SACW - 18 April 2015 | Bangladesh: Talibanisation / Pakistan: Cyber Crimes Bill / India: Great Wall / Afghanistan: Technocrats vs. strongmen / Cambodia: Forty years after genocide

Harsh Kapoor aiindex at gmail.com
Fri Apr 17 15:03:19 EDT 2015


South Asia Citizens Wire - 18 April 2015 - No. 2853 
[since 1996]
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Contents:
1. Heritage & Nationalism: A Bane of Sri Lanka | Jude Fernando
2. Talibanisation in Sri Lanka and the Intimidation of the exiled writer Sharmila Seyyid | Kannan Sundaram
3. Bangladesh: Expanding influence of Islamists among the youth | Mamun Rashid
4. Protest against Pakistan's proposed cybercrime bill
5. Pakistan: With the Passing of Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan - the end of an era | Ishtiaq Ahmed
6. India: As Children Go Hungry PM Modi Buys Fighter Jets In France | Jean-Pierre Lehmann
7. Dr Meera Kosambi (1939 – 2015) - Tribute | Supriya Guha
8. [Audio] The Fabric of Biological Science in the 21st Century: An Indian cell biologist's perspective | Satyajit Mayor
9. India Smruti Koppikar - Bigotry is in the Sena's DNA
10. Spinning rhetoric and reality — India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi | CERAS - SANSAD Statement
11. Le Premier ministre de l'Inde, Narendra Modi – rhétorique et réalité
12. India: Killings by STF in Andhra on 7 April 2015 - Statements of survivors recorded at the National Human Rights Commission
13. Indian cow as a political dish | Jawed Naqvi
14. Gopalkrishna Gandhi remembers the historian Barun De.
15. India: Some Tributes to Kailash Vajpeyi
16. India: Three Articles on Appropriation of Ambedkar by Hindu
17. India: Patna Arrests of Bihar Nav-Nirman Abhiyan for the land rights - 15 April Delhi Solidarity Protest Photos & Petition
18. India: Two encounters and a democracy | Avinash Pandey
19. Recent On Communalism Watch:
 - Divided colours of Ahmedabad: Saffron uniform for Hindu kids, green for Muslim
 - A house that Modi built (Shiv Visvanathan)
 - India: As ICHR takes right turn, journal editor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya quits
 - Military institute student to son of ex-judge, Islamic State taps Dhaka gen-next (Praveen Swami )
 - Book Launch and Discussion: Inequality, Prejudice and Indifference in New India by Harsh Mander (22 April, 2015, New Delhi)
 - India: Church vandalised in Agra
 - Press Release: Canadian Court issues summons for Prime Minister Modi
 - Modi's Second Swipe at Secularism While Abroad (Siddharth Varadarajan)
 - India: Between Bhagwat and Bhagwati (Peter Ronald D’Souza and Errol D’Souza)
 - India: Shiv Sena Wants Mandatory Family Planning [Birth control] For Muslims, Christians
 - India: Sangh imposing new persona on Ambedkar (Subhashini Ali)
 - India: Condemning the Shiv Sena's statement on disenfranchising Muslims - L.S. Hardenia
 - India: Supreme Court opens door for Pragnya, Purohit bail in Malegaon blast case
 - India: DK holds thali-removal festival ahead of HC order bringing back ban
 - BJP's silence over 'communal' remarks by Sena, Sadhvi
 - In defence of conversions (Cleofato A Coutinho)
 - India: Hint of saffron in Bhopal locality names
 - BJP led Haryana govt to give cabinet minister status to the Yoga performer Baba Ramdev
 - Saffronisation of Education yet again ( Ram Puniyani)
 - India: Sena, Leave Shobhaa De Alone, You've Made This Mistake Earlier 

::: FULL TEXT :::
20. India: The Chilling Effect of Restraints | Nandini Sundar
21. Afghanistan’s defining fight: Technocrats vs. strongmen | Sudarsan Raghavan 
22. Bangladesh: 84 on hitlist, 8 killed: Dhaka’s politics drives cycle of death | Praveen Swami
23. Borderlands: India's Great Wall | Kai Friese
24. Forty years after genocide, Cambodia finds complicated truth hard to bear | Harriet Fitch Little

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1. HERITAGE & NATIONALISM: A BANE OF SRI LANKA | Jude Fernando
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The current practices of archeology and their complicity with rebranding of archaeological heritage as national heritage have contributed to the ethnic tensions, civil war, injustice, inequality, and violence in the Sri Lankan society. The pretense that archaeology is an apolitical profession is a form of complicity with these social ills.
http://www.sacw.net/article11051.html

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2. TALIBANISATION IN SRI LANKA AND THE INTIMIDATION OF THE EXILED WRITER SHARMILA SEYYID | Kannan Sundaram
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First exiled from her country, Sri Lankan writer Sharmila Seyyid, has now been ‘raped’ and ‘killed’ online. Fundamentalism knows no boundaries. In India, it was Perumal Murugan who announced the death of the writer in him. In Sri Lanka, writer Sharmila Seyyid was ‘raped’ and ‘murdered’ online on March 28, marking a new low in the history of intolerance.
http://www.sacw.net/article11078.html

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3. BANGLADESH: EXPANDING INFLUENCE OF ISLAMISTS AMONG THE YOUTH | Mamun Rashid
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They are not madrasa students being overdosed by their backdated teachers and deprived of the basic possible amenities of life. Bangladesh is seeing a rise in soft-speaking, IT aware, and articulate youths joining the bandwagon. Madrasa students may be joining similar forces in Afghanistan or in the Middle East, but what do we do with these new emerging youths? They don't like the way this government is working.
http://www.sacw.net/article11068.html

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4. PROTEST AGAINST PAKISTAN'S PROPOSED CYBERCRIME BILL; THREATENS CIVIL LIBERTIES ON THE PRETEXT OF SECURITY
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The Pakistan National Assembly's Standing Committee on Information Technology (IT) on Thursday passed a controversial cybercrime bill that industry leaders and civil society members have been protesting against
http://www.sacw.net/article11076.html

