan officials.

The huge scale of the fraud — involving perhaps more than two million ballots out of roughly eight million reported cast, according to independent international estimates — has stymied efforts to achieve a democratic transition. Secretary of State John Kerry has intervened twice to keep the campaigns in agreement on a unity government and a complete audit of the vote, but the process has repeatedly broken down in disputes.

Despite the hopes that drove millions of Afghans to cast legitimate votes to choose a president, the extent of the fraud has ensured that even if the process comes to a peaceful conclusion, the result will look less like an election correction than a brokered result. And in recent days, officials have quietly expressed worries that even keeping the peace may be difficult.

The warning signs have been there since the 2009 presidential election between Mr. Karzai and Mr. Abdullah, when 1.3 million fraudulent ballots were thrown out. Deeply angered by Western handling of that election, Mr. Karzai pushed changes to the election commissions and the electoral law, removing international delegates from the complaints commission, appointing new commissioners and outlawing a statistical method used for identifying fraud.

As the election approached, Mr. Karzai avoided public statements for or against any specific candidate and insisted he was staying out of the process. The president did, however, make an important introduction.

Early on, Mr. Karzai referred an operations officer to the Independent Election Commission, describing him as his “nephew” — an expression of his favor rather than of actual kinship. The official was Zia ul-Haq Amarkhail, an energetic young officer who had worked in the field operations of the commission for two years and knew his way around the system.

He was promptly appointed head of the secretariat of the commission, putting him in charge of electoral operations. One official who works inside the election commission said Mr. Amarkhail met frequently with senior aides to the president at the palace, though election officials were supposed to guard their independence.

Early in the election dispute, Abdullah campaign officials offered a series of audio recordings in which they said Mr. Amarkhail, other election officials and Ghani campaign workers could be heard directing various officials in ballot-box stuffing. That identification has been supported by a number of Western and Afghan officials who say the tapes are from direct intercepts of telephone calls.

Mr. Amarkhail insisted that the recordings were faked but resigned from his post. Mr. Abdullah and his aides have refused to explain how they gained possession of the recordings.

The Abdullah campaign also had an energetic election operator on its side, Fazil Ahmad Manawi, a former election commissioner and Supreme Court judge who is now a senior adviser to Mr. Abdullah. Like Mr. Amarkhail, Mr. Manawi has been accused of orchestrating fraud in both rounds of this election.

Mr. Manawi had a front-row seat as an election commissioner during the 2009 presidential election and then served three years as the chairman of the commission, overseeing the parliamentary elections, which were also riddled with accusations of corruption. As the current dispute unfolded, he was on the front lines of Mr. Abdullah’s fight with the commission.

“It was different from 2009; then it was the original warlords that committed the fraud. This time it was the Independent Election Commission that did it,” Mr. Manawi said. “This time the ballot stuffing even went on inside the provincial election offices.”

Mr. Manawi’s accusations resonate with details from current and former Afghan officials in Kabul and several other provinces. Some of these officials are critics of Mr. Karzai and Mr. Ghani, but others witnessed or even had a hand in the fraud.

Those officials said that the fraud had been directed by a coterie of presidential aides and ministers and managed in each province by government, election and security officials.

“It was fraud. The governor, the police chief and election commission all did it together,” Malik Muhammad Hasham, a tribal elder in the eastern district of Orgun, said within earshot of those officials. Orgun is in Paktika Province, where results were hugely in favor of Mr. Ghani.

Mr. Karzai’s aides have adamantly rejected accusations that he has been involved in fraud or intervened on Mr. Ghani’s behalf. Many of the president’s critics, unable to provide evidence of Mr. Karzai’s involvement, have focused on his role in changing the electoral system.

Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story
“What caused the electoral fraud? Who did the fraud? The commission,” said Ahmed Wali Massoud, a longtime opposition figure and outspoken critic of the president. “Who put the commission there? Karzai.”

