January 17, 2008
World Briefing Africa
Libya: Migrants Deported
By REUTERS
The government said it had started deporting illegal immigrants. Officials estimate that there are two million illegal immigrants, most from poor African states who were trying to reach Europe. The government said the authorities were instructed to destroy makeshift homes where most illegal immigrants live on the outskirts of Tripoli and other coastal cities.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Democracy and Conflicts In ASIA
'Democracy and Conflict Resolution in Asia'
Dainik Jagran Summit New Delhi – January 16, 2008
Speech by Shri L.K. Advani Leader of the Opposition (Lok Sabha)
Distinguished participants in this conclave, ladies and gentlemen,
I am delighted to be with you this morning. At the outset, I wish to congratulate Dainik Jagran, a leading Hindi language newspaper in our country, for organizing this summit. Conferences of this kind have been held on an annual basis by some well-known English publications, and I have participated in them too. However, it gives me special satisfaction to be participating in a conclave organised by a publication in Hindi, our national language, of which I am immensely proud. At the same time, I am dismayed by the fact that Hindi has not yet received the kind of recognition, both within India and internationally, that it so richly deserves.
There is an urgent need to encourage, enrich and honour Hindi and other native Indian languages. I am saying this in a special context. The United Nations has recently proclaimed 2008 the International Year of Languages, recognizing that genuine multilingualism promotes unity in diversity and international understanding. It also emphasized the paramount importance of the equality of the Organization's six official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish). There is not a single Indian-origin language among these, although the number of Hindi-speaking people exceeds those that speak Arabic, French, Russian and Spanish.
A reason for insufficient international recognition for Hindi may be the fact that it is not spoken outside India. But what is disappointing is that, within India, we place English on a higher pedestal than Hindi and other Indian-origin languages. The effect of the British strategy of making Indians feel inferior about their language and culture has curiously survived even after independence. Those who speak only Hindi or other Indian languages, and are not very conversant in English, are generally looked down upon. Let me recount a personal experience.
I knew very little Hindi during the first twenty years of my life I spent in Sindh. But I studied it diligently after I came to this part of India after Partition. I came from Rajasthan to Delhi in 1957 to assist the parliamentary wing of my party. Whenever the telephone rang and I happened to pick it up, my first expression was (it still is), "Haan ji." To which, many times, the response from the other side used to be: "Sahab ghar mein hain?" (Is sahib at home?). And I would tell them, "Aap ko Advani se baat karani hai, to main bol raha hoon." (If you wish to speak to Advani, you are talking to the right person.)
In the context of the language debate in India, I have always maintained that our opposition is not to Angrezi per se, but to Angreziyat, which makes people harbour a sense of inferiority complex because they are unable to converse in English. The Chinese or Russians or Japanese have never suffered from this complex.
* * *
Let's recognize the Genius of Asia
With these prefatory remarks, let me come to the topic of this conclave. A discussion on 'Democracy and Conflict Resolution in Asia' must first of all recognize two factors about Asia ― its rich historical experience and its proud diversity, which should disabuse us of the notion that we have nothing to learn from our own tradition of democracy and conflict-resolution and have to only learn from others. Asia is the world's largest, most populous and most diverse continent. It is also where all the world's major faiths were born. It is the cradle of a majority of the world's great and living civilizations. Neither of the two devastating World Wars of the last century was caused by Asia, although Asian countries were affected by their fire. Similarly, Asia has been a victim of colonialism and not a cause of it.
All this speaks of what is often termed as the 'Genius of Asia'. By any reckoning, it provides a valuable spiritual, cultural and intellectual resource to promote democracy and peaceful conflict-resolution. There is another important point to be noted here. After remaining a victim of history for several centuries, Asia is now becoming, once again, a prime shaper of its own destiny. Let me put this point in perspective.
Last week, I came across three volumes of a new and ambitious encyclopedia on the history of Indian Science and Technology, a project promoted by Shri Rajiv Malhotra of the Infinity Foundation, USA. It quotes Samuel Huntington writing the following in his much-discussed book 'Clash of Civilisations'.
"In 1750, China accounted for almost one-third, India for almost one-quarter and the West for a less than a fifth of the world's manufacturing output…In the following decades, the industrialization of the West led to the de-industrialisation of the world."
In contrast to this, the late 20th century witnessed an Asian economic renaissance. As far as economic growth is concerned, the centre of gravity has already shifted to Asia, with India and China emerging as the two main engines of the growth of the global economy. According to noted economic historian Angus Maddison, if India and China can sustain their current rates of growth, they will regain their historic place in the next few decades.
The above trend has profound implications for democracy, conflict-resolution and management of global affairs in general. The western monopoly over global economic processes, one that has lasted for over two centuries and which gave the West a dominant position in military matters and global diplomacy, has been unequivocally broken. Asia's material rejuvenation buttressed by the flow of financial resources and dissemination of information/knowledge flows, itself enabled by the IT and communication revolution of the 1990s, has begun to strengthen the voice of nation states in Asia .
Therefore, if Asia's newly gained economic strength and rapidly growing political clout can be combined with the essential 'Genius of Asia' ― its priceless civilisational, cultural and spiritual resource, rooted in the values of peace, harmony, justice, respect for pluralism, co-existence and dialogue ― I am optimistic that Asia will be able to rewrite not only its own history but also contribute greatly to building a better future for the world as a whole. And with Asia rapidly reclaiming its historic position in the global community, I feel confident that Europe's past will not be Asia's future; rather, the best of Asia's past will mould humanity's future.
India and China should fully normalize good-neighbourly ties
In fact, one notices an interesting trend in Asian diplomacy whereby outstanding conflicts are casting a diminishing shadow on the improvement of relations in other spheres, particularly economic. It could also be argued that the existence of outstanding disputes is persuading states to seek rapprochement and construct new bilateral and multilateral mechanisms/institutions. Economic interdependence in Asia is gradually compelling states to pursue non-confrontational means of tackling old disputes. It may suffice to say that inter-state stability can only emerge from a mutual accommodation of each other's core security interests. And this in turn will require responsible statesmen who can equilibrate security strategies based on "self-help" with those based on cooperative norms.
A good example of this is the evolution of India-China relations in recent years, and the constructive approach that both countries have adopted to resolve the border dispute. Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh's just-concluded visit to China has hopefully taken this effort forward. Fully normalized good-neighbourly and cooperative relations between the two great nations of Asia can become a reliable factor of peace, stability and progress both in the region and globally.
Indeed, the effort to bring about a rapprochement in India-China relations was started when Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the foreign minister in Morarji Desai's government. His historic meeting with Deng Xiaoping in 1979 broke the ice and resumed top-level dialogue that had been frozen after 1962. Shri Vajpayee also gave a big boost to this effort when he became the Prime Minister. An institutionalized framework for dialogue on resolution of the border dispute was begun during his regime. In between, Rajiv Gandhi and P.V. Narasimha Rao also made valuable contribution to the normalization of ties between our two countries. Here we see an example of the development of a highly useful national consensus in foreign policy.
It has been my view that Pakistan should recognize the usefulness of the framework adopted by India and China for normalizing and strengthening our bilateral ties, without holding them hostage to the resolution of the border dispute. Similarly, Indo-Pak relations can be normalized without holding them hostage to the resolution of the Kashmir issue.
Two long-festering conflicts in Asia
Unfortunately, several long-festering conflicts in Asia have been sustained, and have eluded a satisfactory solution, because of the interplay between western strategies of global domination in conflict-zones, where the conflicts are in turn exacerbated by certain intolerant, violent, hegemonistic ideologies that have originated in Asia itself.
Two prime examples of this are the conflicts in West Asia and South Asia . Palestine must get independent statehood and, at the same time, Israel's right to exist must be unequivocally recognized by all its neighbours. Those who say that Israel should be wiped off the map of the world are a threat to regional and world peace, even though their voice emanates from within Asia itself.
Similarly, closer home, we have witnessed the tragedy of Afghanistan , where the forces stoking the fires of religious extremism and global domination have harmed India, too. The trouble began in 1979 with the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, which the then government of India should have condemned strongly and categorically. Afghanistan then became a victim of the Cold War rivalry between the then two superpowers, with Pakistan trying to take advantage of the conflict for its own narrow geo-political ambitions. Since then, the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union itself disintegrated. But Afghanistan continues to be a zone of war, because it was converted into a sanctuary of jehadi terrorism, with disastrous consequences for all those who gave birth to this Bhasmasur.
The latest victim of this Bhasmasur was Ms. Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. We must remember that her assassination in a terrorist attack took place in the context of the Pakistani people's aspiration for the establishment of an effective and stable democratic system. I had commented then, and also on the earlier occasion when she escaped an assassination bid on the day she returned from her exile (when 125 persons were killed in a terrorist attack on her convoy), that, in Pakistan, the struggle for democracy and the struggle against terrorism inspired by religious extremism cannot be separated.
The developments in Pakistan should prompt us to recognize a disturbing trend: The term 'democracy' is being manipulated in international relations discourse to suit the self-serving purpose of preserving one's global domination and preserving one's "spheres of influence". All of us know that intolerant and extremist religious ideologies are being exported out of certain countries in Asia which are far from being democratic. Nevertheless, they are tolerated by those proclaiming to be defenders of freedom and democracy worldwide. This self-deception will prove costly to its practitioners and to the world at large.
Worrisome developments in Nepal
Friends, I would like to make a brief comment on the happenings in Nepal. My party and I stood firmly by the side of the people of Nepal in their desire for effective and fully empowered democracy. But we also backed their other aspiration, which was suppressed by the rise of Maoist forces in the politics of Nepal : namely, preservation of Nepal as a Hindu kingdom with constitutional monarchy. Maoism and democracy are a contradiction in terms. The two cannot go together. It is unfortunate that they have gained ascendancy in the polity of Nepal.
This has grave implications not only for Nepal but also for India, given the close nexus between Maoists on both sides of the border. The Prime Minister is right in characterizing Communist extremism or Naxalism as the biggest threat to India's internal security. It is also a threat to our democracy. Why then has the UPA government remained a silent onlooker, with communists in India playing the role of a colluder, when constitutional monarchy was disbanded recently under the pressure of Maoists? The monarchy in Nepal was a symbol of its unique national identity and a source of its stability.
Also, why did the Indian communists applaud when the identity of Nepal as a Hindu kingdom was erased even before the Constituent Assembly had discussed it? Would they demand that Pakistan or Bangladesh cease to be Islamic Republics?