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5. PAKISTAN: WITH THE PASSING OF TAHIRA MAZHAR ALI KHAN - THE END OF AN ERA
by Ishtiaq Ahmed
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The veteran leftist Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan (1925 to 2015) died on March 23, 2015. Her departure closes the chapter on pre-partition erstwhile Lahore-based Communist and pro-Communist intellectuals and activists.
http://www.sacw.net/article11054.html

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6. INDIA: AS CHILDREN GO HUNGRY PM MODI BUYS FIGHTER JETS IN FRANCE | Jean-Pierre Lehmann
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960 million Indians live on less than $2 a day. Reading the data is one thing; seeing the consequences, as I did recently driving through the slums on the outskirts of Jaipur, is heart-wrenching. Their plight could not be worse. Rafale jet fighters are about the last thing they need!
http://www.sacw.net/article11061.html

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7. DR MEERA KOSAMBI (1939 – 2015) - TRIBUTE 
by Supriya Guha
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She spoke with disappointment of what she saw as the erosion of the academic culture of Maharashtra or of the lack of veneration for scholarly achievement. Her own strength was that she was completely bi-lingual, having had her primary education in Marathi. Meera began writing and publishing fairly late in her career. It might almost appear that she lived under that overwhelming shadow of her distinguished father well into her middle age and it took her time to come into her own.
http://www.sacw.net/article11026.html

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8. [AUDIO] THE FABRIC OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: AN INDIAN CELL BIOLOGIST'S PERSPECTIVE | Satyajit Mayor
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http://www.sacw.net/article11059.html
    
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9. INDIA SMRUTI KOPPIKAR - BIGOTRY IS IN THE SENA'S DNA
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    Sanjay Raut must know what fallacy is. He demonstrated its use on Sunday while writing in Saamna, the Marathi daily of the Shiv Sena, the political party that he represents in the Rajya Sabha. In his weekly column Rok-Thok, Raut propagated the idea that “Muslims must be stripped of their voting rights” in order to end vote-bank politics. What's more, he even called upon Muslims to “take the initiative in this regard”.
http://www.sacw.net/article11053.html

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10. SPINNING RHETORIC AND REALITY — INDIA'S PRIME MINISTER, NARENDRA MODI | CERAS - SANSAD Statement
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India's Prime Minster, Mr. Narendra Modi, begins a three-day official visit to Canada today. That the Canadian Government accords the visit great significance is indicated by the fact that Prime Minister Harper will participate in events in all three cities on Mr. Modi's itinerary – Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver. 
http://www.sacw.net/article11058.html

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11. LE PREMIER MINISTRE DE L'INDE, NARENDRA MODI – RHÉTORIQUE ET RÉALITÉ
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Le Premier ministre de l'Inde, Narendra Modi, entame aujourd'hui, le mardi 14 avril, une visite officielle de trois jours au Canada. Le Premier ministre Stephen Harper participera aux événements prévus dans les trois villes figurant sur l'itinéraire de M. Modi – Ottawa, Toronto et Vancouver -, ce qui souligne la grande importance que le Canada accorde à cette visite.
http://www.sacw.net/article11057.html

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12. INDIA: KILLINGS BY STF IN ANDHRA ON 7 APRIL 2015 - STATEMENTS OF SURVIVORS RECORDED AT THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION
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New Delhi, 13 April 2015 - Three witness-survivors of the 7 April 2015 extra-judicial killing by the Andhra Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) came forward and recorded their statements at the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) this morning. The survivors were accompanied by Henri Tiphagne of the Peoples' Watch and Supreme Court advocate Vrinda Grover. The statements of the witnesses challenge the claim of "self defence" of the STF and the AP government.
http://www.sacw.net/article11056.html

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13. INDIAN COW AS A POLITICAL DISH
by Jawed Naqvi
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In my view neither Akbar nor Bahadur Shah Zafar who opposed cow slaughter cared for India's poor. The newly decorated Bharat Ratna Atal Behari Vajpayee may have stayed for all of 13 days as prime minister in 1996, but he promptly promised a ban on cow slaughter. If the Mughals translated the Upanishads or Mahabharat or Ramayan into Persian they did so to stay in their comfort zone with India's Hindu elite. They criminalised beef-eating without fixing a politically correct food menu for India's poor who include Muslims and Christians. Both communities remain in the cross hairs of Hindutva's communal agenda.
http://www.sacw.net/article11055.html

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14. GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI REMEMBERS THE HISTORIAN BARUN DE.
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State of abounding grace - Remembering a historian and the buildings he loved
http://www.sacw.net/article10969.html

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15. INDIA: SOME TRIBUTES TO THE POET AND WRITER KAILASH VAJPEYI
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http://www.sacw.net/article10970.html

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16. INDIA: THREE ARTICLES ON APPROPRIATION OF AMBEDKAR BY HINDUTVA | Shamsul Islam
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The leading Hindutva outfit, RSS is trying to co-opt Father of the Nation Gandhi (despite the fact that criminals led by the ideology of Hindutva killed him), Sardar Patel (who as first home minister of India banned it in 1948) and now RSS is attempting to co-opt Dr. Ambedkar, the Dalit philosopher and icon. This is being attempted despite of the fact that Dr. Ambedkar renounced Hinduism for its inequality. While discussing the Hindutva politics he wrote: "If Hindu Raj does become a fact, (...) 
http://www.sacw.net/article11052.html

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17. INDIA: PATNA ARRESTS OF BIHAR NAV-NIRMAN ABHIYAN FOR THE LAND RIGHTS - 15 APRIL DELHI SOLIDARITY PROTEST PHOTOS & PETITION
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On 15 April 2015 there was a demonstration at the Bihar Bhavan, Delhi, in support of the Bihar Nav-Nirman Abhiyan, formed of nine organisations two years ago to struggle for the land rights of the people. On 9 April this year, around 400 satyagrahis gathered outside the chief minister's house. They were peaceful and were prepared to be arrested and taken to jail, but the administration made the police react in an inhuman way. Five leaders were taken to jail, and the remaining hundreds were (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article11077.html

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18. INDIA: TWO ENCOUNTERS AND A DEMOCRACY | Avinash Pandey
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The world’s largest democracy witnessed its police force killing 25 of its citizens in two encounters in Andhra Pradesh. “Encounters”, for the uninitiated, are a euphemism for killing unarmed civilians in staged gun battles. The police version of both the alleged encounters is such that it could be laughed-off had they not been about the deaths of civilians.
http://www.sacw.net/article11020.html

