Filed under: Religion
What clothes a Muslim woman should wear
Inspired by a self-imposed success of the French government, in spite of protests, in banning the Muslim headscarf in public schools in 2004 Nicolas Sarkozy in his recent speech in the French parliament was agog shedding crocodile tears for Muslim women terming the ‘burqa’ a walking prison, a sign of subjugation, a signature of debasement, and an instrument of torture not tolerable on French territory. What a great Frenchman empathizing with the pains of the hapless women, a male Sarkozy deciding what female Muslims should wear and should not!
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The first cultural shock I had on the first day of my arrival at Kuala Lumpur back in 1995 was how conventional Malaysian Muslim women conserve their body exposure. They insulate their head with headscarf so that head-hairs are not visible, but they don’t wear any sash or any extension of their costumes that could additionally cover their basic dress contouring their breasts. On the other hand, Muslim women in Bangladesh, no matter they wear a sari or a frock, are careful first to hide with extra clothing the area of their torso and then their head and other areas of their bodies in accordance with Bangladeshi style and not in gross contravention of Islamic dress codes.
What pleasantly surprised me was the liberty Malaysians enjoyed in ‘dressing as they liked’. You will find Malaysian men and women and foreigners strolling in public places dressed in whatever style they fancy. Liberal attitude to religions and tourist-friendly environment have made Malaysia, a country deemed an ideal Muslim nation, a haven for foreign direct investment.
Nobody will ogle you if like a Chinese damsel you, a Bangladeshi girl or an Iranian lady, wear a bikini while shopping at a mall or move around in public places wearing a ‘burqa’, a head-to-toe Islamic garment. The peaceful coexistence of Malay Muslims, Chinese Buddhists, Indian Hindus and tourists of different colors, creeds and religions enjoying complete freedom in pursuing their individual dress and culture in Malaysia should be a tutorial President of the French Republic Nicolas Sarkozy can study and implement the lessons in his own country.
Inspired by a self-imposed success of the French government, in spite of protests, in banning the Muslim headscarf in public schools in 2004 Nicolas Sarkozy in his recent speech in the French parliament was agog shedding crocodile tears for Muslim women terming the ‘burqa’ a walking prison, a sign of subjugation, a signature of debasement, and an instrument of torture not tolerable on French territory. What a great Frenchman empathizing with the pains of the hapless women, a male Sarkozy deciding what female Muslims should wear and should not!
The French President spending precious time in his parliamentary lecture on sartorial details of Muslim burqa is a clear indication that he was perhaps running out of ideas on how to solve economic and social ills of his country.
The French parliament is soon going to enact laws that will further embolden the 2004 law to ban everything from headscarf to burqa to anything else that Islam had prescribed to conserve woman’s body exposure. Such a ban applicable in all public places would be a veritable French display of secularist fundamentalism entrenched by their law since 1905—to keep religion firmly out of the state sphere.
The 2004 headscarf ban in France was supposed to outlaw conspicuous religious symbols of all faiths. We don’t know whether Israelis wearing Jewish yarmulkes or Americans wearing Christian crosses or Indians with clipped beards wearing their Sheikh turbans to cover their uncut hairs or Muslim imams with their uncut long beards wearing their Muslim turbans are debarred from entering the French territories. If not, such a French policy barring headscarf and burqa should be construed as a discriminatory principle to pick only on Islam and to constrain religious freedom of only Muslims.
Religion should be practiced privately. No religion—Islam or Judaism or Christianity or Hinduism—advocates that religious identities have to be flaunted in public places. We wear caps while praying inside mosques, but there is no compulsion that we have to cover our heads day and night, at workplace and at bedroom. But if someone wishes to keep his or her head covered round the clock there is no right for anybody, let alone the government, to veto the practice.
In fact, very few men and women nowadays wear the garments that are ordained by their religions. There was a time in the first half of the last century when our Muslim ladies not only had to wear burqa under compulsion but also had to move in a rickshaw or a ‘palki’ (a wheel-less and human-powered litter vehicle) tightly wound around by long pieces of clothes so that neither the female passenger inside the litter vehicle can see the outside world nor can a passerby peek into who is sitting inside the manpowered vehicle.