Some officials and tribal elders in the provinces, however, say that after the first election round, Mr. Karzai issued instructions to support Mr. Ghani’s campaign. Their claims line up with reports by diplomats and officials within the election commission who described heavy pressure emanating from top officials at various times during the election crisis.

There is also independent evidence of large-scale fraud, mostly on Mr. Ghani’s behalf. The most credible local election observer organization, the Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan, has submitted 2,684 files of cases of major irregularities and fraud, including blatant ballot stuffing, to the Electoral Complaints Commission. “We have videos of I.E.C. officials doing it for both sides,” said Nader Nadery, the head of the observer group.

Another factor is complicating efforts to sort fraud from fact: Election analysts say that in the second round, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns — faced with a choice between Mr. Ghani, a fellow Pashtun, and Mr. Adbullah, who is closely linked to the Tajik-based Northern Alliance — were galvanized to vote for Mr. Ghani in larger numbers.

In an interview, Mr. Ghani insisted that a huge campaign push to mobilize the Pashtun vote made the difference that, according to preliminary results in July, put him ahead of Mr. Abdullah by more than a million votes.

“When you run a campaign through networks — I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of volunteers have worked on this campaign, I don’t know what singly each one of them does — that’s the whole point: A convergence was brought to propel us,” Mr. Ghani said.

Mr. Abdullah was the clear leader in the first round, with a 900,000-vote margin over Mr. Ghani. But the preliminary results of the runoff showed a gigantic improvement for Mr. Ghani — an “impossible” one, according to one Western official — of 1.9 million votes.

Mr. Ghani saw huge gains in some of the most insecure Afghan provinces, many of them where the Taliban insurgency made travel for election monitors prohibitively dangerous. Results from polling stations in such places were counted in the runoff, despite local reports that the turnout was actually very low.

Now, hopes for salvaging the election have come down to the audit, a vast operation supervised by professional election observers spread out across several warehouses in Kabul.

One time-tested way to reject fraud is to throw out any ballot box that shows an overwhelming percentage for one candidate — 95 percent, for example.

If applied to the runoff, a trigger of 93 percent of votes in a polling station in favor of one candidate, which was advocated by the Abdullah team, would have removed one-third of the ballots, more than two million, from the count, according to a diplomat in Kabul.

Two Western analysts independently studying the numbers gave even higher estimates: as many as 2.2 million fraudulent ballots favoring Mr. Ghani and 800,000 favoring Mr. Abdullah. If these votes were excluded, Mr. Abdullah would emerge the winner.

Mr. Ghani’s team has not produced figures, but a senior politician who has supported Mr. Ghani said that fraud, once eliminated, would not change the preliminary results by much — Mr. Ghani would still win.

Some other Western officials have hewed closer to that view, putting their estimates of fraud far lower than their colleagues’ and expressing confidence that the most blatant fraud could be weeded out without using broad percentage filters.

But it is the exact triggers for fraud elimination that have been the hardest-fought issues between the campaigns.

“Both campaigns cannot guarantee that their supporters were clean,” the diplomat in Kabul said. “Both of them know there might be something unpleasant coming out of it.”

Matthew Rosenberg contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on August 24, 2014, on page A8 of the New York edition

=========================================
29. BANGLADESH’S TRAVELING PAIN
by Tahmima Anam
=========================================
(The New York Times, Sept. 2, 2014)

In “Regarding the Pain of Others,” Susan Sontag writes, “being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country is a quintessential modern experience.” In Bangladesh, it appears that we are the spectators of — and collaborators in — our own calamities. Every few months, we witness a major tragedy, knowing all the while that once the dust has settled on the terrible thing that just happened, it is only a matter of time before another one is splashed across the front pages of our newspapers.

Take August, for example. It was Eid al-Fitr, the celebration that marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. Thousands of urban migrants left the squalor and promise of the capital city, Dhaka, and returned to their villages to be reunited with their families. The village homes they traveled to were far away, so they boarded ferries to cross the major rivers that bisect the country. They spent a few days at home, and then began to make their way back to the city. They boarded the same ferries.