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19. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
=========================================
available at: http://communalism.blogspot.in/
 - Divided colours of Ahmedabad: Saffron uniform for Hindu kids, green for Muslim
 - A house that Modi built (Shiv Visvanathan)
 - India: As ICHR takes right turn, journal editor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya quits
 - Military institute student to son of ex-judge, Islamic State taps Dhaka gen-next (Praveen Swami )
 - Book Launch and Discussion: INEQUALITY, Prejudice and Indifference in New India by Harsh Mander (22 April, 2015, New Delhi)
 - India: Church vandalised in Agra
 - Press Release: Canadian Court issues summons for Prime Minister Modi; Attorney General blocks it
 - Modi's Second Swipe at Secularism While Abroad (Siddharth Varadarajan)
 - India: Between Bhagwat and Bhagwati (Peter Ronald D’Souza and Errol D’Souza)
 - Islamist radicalisation of the youth in Bangaldesh
 - India: Ban on cow slaughter in BJP-ruled states negates the Modi govt’s intent of supporting the leather industry
 - India: Shiv Sena Wants Mandatory Family Planning [Birth control] For Muslims, Christians
 - India: Sangh imposing new persona on Ambedkar (Subhashini Ali)
 - India: Condemning the Shiv Sena's statement on disenfranchising Muslims - L.S. Hardenia
 - India: Supreme Court opens door for Pragnya, Purohit bail in Malegaon blast case
 - India: DK holds thali-removal festival ahead of HC order bringing back ban
 - BJP's silence over 'communal' remarks by Sena, Sadhvi
 - In defence of conversions (Cleofato A Coutinho)
 - India: Hint of saffron in Bhopal locality names
 - BJP led Haryana govt to give cabinet minister status to the Yoga performer Baba Ramdev
 - Saffronisation of Education yet again ( Ram Puniyani)
 - India: Aam Aadmi party into value education; his education team has gone to Durg, Chattissgarh at a village school (Is there any RSS connection with this vedic education outfit ?)
 - India: Muslim body lends support to VHP against Uttama Villain
 - India: Sena, Leave Shobhaa De Alone, You've Made This Mistake Earlier 

and More ...
available at: http://communalism.blogspot.in/
 
::: FULL TEXT :::
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20. INDIA: THE CHILLING EFFECT OF RESTRAINTS
by Nandini Sundar
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(The Economic and Political Weekly, Vol - L No. 15, April 11, 2015)

This response to Indira Jaising and Ritu Menon's "Ethics and Theatrics" (EPW, 28 March 2015) says blaming Leslee Udwin, maker of the controversial India's Daughter and her promoters for not addressing the different contexts of rape is missing the point.

Indian governments in general, and the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in particular, can be relied on to elevate spurious notions of national security or national honour over actual change, just like the green curtains drawn over Ahmedabad’s slums when the Chinese President came to visit. God forbid the world should come to know, via a BBC film, that the saintly Indian man commits crimes against the revered Indian woman.

However, one of the more distressing aspects of the non-screening of Leslee Udwin’s film, India’s Daughter, on NDTV, has been the stand of certain sections of the women’s movement, demanding a “restraint” on its release (Indira Jaising and Ritu Menon, “Ethics and Theatrics,” EPW, 28 March 2015). Those feminists opposing the film have several problems such as the “orientalist framing” or “white women’s saviour complex” that the film is supposed to embody; a dislike of the title which reduces women to daughters rather than independent agents; the supposed equation of poverty and violence; the fact that the commodification of “Nirbhaya” does injustice to the decades of work by the women’s movement to raise awareness about rape and violence; and the neglect of the structural nature of sexual violence through an overt focus on the mind of one rapist (An Open Letter to Meryl Streep and Frieda Pinto).

Each of these arguments could lend themselves to hours of fruitful classroom discussion, given the multiple ways all texts are read. On the title, one might argue that since much of the film is about the ways in which daughters are treated in a changing India—with some parents selling their land to educate them and others using technology to practise female foeticide—it is not entirely inapposite. Similarly, the defence lawyers destroy any notion that a violent patriarchal mentality is confined to the poor. While it is important to show up the government for enabling the use of sexual violence as an instrument of domination in communal massacres or counter-insurgency, even as it expresses outrage over the 16 December gang rape, blaming Udwin and her promoters for not addressing the different contexts of rape is missing the point.

Issue of Fair Trial

The orientalist charge also veers dangerously close to the government’s xenophobia and insecurity. Just as Arundhati Roy’s caste should not affect her right to write about B R Ambedkar, Udwin’s citizenship has no bearing on her ability to make a film on the 16 December gang rape. We are not obliged to either praise or condemn it for that reason, or treat it as the last word on rape in India. And surely the Indian women’s movement has not developed in splendid isolation. Apart from participating in global campaigns like Take Back the Night or One Billion Rising, Indian feminism owes much to the writings of Western feminists. Udwin is no Susan Brownmiller or Angela Davis but her film is hardly the enemy here. The point is to change Indian misogyny, not to worry that we will be seen as a misogynist nation internationally.

The most serious issue is, of course, the call for a restraint on showing the film. While the grounds for this demand have shifted from describing the accused Mukesh’s statements as hate speech to a concern for the rights of the accused to fair trial in a pending appeal against the death sentence in the Supreme Court, the issue of fair trial itself needs unpacking. In particular, we need to look at the relationship between the media, public opinion and judicial pronouncements.

While I have been unable to locate any empirical study on the extent to which media influences the Indian judiciary, research elsewhere indicates that the record is inconclusive. A 2011 study by Mark Potter “Do the Media Influence the Judiciary?” argues that while judges also live in society, they are more likely to be influenced by the arguments made by counsel, discussions with their peers, precedents set by other courts, etc. Other studies from the US suggest that judges are affected by media coverage to the extent that they care about “institutional legitimacy.” They are circumspect about lowering the authority of the court by giving judgments which are unpopular or which will not be enforced. Either way, judicial responses to public opinion are mediated by several factors. If the media-created cannibal Surinder Kohli could get reprieve based on facts before the court, there is no reason to assume that this film will overpower the judiciary; or that films in general have such a capacity. And if judges are so easily swayed, we need to worry more about the quality of the judiciary than of films.