Time has changed. A Hindu priest while moving in public places hesitates to wrap around his waist and legs a long piece of unstitched cloth what in Bangla we call ‘dhuti’, a traditional men’s garment in our country Hindus and Muslims alike would love to wear as a fashion only a few decades back.
We hardly find in our country Muslim women attending their schools, colleges, universities or offices wearing burqa. There are ladies of course who still wear burqa and who are highly esteemed in our society; nobody frowns eyebrows at them. There are girls as well who dress themselves in western styles and nobody ogles them unless they are overly nude.
For convenience most of our Muslim women in our country wear pajamas or jeans in both their homes and offices; our modern girls wear with élan extra clothes tailored in the latest fashion to cover their head and torso. There can hardly a Muslim lady be found who does not wear sari, which is a dress evolved in our Bengali culture based on Hindu religion, not at all a Muslim dress. Have saris made our women less devout compared to those who wear burqa? Have the women lost their liberty for the reason that they had to wear burqa?
It is fascinating that people who raise their voices and complain about their liberty have no such regards when it comes to other people’s freedom, no matter it is freedom of religion or freedom of secularism. For them it is a one-way affair—they want you to obey them or else you risk your social status.
There are groups who may call the burqa ‘a coffin that kills individual liberties’ and there are people who may call the necktie ‘a rope that gags a man’. There are groups who say ‘Muslim women are treated like disposable items’ and there are also people who will say ‘women are worshipped by men when they are nude and abhorred when they are clothed’.
Some groups may say that ‘Muslim women are forced to wear burqa’ while the opposing groups will say that ‘women in the West are forced to get plastic breasts in order to get more acceptances in the society’. Some groups may wish to find their women wearing burqa that covers up the whole body but not the eyes; some groups might wish to find their ladies wearing only sunglasses that cover their eyes only in order to expose the rest of their whole body on a sea-beach under the sun.
Let citizens hear voices of both the groups and choose for themselves what fit them best. But an official ban on headscarf and on burqa the French parliamentarians are now contemplating to impose as a law, reportedly within six months, will be a despotic move on a democratic land and may be interpreted as a ploy to stigmatize Islam. The French should never give in to the blackmail neither of Muslim Fundamentalists nor of Secular Fundamentalists.
In his recent speech in Cairo, Barack Obama has rightly said: “It is important for the Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit—for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear”.
Maswood Alam Khan is a banker. His e-address: maswood@hotmail.com
By: Dr. Soibam Ibotombi (Dept. of Earth Sciences, Manipur University)
The proposed Tipaimukh dam is to be located 500 metres downstream from the confluence of Barak and Tuivai rivers, and lies on the south-western corner of Manipur State (24°14¢N and 93°1.3¢E approximately). It is a huge earth dam (rock-fill with central impervious core) having an altitude of about 180 M above the sea-level with a maximum reservoir level of 178m and 136m as the MDDL (minimum draw down level). The dam was originally conceived to only contain the flood water in the Cachar plains of Assam but later on, emphasis has been placed on hydroelectric power generation, having an installation capacity of 1500MW with only a firm generation of 412MW (less than 30 per cent of installed capacity). In order to appease the people of Manipur state, the project proponent, NEEPCO, has been building up a list of benefits that include high-class tourism, free power sharing, resettlement and rehabilitation package and an all round rosy picture of development.
Over the past decade and half, the issue of Tipaimukh dam has created a lot of disenchantment in regard to scientific, technical, economic and environmental feasibility of the dam especially concerning with the state of Manipur. An attempt is, therefore, made here to provide a brief geological, structural and tectonic account of Tipaimukh and its adjoining region in terms of tectonic framework of Indo-Myanmar [Burma] Ranges (IMR) in general and that of Manipur in particular and possible socio-economic impacts of the dam. Such a consideration would reveal the nature and extent of the geotectonic risk being taken by constructing a mega-dam at Tipaimukh.