The examples of Israel-Palestine, Afghanistan and Nepal raise two important questions: Should India and other countries in Asia get entrapped in the Western-sponsored normative discourse on Asia's political evolution, or should we imbibe from our traditional values and norms? The former path is likely to ensure that we become the plaything of external powers seeking to shoot guns off our shoulders.
The second question is: Can Asia, or for that matter, the rest of the world, rest in peace if ideologies of religious extremism, exclusivism and global domination ― and these ideologies neither respect democracy nor tolerate secularism and plurality ― are allowed to grow in our midst?
India 's proud record in defending democracy
It is against this background that I wish to present a few salient aspects of India's democratic tradition and our approach to conflict-resolution. This tradition and approach have been fundamentally influenced by Hindu philosophy and cultural ethos. Hindu philosophy since the dawn of our civilization has been pluralistic in its outlook and teachings. As a result, India is inherently a rare state in the international system, insofar as it is unwilling to impose a set of ideals and principles on other equally proud nations. Which is why, throughout her millennial history, India never sent out her armies to conquer other lands and exterminate or coerce the native populations or cultures.
It is because of this faith in pluralism and respect for the other's viewpoint that India, after independence, naturally accepted democracy and secularism. We did not import these from the West. Ask yourselves a simple question: Why is it that there has never been a military coup in a vast and diverse country like India, where a large section of the population is poor and less-literate? Never a violent change of power? How did India succeed in having regular elections, which are free and fair, and whose outcome has always been accepted by all political parties?
Yes, there was a brief eclipse of democracy during the Emergency. But the people voted against the Emergency regime so angrily, that even a leader as tall as Indira Gandhi was defeated.
Five tasks for strengthening India's role in the world
Friends, the challenge before us in India is: How do we strengthen the voice and role of India in the affairs of Asia and the world? Let me identify five tasks:
The first task is to ensure the success of India's own socio-political-economic story, which would in turn serve as a model for others to emulate.
Without comprehensive national success ― material, political, technological, and social progress, combined with military might to defend ourselves against any external threat ― the credibility/attraction of India's soft power (that is, the repertoire of ancient Indic knowledge, spiritual traditions, cultural heritage etc.) will remain perfunctory. In fact, derogatory western commentary toward India and Hindus ― i.e. "Hindu rate of growth", which, shockingly, some Indian intellectuals also use ― stemmed from our poor performance on the economic front, the inaction that stifled the strengthening of our polity, and the inefficient execution of our developmental objectives.
The second task is to regain and rebuild pride in our own national heritage ― spiritual, cultural, intellectual, scientific, technological and military.
Sadly, in the name of a distorted and perverted understanding of secularism, a section of our political and intellectual elite is busy belittling, denying and denigrating all that is Hindu. A nation that is not proud of its own past can never attain greatness, nor can it command respect in the eyes of the world.
Thirdly, India should further strengthen an omnidirectional foreign policy seeks to engage with all the major centres of power.
The end of the Cold War brought with it the gradual dilution of a bloc-based system. The evolution of Indian diplomacy since the 1990s has been a structural response to such a world. The proliferation of our numerous "strategic partnerships" that India has entered into in the past 15 years attests to the geopolitical diversity around us.
Fourthly, we have to vastly expand the size and strength of our foreign service personnel; business platforms; media organizations and think tanks with global reach; personalities associated with cinema, arts, music and literature; academics; NGOs; and cultural and spiritual ambassadors. We should also leverage the valuable resources of the approximately 20-million Indian Diaspora worldwide.
India 's current diplomatic infrastructure and resources ― in the political, economic, cultural and academic-intellectual fields ― are far too inadequate for us to play an effective role either in Asia or around the world.
Lastly, India must intensify its efforts aimed at reform and restructuring of multilateral organizations at the Asian and global levels, beginning with the United Nations.
India 's current role in these organizations is far from being commensurate with our present strength and future potential. If India is seeking a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, it is not because of some prestige value. Rather, it is out of our conviction that any global system that does not fully recognize the role of an ancient and newly resurgent nation, one which is the world's largest democracy and accounts for one-fifth of humanity, is inherently flawed.
I believe that systematic, unsentimental pursuit of all the above-mentioned five tasks will enable India to play a benign/constructive role in promotion of democracy and conflict-resolution in our own immediate neighbourhood, in wider Asia, and in the world at large. This is what we mean by our goal of working towards India reclaiming her rightful place in the comity of nations.
Thank you.
Dainik Jagran Summit New Delhi – January 16, 2008
Speech by Shri L.K. Advani Leader of the Opposition (Lok Sabha)
Distinguished participants in this conclave, ladies and gentlemen,
I am delighted to be with you this morning. At the outset, I wish to congratulate Dainik Jagran, a leading Hindi language newspaper in our country, for organizing this summit. Conferences of this kind have been held on an annual basis by some well-known English publications, and I have participated in them too. However, it gives me special satisfaction to be participating in a conclave organised by a publication in Hindi, our national language, of which I am immensely proud. At the same time, I am dismayed by the fact that Hindi has not yet received the kind of recognition, both within India and internationally, that it so richly deserves.
There is an urgent need to encourage, enrich and honour Hindi and other native Indian languages. I am saying this in a special context. The United Nations has recently proclaimed 2008 the International Year of Languages, recognizing that genuine multilingualism promotes unity in diversity and international understanding. It also emphasized the paramount importance of the equality of the Organization's six official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish). There is not a single Indian-origin language among these, although the number of Hindi-speaking people exceeds those that speak Arabic, French, Russian and Spanish.
A reason for insufficient international recognition for Hindi may be the fact that it is not spoken outside India. But what is disappointing is that, within India, we place English on a higher pedestal than Hindi and other Indian-origin languages. The effect of the British strategy of making Indians feel inferior about their language and culture has curiously survived even after independence. Those who speak only Hindi or other Indian languages, and are not very conversant in English, are generally looked down upon. Let me recount a personal experience.
I knew very little Hindi during the first twenty years of my life I spent in Sindh. But I studied it diligently after I came to this part of India after Partition. I came from Rajasthan to Delhi in 1957 to assist the parliamentary wing of my party. Whenever the telephone rang and I happened to pick it up, my first expression was (it still is), "Haan ji." To which, many times, the response from the other side used to be: "Sahab ghar mein hain?" (Is sahib at home?). And I would tell them, "Aap ko Advani se baat karani hai, to main bol raha hoon." (If you wish to speak to Advani, you are talking to the right person.)
In the context of the language debate in India, I have always maintained that our opposition is not to Angrezi per se, but to Angreziyat, which makes people harbour a sense of inferiority complex because they are unable to converse in English. The Chinese or Russians or Japanese have never suffered from this complex.
* * *
Let's recognize the Genius of Asia
With these prefatory remarks, let me come to the topic of this conclave. A discussion on 'Democracy and Conflict Resolution in Asia' must first of all recognize two factors about Asia ― its rich historical experience and its proud diversity, which should disabuse us of the notion that we have nothing to learn from our own tradition of democracy and conflict-resolution and have to only learn from others. Asia is the world's largest, most populous and most diverse continent. It is also where all the world's major faiths were born. It is the cradle of a majority of the world's great and living civilizations. Neither of the two devastating World Wars of the last century was caused by Asia, although Asian countries were affected by their fire. Similarly, Asia has been a victim of colonialism and not a cause of it.
All this speaks of what is often termed as the 'Genius of Asia'. By any reckoning, it provides a valuable spiritual, cultural and intellectual resource to promote democracy and peaceful conflict-resolution. There is another important point to be noted here. After remaining a victim of history for several centuries, Asia is now becoming, once again, a prime shaper of its own destiny. Let me put this point in perspective.
Last week, I came across three volumes of a new and ambitious encyclopedia on the history of Indian Science and Technology, a project promoted by Shri Rajiv Malhotra of the Infinity Foundation, USA. It quotes Samuel Huntington writing the following in his much-discussed book 'Clash of Civilisations'.
"In 1750, China accounted for almost one-third, India for almost one-quarter and the West for a less than a fifth of the world's manufacturing output…In the following decades, the industrialization of the West led to the de-industrialisation of the world."
In contrast to this, the late 20th century witnessed an Asian economic renaissance. As far as economic growth is concerned, the centre of gravity has already shifted to Asia, with India and China emerging as the two main engines of the growth of the global economy. According to noted economic historian Angus Maddison, if India and China can sustain their current rates of growth, they will regain their historic place in the next few decades.
The above trend has profound implications for democracy, conflict-resolution and management of global affairs in general. The western monopoly over global economic processes, one that has lasted for over two centuries and which gave the West a dominant position in military matters and global diplomacy, has been unequivocally broken. Asia's material rejuvenation buttressed by the flow of financial resources and dissemination of information/knowledge flows, itself enabled by the IT and communication revolution of the 1990s, has begun to strengthen the voice of nation states in Asia .
Therefore, if Asia's newly gained economic strength and rapidly growing political clout can be combined with the essential 'Genius of Asia' ― its priceless civilisational, cultural and spiritual resource, rooted in the values of peace, harmony, justice, respect for pluralism, co-existence and dialogue ― I am optimistic that Asia will be able to rewrite not only its own history but also contribute greatly to building a better future for the world as a whole. And with Asia rapidly reclaiming its historic position in the global community, I feel confident that Europe's past will not be Asia's future; rather, the best of Asia's past will mould humanity's future.
India and China should fully normalize good-neighbourly ties
In fact, one notices an interesting trend in Asian diplomacy whereby outstanding conflicts are casting a diminishing shadow on the improvement of relations in other spheres, particularly economic. It could also be argued that the existence of outstanding disputes is persuading states to seek rapprochement and construct new bilateral and multilateral mechanisms/institutions. Economic interdependence in Asia is gradually compelling states to pursue non-confrontational means of tackling old disputes. It may suffice to say that inter-state stability can only emerge from a mutual accommodation of each other's core security interests. And this in turn will require responsible statesmen who can equilibrate security strategies based on "self-help" with those based on cooperative norms.
A good example of this is the evolution of India-China relations in recent years, and the constructive approach that both countries have adopted to resolve the border dispute. Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh's just-concluded visit to China has hopefully taken this effort forward. Fully normalized good-neighbourly and cooperative relations between the two great nations of Asia can become a reliable factor of peace, stability and progress both in the region and globally.