Moreover, judicial sensitivity to public opinion is not always undesirable, especially when public opinion is far in advance of the law, such as in getting rid of Section 377. If media coverage during the pendency of a trial—even at the initial trial stage of giving evidence, and not on appeal as in this case—is to be restrained, that would outlaw the work of many defence committees, such as those formed for the release of Afzal Guru or Binayak Sen. Moreover, in a country known for its judicial arrears (the Hashimpura case lasted from 1987 to 2015), to restrain a film during trial can amount to a lifelong ban. On the other hand, justice has an unexpected lifespan. Films or books may play an important role in creating grounds for reparations, e g, through truth and reconciliation commissions, long after the courts have failed.

In India, the public sphere is divided on many issues, and the same media coverage has contradictory effects depending on the audience—the coverage of Afzal Guru as a terrorist in the Indian media made him a martyr in Kashmir; Maya Kodnani’s conviction for the massacres of 2002 is seen as a good thing by all right-thinking Indians but the communal-minded Hindu in Gujarat thinks she has been unfairly victimised. The effects of this coverage may impinge on the courts, but indirectly via the political process.

Even were the rights of Mukesh or his co-accused an issue here, to call for a restraint on the film’s screening may do greater disservice to prisoners’ rights in the long term. For the government and Times Now, which instigated the outcry, the problem is giving the accused the space to represent themselves. This logic can then be easily extended to Naxalites, those accused of terrorism, or even people like Irom Sharmila. In restraining this film, we run the risk of a much larger silencing of our polity.

Nandini Sundar (nandinisundar[at]yahoo.com) teaches Sociology at the University of Delhi.

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21. AFGHANISTAN’S DEFINING FIGHT: TECHNOCRATS VS. STRONGMEN
by Sudarsan Raghavan 
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(The Washington Post - April 12, 2015)

MAZAR-E SHARIF, Afghanistan — A massive portrait of a middle-aged man towers over the Ferris wheel and giant mushrooms at an amusement park here. At night, the image is bathed in an ethereal light, visible from a quarter-mile away.

His admirers call him “Ustad,” or “Teacher.” His critics call him the King.

For more than a decade, Atta Mohammad Noor, governor of Balkh province, has controlled this northern region with an iron hand, imbued with the authority of the freedom fighter he was and the ultra-rich businessman he has become. Guns, militias and guile, as well as his ability to provide security, have made him one of the country’s most formidable strongmen.

To many war-weary Afghans, former warlords such as Noor — who are accused of human rights abuses yet rule with impunity — have to be marginalized for the nation to move into a new era. To their supporters, these former warlords remain a bulwark against the Taliban, al-Qaeda and, possibly, the Islamic State, more vital than ever as the U.S. military mission edges to a close.

“If Ustad Atta is ever replaced as governor, there will be chaos here, and it will spread to other provinces,” declared Haji Abdul Wahab, a close friend who manages the park, which Noor built. “He’s got a special place in the hearts of Afghan people.”
WARLORDS OF AFGHANISTAN: Here are some of Afghanistan’s prominent warlords, some who have died, and some who will continue to influence Afghanistan for many years. View Graphic

Noor’s rise and endurance is a legacy of America’s longest war and an emblem of a fresh contest for influence. It pits the aspirations of Western-educated technocrats keen to transform Afghanistan against conservative ethnic and tribal strongmen determined to preserve the status quo. That struggle is becoming the definitive battle for the future of every aspect of the country’s affairs — from forming a new cabinet to tackling rampant corruption to engaging in peace talks with the Taliban.

“There’s a tug of war between two different ways of running the country,” said Peter Semneby, Sweden’s ambassador to Afghanistan. “It’s the traditional patronage way of running Afghanistan against the modern way of running a country, with respect for the constitution, laws and transparency.”

By the time U.S. forces left Iraq, conflict and occupation had destroyed many of the patronage networks, creating new elites. In Afghanistan, the traditional political order remains entrenched after more than 13 years of war, bolstered by American support, a weak central government and fears of a resurgent Taliban.

The ascent last year of ­President Ashraf Ghani, a U.S-educated former World Bank official, was widely seen as a key step in altering old notions of power. But Noor and other strongmen are challenging his efforts to strengthen the government’s authority. The U.S.-brokered power-sharing deal that ushered Ghani into his position “was a narrow victory for the modern way of running Afghanistan,” Semneby said. “But the patronage system is striking back.”

The mujahideen legacy

That system is visible across this sprawling provincial capital, the country’s fourth-largest city, graced with ancient shrines and modern construction projects. Billboards looming over intersections show Noor with influential former mujahideen leaders from years past. The message is unmistakably clear: Noor is the heir to their legacy.

An ethnic Tajik, Noor gained prominence in late 2001 as the top mujahideen commander in northern Afghanistan fighting the Taliban regime. With American funds and weapons, the rebels ousted the Islamists, paving the way for Noor to control the nation’s security forces in strategic Balkh province. In 2003, after a series of battles, he pushed out his main rival, Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek warlord, from its capital, Mazar-e Sharif. The next year, then-President Hamid Karzai made Noor provincial governor.

Under Karzai, the warlords thrived. The government either installed them in influential positions or left them alone. Many received funds from the United States and other Western powers to work alongside U.S. and NATO forces to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda, further increasing their influence in Afghanistan’s political circles.
Atta Mohammad Noor (AFP/Getty)

Broad-shouldered with an athletic build, Noor was a high school teacher — hence his nickname — before he joined the U.S.-backed mujahideen resisting the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. He has since shaved his thick beard and traded his military uniform for tailored Western suits.

He has doled out parcels of land and jobs to hundreds of his former commanders and fighters, according to Western diplomats and human rights activists. Noor exerts influence over the media, judicial system and commercial life here. He’s said to control lucrative customs revenue as well as dozens of companies, some of which receive Western-funded government contracts.