Some basic geological informationTipaimukh and its adjoining areas are basically made up of Surma Group of rocks. The rocks of Surma Group are mainly light grey to brownish grey generally medium to coarse grained sandstones having occasional shale and silt/sand intervening bands between massive to thickly bedded sandstones. Conglomeratic (loosely cemented pebbles and gravel)) horizon at the base of Bhuban Formation, though, can be observed in the field easily due to its wide areal extent; other conglomeratic horizons are generally often missing which is probably due to their localised nature.
In general, this group of rocks are predominantly arenaceous with subordinate shales. Usually shales are less sandy and sandstones are less argillaceous. Some typical natures of bedding similar to turbidite character are also found at places. Like Barails, Surma Group of rocks is also marked by primary structures such as cross bedding, ripple marks, etc. All these geologic features, lithocharacters as well as primary st ructures suggest a different depositional environment from that of the Disangs and Barails. So, these groups of rocks as well as the younger Tipams are treated as molasse sediments.
The rocks of Surma Group are well characterised by folds and faults having regional strike similar to that of the Barails i.e. NNE-SSW. Fractures are also well developed which have close relationship with the topographic features and drainage patterns. The geometry of folds found in the region is quite typical as in other parts of the Surma Basin and Western Manipur. Antiforms are generally sharp and angular forming ridges while synforms are broad and rounded representing valleys and river beds. Such geometry of the folds might have been controlled by hidden faults called, blind thrusts. And these thrusts could be potential earthquake foci any time in future.
Geomorphic and topographic features around Tipaimukh and its adjoining region is also quite interesting not only because of thickly vegetated low-lying hill ranges but also due to the intimate relationship between the topography especially the drainage system, and the structural and tectonic lineaments of the region. The drainage pattern of the Barak river and its tributary system around Tipaimukh displays how delicately Barak river takes a turn of about 360° at Tipaimukh giving rise to what is called, barbed pattern. Such a drainage pattern is always resulted from the structural control of the river. And practically the main Barak River opposite to Tuivai River itself is also controlled by the Barak-Makru thrust fault. Further it is also observed that main Barak river course and its tributary system are all controlled by faults and fractures as they all show rectangular to sub-rectangular drainage patterns.
All these faults and fractures cause localised shifting or deflection of the main river course, and even at the confluence of Barak River and Tuivai River. Such faults are potentially active and may be focal and/or epicentres of any future earthquake. 1 The author thanks the Centre for Organisation Research & Education (CORE) for substantial inputs into this article from sources based in Bangladesh. The International Tipaimukh Dam Conference 2005, Dhaka saw international water, seismological and geological experts gather along with social activists, academics, writers and leaders from 11 countries.
The structural and tectonic pattern of Manipur is transitional between the NE-SW trending pattern of Naga-Patkai Hills and N-S trend of Mizoram and Chin Hills. The general structural and lithological trend of the rock formations of the state is NNE-SSW. It frequently varies between N-S and NE-SW although sometimes NNW-SSE trends are locally common. Almost all the major structural elements such as folds, thrust and reverse faults follow this regional strike. Majority of the extensional structures e.g. normal faults have WNW-ESE trend. While the structures having neither compress ional nor extensional affinities strike in the NW-SE and NE-SW quadrants. Dip of the lithounits varies between moderate to steep angles towards east or west. The geological and structural settings suggest a very interesting tectonic evolutionary history of the state. The state, forming an integral part of the Indo-Myanmar Range lies in the boundary region of the Indian, Eurasian and Myanmar plates having typical interaction nature. As a result, the region is also one of the most seismically active zones in the world (Zone V, earthquake zones of India).