One, the MV Pinak-6, waited at Mawa port in Munshiganj district, about 20 miles south of Dhaka. At around 2 p.m., the ferry began its two-hour journey across the Padma River. Because ferry passengers tend to be poor (wealthy Bangladeshis prefer to remain in the city and rejoice at the easing of traffic), no one counted the number of people who climbed aboard. The migrants crowded onto this particular ferry because no one knew when the next one would arrive, and they needed to rush back to their jobs.

And then it happened: The ferry capsized. Scores, perhaps even hundreds, drowned in minutes. The Pinak-6 was licensed for 85 passengers, but was reported to be carrying more than 200. In addition, its operating license had actually expired. The trip occurred at high tide, under a weather warning: Just 10 minutes before the ferry was due to arrive, the shore visible, it tilted over and sank rapidly into the riverbed. Only a few dozen were able to swim to shore, or were rescued by locals. There were 110 survivors, and so far more than 40 bodies have been recovered. The rest of the passengers disappeared without a trace.

The Padma is swollen by monsoon rains at this time of year, and the Pinak-6’s wreck has not yet been located. Ferry disasters happen regularly in Bangladesh — the last one was just a few months ago, in May. Over time, the stories echo one another and become banal. Overloaded boats. Two hundred people on board. Women and children. People waiting on shore for news of their loved ones. A search begun, then called off.

Last month, I wrote about the affection that Bengalis have for their rivers. They do, but the other truth is that the riverbed is lined with bodies, drowned in the face of an indifferent state.

And ferries are not the only way to die when trying to get from one place to another in Bangladesh: Our roads fare little better. The World Health Organization estimates show that at least 17,000 people die on Bangladesh’s roads every year.

Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story
One of these roads, the Dhaka-Sylhet highway, has been dubbed the deadliest road in the world after a World Bank-funded project to upgrade the highway placed priority on speed but not on safety. Now that the road is smooth, cars and trucks can barrel along at many times the speed limit, raising the death toll. Many of the dead are not even drivers; they are those who cannot afford any form of transportation, and get mowed down by passing vehicles while walking alongside the highway.

We have become a country that takes disaster in its stride. We take for granted that, every year, a certain number of people will die for entirely avoidable reasons, killed on roads that could have been safer, drowned on ferries that were overcrowded. At some point, someone, or a collection of people, have made the decision that the cost of upgrading, maintaining and regulating our transportation infrastructure is higher than the cost of the lives that will be lost if things continue as they are.

What is at stake here is not just the loss of individual lives, but the very basis of our social contract. We are saying that some lives are not worth spending money on, because there are others who will always have ways of avoiding disaster. They will board giant, tank-like cars or private helicopters or expensive cross-country flights. When some of us no longer have to use the roads or board the ferries, the roads and the ferries do not need to be safe.

When the Pinak-6 capsized, we looked at photographs of the families waiting on shore for news of their loved ones. We read angry editorials and Facebook posts. But in all likelihood, this disaster will go the way of all the others that came before. No minister will be fired, no regulation will be enforced, no prosecution will be handed down.

And we will become a little more inured to our disasters. We will say, well, it could have been worse. It could have been a cyclone. The dead could have numbered in the thousands, rather than the hundreds. So we move on. And our social contract gets a little cheaper, a little more brittle.

When we watch another person in pain, an image meant to provoke empathy, we are also acknowledging that this person is not us. The greater the tragedy, the more we feel ourselves separate from it, because we would never be on that ferry, or in that garment factory when it collapsed, or on the side of that road when the car struck. To paraphrase the aesthetician Elaine Scarry, in “The Body in Pain,” the larger their pain, the greater our power. The question remains: What do we do with this power?

Tahmima Anam is a writer and anthropologist, and the author of the novel “A Golden Age.”

(A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 3, 2014, in The International New York Times.)