In late 2001 and early 2002, forces under Noor’s command carried out a campaign of looting and rape against ethnic Pashtuns, whose tribesmen make up a majority of the Taliban, according to Human Rights Watch. Today, Noor commands a network of militias, some of which have been implicated in numerous violations, including killings, beatings, abductions, extortion and land seizures.

“Because of the regular and ongoing nature of abuses, it is credible to allege that Atta is either aware of the abuses and directly complicit, or he is indirectly culpable for failing to stop the abuses and hold perpetrators accountable,” said John Sifton, Human Rights Watch’s Asia ­Advocacy director.

A confidential 2011 security report by the U.S. and NATO-led coalition forces, obtained by The Washington Post, found that Noor sought to bolster his political position “by using his patronage network to assassinate and harass political opponents.” The report added that Noor’s “relationship with criminals, especially drug traffickers, has likely been profitable and contributed to [his] financial resources.“

Anyone who opposes him is a target, his critics say.

“Because of Atta’s power, I can no longer do my work freely,” said Shamsuddin Shams, 51, an ethnic Uzbek activist and former businessman who has openly criticized Noor. Noor, he said, confiscated his lands by force, threw him in prison several times and shut down a university he had launched.

Noor did not respond to repeated requests to be interviewed for this story. He has publicly denied allegations of abuses and corruption. In interviews, his friends and close associates insisted that he is so wealthy that he does not need to subsist on graft or violence.

“There’s no truth to what his enemies say about him,” said Zahir Wahdat, the deputy governor of the province and also a former mujahideen commander.

Noor’s supporters contend that he and other strongmen are Afghanistan’s true leaders and have sacrificed immensely for the nation. They disdain technocrats such as Ghani who spent much of their adult lives in the United States and Europe, returning only after the Taliban was ousted.

“Who has destroyed this country for the past 13 years? It’s the people who came from the West,” said Mowlana Farid, a close friend of Noor’s for three decades. “These people with Western ideas have given a bad name to the mujahideen, calling them warlords. Instead of disrespecting them, they have to be respected.”

Opponents of the president

At Balkh Gate, the main entrance to the city, police officers search cars for weapons. Travelers cannot enter unless they deposit their guns and pick them up on the way out. In no other province in Afghanistan does that happen. The policemen are supposed to report to the nation’s Interior Ministry. But it’s clear where their allegiance lies.

“If we had a committed person like Ustad Atta in every province, Afghanistan would be secure,” said Hamidullah Chamto, the police commander at the gate, which was emblazoned with another giant portrait of Noor.

Mazar-e Sharif is widely viewed as the safest city in the country, largely due to Noor’s intelligence, police and military forces. In one recent incident, kidnappers snatched a 4-year-old boy, a relative of a well-known politician. Noor ordered that 5,000 photos of the child be distributed and closed all roads leading out of the city.

“The kidnappers released the child by the afternoon,” recalled Mohammad Moeen Marastial, the politician, who is a close Ghani ally. “Atta has people everywhere.”

That helps explain why Noor remains governor despite the allegations. In Noor, the United States and its allies see someone who can keep the north secure at a time when the Taliban are making inroads outside of their traditional power centers in the south and east.

But Noor and other strongmen have also emerged as the most powerful opposition to Ghani, even as the president forges the closest relationship an Afghan leader has had with Washington in decades.

During last year’s elections, Noor was a key supporter of Abdullah Abdullah, also a prominent former mujahideen figure. Noor publicly criticized Ghani and vowed to create a parallel government in the north if Ghani was elected. Ghani, in turn, vowed to tackle what he described as the illegal activities of Noor and other former warlords — and remove them from their influential positions.

The power-sharing deal brokered by Secretary of State John F. Kerry, under which Abdullah became the country’s chief executive, staved off potential chaos. But it boosted the influence of Noor and other strongmen aligned with Abdullah. Forced to make compromises, Ghani now leads an administration filled with former warlords, including Dostum, who is his vice president.

“If Ustad Atta doesn’t himself want to be replaced, no one can replace him,” Wahdat said.
Unlikely to be removed

In January, members of parliament loyal to the old patronage system rejected more than half the ministers Ghani had appointed to his cabinet, which still is not fully functioning. Some Karzai loyalists and former mujahideen commanders have voiced displeasure with Ghani’s attempts to enter peace talks with the Taliban. Ghani has also had a difficult time persuading Noor and other strongmen in charge of border areas to release vital customs revenue to the government.

“Ghani has a vision for a more unified country, and that runs up hard against Atta’s sense of independence,” said Graeme Smith, Afghanistan analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Noor has aspirations to become leader of the ethnic Tajiks, potentially positioning himself for even greater influence, Western diplomats and analysts said. Even Ghani’s closest friends say it is unlikely that he will fire Noor as governor in the near future. They are more worried that the Taliban or other militants will gain ground — or that other former warlords who have committed even graver abuses, such as Dostum, could seize control of the north.

“The government has too many problems,” said Marastial. “If I was in Ghani’s position, for the stability of Afghanistan, it would be better if Atta stays in his position.”


Sudarsan Raghavan has been The Post's Kabul bureau chief since 2014. He was previously based in Nairobi and Baghdad for the Post.

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22. BANGLADESH: 84 ON HITLIST, 8 KILLED: DHAKA’S POLITICS DRIVES CYCLE OF DEATH
Written by Praveen Swami
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(The Indian Express - April 17, 2015)

Avijit Roy, a prominent Bangladeshi-American blogger known for speaking out against religious extremism was hacked to death as he walked through Bangladesh's capital with his wife. (Source: AP photo)

For ten days early this year, the seven men took turns to stalk their prey, watching him eat, talk, laugh and walk the streets of Dhaka.

On February 26, they were ready. Grainy CCTV footage shows three of them following their victim to the spot they had picked to kill him. And then, on the street outside Dhaka University, they killed Bangladeshi-American writer Avijit Roy, leaving his wife Rafida Bonya with serious injuries.

Five minutes before the attack began, police sources in Dhaka said, the leader of the death squad received a coded text message on a disposable cellphone, signalling that the killers were in place. He received another a minute after the attack to let him know Roy had been hacked down.