Indeed, the effort to bring about a rapprochement in India-China relations was started when Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the foreign minister in Morarji Desai's government. His historic meeting with Deng Xiaoping in 1979 broke the ice and resumed top-level dialogue that had been frozen after 1962. Shri Vajpayee also gave a big boost to this effort when he became the Prime Minister. An institutionalized framework for dialogue on resolution of the border dispute was begun during his regime. In between, Rajiv Gandhi and P.V. Narasimha Rao also made valuable contribution to the normalization of ties between our two countries. Here we see an example of the development of a highly useful national consensus in foreign policy.
It has been my view that Pakistan should recognize the usefulness of the framework adopted by India and China for normalizing and strengthening our bilateral ties, without holding them hostage to the resolution of the border dispute. Similarly, Indo-Pak relations can be normalized without holding them hostage to the resolution of the Kashmir issue.
Two long-festering conflicts in Asia
Unfortunately, several long-festering conflicts in Asia have been sustained, and have eluded a satisfactory solution, because of the interplay between western strategies of global domination in conflict-zones, where the conflicts are in turn exacerbated by certain intolerant, violent, hegemonistic ideologies that have originated in Asia itself.
Two prime examples of this are the conflicts in West Asia and South Asia . Palestine must get independent statehood and, at the same time, Israel's right to exist must be unequivocally recognized by all its neighbours. Those who say that Israel should be wiped off the map of the world are a threat to regional and world peace, even though their voice emanates from within Asia itself.
Similarly, closer home, we have witnessed the tragedy of Afghanistan , where the forces stoking the fires of religious extremism and global domination have harmed India, too. The trouble began in 1979 with the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, which the then government of India should have condemned strongly and categorically. Afghanistan then became a victim of the Cold War rivalry between the then two superpowers, with Pakistan trying to take advantage of the conflict for its own narrow geo-political ambitions. Since then, the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union itself disintegrated. But Afghanistan continues to be a zone of war, because it was converted into a sanctuary of jehadi terrorism, with disastrous consequences for all those who gave birth to this Bhasmasur.
The latest victim of this Bhasmasur was Ms. Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. We must remember that her assassination in a terrorist attack took place in the context of the Pakistani people's aspiration for the establishment of an effective and stable democratic system. I had commented then, and also on the earlier occasion when she escaped an assassination bid on the day she returned from her exile (when 125 persons were killed in a terrorist attack on her convoy), that, in Pakistan, the struggle for democracy and the struggle against terrorism inspired by religious extremism cannot be separated.
The developments in Pakistan should prompt us to recognize a disturbing trend: The term 'democracy' is being manipulated in international relations discourse to suit the self-serving purpose of preserving one's global domination and preserving one's "spheres of influence". All of us know that intolerant and extremist religious ideologies are being exported out of certain countries in Asia which are far from being democratic. Nevertheless, they are tolerated by those proclaiming to be defenders of freedom and democracy worldwide. This self-deception will prove costly to its practitioners and to the world at large.
Worrisome developments in Nepal
Friends, I would like to make a brief comment on the happenings in Nepal. My party and I stood firmly by the side of the people of Nepal in their desire for effective and fully empowered democracy. But we also backed their other aspiration, which was suppressed by the rise of Maoist forces in the politics of Nepal : namely, preservation of Nepal as a Hindu kingdom with constitutional monarchy. Maoism and democracy are a contradiction in terms. The two cannot go together. It is unfortunate that they have gained ascendancy in the polity of Nepal.
This has grave implications not only for Nepal but also for India, given the close nexus between Maoists on both sides of the border. The Prime Minister is right in characterizing Communist extremism or Naxalism as the biggest threat to India's internal security. It is also a threat to our democracy. Why then has the UPA government remained a silent onlooker, with communists in India playing the role of a colluder, when constitutional monarchy was disbanded recently under the pressure of Maoists? The monarchy in Nepal was a symbol of its unique national identity and a source of its stability.
Also, why did the Indian communists applaud when the identity of Nepal as a Hindu kingdom was erased even before the Constituent Assembly had discussed it? Would they demand that Pakistan or Bangladesh cease to be Islamic Republics?
The examples of Israel-Palestine, Afghanistan and Nepal raise two important questions: Should India and other countries in Asia get entrapped in the Western-sponsored normative discourse on Asia's political evolution, or should we imbibe from our traditional values and norms? The former path is likely to ensure that we become the plaything of external powers seeking to shoot guns off our shoulders.
The second question is: Can Asia, or for that matter, the rest of the world, rest in peace if ideologies of religious extremism, exclusivism and global domination ― and these ideologies neither respect democracy nor tolerate secularism and plurality ― are allowed to grow in our midst?
India 's proud record in defending democracy
It is against this background that I wish to present a few salient aspects of India's democratic tradition and our approach to conflict-resolution. This tradition and approach have been fundamentally influenced by Hindu philosophy and cultural ethos. Hindu philosophy since the dawn of our civilization has been pluralistic in its outlook and teachings. As a result, India is inherently a rare state in the international system, insofar as it is unwilling to impose a set of ideals and principles on other equally proud nations. Which is why, throughout her millennial history, India never sent out her armies to conquer other lands and exterminate or coerce the native populations or cultures.
It is because of this faith in pluralism and respect for the other's viewpoint that India, after independence, naturally accepted democracy and secularism. We did not import these from the West. Ask yourselves a simple question: Why is it that there has never been a military coup in a vast and diverse country like India, where a large section of the population is poor and less-literate? Never a violent change of power? How did India succeed in having regular elections, which are free and fair, and whose outcome has always been accepted by all political parties?
Yes, there was a brief eclipse of democracy during the Emergency. But the people voted against the Emergency regime so angrily, that even a leader as tall as Indira Gandhi was defeated.
Five tasks for strengthening India's role in the world
Friends, the challenge before us in India is: How do we strengthen the voice and role of India in the affairs of Asia and the world? Let me identify five tasks:
The first task is to ensure the success of India's own socio-political-economic story, which would in turn serve as a model for others to emulate.
Without comprehensive national success ― material, political, technological, and social progress, combined with military might to defend ourselves against any external threat ― the credibility/attraction of India's soft power (that is, the repertoire of ancient Indic knowledge, spiritual traditions, cultural heritage etc.) will remain perfunctory. In fact, derogatory western commentary toward India and Hindus ― i.e. "Hindu rate of growth", which, shockingly, some Indian intellectuals also use ― stemmed from our poor performance on the economic front, the inaction that stifled the strengthening of our polity, and the inefficient execution of our developmental objectives.
The second task is to regain and rebuild pride in our own national heritage ― spiritual, cultural, intellectual, scientific, technological and military.
Sadly, in the name of a distorted and perverted understanding of secularism, a section of our political and intellectual elite is busy belittling, denying and denigrating all that is Hindu. A nation that is not proud of its own past can never attain greatness, nor can it command respect in the eyes of the world.
Thirdly, India should further strengthen an omnidirectional foreign policy seeks to engage with all the major centres of power.
The end of the Cold War brought with it the gradual dilution of a bloc-based system. The evolution of Indian diplomacy since the 1990s has been a structural response to such a world. The proliferation of our numerous "strategic partnerships" that India has entered into in the past 15 years attests to the geopolitical diversity around us.
Fourthly, we have to vastly expand the size and strength of our foreign service personnel; business platforms; media organizations and think tanks with global reach; personalities associated with cinema, arts, music and literature; academics; NGOs; and cultural and spiritual ambassadors. We should also leverage the valuable resources of the approximately 20-million Indian Diaspora worldwide.
India 's current diplomatic infrastructure and resources ― in the political, economic, cultural and academic-intellectual fields ― are far too inadequate for us to play an effective role either in Asia or around the world.
Lastly, India must intensify its efforts aimed at reform and restructuring of multilateral organizations at the Asian and global levels, beginning with the United Nations.
India 's current role in these organizations is far from being commensurate with our present strength and future potential. If India is seeking a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, it is not because of some prestige value. Rather, it is out of our conviction that any global system that does not fully recognize the role of an ancient and newly resurgent nation, one which is the world's largest democracy and accounts for one-fifth of humanity, is inherently flawed.
I believe that systematic, unsentimental pursuit of all the above-mentioned five tasks will enable India to play a benign/constructive role in promotion of democracy and conflict-resolution in our own immediate neighbourhood, in wider Asia, and in the world at large. This is what we mean by our goal of working towards India reclaiming her rightful place in the comity of nations.
Thank you.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
UnHoly way of Holy Chritians
http://indiasecular.wordpress.com/
Unholy ways of Holy Missionaries
- U. Mahesh Prabhu, ivarta blog
1/14/2008
On December 25th when the whole world was celebrating the birth of the Jesus Christ, churches were burning in Gujarat. As per confirmed estimates 11 churches had been burnt. On December 27th Religious leaders in the national capital expressed their anguish over the continuing attacks on the churches in Orissa, saying violence in any form in unacceptable.
But something that which really bothered me was one of the statements, by Swami Shantatmanand – Secretary of Ramakrishna Mission in New Delhi – published in Indian Express that which read ‘Hinduism teaches us to respect and acknowledge the validity of all other religion.’ I am yet to understand as to why was he saying so? Or what made him to make that statement? Is he trying to portray that some Hindus had done those deeds? But how can you say without investigation is complete and report is out?
Reports do say that the attacks on Churches had begun on Christmas after assault on a VHP leader and until today 11 Churches and prayer houses were ransacked and torched by ‘suspected saffron activists’ in several areas of Kandhamal districts in Orissa.
But who attacked the VHP leader? It isn’t clear. Overall for many people the situation may just look, as if, ‘VHP people had attacked in response to the assault on their leader’. That’s simply not it. But, there is more to it.
Recently I happened to read Edward Gibbons ‘Decline and Fall of Roman Empire’. In the book he makes observation on early Christians and their tactics for conversion. Here he quotes a Roman proconsul who wrote that Christians have a very effective method of getting noticed and portraying themselves as ‘Victims’ in order to advance their cause.
Whenever, a minute transgression or even an attempt is made to implement law against them they make such a fuss and in such a rowdy manner that one would think that a ‘great injustice’ had been committed to them.
Christianity does not have a notable reputation for tolerance and respect for other religions. ‘The Christian need to convert the entire world’ has been an historical obsession that continues in major Christian fundamentalist groups even today, both Protestant and Catholic.