=========================================
30. FRANCE'S TROUBLED LIBERATION
by Alan Riding
=========================================
(The New York Times, AUG. 24, 2014)
Photo: A Frenchwoman having her head shaved in August 1944, a common punishment for consorting with the enemy during the occupation. Credit Associated Press

PARIS — Even 70 years on, the liberation of Paris on Aug. 25, 1944, evokes powerful images: men and women firing at German tanks from behind barricades, girls in flowery dresses embracing arriving French and American soldiers, General de Gaulle proclaiming with no little chutzpah that Paris had liberated itself. How could Parisians not be celebrating? After 50 months of German occupation, their war was over.

But when the morning after came, the notion that France was now happily united seemed illusory. Just as in 1940, when Jews, Communists and Freemasons became scapegoats for a humiliating defeat, the hunt began for those who had supported the Nazi enemy and the collaborationist Vichy regime. The violence, fear and misery of the occupation had awakened a strong thirst for revenge.

Reprisals began even before Paris was freed, with resistance bands summarily executing members of a fascist militia, black marketeers and informants across France. A more orderly purge then followed, with many leading collaborationists eventually brought to trial. Marshal Philippe Pétain, the octogenarian head of the Vichy regime, was jailed for life; his prime minister, Pierre Laval, was among 791 convicted traitors who were shot.

But punishing collabos was not de Gaulle’s top priority. Having personified French honor in exile, he was determined that France should end the war as a victorious ally — even if this meant tweaking history. Thus, by claiming that few French were Nazi sympathizers and most were active or silent resisters, he successfully argued that France never stopped fighting Hitler and that it deserved its place alongside the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union.

But in one high profile arena, that of media, culture and entertainment, the myth of la France résistante was harder to sustain because so many well-known writers, artists and singers had worked under German rules in full view of the public. And this in a country where intellectuals and artists have long claimed the right to pontificate on all topics from the moral high ground.

What every Parisian knew — and usually applauded — was that within months of the fall of France, the city’s cultural life was once again buzzing (albeit with Jewish artists first excluded and later persecuted). This was encouraged by the Germans, who wanted life to appear “normal;” by Vichy, because it showed that culturally France was not defeated; and by artists who wanted — and needed — to work.

Taking the German side, many fascist journalists and a few prominent writers, among them the evil genius Louis-Ferdinand Céline, used the collaborationist press to denounce Jews, Communists, Freemasons and other writers outside their fold. But France’s prestigious literary world was also eager to return to print and it went along with the self-censorship accepted by the publishing industry as a condition for resuming business.

The glittering list of writers who published books or articles included four later Nobel laureates — André Gide, François Mauriac, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre — as well as the novelists Colette and Georges Simenon. Not to overlook Sacha Guitry, Jean Giraudoux, Jean Cocteau, Paul Claudel, Jean Anouilh, Sartre and Camus, whose plays were also presented with German approval.

Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story
The movie world was no less active, with 220 new French films produced during the occupation. The Paris Opera and the Opéra Comique kept busy, while the music fare was enriched by German orchestras and star conductors like Herbert von Karajan. Popular singers like Maurice Chevalier, Charles Trenet and Edith Piaf in turn had many German fans in their audiences.

The striking thing is that, except for a handful of writers, everyone in the world of culture chose to work, even those who in 1942 formed a resistance movement. Writers took the lead, publishing an underground monthly, Les Lettres Françaises, and founding a clandestine publishing house, Les Editions de Minuit. Resistance poems also circulated: The poem “Liberté” by Paul Eluard was even reprinted in London on sheets of paper later scattered over France.

Then, after D-Day, resistance groups of writers, musicians, moviemakers and artists organized their own purge committees with a view to judging their peers. But when the time came, beyond cases of blatant Nazi propaganda, collaboration proved hard to define. Did it mean sleeping with the enemy or singing before German soldiers, publishing a book or making a movie? Indeed, was it a crime to offer an offensive opinion?

The ensuing debate, which was carried out noisily in the now-uncensored press, resulted in confusing and inconsistent verdicts: Some artists were jailed for a few months and banned from working for two years; others walked free. However, soon it became apparent that bitter arguments about past culpability had more to do with shaping the future. And here the Communists seized the initiative.