That man, police allege, was Redwanul Rana, a student at Dhaka’s prestigious North-South University and now among Bangladesh’s most wanted criminals, said to command the death squad of a shadowy al-Qaeda affiliated organisation called the Ansarullah Bengali Team.

In 2013, Ansarullah had put out a list of 84 anti-Islamist voices it wanted silenced. Eight, so far, are dead: Roy, Rajeeb Haider, Jafar Munshi, Mamun Hossain, Jagatjyoti Talukder, Arif Hossain Dwip, Ziauddin Zakaria Babu and Wasikur Rahman.

The killings are part of a bitter struggle to control Bangladesh’s destiny, pitting the secular nationalists who won independence in 1971, against the Islamists who usurped power four years later. For the past decade, the nationalists had the upper hand — but now, the wheel could be turning again.

Caliphate calling

Early this month, evidence of a significant new jihadist mobilisation emerged when Bangladesh’s elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) recovered assault rifles and pistols from cadre of a new organisation — the Shaheed Hamja Brigade. RAB investigators had recovered over 150 kg and bomb-making equipment in earlier raids on the Brigade.

RAB chief Benazir Ahmad said that “an entire army battalion could have been equipped with the explosives”. “I can say without bragging that we have been on top of the problem,” said Ahmad. “There working very hard to surprising us with what they can do, though, and I’m working harder than ever, because I hate surprises.”

The story goes back to 2013, when unprecedented protests demanding the death sentence for Jama’at-e-Islami leaders implicated in 1971 war crimes swept the country.

From his base in Pakistan, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri issued a call for war. He urged jihadists everywhere to help Muslims in Bangladesh, “where Islam is being clearly fought”. He claimed the country’s “atheist government protects those who publicly ridicule the Prophet”.

Fighters from Bangladesh, intelligence officials believe, have responded to the call, though no one is certain how many. In one video, ‘A Glimpse of a Base of Al-Qaeda in Khurasan’, a Bengali-speaking fighter identifying himself as ‘Suleiman’ said: “Here, I feel there is the kind of environment that helps one learn how to deal with his family and what one’s role should be as a son, a Mujahid and a Muslim.”

Late last year, an Ansarullah Bengali-language video, ‘Eradicate Democracy’, asked Bangaldesh’s “patriotic armed forces” to rise against the government and set up a Caliphate in Bangladesh.

His master’s voice

Police say the North-South University student radicals who formed Ansarullah joined hands because of their common attraction to the work of Indian-educated Bangladeshi cleric, Jashimuddin Rahmani.

Rahmani’s speeches had long fired the imagination of Bangladesh-origin jihadists worldwide. Among them were Rajib Karim, convicted for plotting to bomb a British Airways flight, and North-South alumnus Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, serving time for trying to seeking to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.

Fluent in the art of disseminating his message online, Rehmani described himself as the Bangladeshi voice of Anwar al-Awlaki – the slain US-born jihadist ideologue who led al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Rehmani publicly eulogised Osama bin Laden, and called for the killings of Bangladesh’s atheists.

Now charged with inciting the murder of Rajeeb Haidar, among the architects of the 2013 anti-Islamist Shahbag protests, Rahmani admitted to an anti-terrorism court last month that his words had led his followers to kill.

The first arrests

The Dhaka police made their first arrests of Ansarullah operatives in March, 2013, when they arrested five Dhaka North-South University students in connection with Haidar’s murder. The Ansar al-Mujahideen English Forum hailed the arrested men as “lions of ummah (Islamic nation)”.

In years since then, there have more than twenty other arrests of alleged Ansarullah cadre. Many, including Rana, began their careers in the Islami Chhatra Shibir, or Islamic Students’ Movement — the student wing of the powerful Jama’at-e-Islami party.

In this, the trajectory of these generation-next jihadists has been identical to that of the first generation of Bangladesh fighters. Drawn from one-time Chattra Shibir members who fought against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the formation of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami Bangladesh was announced at a public meeting in 1992. In 1996, leaders of the group merged with the neo-fundamentalist Ahl-e-Hadith Andolon, to create the Jami’at-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

The rise of JMB

The JMB soon began staging lethal attacks on cultural events, like jatra performances, seeking to wipe out the country’s syncretic culture. It killed opponents, including judges and police officials.

Famously, the group set off 500 bombs at 300 locations in 50 cities and towns on August 17, 2005. The attacks, it said, were meant to push the government for the “implementation of Allah’s law the way the Prophet, Sahabs and heroic Mujahideen have implemented for centuries”.

Bangladesh’s government, then led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, dithered. Dependent for support on the Jama’at-e-Islami, and deriving its own legitimacy from religion, it chose not to act against the top terrorist leadership.

The Jama’at’s political power, the scholar Sajjan Gohel has argued, facilitated “an atmosphere of extra-Parliamentary militancy”.

But the military government that took power in 2006, cracked down and hanged four of the plotters, including its chief. Hundreds of JMB cadre have since be arrested by Sheikh Hasina’s government. The few leaders who have survived are believed to be hiding out on the Indian side of the border.

Existential crisis

For the Jama’at-e-Islami, and its jihadist allies, this is a moment of existential threat. The Hasina government has cracked down hard on the organisation. Top leaders of the Jama’at, like Delwar Hossain Sayeedi and Abdul Qader Mollah, await execution for their role in the 1971 war. Last year, former Jama’at Minister Motiur Nizami was sentenced to hang after being convicted of smuggling weapons into Chittagong for insurgents in India’s north-east.

Leaders of Ansarullah, the inheritors of their legacy, will decide if the struggle to turn Bangladesh into an Islamic state has a future – and many fear their odds are more than good. The Jama’at-e-Islami has built up a network of charities, hospitals, educational institutions, micro-credit centres and even banks, estimated by scholar Abul Barkat to bring in over US$200mn a year.

“There are real incentives for young people to join the Islamist ranks,” said analyst Maj-Gen Mohammad Abdur Rashid. “The Jama’at is the swamp in which the jihadists are bred.”


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23. Borderlands: India's Great Wall
by Kai Friese
=========================================
(n+1, March 24, 2015)
https://tinyurl.com/k3vz7zd

An earlier version of this essay was published in French in the magazine GEO.