The Christian Missionary’s failure to honor other religions, particularly non-biblical traditions, is well known, with Christians still denigrating the sophisticated yogic traditions of Asia as mere superstition, idolatry and polytheism. Christian missionaries have had a reputation for using methods to promote conversion that are not always honest, including employing military and political force during the colonial era.
Their targeting of the poor and illiterate for conversion shows that they don’t like open debates in the light of the day. Yet Christians like to ignore such inconvenient facts while posing as peaceful people concerned with human welfare, not with conversion. They are surprised if members of other religion are suspicious of them, even if they look at these religions and condemn them as works of the Devil. They feel easily hurt and insulted should anyone question their motives.
In the modern secular world, Christians along with Muslims, now demand conversion as a democratic right, even though their religion is authoritarian, and not democratic, accepting only one way, and not honoring pluralism in approaching the Divine.
They offer no freedom of choice about the ‘savior’ or the book or the creed that can bring salvation and there is little tolerance for those who choose another way outside their faith.
Europe had to reject the church and Christian dogma in order to become democratic over the past several centuries, considering this; Christian churches are the last people on earth who should be talking about ‘democratic rights’. It is merely a smokescreen for promoting their own agendas, spreading their authoritarian and exclusivist beliefs, recklessly eliminating other cultures and religions along the way.
Years before there were serial church bombings in South India. It proved that the charges made by Christian leaders against Hindu organizations for the bombings were unfounded, if not malicious. However instead of admitting their mistake Christian leaders and organizations started a propaganda campaign, again blaming the Hindu organizations for ‘creating an atmosphere’ that led to these crimes! The arrests in this regard, in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, had shown that Deendal Anjuman, a Muslim organization led by a Pakistani National was behind most of the bomb blasts and attacks on Christian groups in South India.
The Christian response has been to ignore or deny the report, though it is quite well documented and occurred in states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, not ruled by the so called ‘Hindu BJP’. For further details, I suggest you to, read ‘Church Blasts: Truth and Propaganda’ by S Y Seshagiri Rao.
Christians in India, who exaggerate such minor incidents into a National or International anti-Hindu propaganda, somehow never speak of the fact that ‘More churches have been burnt in America in recent years than in India. Several dozen black American churches were burnt to the ground. Christian priests and ministers are also robbed, assaulted and sometimes killed in all Western countries in numbers not unlike what occurs in India.
We should note that many more priests in America have been arrested for sexual molestation of children than have priests been assaulted in India. Should we use that to make conclusions about the nature of Christianity?
Did you know the fact that many more pagans were killed by Christians, and thousands of pagan temples were destroyed throughout Europe? The great Greek (Neo Platonic) Academy in Alexandria was destroyed and its scholars like Hypatia killed by Cyril – ‘Saint Cyril’.
The number of Native Americans killed or forcibly converted by Catholics was also in the many millions, and yet the Catholics emphasize a few priests martyred by Native Americans as being the real victims. Such and more are stories of ‘Christian Oppression’.
Hinduism is a religion of openness. We appreciate all gods and deities. We have never said that we are the ‘only way’ like many of the Semitic faiths. We have no problems acknowledging greatness of Allah, Jehovah or Jesus. We have done that many a times. Didn’t we? But Christian missionaries have, instead, used it as a pretext to promote Christian superiority, not to reciprocate with honoring Hinduism and its sages and yogis.
They say Christ must be great because Hindus honor him. They don’t honor Hindu teachers in return. The hypocrisy of the whole thing is easy to see.
It shows the condescending attitude towards Hindus, thinking that they can bully them or appeal to their tolerance by a feigned persecution. It wholly proves that Christians Missionaries are still promoting a medieval religion that will not honor other religions and is still seeking world domination by any means fair or foul.
If we count the victims of Christian aggression on one side and the Christian themselves who have been victimized we will find that the victims of Christianity are overwhelming in the majority.
- While some Christians have apologized to African and Native American groups for such missionary misdeeds, the Hindus have so far not received any such apology, though they have suffered from the same methods.
The reason is that the missionaries have not yet triumphed in India. The apology, like crocodile tears, comes only after the victim is dead.
I would trust those missionaries only if they say that Hinduism, - Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism and other Indian religions are as good as Christianity. Let Christians say clearly that members of other religions will not go to hell but will gain immortality in the presence of God by following what is good in their own teachings.
Writes David Frawley ‘As a former Catholic I know in what little esteem the Church holds Hinduism and Buddhism with all their great sages and yogis. Christianity, like Islam, sees tolerance not as a virtue to be emulated but as a weakness to be exploited. Were Christians really to honor Hinduism as a valid religion all Hindu-Christian hostility could easily come to an end. - As long as Christians hold that their alone is the True Faith and are working to convert the members of other religion in one way or another, they should not be surprised if members of other religions do not welcome their presence.’ In his book ‘The Missionary Ploy.’
It is only a matter of time before Missionary Christianity is seen for what is imperialism in the name of God and Christ, the proverbial wolf in the sheep’s clothing. It is a political, worldly movement with little spirituality in it. Unfortunately such Christians confuse the real Divine work, which is improving us through introspection, with the institutional work of imposing a single belief upon all humanity.
This political view of religion has no place in global age of consciousness that is dawning in enlightened minds all over the world today. The quicker it comes to an end, the better it will be for all of humanity. http://www.blogs.ivarta.com/india-usa-blog-column65.htm
PERSECUTION INDUSTRY @ http://www.crusadewatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=697&Itemid=128
http://indiasecular.wordpress.com/
Poor Modi --Pooer Hindus
- From: setlurbadri
To: prohindu@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 5:38 AM
Subject: [prohindu] Poor Modi - Poorer Hindus
POOR MODI – POORER HINDUS It does not surprise me if the Christists and Islamists target the Hindus. - They are just doing what their religious dogmas prescribe. And worse, order them to do. Hindus targeting Hindus has ceased to surprise me because of the extensive abuse of the enormous freedom our religion gives us.
- If the former has to be fought tooth and nail, the latter is something we should not learn to live comfortably with. Satya Himsa Tathaiva Ca.
- Adharma in any form should be dealt with the righteousness of a Srotriya and the parakrama of a Kshatriya, in the larger interest of upholding our Dharma.Our Acharyas are the Pratikas of our Pantheon of Gods.
- Guru Bramha, Gurur Vishnu, Gurudevo Maheshwaraha, Guru Sakshat Parabramha, Tasmaisree Gurave Namaha.Learnt in our early child hood, the Guru is the embodiment of our Gods and Goddesses. And to Guru, we perform our SaranAgati. And to His lotus feet that we consign ourselves at the end of this arduous journey through life.
- When such a worshipful Guru is insulted, we have conveniently learnt how to comfortably go through various motions of life, as though nothing has happened. And when He is insulted a second time, we gleefully accept it with a happy Pongal.When our own Hindus are the offenders of such grievous Guru Droham, we shamelessly allow them to an alliance with us.
- And award them a fresh lease of political life to target our Dharma and our hoary Institutions, yet again.By arresting the Pujya Acharyas on the eve of the Diwali, Jayalalithaa sought to prove her secular credentials. '
- That she lost the subsequent election is not an equal punishment to her assault on Hindus. God must have surely reserved a more deserving punishment.
- By meeting Jayalalithaa on the eve of Pongal, more significantly dumping the visit to the Acharyas, Modi and the BJP have now proved their secular credentials. This Guru Droham is their passport to secularism. A passport that will not get the Visa stamped by the Hindu Bhaktas.
- That Jaya, Modi and the BJP chose to insult Hindu Bhaktas and Hindu Institutions like the revered Acharyas on the eve of two significant Hindu festivals is no sheer coincidence.The Diwali Lehiyam, which should taste bitter turned sweet. The Diwali sweets turned sour.
- The Sweet Pongal tastes bitter today.It was Happy Diwali in 2004. Now, Happy Pongal in 2008. Happy for whom?For Modi and the BJP who feasted on a 45 item lunch, that started off ironically with the Sweet Pongal?For the secular press-congi- commie-athiest bandwagon that constitute the UPA?Hindus like me are never seriously worried about what the latter think of our religion, for we can deal with the known enemies.
- But how do we deal with the enemies from within? How do we deal with the advisors of Modi and the BJP think-tank stalwarts, who we have so religiously considered as our friends and pinned so much hope on?
- How can the Sangha Parivar turn a Dritarashra on what has just happened on the eve of the Pongal?Does the BJP have the right to claim Hindu votes any more? How can it do an act of a chameleon to fall at the feet of the lady who chose to insult one of Adi Sankara's Mathams and His successors?If this is a trailer of things to come, I shudder to think what would happen to Hindus and Hindu Institutions should they be given power at Delhi. I
- t is easier to fight a christist government, than to defend ourselves from the Hindu pretenders alias Hindu predators.
- What is the guarantee that this would not give Jaya, the fresh lease of political life to start persecuting the Acharyas if she comes to power again? And hound other Acharyas with renewed hunger? Can anyone be so confident of this unstable lady that she would not threaten to pull out of the alliance if she is not allowed her ways with inflicting wanton injury on Hindu Institutions and its persona?
- Does one congratulatory note to Modi, a lavish luncheon spread with him and a support to Rama Sethu absolve her of the Guru Droham that she did on Kanchi?Can the VHP and the BJP assure the Hindus that her support for the Ram Sethu is not simply motivated because of Karunanidhi' s opposition to it?Is she a reliable ally?
- Does her earlier behavior support this? Is her support to Rama Sethu an adequate prayaschitha for her assault on Hindu Acharyas, the very pratiksas of our Hindu Dharma?Are we to believe the BJP is naïve, plain stupid or extremely arrogant and totally insensitive to Hindu sentiments and its 100% Hindu voters?If Modi's body language showed his discomfiture in the presence of the vain lady,
- Ravi Shankar Prasad looked like a school boy who was handed out his first 45 item spread. Beaming from ear to ear, he gushed at the menu like someone starved of food for generations. Will a 48 item dinner from some other political party make him reconsider his current position?To the large section of devout Hindus, the Chennai visit has not done any good to Modi's image. He has allowed his confidants to inflict a blemish on his carefully nourished righteousness. The source of this rich nourishment at the Poes Garden has led to strong indigestion to many of his earlier supporters, I included.This is certainly a blemish on Modi. Those who advised him and organized this have achieved their goal. He was advised NOT to meet the Acharyas. "She will not like that", they told him. "She will NOT receive him properly if he visits the Acharyas", they added. And the Kanchi was struck off his itinerary. Fight terrorism with all your might, Modi. We are with you. Not allying with those who unleash terrorism on Hindu Gurus and Hindu Institutions.