The French Communist Party had dominated the resistance, including that of the cultural world, but it put aside sectarianism during the occupation. After the liberation, though, it again took its orders from Moscow, which in turn recognized the importance of writers and artists, not least Picasso, who joined the party in late 1944. It was not long before the equation Resistant = Communist had become dogma.

In hindsight, then, it seems clear that the left’s sway over French intellectual and cultural life throughout the Cold War had its roots in the occupation and the ideological coup that followed the liberation. Few were the writers or artists who did not spout anti-Americanism and find excuses for Soviet totalitarianism. And even after Moscow lost its appeal, cults to Chairman Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro flourished on the Paris Left Bank.

Today, the French left has run out of steam and both the Communist and Gaullist takes on the occupation have been replaced by a more nuanced verdict, one that shows the great majority of French as simply trying to survive. But there were also genuine heroes. And on Monday, along with an outdoor dance to mark the anniversary of the liberation, some will be remembered more soberly with bouquets of flowers below plaques carrying their names on walls across the city. They all died fighting in the final days before Paris was once more free.

Alan Riding is a former European cultural correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author, most recently, of “And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris.”

(A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 25, 2014, in The International New York Times. )

=========================================
31. THE NEW COLD WAR
by Serge Halimi
=========================================
(Le Monde Diplomatique, September 2014)

In 1980 Ronald Reagan expressed his idea of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union in one short sentence: “We win, they lose.” Twelve years later, his immediate successor at the White House, George H W Bush, was satisfied that the task had been accomplished: “A world once divided into two armed camps now recognises one, sole and pre-eminent power, the United States of America.” The cold war was officially at an end.

That period too is now over. Its death knell sounded on the day Russia had had enough of “losing” and realised that its ritual humiliation would never come to an end, with one neighbouring country after another being persuaded — or bribed — into joining an economic and military alliance against it. Obama, speaking in Brussels in March, stressed that “Today, NATO planes patrol the skies over the Baltics and we’ve reinforced our presence in Poland. And we’re prepared to do more” (1). Vladimir Putin, addressing the Russian parliament, observed that this was part of the “infamous policy of containment” that the western powers had pursued against Russia since the 18th century (2).

However, the new cold war will be different from the old one. As Obama pointed out, “unlike the Soviet Union, Russia leads no bloc of nations, no global ideology.” The latest confrontation is not between an American superpower, drawing the imperial assurance of a “manifest destiny” from its religious faith, and an “evil empire” castigated by Reagan for its atheism. On the contrary, Putin is appealing with some success to Christian fundamentalism. On annexing Crimea, he suddenly remembered it was the place “where Saint Vladimir was baptised ... adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilisation and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.”

In other words, Moscow will not allow Ukraine to become a rear base for its enemies. The Russian people, inflamed by nationalist propaganda that is even more extreme than western brainwashing (and that’s saying something), won’t have it. Meanwhile, in the US and Europe, the supporters of rearmament are raising the stakes, with warlike declarations and a host of assorted sanctions that only increase the determination in the enemy camp. “The new cold war may be more perilous,” warns Stephen F Cohen, one of America’s leading Russia experts, “because, unlike its predecessor, there is no effective American opposition — not in the administration, Congress, media, universities, think tanks” (3). The well-known recipe for every kind of trap...

Translated by Barbara Wilson

(1) Speech by Barack Obama in Brussels, 26 March 2014.

(2) Speech by Vladimir Putin to the Russian Parliament, 18 March 2014.

(3) Address to the annual US-Russia Forum in Washington DC, 16 June 2014, reproduced in The Nation, New York, 12 August 2014.

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

South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. Newsletter of South Asia Citizens Web: 
www.sacw.net/

     #####
    #### _\_  ________
    ##=-[.].]| \      \
    #(    _\ |  |------|
     #   __| |  ||||||||
      \  _/  |  ||||||||
   .--'--'-. |  | ____ |
  / __      `|__|[o__o]|
_(____nm_______ /____\____ 

DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.
=====================================