All national borders are imaginary. But some are more imaginary than others. And perhaps some nations are more imaginative too. Somewhere in the labyrinths of the New Delhi bureaucracy, tucked within the recesses of the Ministry of Home Affairs, is a bureau called the Department of Border Management. The DBM, sometimes with just the flourish of an ink pen, conjures the sinuous, unsteady line that separates the triangle of the subcontinent from the mass of Asia. India’s shortest border, according to the department, is its ninety-nine mile border with Afghanistan. This one is especially imaginary, since it’s been in Pakistani hands for the past seventy years. India’s longest border is the 2,545 mile line that encircles Bangladesh. This one is being drawn right now, with steel and electric light.

Travel along the border districts of the east and you will see it unfurling slowly through the simmering green farmlands of Bengal, turning the territory into a map at last. It is an improbable structure: a double fence, eight feet high, consisting of two parallel rows of black columns made of sturdy angle iron and topped with overhanging beams. The two rows of columns are draped in a tapestry of barbed wire, with spools of concertina wire sandwiched between them.

This imposing national installation is still a work in progress. It has been under construction since 1989; 1700 miles have now been erected, at a cost of approximately $600 million. There have been many delays and cost overruns, but when it is complete it will render precisely 2042 miles of the invisible border an impenetrable barrier, a gigantic machine for processing bodies—designed, in the words of the DBM, to prevent “illegal immigration and other anti-national activities from across the border.”

    Whatever its inadequacies, it is already the world’s longest border fence by any measure.
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Whether this is an appropriate or proportionate response to India’s perceived problem with its smaller neighbor is less certain. The issue of Bangladeshi migration into India has become part of the background chatter of Indian political discourse in the quarter century since work began on the fence, though in times of political turmoil it has been amplified into obtrusive static. Both the partition of India in 1947 and the 1971 war that led to Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan occasioned a massive influx of refugees into India. But migrants of these generations are now generally accepted as naturalized Indians. While the number of subsequent migrants is presumed to be significant, the figures most commonly cited are wildly divergent and unverifiable. In 2000 the Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina famously asserted there were no illegal Bangladeshi migrants in India at all, while three years later India’s Intelligence Bureau pegged the figure at 16 million. The Indian press routinely cites more sensational figures, which expand impressively each year. The unlikely sum of 60 million was a popular estimate a couple of years ago.

Just last year, during his election campaign tour of Bengal, Narendra Modi promised to send all illegal migrants “back to Bangladesh”—although, he reassured his audience, those who worshipped the Hindu goddess Durga would be “welcomed as sons of Mother India.” Nobody knows, of course, what proportion of the unknown number of Bangladeshi migrants are Hindu. Like all the other numbers, it is likely to be impressive. But it seems doubtful that the extravagant net that India is casting around Bangladesh will be up to the task of sieving Muslims from Hindus.

Whatever its inadequacies, it is already the world’s longest border fence by any measure. The infamous West Bank Barrier in Israel, for example, will stretch for 454 miles when complete. The USA-Mexico Wall covers an estimated 578 miles so far. Even the murderous Zonengrenze, which once divided Germany from the Baltic Sea to Czechoslovakia, spanned a mere 866 miles. The German wall is said to have claimed a thousand lives in its forty-year career. But according to a report by Human Rights Watch, the same number of people were killed by the Indian Border Security Force on the India-Bangladesh border in just one decade, between 2000 and 2010. The Bengal-based human rights organization MASUM, which contributed to that report, has documented hundreds of instances of the shooting, beating to death, and torture of Indian citizens by the country’s own armed forces along this border. Its website features a grisly gallery of photographs and even videos of victims, both Bangladeshis and Indians. Comparisons may be odious, but, inevitably, India’s long fence has acquired an ambiguous sobriquet, sometimes invoked with pride, more frequently with sarcasm: “the Great Wall of India.”

Journey along this border and you will occasionally see the proud steel fence falter. Sometimes it yields to a mighty shape-shifting river, sometimes to a sluggish creek. Or a stubborn hamlet of farmers and fishermen in mud huts who just don’t want to move from its path. Often it’s reduced to a ramshackle fence of bamboo or chicken wire. In the north it surrenders to an archipelago of land-locked political “islands,” an impossible territory, too complex to demarcate. And then it returns, all sturdy posts and glinting wire and blazing floodlights. But by then it seems less convincing. And in its place you begin to pick up threads of a more credible narrative.

You will meet activists who complain about the border guards’ brutality and farmers who complain that the guards don’t shoot at infiltrators anymore. Soldiers with bandaged eyes who complain that the villagers are hand in glove with criminals and villagers who tell you that the soldiers are in cahoots with smugglers. Small-town politicians will complain that the border floodlights are keeping the crops awake at night.

And you will realize, sooner or later, that they were all right. Theirs are all true stories, inscribed on a fiction, the one that no nation-state can live without: here is the border, a long line without width. That is Bangladesh. This is India.

That particular distinction dates back only to 1971, but the border itself has an older history—older in fact than either country. It can be traced to the 1905 partition of the Bengal province by the British colonial viceroy George Curzon, which created two administrative units: a Muslim-majority East Bengal and a Hindu-majority West Bengal. But this stroke of the imperial pen was so unpopular—widely regarded as a cynical act of divide et impera—that it proved counterproductive, stirring Indian and Bengali nationalist sentiments rather than fracturing them. As a result the division was eventually rescinded, and the line erased from the map of Bengal in 1911.

It had left an enduring mark however, and, later, as the anti-colonial movement for national independence gathered momentum, the subcontinent fractured along precisely the lines Curzon had foreshadowed. As the moment of independence approached, it became clear that British India would be rendered into two nations: the Hindu-majority country we now know as India and an overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan. The latter would take shape in 1947 as an unusual dominion, comprising two distinct and distant territories, one sandwiched between the western fringes of India and the eastern borders of Afghanistan and Persia, the other virtually encircled by India’s eastern provinces of Bengal and Assam. The territory of East Pakistan was in fact practically indistinguishable from the failed experiment of East Bengal.