- BJP has already started its election mode in Tamil Nadu. Preserving every ounce of energy for repeated prostrations at the feet of Lalitha. Are we getting ready to be transported back to the blackmailing days of the Lalitha, Samata and Mamata?It must have been a Happy Pongal for the select few who organized his visit to meet Lalitha and advised him NOT to pay his obeisance to the Acharyas. These are the select few who are enemies of the Hindus from within. They have succeeded in taking some sheen off Modi. And now they must be enjoying their sweet Pongal. Poor Modi.And poorer Hindus who pinned hopes on him.
Gujrat And Now INDIA
Subject: Gujarat mirrors India
Gujarat mirrors India
Prafull Goradia
There is a slow but steady crystallisation of Hindu identity, thanks to a perverse form of secularism being practised in the countryIn a recent article on the Gujarat Assembly election, Mr Ramaswamy R Iyer has let the cat out of the bag.
He writes, "What should worry us, then, is not whether Mr Modi is a demon, but the change in the Gujarati psyche. What has happened to Gujarat? Is it still redeemable?
The post-Godhra violence of 2002 is not a matter of deep concern. Even if the allegation that the arson, loot and killing were state-sponsored is true, it matters less. What matters most is the change in the Gujarati psyche!
The resentment against Muslim conquerors is as old as the conquest of Patan by Muzaffar Shah in 1391 and the establishment of Ahmedabad at the site of Karnavati by Ahmed Shah in 1411. The deprivation of Junagadh from the Kshatriya Chudasamas by Bahadur Shah in 1610 was another upsetting event.
As recently as 1989, I had travelled in a bus in Ahmedabad when my fellow traveller asked for a ticket to Pakistan. He meant Jamalpur.
Gujarat mirrors India
Prafull Goradia
There is a slow but steady crystallisation of Hindu identity, thanks to a perverse form of secularism being practised in the countryIn a recent article on the Gujarat Assembly election, Mr Ramaswamy R Iyer has let the cat out of the bag.
He writes, "What should worry us, then, is not whether Mr Modi is a demon, but the change in the Gujarati psyche. What has happened to Gujarat? Is it still redeemable?
The post-Godhra violence of 2002 is not a matter of deep concern. Even if the allegation that the arson, loot and killing were state-sponsored is true, it matters less. What matters most is the change in the Gujarati psyche!
The resentment against Muslim conquerors is as old as the conquest of Patan by Muzaffar Shah in 1391 and the establishment of Ahmedabad at the site of Karnavati by Ahmed Shah in 1411. The deprivation of Junagadh from the Kshatriya Chudasamas by Bahadur Shah in 1610 was another upsetting event.
As recently as 1989, I had travelled in a bus in Ahmedabad when my fellow traveller asked for a ticket to Pakistan. He meant Jamalpur.
- Over the years, I have heard again and again how in localities like Kalupur and Dariapur, Hindu families have vacated their flats because Muslim neighbours cooked meat and fish. How the neighbours' sons whistled at their daughters. The families sold their flats at, say, Rs 4,000 a square yard, whereas they had to pay Rs 12,000 for their new residence in, say, the Satellite area. This expensive residence cleansing was at the back of middle class women helping their menfolk in the 2002 violence.
In 1969, Ahmedabad had witnessed a much bigger riot which lasted for weeks together. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan had to be invited from Pakistan to calm public anger at the time.
The year 1985 saw a long lingering riot which eventually cost Mr Madhavsinh Solanki his chief ministership. But prima facie, none of these cataclysms changed the Gujarati psyche. The age-old hypocrisy continued to adorn Hindu lips. However misguided some Muslims might be, they are our brethren. Most of them are of our own common blood. They are less educated. Many of them are poor and backward. Hindus in influential positions do not give them jobs. Political parties exploit them for their electoral advantage. Muslims should, therefore, be helped rather than blamed. So went conversations except in very private when bitterness was allowed to spew. Otherwise, politically as well as socially, it was correct to sound secular.
As a child, I had overheard an aunt of mine, in exasperated anger, call her husband Nadir Shah, although she wore khadi and was in society a paragon of Gandhian samabhav. This is despite Mahatma Gandhi writing in his journal -- Young India, Collected Works -- that every Hindu is a coward while every Muslim is a bully.
Gandhi had set the pace with his taking over the leadership of the Khilafat movement in 1919. His motive was to befriend Muslims. Two leading maulanas, Muhamm-ed Ali and Shaukat Ali, were particularly determined to retain the Sultan of Turkey on his throne and in his Caliphate. After World War I, the British were keen on abolishing the Sultanate and as was Mustafa Kemal Pasha on ending the Caliphate. The Maulana-Mahatma agenda was so dreadfully communal that even Mohammed Ali Jinnah was opposed to it.
The Moplah riots were the direct result of the Khilafat movement. The official reports of the time stated that the main brunt of Moplah ferocity was borne by Hindus. - They were massacred by the thousand, forcibly converted to Islam and their women were raped and killed.
The reaction of Gandhi to those atrocities was shocking. He described the Moplahs as "brave god-fearing fighting for what they consider as religion and in a manner which they consider as religious".
The era of Ishwar Allah tero naam and sarva dharma samabhav was inaugurated by Gandhi.
- The Mahatma's samabhav, which was succeeded by Jawaharlal Nehru's secularism, rose to extraordinary heights.
- An example was the murder of Swami Shradhananda in 1926 by one Abdul Rashid.
- The murderer's defence counsel was Nehru's friend and Congressman Asaf Ali. The accused was sentenced to death and hanged.
- Gandhi's comment was "I have called Abdul Rashid a brother,... I do not even regard him as guilty of Swami's murder". Most Hindus are still in the grip of this 'secular' samabhav, which explains why within decades after Partition, self-styled secularists are creating conditions for another vivisection of the country.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has boldly declared "Muslims First". India is a crypto-Muslim's paradise, be he a secularist, a Leftist or a Communist.
After the 2002 Assembly election, fears began to gather that some Hindus, especially in Gujarat, had begun to break out from the chains of 'secular' samabhav and come into their own. The ripples of change also began to reach Hindus living outside Gujarat.
In 2004, at the Calcutta Club there was a seminar with four speakers. - Mr Narendra Modi, after speaking in Hindi on a Uniform Civil Code, received a roaring applause.
- The growing anxiety of crypto-Muslims was reflected in the media more and more.
- The demonisation of Mr Modi increased as the 2007 election neared. Little did the detractors realise that with every attack, the polarisation in his favour would be solidified harder.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Millitants out of control In pakisatan
January 15, 2008
Militants Escape Control of Pakistan, Officials Say
By CARLOTTA GALL and DAVID ROHDE
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency has lost control of some of the networks of Pakistani militants it has nurtured since the 1980s, and is now suffering the violent blowback of that policy, two former senior intelligence officials and other officials close to the agency say.
As the military has moved against them, the militants have turned on their former handlers, the officials said. Joining with other extremist groups, they have battled Pakistani security forces and helped militants carry out a record number of suicide attacks last year, including some aimed directly at army and intelligence units as well as prominent political figures, possibly even Benazir Bhutto.
The growing strength of the militants, many of whom now express support for Al Qaeda’s global jihad, presents a grave threat to Pakistan’s security, as well as NATO efforts to push back the Taliban in Afghanistan. American officials have begun to weigh more robust covert operations to go after Al Qaeda in the lawless border areas because they are so concerned that the Pakistani government is unable to do so.
The unusual disclosures regarding Pakistan’s leading military intelligence agency — Inter-Services Intelligence, or the ISI — emerged in interviews last month with former senior Pakistani intelligence officials. The disclosures confirm some of the worst fears, and suspicions, of American and Western military officials and diplomats.
The interviews, a rare glimpse inside a notoriously secretive and opaque agency, offered a string of other troubling insights likely to refocus attention on the ISI’s role as Pakistan moves toward elections on Feb. 18 and a battle for control of the government looms:
¶One former senior Pakistani intelligence official, as well as other people close to the agency, acknowledged that the ISI led the effort to manipulate Pakistan’s last national election in 2002, and offered to drop corruption cases against candidates who would back President Pervez Musharraf.
A person close to the ISI said Mr. Musharraf had now ordered the agency to ensure that the coming elections were free and fair, and denied that the agency was working to rig the vote. But the acknowledgment of past rigging is certain to fuel opposition fears of new meddling.
¶The two former high-ranking intelligence officials acknowledged that after Sept. 11, 2001, when President Musharraf publicly allied Pakistan with the Bush administration, the ISI could not rein in the militants it had nurtured for decades as a proxy force to exert pressure on India and Afghanistan. After the agency unleashed hard-line Islamist beliefs, the officials said, it struggled to stop the ideology from spreading.
¶Another former senior intelligence official said dozens of ISI officers who trained militants had come to sympathize with their cause and had had to be expelled from the agency. He said three purges had taken place since the late 1980s and included the removal of three ISI directors suspected of being sympathetic to the militants.
None of the former intelligence officials who spoke to The New York Times agreed to be identified when talking about the ISI, an agency that has gained a fearsome reputation for interfering in almost every aspect of Pakistani life. But two former American intelligence officials agreed with much of what they said about the agency’s relationship with the militants.
So did other sources close to the ISI, who admitted that the agency had supported militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir, although they said they had been ordered to do so by political leaders.
The former intelligence officials appeared to feel freer to speak as Mr. Musharraf’s eight years of military rule weakened, and as a power struggle for control over the government looms between Mr. Musharraf and opposition political parties.
The officials were interviewed before the assassination of Ms. Bhutto, the opposition leader, on Dec. 27. Since then, the government has said that Pakistani militants linked to Al Qaeda are the foremost suspects in her killing. Her supporters have accused the government of a hidden hand in the attack.
While the author of Ms. Bhutto’s death remains a mystery, the interviews with the former intelligence officials made clear that the agency remained unable to control the militants it had fostered.
The threat from the militants, the former intelligence officials warned, is one that Pakistan is unable to contain. “We could not control them,” said one former senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We indoctrinated them and told them, ‘You will go to heaven.’ You cannot turn it around so suddenly.”