The North-East region of India is one of the six major seismically active zones of the world that includes California, North-East India, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan and Turkey. So, it is essential to have a brief discussion on these aspects also.Plate Kinematics The root cause of earthquakes in a particular region is more or less exclusively a function of the tectonic setting of that region and its proximity to plate boundary. Therefore, the tectonic setting, plate movements and palaeo- and neo-stress analyses of the region are very important aspects in order to know about the seismic activity of that region. It, not only, will reveal the deformation mechanism of the region but also, will provide knowledge about the structures that may be easily reactivated as a function of the plate kinematics in that region.
Analysis conducted by the author about the plate kinematics in and around Manipur reveals that the structural and tectonic features of IMR in general and that of Manipur in particular evolved through the interaction between the Indian and Myanmar plates rather than Indian and Eurasian (China) plates under a simple shear deformation mechanism.From the analysis it is found that the region has compression in the WNW-ESE direction while extension lies in the NNE-SSW direction. As a result, structures such as folds, reverse and thrust faults oriented parallel to NNE-SSW direction will suffer maximum compression and shortening while structures such as normal faults, tension fractures and joints running parallel to the WNW-ESE direction will undergo maximum extension.
And structures lying in the NW-SE and NE-SW quadrants will have strike-slip movement. The faults and fractures around Tipaimukh dam axis belong to the category that may undergo strike-slip and extensional movements. So, these structures can be easily reactivated causing small to considerable displacement along them by any tectonic phenomena e.g. moderate and large earthquakes. By such a process, if the dam axis is displaced by a few centimetres a serious damage may occur causing a dam disaster leading to huge loss of lives and property.Seismicity Northeast India is one of the highest earthquake potential area in the world due to its tectonic setting i.e. subduction as well as collision plate convergence. Analysis of earthquake epicentres and magnitudes of 5M and above within 100-200km radii of Tipaimukh dam site reveals hundreds of earthquakes in the last 100-200 years. It is found that within 100km radius of Tipaimukh, 2 earthquakes of +7M magnitude have taken placed in the last 150 years and the last one being occurred in the year 1957 at an aerial distance of about 75km from the dam site in the ENE direction.
Beside the frequency of such large earthquakes within 100km radius, it is also further observed that a number of epicentral points align in the form of a linear array parallel to regional strike NNE-SSW or N-S revealing how this Barak-Makru Thrust zone is seismically active. Another important aspect of seismic activity is that shallow earthquakes are far more disastrous than the deeper ones even if magnitude is relatively low since destructive surface waves can be quickly and easily propagated from the focus/epicentre. And majority of the earthquakes that takes place on the western side of Manipur are shallow (50km focal depth or less) which is due to the tectonic setting of the Indo-Myanmar Range.
Under these circumstances whether it will be a wise policy to construct a huge dam or not need to be thoroughly discussed and investigated. The trend of earthquakes shows that the regions which have experienced earthquakes in the past are more prone to it; the magnitude of future earthquakes may be uniform to the past ones; and the earthquake occurrence, geological data and tectonic history all have close correlation (Mollick). The Tipaimukh Dam site has been chosen at the highest risk seismically hazardous zone .
The dam proponent, NEEPCO claims that seismic hazards are being taken care of through consultations with Rourkee University (However, the Government of Indian has requested NEEPCO to also consult with the Geological Survey of India). Here it is pertinent to state that extreme seismic hazards cannot be addressed adequately or satisfactorily through consultations with seismologists, as the risk inducing and impact factors are mechanical, geophysical, tectonic and socio-economic in nature.The author thanks the Centre for Organisation Research & Education (CORE) for substantial inputs into this article from sources based in Bangladesh.
Water Scarcity and the Threat of Water Wars in South Asia – A Bangladesh Perspective
MBI Munshi
INTRODUCTION
South Asia is known for many wonderful and beautiful things such as its varied cultures, languages, religions, landscapes and peoples but above all it is known for its volatility and sudden outbreaks of violence and often brutal and destructive conflicts. The Indian subcontinent, as it was once known, was partitioned on the basis of religion in 1947 according to the concept of the two-nation theory. Since then several wars have been fought over territory, sovereignty and in one case for independence which eventually led to the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971 as an independent nation-state. As things now stand the next war in the South Asia region could well be over water. This appears almost inevitable unless India adopts a more accommodative attitude towards its neighbour’s claims for reasonable and equitable water sharing rights. Recent history has, however, suggested quite the opposite with New Delhi ignoring the just demands of Bangladesh which as the lower riparian nation is wholly dependant for its survival on the regular and sustained flow of water coming through India from the Himalayas.