Pakistan’s two halves were an anomaly, perhaps even an absurdity, but not entirely without precedent: consider Alaska—or Hawaii for that matter. However, within a quarter of a century East Pakistan’s Bengali population revolted against the rule of the less-populous but politically dominant West Pakistanis. A brutal military crackdown by the Pakistani Army in March 1971 provoked an armed uprising in the East. The bloody civil war led to an exodus of millions of refugees into Indian Bengal, Assam, and Tripura. In early December the Pakistani Air Force, anticipating Indian intervention, launched preemptive air raids on Indian air bases—only to be overwhelmed by Indian forces, who, in conjunction with the East Pakistani Mukti Bahini rebels, secured the surrender of some 90,000 Pakistani soldiers stationed in the east. The war was over within two weeks of India’s intervention, and the new nation of Bangladesh replaced theerstwhile East Bengal and East Pakistan on maps.

 Sixty miles northeast of Kolkata, the Petrapole (India)–Benapole (Bangladesh) border is officially designated a “Land Port,” less an oxymoron than an irony given the  surrounding landscape, a delta full of tidal rivers. No ships dock here, but it is the most significant point of contact between the two countries. So they do their best. There is a ceremonial plaza linking the two nations. India’s contribution is an oversized sculptural rendition of its fence posts,in granite. Bangladesh has huge a mural depicting its founding father, Mujibur Rahman, who was assassinated in a military coup in 1975. In the courtyard between, porters dressed in national livery—red jackets for India, green for Bangladesh—exchange loads, passing them mostly from Indian backs to Bangladeshi backs. Overseeing them are platoons of soldiers from the Indian BSF (Border Security Force) and the Bangladeshi BGB (Border Guard Bangladesh) armed with automatic weapons. Every evening the BSF and the BGB stage a public show of martial prowess with synchronized goose-stepping marches before their flags are lowered and folded for the night. It’s modeled on the wildly popular “retreat ceremony” held at Wagah on India’s Western border with Pakistan—an elaborately choreographed pas de deux of martial pomp staged by the BSF and their counterparts the Pakistan Rangers at a border post between Amritsar and Lahore. But while the Wagah show is charged with aggression and the passionate and sentimental rivalry of two nations separated at birth, the Petrapole affair is an insipid dance. It reaches a low point when the national anthems are played over the loudspeakers, since Amar Sonar Bangla and Jana Gana Mana were both written by the same “national poet,” Rabindranath Tagore.

Petrapole is a strange town consisting mostly of an incongruously wide divided highway lined with monumental rain trees. But its true renown comes from its reputation as “Asia’s largest customs station.” And this achievement is manifest in the endless jam of trucks being slowly processed by the Customs and Excise Department. Here “Clearing and Forwarding Agents,” as they are called, make a good living, supervising the safe passage of Indian steel billets and machine parts to Bangladesh through thickets of bureaucracy. Their business has recently been streamlined, the paperwork eliminated by online processing, and shipments are cleared in seven days. But the clearing agents must still make the rounds to customs officials and border guards to lubricate their transactions. “It was actually faster without computers,” one of them tells me.

Outside the customs station a small convoy of Indian-made vehicles waits to be processed: three of the most patient ambulances in the world and a funeral hearse with a glass coffin in the back. What Bangladesh sells to India is much more modest, these days: some jute from the mills; hilsa fish used to be a big thing, but now it’s been banned; one perennial exportis human hair for the wig industry in India—itself a net exporter in hair—where Bengali hair is particularly prized for its quality.

According to a World Bank report, Bangladesh imports around $1.7 billion worth of goods from India each year. Its exports are a fraction of this, around $78 million. But the same report also acknowledges that “illegal trade between the two countries amounts to 3/4ths of regular trade.” In other words, $1.3 billion worth of goods are smuggled through that $600 million fence each year.

Sudip Haldaris a fisherman.1 He lives in a small hut on the edge of an Indian village called Jhaudanga on the banks of the turbid Ichamati river. Just an hour’s drive from Petrapole, the scene is idyllic: there are bright green paddy fields and craning, deferential coconut and date palms, and on the other side of the slow moving river the same scene resumes. Small figures sit on the opposite bank, idly watching the river flow. Like all border landscapes, this one is filled with symmetries. Half the time the river is sweet and half the time it is salty, Sudip says. It changes with the moon. And half the river is in Bangladesh. “We only go as far as that sandbank,” he says, pointing at an island in the middle of the stream.

It is in the middle of the Ichamati, while Sudip adjusts his oars to keep the boat in place, that he talks about his other job, the one he does at night: herding cows across the river to Bangladesh. “It’s much better money,” he says. “I can make more than a thousand rupees in a night.”

Sudip is just one of thousands employed in the biggest industry on the border. It is estimated that up to 10 million Indian cattle are smuggled into Bangladesh each year. The trade is said to be worth at least $500 million annually, and like all trade it is a matter of supply and demand. India has a surplus of cows but relatively little demand for beef. In Bangladesh it’s the other way around. The price of a cow in India can range from Rs 500-3,000. In Bangladesh: Rs 20,000-40,000. And this astonishing price difference is preserved by the strangest of market mechanisms: the border fence and the 70,000 soldiers of the BSF who guard it. They maintain yet another national fiction: that the cow is sacred to Hindus and its export for slaughter is prohibited.

Sudip’s moonlight career is one of the worst-kept secrets in India. The highways to Bengal are thronged with trucks ferrying cattle from distant states like Rajasthan and Punjab. And out here on the border it is an organized business, with its own hierarchies and designations. There are the ghatials, or buyers, the dalals, or brokers who arrange the deal, and the rakhals, or cowboys, like Sudip, who actually herd the cattle across the border. The fourth and arguably the most crucial player is the BSF. Their job is to provide the element of risk, without which the whole business would collapse. And so they catch cows some of the time and then auction them off again to the dalals. Or they turn a blind eye, for a fee. There are two ways to cross, Sudip says. “Line open,” when the BSF has been paid. Or the more difficult maneuver of a “pass” which usually involves releasing a couple of cows to divert the sentries in one direction while the rest of the herd crosses on the other side. “The dalals always draw up a game-plan for us,” he says.

“It’s like football every night,” says Ajay Kumar, a young BSF sentry back on the shore in Jhaudanga. He smiles wryly as he dis


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