The Context
After 9/11, the Bush administration pressed Mr. Musharraf to choose a side in fighting Islamist extremism and to abandon Pakistan’s longtime support for the Taliban and other Islamist militants.
In the 1990s, the ISI supported the militants as a proxy force to contest Indian-controlled Kashmir, the border territory that India and Pakistan both claim, and to gain a controlling influence in neighboring Afghanistan. In the 1980s, the United States supported militants, too, funneling billions of dollars to Islamic fighters battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan through the ISI, vastly increasing the agency’s size and power.
Publicly, Mr. Musharraf agreed to reverse course in 2001, and he has received $10 billion in aid for Pakistan since then in return. In an interview in November, he vehemently defended the conduct of the ISI, an agency that, according to American officials, was under his firm control for the last eight years while he served as both president and army chief.
Mr. Musharraf dismissed criticism of the ISI’s relationship with the militants. He cited the deaths of 1,000 Pakistani soldiers and police officers in battles with the militants in recent years — as well as several assassination attempts against himself — as proof of the seriousness of Pakistan’s counterterrorism effort.
“It is quite illogical if you think those people who have suffered 1,000 people dead, and I who have been attacked thrice or four or five times, that I would be supportive towards Taliban, towards Al Qaeda,” Mr. Musharraf said. “These are ridiculous things that discourages and demoralizes.”
But some former American intelligence officials have argued that Mr. Musharraf and the ISI never fully jettisoned their militant protégés, and instead carried on a “double-game.” They say Mr. Musharraf cooperated with American intelligence agencies to track down foreign Qaeda members while holding Taliban commanders and Kashmiri militants in reserve.
In order to undercut major opposition parties, he wooed religious conservatives, according to analysts. And instead of carrying out a crackdown, Mr. Musharraf took half-measures.
“I think he would make a decision when a situation arises,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani military analyst, referring to militants openly confronting the government. “But before that he would not alienate any side.”
There is little dispute that Pakistan’s crackdown on the militants has been at best uneven, but key sources interviewed by The Times disagreed on why.
Most Western officials in Pakistan say they believe, as Pakistani officials, including President Musharraf, insist, that the agency is well disciplined, like the army, and is in no sense a rogue or out-of-control organization acting contrary to the policies of the leadership.
A senior Western military official in Pakistan said that if the ISI was covertly aiding the Taliban, the decision would come from the top of the government, not the agency. “That’s not an ISI decision,” the official said. “That’s a government-of-Pakistan decision.”
But former Pakistani intelligence officials insisted that Mr. Musharraf had ordered a crackdown on all militants. It was never fully carried out, however, because of opposition within his government and within ISI, they said.
One former senior intelligence official said that some officials in the government and the ISI thought the militants should be held in reserve, as insurance against the day when American and NATO forces abandoned the region and Pakistan might again need them as a lever against India.
“We had a school of thought that favored retention of this capability,” the former senior intelligence official said.
Some senior ministers and officials in Mr. Musharraf’s government sympathized with the militants and protected them, former intelligence officials said. Still others advised a go-slow approach, fearing a backlash against the government from the militants.
When arrests were ordered, the police refused to carry them out in some cases until they received written orders, believing the militants were still protected by the ISI, as they had been for years.
Inside the ISI, there was division as well. One part of the ISI hunted down militants, the officials said, while another continued to work with them. The result was confusion.
In interviews in 2002, Kashmiri militants in Pakistan said they had been told by the government to maintain a low profile and wait. But as Pakistani military operations in the tribal areas intensified, along with airstrikes by C.I.A.-operated drones, militant groups there issued highly charged and sometimes exaggerated accounts of women and children being killed.
The first suicide bombing attack on a military target outside the tribal areas came days after an airstrike on a madrasa in the tribal area of Bajaur in October 2006 killed scores of people.
Another turning point came last July when Pakistani forces stormed the Red Mosque in Islamabad, where militants had armed themselves in a compound less than a mile from ISI headquarters and demanded the imposition of Islamic law. Government officials said that more than 100 people died. The militants have insisted that thousands did.
Several weeks later, militants carried out the first direct attacks on ISI employees. Suicide bombers twice attacked buses ferrying agency employees, killing 18 on Sept. 4 and 15 more on Nov. 24. According to Pakistani analysts, the attacks signaled that enraged militants had turned on their longtime patrons.
The Militant
One militant leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, typifies how extremists once trained by the ISI have broken free of the agency’s control, turned against the government and joined with other militants to create powerful new networks.
In 2000, Mr. Azhar received support from the ISI when he founded Jaish-e-Muhammad, or Army of Muhammad, a Pakistani militant group fighting Indian forces in Kashmir, according to Robert Grenier, who served as the Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Islamabad from 1999 to 2002. The ISI intermittently provided training and operational coordination to such groups, he said, but struggled to fully control them.
Mr. Musharraf banned Jaish-e-Muhammad and detained Mr. Azhar after militants carried out an attack on the Indian Parliament building in December 2001. Indian officials accused Jaish-e-Muhammad and another Pakistani militant group of masterminding the attack. After India massed hundreds of thousands of troops on Pakistan’s border, Mr. Musharraf vowed in a nationally televised speech that January to crack down on all militants in Pakistan.
“We will take strict action against any Pakistani who is involved in terrorism inside the country or abroad,” he said. Two weeks later, a British-born member of Mr. Azhar’s group, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, kidnapped Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was beheaded by his captors. Mr. Sheikh surrendered to the ISI, the agency that had supported Jaish-e-Muhammad, and was sentenced to death for the kidnapping.
After Mr. Pearl’s killing, Pakistani officials arrested more than 2,000 people in a crackdown. But within a year, Mr. Azhar and most of the 2,000 militants who had been arrested were freed. “I never believed that government ties with these groups was being irrevocably cut,” said Mr. Grenier, now a managing director at Kroll, a risk consulting firm.
At the same time, Pakistan seemingly went “through the motions” when it came to hunting Taliban leaders who fled into Pakistan after the 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan, he said.
Encouraged by the United States, the Pakistanis focused their resources on arresting senior Qaeda members, he said, which they successfully did from 2002 to 2005. Since then, arrests have slowed as Al Qaeda and other militant groups have become more entrenched in the tribal areas.
Asked in 2006 why the Pakistani government did not move against the leading Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, and his son Sirajuddin, who are based in the tribal areas and have long had links with Al Qaeda, one senior ISI official said it was because Pakistan needed to retain some assets of its own.
That policy haunts Mr. Musharraf and the United States, according to American and Pakistani analysts. Today Pakistan’s tribal areas are host to a lethal stew of foreign Qaeda members, Uzbek militants, Taliban, ISI-trained Pakistani extremists, disgruntled tribesmen and new recruits.
The groups carried out a record number of suicide bombings in Pakistan and Afghanistan last year and have been tied to three major terrorist plots in Britain and Germany since 2005.
Mr. Azhar, who once served his ISI mentors in Kashmir, is thought to be hiding in the tribal area of Bajaur, or nearby Dir, and fighting Pakistani security forces, according to one former intelligence official. Militants who took part in the Red Mosque siege in Islamabad in July were closely affiliated with Mr. Azhar’s group. This fall, his group fielded fighters in the Swat Valley, the famous tourist spot, where the militants presented a challenge of new proportions to the government, seizing several districts and mounting battles against Pakistani forces that left scores dead.
One militant from a banned sectarian group who joined Mr. Azhar’s group, Qari Zafar, now trains insurgents in South Waziristan on how to rig roadside bombs and vests for suicide bombings, according to the former intelligence official.
Cooperation against the Taliban fighting in Afghanistan has improved since 2006, and three senior Taliban figures have been caught, according to Western officials and sources close to the ISI. Yet doubts remain about the Pakistani government’s intentions.
Senior provincial ISI officials continue to meet with high-level members of the Taliban in the border provinces, according to one Western diplomat. “It is not illogical to surmise that cooperation is on the agenda, and not just debriefing,” the diplomat said.
“There are groups they know they have lost control of,” the Western diplomat added. But the government moved only against those groups that have attacked the Pakistani state, the diplomat said, adding, “It seems very difficult for them to write them off.”
The Agency Now
Western officials say that before Mr. Musharraf resigned as army chief in December, he appointed a loyalist to run the ISI and appears determined to retain power over the agency even as a civilian president.
“For as long as he can, Musharraf will keep trying to control these organizations,” a Western diplomat said. “I don’t think we should expect this man to become an elder statesman as we know it.”
That puts Mr. Musharraf’s successor as army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who headed the ISI from 2004 to 2007, in a potentially pivotal position. General Kayani, a pro-American moderate, is loyal to Mr. Musharraf to a point, according to retired officers. But he will abandon him if he thinks Mr. Musharraf’s actions are significantly undermining the standing of the Pakistani army.
Mr. Musharraf will maintain control over the agency as long as his interests coincide with General Kayani’s, they said, while the new civilian prime minister who emerges from February’s elections is likely to have far less authority over the agency. Opposition political parties already accuse the agency of meddling in next month’s election. The Western diplomat called the ISI “the army’s dirty bag of tricks.”
Since Ms. Bhutto’s assassination, members of her party have accused government officials, including former ISI agents, of having a hidden hand in the attack or of knowing about a plot and failing to inform Ms. Bhutto.
American experts played down the chances of a government conspiracy against Ms. Bhutto. They also said it was unlikely that low-level or retired officers working alone or with militants carried out the attack.
But nearly half of Pakistanis said in a recent poll that they suspected that government agencies or pro-government politicians had assassinated Ms. Bhutto. Such suspicion stems from decades of interference in elections and politics by the ISI, according to analysts, as well as a high level of domestic surveillance, intimidation and threats to journalists, academics and human rights activists, which former intelligence officials also acknowledged.
Pakistani and American experts say that distrust speaks to the urgent need to reform a hugely powerful intelligence agency that Pakistan’s military rulers have used for decades to suppress political opponents, manipulate elections and support militant groups.
“Pakistan would certainly be better off if the ISI were never used for domestic political purposes,” said Mr. Grenier, the former C.I.A. Islamabad station chief. “That goes without saying.”
Pakistani analysts and Western diplomats argue that the country will remain unstable as long as the ISI remains so powerful and so unaccountable. The ISI has grown more powerful in each period of military rule, they said.