Since 1971 Bangladesh has generally adopted a defensive attitude in its relations with its large neighbour in recognition of the economic and military might of India. However, if New Delhi continues with its policy of draining the life blood of Bangladesh it is more than likely that this small but populous nation would be forced to take on a more assertive role in its relations with India and in realizing its just demands for water, as well as in addition to other contentious bilateral issues, could ultimately lead to conflict in the coming decade. Policy makers in Bangladesh are yet to wake up to this reality but as a new generation of leaders emerge faced with the calamitous consequences of the large scale withdrawal and diversion of water by India they may have few choices but to confront New Delhi in a more aggressive and confrontational manner. This may appear at first glance to be highly unlikely but with millions displaced by desertification and the numerous other adverse effects (some of which has wrongly been attributed to climate change to distract world attention to the actual causes of environmental damage in Bangladesh) of the Indian water withdrawal policy such a scenario cannot be easily dismissed. Fueling this growing animosity would be decades of mistrust caused by an arrogant and duplicitous policy devised and practiced by India’s politicians and diplomats in their dealings with Bangladesh.
BACKGROUND TO WATER SHARING DISPUTES
The very geographical location of Bangladesh makes it the lowest riparian country of more than 50 trans-boundary rivers. The waters of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and other trans-boundary rivers have been sustaining the life and living of millions of Bangladeshis. Without these waters, the livelihood of millions of Bangladeshis would come under severe stress. Unfortunately, since independence, Bangladesh has been observing with great concern, the gradual reduction of the dry season flows of the Ganges, Teesta and many other trans-boundary rivers due to anthropogenic interventions across the borders – primarily by India. Since its independence in 1947, India has made intensive efforts to harness and develop the water resources in the Ganges basin. The data indicates that India now has several dozen large barrages and other diversionary structures operating in the basin which are capable of diverting 100,000 cusec flows from the Ganges and its different tributaries. Moreover, India has constructed more than 400 major, medium and small storage dams in the basin area. Of these, the major storage reservoirs have a total capacity of 2221 billion cubic feet or 63 billion cubic meters (BCM). Bangladesh itself could not embark upon any such major development of the waters of the trans-boundary rivers including the Ganges in the face of uncertainties of its dry season availability from across the border. Moreover, the flat terrain of Bangladesh does not allow any storage of excess monsoon waters for use during the dry season and such projects would in any case be extortionately exorbitant for the country at its present stage of development and with its limited financial resources.
The consequences for Bangladesh of India’s policy of diversion and withdrawal of water have been both dramatic and devastating. Upstream diversion of the precious dry season flows of the Ganges has adversely affected the hydrology, river morphology, agriculture, domestic and municipal water supply, fishery, forestry, wildlife, industry, navigation, public health and biodiversity in large areas of Bangladesh dependent on the Ganges water. Western analysts have been duped into believing that these negative environmental affects are caused by climate change that will in a few decades result in the rise of sea waters that will inundate large areas of the country. However, the actual cause of increased salinity in the south-western region of Bangladesh has been India’s diversion and withdrawal of water which allows ingress of sea water from the Bay of Bengal due to the reduced natural fresh water flows in the opposite direction during the dry season. Another extremely serious but indirect consequence of this water diversion policy is the contamination of ground water with arsenic. With the reduction of water from India millions in Bangladesh are now forced to access ground water which if pumped continuously over a prolonged period assists a chemical reaction that oxidizes naturally occurring arseno-pyrites deep in the soil resulting in the release of arsenic into the water – a process which may properly described as almost akin to mass poisoning. This consequential alarming degradation of the environment and water supply in south-western Bangladesh has already forced thousands to leave in quest of survival elsewhere. In the face of deteriorating human health, reduced economic productivity and loss of amenities, life and living in this part of Bangladesh people are becoming increasingly vulnerable, insecure and resentful. These are probably the prime causes of conflict between states if history is to be any guide.