Civilian leaders, including Mrs. Bhutto, could not resist using it to secure their political aims, but neither could they control it. And the army continues to rely on the ISI for its own foreign policy aims, particularly battling India in Kashmir and seeking influence in Afghanistan.
“The question is, how do you change that?” asked one Western diplomat. “Their tentacles are everywhere.”
Militants Escape Control of Pakistan, Officials Say
By CARLOTTA GALL and DAVID ROHDE
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency has lost control of some of the networks of Pakistani militants it has nurtured since the 1980s, and is now suffering the violent blowback of that policy, two former senior intelligence officials and other officials close to the agency say.
As the military has moved against them, the militants have turned on their former handlers, the officials said. Joining with other extremist groups, they have battled Pakistani security forces and helped militants carry out a record number of suicide attacks last year, including some aimed directly at army and intelligence units as well as prominent political figures, possibly even Benazir Bhutto.
The growing strength of the militants, many of whom now express support for Al Qaeda’s global jihad, presents a grave threat to Pakistan’s security, as well as NATO efforts to push back the Taliban in Afghanistan. American officials have begun to weigh more robust covert operations to go after Al Qaeda in the lawless border areas because they are so concerned that the Pakistani government is unable to do so.
The unusual disclosures regarding Pakistan’s leading military intelligence agency — Inter-Services Intelligence, or the ISI — emerged in interviews last month with former senior Pakistani intelligence officials. The disclosures confirm some of the worst fears, and suspicions, of American and Western military officials and diplomats.
The interviews, a rare glimpse inside a notoriously secretive and opaque agency, offered a string of other troubling insights likely to refocus attention on the ISI’s role as Pakistan moves toward elections on Feb. 18 and a battle for control of the government looms:
¶One former senior Pakistani intelligence official, as well as other people close to the agency, acknowledged that the ISI led the effort to manipulate Pakistan’s last national election in 2002, and offered to drop corruption cases against candidates who would back President Pervez Musharraf.
A person close to the ISI said Mr. Musharraf had now ordered the agency to ensure that the coming elections were free and fair, and denied that the agency was working to rig the vote. But the acknowledgment of past rigging is certain to fuel opposition fears of new meddling.
¶The two former high-ranking intelligence officials acknowledged that after Sept. 11, 2001, when President Musharraf publicly allied Pakistan with the Bush administration, the ISI could not rein in the militants it had nurtured for decades as a proxy force to exert pressure on India and Afghanistan. After the agency unleashed hard-line Islamist beliefs, the officials said, it struggled to stop the ideology from spreading.
¶Another former senior intelligence official said dozens of ISI officers who trained militants had come to sympathize with their cause and had had to be expelled from the agency. He said three purges had taken place since the late 1980s and included the removal of three ISI directors suspected of being sympathetic to the militants.
None of the former intelligence officials who spoke to The New York Times agreed to be identified when talking about the ISI, an agency that has gained a fearsome reputation for interfering in almost every aspect of Pakistani life. But two former American intelligence officials agreed with much of what they said about the agency’s relationship with the militants.
So did other sources close to the ISI, who admitted that the agency had supported militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir, although they said they had been ordered to do so by political leaders.
The former intelligence officials appeared to feel freer to speak as Mr. Musharraf’s eight years of military rule weakened, and as a power struggle for control over the government looms between Mr. Musharraf and opposition political parties.
The officials were interviewed before the assassination of Ms. Bhutto, the opposition leader, on Dec. 27. Since then, the government has said that Pakistani militants linked to Al Qaeda are the foremost suspects in her killing. Her supporters have accused the government of a hidden hand in the attack.
While the author of Ms. Bhutto’s death remains a mystery, the interviews with the former intelligence officials made clear that the agency remained unable to control the militants it had fostered.
The threat from the militants, the former intelligence officials warned, is one that Pakistan is unable to contain. “We could not control them,” said one former senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We indoctrinated them and told them, ‘You will go to heaven.’ You cannot turn it around so suddenly.”
The Context
After 9/11, the Bush administration pressed Mr. Musharraf to choose a side in fighting Islamist extremism and to abandon Pakistan’s longtime support for the Taliban and other Islamist militants.
In the 1990s, the ISI supported the militants as a proxy force to contest Indian-controlled Kashmir, the border territory that India and Pakistan both claim, and to gain a controlling influence in neighboring Afghanistan. In the 1980s, the United States supported militants, too, funneling billions of dollars to Islamic fighters battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan through the ISI, vastly increasing the agency’s size and power.
Publicly, Mr. Musharraf agreed to reverse course in 2001, and he has received $10 billion in aid for Pakistan since then in return. In an interview in November, he vehemently defended the conduct of the ISI, an agency that, according to American officials, was under his firm control for the last eight years while he served as both president and army chief.
Mr. Musharraf dismissed criticism of the ISI’s relationship with the militants. He cited the deaths of 1,000 Pakistani soldiers and police officers in battles with the militants in recent years — as well as several assassination attempts against himself — as proof of the seriousness of Pakistan’s counterterrorism effort.
“It is quite illogical if you think those people who have suffered 1,000 people dead, and I who have been attacked thrice or four or five times, that I would be supportive towards Taliban, towards Al Qaeda,” Mr. Musharraf said. “These are ridiculous things that discourages and demoralizes.”
But some former American intelligence officials have argued that Mr. Musharraf and the ISI never fully jettisoned their militant protégés, and instead carried on a “double-game.” They say Mr. Musharraf cooperated with American intelligence agencies to track down foreign Qaeda members while holding Taliban commanders and Kashmiri militants in reserve.
In order to undercut major opposition parties, he wooed religious conservatives, according to analysts. And instead of carrying out a crackdown, Mr. Musharraf took half-measures.
“I think he would make a decision when a situation arises,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani military analyst, referring to militants openly confronting the government. “But before that he would not alienate any side.”
There is little dispute that Pakistan’s crackdown on the militants has been at best uneven, but key sources interviewed by The Times disagreed on why.
Most Western officials in Pakistan say they believe, as Pakistani officials, including President Musharraf, insist, that the agency is well disciplined, like the army, and is in no sense a rogue or out-of-control organization acting contrary to the policies of the leadership.
A senior Western military official in Pakistan said that if the ISI was covertly aiding the Taliban, the decision would come from the top of the government, not the agency. “That’s not an ISI decision,” the official said. “That’s a government-of-Pakistan decision.”
But former Pakistani intelligence officials insisted that Mr. Musharraf had ordered a crackdown on all militants. It was never fully carried out, however, because of opposition within his government and within ISI, they said.
One former senior intelligence official said that some officials in the government and the ISI thought the militants should be held in reserve, as insurance against the day when American and NATO forces abandoned the region and Pakistan might again need them as a lever against India.
“We had a school of thought that favored retention of this capability,” the former senior intelligence official said.
Some senior ministers and officials in Mr. Musharraf’s government sympathized with the militants and protected them, former intelligence officials said. Still others advised a go-slow approach, fearing a backlash against the government from the militants.
When arrests were ordered, the police refused to carry them out in some cases until they received written orders, believing the militants were still protected by the ISI, as they had been for years.
Inside the ISI, there was division as well. One part of the ISI hunted down militants, the officials said, while another continued to work with them. The result was confusion.
In interviews in 2002, Kashmiri militants in Pakistan said they had been told by the government to maintain a low profile and wait. But as Pakistani military operations in the tribal areas intensified, along with airstrikes by C.I.A.-operated drones, militant groups there issued highly charged and sometimes exaggerated accounts of women and children being killed.
The first suicide bombing attack on a military target outside the tribal areas came days after an airstrike on a madrasa in the tribal area of Bajaur in October 2006 killed scores of people.
Another turning point came last July when Pakistani forces stormed the Red Mosque in Islamabad, where militants had armed themselves in a compound less than a mile from ISI headquarters and demanded the imposition of Islamic law. Government officials said that more than 100 people died. The militants have insisted that thousands did.
Several weeks later, militants carried out the first direct attacks on ISI employees. Suicide bombers twice attacked buses ferrying agency employees, killing 18 on Sept. 4 and 15 more on Nov. 24. According to Pakistani analysts, the attacks signaled that enraged militants had turned on their longtime patrons.
The Militant
One militant leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, typifies how extremists once trained by the ISI have broken free of the agency’s control, turned against the government and joined with other militants to create powerful new networks.
In 2000, Mr. Azhar received support from the ISI when he founded Jaish-e-Muhammad, or Army of Muhammad, a Pakistani militant group fighting Indian forces in Kashmir, according to Robert Grenier, who served as the Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Islamabad from 1999 to 2002. The ISI intermittently provided training and operational coordination to such groups, he said, but struggled to fully control them.
Mr. Musharraf banned Jaish-e-Muhammad and detained Mr. Azhar after militants carried out an attack on the Indian Parliament building in December 2001. Indian officials accused Jaish-e-Muhammad and another Pakistani militant group of masterminding the attack. After India massed hundreds of thousands of troops on Pakistan’s border, Mr. Musharraf vowed in a nationally televised speech that January to crack down on all militants in Pakistan.
“We will take strict action against any Pakistani who is involved in terrorism inside the country or abroad,” he said. Two weeks later, a British-born member of Mr. Azhar’s group, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, kidnapped Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was beheaded by his captors. Mr. Sheikh surrendered to the ISI, the agency that had supported Jaish-e-Muhammad, and was sentenced to death for the kidnapping.
After Mr. Pearl’s killing, Pakistani officials arrested more than 2,000 people in a crackdown. But within a year, Mr. Azhar and most of the 2,000 militants who had been arrested were freed. “I never believed that government ties with these groups was being irrevocably cut,” said Mr. Grenier, now a managing director at Kroll, a risk consulting firm.
At the same time, Pakistan seemingly went “through the motions” when it came to hunting Taliban leaders who fled into Pakistan after the 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan, he said.
Encouraged by the United States, the Pakistanis focused their resources on arresting senior Qaeda members, he said, which they successfully did from 2002 to 2005. Since then, arrests have slowed as Al Qaeda and other militant groups have become more entrenched in the tribal areas.
Asked in 2006 why the Pakistani government did not move against the leading Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, and his son Sirajuddin, who are based in the tribal areas and have long had links with Al Qaeda, one senior ISI official said it was because Pakistan needed to retain some assets of its own.
That policy haunts Mr. Musharraf and the United States, according to American and Pakistani analysts. Today Pakistan’s tribal areas are host to a lethal stew of foreign Qaeda members, Uzbek militants, Taliban, ISI-trained Pakistani extremists, disgruntled tribesmen and new recruits.
The groups carried out a record number of suicide bombings in Pakistan and Afghanistan last year and have been tied to three major terrorist plots in Britain and Germany since 2005.
Mr. Azhar, who once served his ISI mentors in Kashmir, is thought to be hiding in the tribal area of Bajaur, or nearby Dir, and fighting Pakistani security forces, according to one former intelligence official. Militants who took part in the Red Mosque siege in Islamabad in July were closely affiliated with Mr. Azhar’s group. This fall, his group fielded fighters in the Swat Valley, the famous tourist spot, where the militants presented a challenge of new proportions to the government, seizing several districts and mounting battles against Pakistani forces that left scores dead.
One militant from a banned sectarian group who joined Mr. Azhar’s group, Qari Zafar, now trains insurgents in South Waziristan on how to rig roadside bombs and vests for suicide bombings, according to the former intelligence official.
Cooperation against the Taliban fighting in Afghanistan has improved since 2006, and three senior Taliban figures have been caught, according to Western officials and sources close to the ISI. Yet doubts remain about the Pakistani government’s intentions.
Senior provincial ISI officials continue to meet with high-level members of the Taliban in the border provinces, according to one Western diplomat. “It is not illogical to surmise that cooperation is on the agenda, and not just debriefing,” the diplomat said.
“There are groups they know they have lost control of,” the Western diplomat added. But the government moved only against those groups that have attacked the Pakistani state, the diplomat said, adding, “It seems very difficult for them to write them off.”
The Agency Now
Western officials say that before Mr. Musharraf resigned as army chief in December, he appointed a loyalist to run the ISI and appears determined to retain power over the agency even as a civilian president.
“For as long as he can, Musharraf will keep trying to control these organizations,” a Western diplomat said. “I don’t think we should expect this man to become an elder statesman as we know it.”
That puts Mr. Musharraf’s successor as army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who headed the ISI from 2004 to 2007, in a potentially pivotal position. General Kayani, a pro-American moderate, is loyal to Mr. Musharraf to a point, according to retired officers. But he will abandon him if he thinks Mr. Musharraf’s actions are significantly undermining the standing of the Pakistani army.
Mr. Musharraf will maintain control over the agency as long as his interests coincide with General Kayani’s, they said, while the new civilian prime minister who emerges from February’s elections is likely to have far less authority over the agency. Opposition political parties already accuse the agency of meddling in next month’s election. The Western diplomat called the ISI “the army’s dirty bag of tricks.”
Since Ms. Bhutto’s assassination, members of her party have accused government officials, including former ISI agents, of having a hidden hand in the attack or of knowing about a plot and failing to inform Ms. Bhutto.
American experts played down the chances of a government conspiracy against Ms. Bhutto. They also said it was unlikely that low-level or retired officers working alone or with militants carried out the attack.
But nearly half of Pakistanis said in a recent poll that they suspected that government agencies or pro-government politicians had assassinated Ms. Bhutto. Such suspicion stems from decades of interference in elections and politics by the ISI, according to analysts, as well as a high level of domestic surveillance, intimidation and threats to journalists, academics and human rights activists, which former intelligence officials also acknowledged.
Pakistani and American experts say that distrust speaks to the urgent need to reform a hugely powerful intelligence agency that Pakistan’s military rulers have used for decades to suppress political opponents, manipulate elections and support militant groups.
“Pakistan would certainly be better off if the ISI were never used for domestic political purposes,” said Mr. Grenier, the former C.I.A. Islamabad station chief. “That goes without saying.”
Pakistani analysts and Western diplomats argue that the country will remain unstable as long as the ISI remains so powerful and so unaccountable. The ISI has grown more powerful in each period of military rule, they said.
Civilian leaders, including Mrs. Bhutto, could not resist using it to secure their political aims, but neither could they control it. And the army continues to rely on the ISI for its own foreign policy aims, particularly battling India in Kashmir and seeking influence in Afghanistan.
“The question is, how do you change that?” asked one Western diplomat. “Their tentacles are everywhere.”
Monday, January 14, 2008
CPM and Congresss distoying India
Collapse of a culture
-M.V. Kamath
Organiser
The media which tried to cover the event were pounced upon, beaten up and had their cameras smashed. All by the CPM cadres or their police counterparts.
Has the RSS ever been guilty of such behavious anywhere in India, including Gujarat? Now Karat is frightening the UPA that if it goes ahead with the talks with the IAEA, then it would withdraw its support to the coalition.
What have we come to? To what depths of political degradation have we fallen that the politicking especially prior to the first phase of elections to the Gujarat State Assembly should be turned into name-calling and mud-slinging? One is ashamed of our leaders.
One expected some high class speechifying from the Congress leaders in fighting the elections. As it turned out, both Sonia Gandhi and the party general secretary Rahul Gandhi could only engage themselves in slovenly shouting unworthy of any leader.
The idea, apparently, was to run down the Gujarat Chief Minister in whatever way possible. And understandably he hit back in ample measure unworthy of an elder.
Sonia Gandhi was badly advised. So was Rahul. They had nothing positive to say and whatever they said reflected poor taste. Is Gujarat a “den of sins” as was made out by Congress leaders? Do they have their own hands clean?
Surprising support to the Gujarat Chief Minister has come from an unsuspected source: columnist Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar.
According to him, the Chief Minister is “factually on firm ground in saying that political parties who have resorted to extra judicial killings in other states are hypocrites in trying to portray Gujarat as a den of sin”.
And how right he is. In Punjab, during the rise of the Pakistan-ISI sponsored Sikh militancy, upholding civil rights or the rule of law did not end it. Sikh terrorism was quashed by state terror, by extra-judicial torture, kidnapping and murder.
Ask K.P.S.Gill. Earlier, when Naxalite militants threatened West Bengal in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was collusion between Congress and CPM that led to the crushing to the insurgents again, through extra-judicial means. As Aiyar noted, “Naxalism was not quashed by the rule of law, but by State terror”. Forget the past. Think of the present.
Who halted the Nandigram revolt sponsored by the Bhumi Uchched Pratiridh Committee (BUPC): the West Bengal police? The CRPF? Neither.
It was the CPM cadre, fully armed, which ‘invaded’ Nandigram in ‘Operation Recapture’ and took it over. Fully armed CPM cadres? Yes, fully-armed CPM cadres indeed. Not only did the CPM cadres take over Nandigram, they have been, according to The Statesman (November 16) laying down fines on BUPC supporters. The cadres would tell them that if they did not pay the fine they would have to leave their homes.
Has the Congress raised its voice against this form of terrorism and utter lawlessness? The State police simply failed to stop the cadres. And West Bengal’s Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya boasted about their work, saying the Opposition in Nandigram has been “paid back in the same coin”.
He even went to the extent of saying that the CPM cadres were “legally and morally justified in entering Nandigram, armed”.
Where, pray, is the rule of law? The media has not identified the so-called ‘Opposition’, which largely consisted of Muslims.
Fancy something like that happening in Gujarat with a Gujarat Nandigram being ruthlessly put down, say, by ‘fully armed’ RSS cadres? The media then would have been up in arms.
The RSS would have been damned as an anti-Muslim outfit. And the Chief Minister would have been condemned as a fascist, communal monster and killer of Muslims.
The CPM has been able literally to get away with murder of Muslims. But what has the media to say about it? Nothing. The Times of India (December 7, 2007) demanded of the Gujarat Chief Minister that he should “understand the rule of law”. Did it give the same advise to Buddhadev Bhattacharya?
A report in The Pioneer (November 10) re-called what happened in Nandigram. It said: Hungry men, women and children, rendered homeless after CPM cadres began to shoot and bomb their way into Nandigram wailed in despair… They had to retreat under the deadly firepower of the Marxist militia armed with sophisticated weapons, including self-loading rifles…”
Can one imagine RSS volunteers being thus armed? Where did the Marxist cadres get their arms from? The Congress has no answer. It prefers to look away from the scene.
CPM’s murderous activities are not new. The Marxists have been indulging in Nandigram-type violence against BJP workers in Kerala for decades.
It doesn’t serve Congress to remember these foul acts. According to BJP spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy, over the last 40 years since 1960s, about 150 RSS and BJP workers have been killed in Kerala, especially in Kannur district. Many more were attacked. As many as 15 survivors of such violent attacks, many of them amputees, told their stories to reporters in Delhi.
They said that their hands and legs were cut off often because they had deserted the CPM to join the RSS or BJP.
The violence shown by the CPM has never been projected by the media, because the CPM is allegedly ‘secular’. One would like to ask the CPM-led governments in Kerala and West Bengal how many of their party murderers have been booked, let alone tried and sentenced to death. If these state governments would not provide the answer, will Home Minister Shivraj Patil kindly provide one?
The late Nikhil Chakravartty was a confirmed Leftist, but even he had complaints to make against the CPM. Writing in Mainstream (January 23, 1993) a journal he edited, Chakravartty recalled how in a village in Nadia district, a deaf and dumb girl in a poverty-stricken family had been ‘allegedly’ raped by a worker of the ruling CPM.
Her mother complained to Mamata Bannerjee, then a Union Minister of State and an M.P. Mamata sought an appointment with a CPM Minister in Kolkata who refused to see her. Mamata decided to observe dharna in front of the Chief Minister’s office.
The police encircled her, physically dragged her down the stairs, whisked her away in a police van to police headquarters and locked her up until midnight.
And this happened to a Union Minister and an MP. That is the CPM.
The media which tried to cover the event were pounced upon, beaten up and had their cameras smashed. All by the CPM cadres or their police counterparts.
Has the RSS ever been guilty of such behavious anywhere in India, including Gujarat?
Now Karat is frightening the UPA that if it goes ahead with the talks with the IAEA, then it would withdraw its support to the coalition. When will Congress learn that the BJP Chief Minister of Gujarat comes out smelling of roses when contrasted with the CPM thugs who observe no law and have no respect for authority?
And has Congress forgotten that it was the CPM which originated the concept of gherao, torturing Company managers in many ways that was ultimately to lead to the closure of several industrial units in West Bengal?
One suspects Sonia Gandhi and Dr Manmohan Singh suffering from loss of memory. Or is it a question of holding on to power at any cost? Answer, Congressmen, answer!
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