THE FARAKKA BARRAGE PROJECT AND DIVERSION OF THE GANGES WATER
If we leave aside the period between 1947-1971 when Bangladesh was called East Pakistan and considered by India as a hostile entity the likelihood of agreement on water sharing was obviously limited. However, it was during this period that Indian diplomacy became a byword for duplicity and this approach was to continue in its relations with Bangladesh after it obtained independence from Pakistan with the help of the Indian military – which in hindsight had very little to do with altruism or kind hearted generosity and more to do with Indian geo-strategic imperatives. In any case, it was on October 29, 1951 that the then Pakistan government drew the attention of the Indian authorities to the report of a scheme for diverting large amounts of dry season flow of the Ganges. Four months later, on 8 March, 1952 India replied that the project was only under preliminary investigation and described Pakistan’s concern over probable effects as purely hypothetical. Again on May 22, 1953 India reassured Pakistan that the Farraka and Gandak projects (a tributary of the Ganges) were still being investigated and India would appreciate cooperative development of the water resources of the Ganges. Nine years after the issue was first mooted the Government of India announced that it was going ahead with the plan to build a barrage across the River Ganges at Farraka[i] and Pakistan was formally informed. Talks took place occasionally between 1961 and 1970 but real negotiation and consultations did not. By 1970 India completed construction of the Farraka Barrage. The 24 mile feeder canal was, however, not yet ready.
While the Indian government’s behaviour towards Pakistan during this 19 year period (1951-1970) is explicable on the grounds that both nations were inherently inimical towards each other having just fought two wars within just thirty years it is still not explainable why India would adopt the same negotiating tactics towards the new nation of Bangladesh which it had recently assisted in its liberation war? I have provided my own theory in my book ‘The India Doctrine’ where I draw attention to India’s policy of domination over South Asia and an underlying resentment over the 1947 partition which seemingly allows Indian policy makers to ignore the just grievances of its smaller neighbours and not merely in the area of water sharing but including the whole array of bilateral issues that now bedevil interstate relations in the region.
After Bangladesh gained independence in 1971 relations with India gradually deteriorated and this was reflected in negotiations between the countries over water sharing rights. The Governments of India and Bangladesh decided in March 1972 to set up the Indo-Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission (JRC). One of the major functions of the JRC was to maintain liaison between the participating countries in order to ensure the most effective joint efforts in maximizing the benefits from common river systems to both the countries. The question of sharing the water of the Ganges was, however, kept out of the purview of the JRC, to be settled at the level of Prime Ministers. In this regard, many in Bangladesh felt at the time that the Awami League government of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was too compliant and would easily buckle to Indian demands which actually turned out to be the case. The Prime Minister of India and Bangladesh met in New Delhi in May 1974 and discussed amongst other things, the Ganges issue. Following this meeting, there was a Joint Declaration on May 16, 1974, wherein they observed that during the periods of minimum flow in the Ganges, there might not be enough water and, therefore, the fair weather (dry season) flow of the Ganges in the lean months would have to be augmented to meet the needs of Calcutta port and to fulfill requirement of Bangladesh. They also agreed that the best means of augmentation through optimum utilization of the water resources of the region available to the two countries should be studied by the Joint Rivers Commission. The two sides expressed their determination that before the Farakka project is commissioned; they would arrive at a mutually acceptable allocation of the water available during the periods of minimum flow in the Ganges. The JRC accordingly took up the issue of augmentation of the Ganges flows but was unable to reach any agreement.
At a subsequent minister level meeting in April 1975 the Indian side proposed a test-run of the feeder canal of the Farakka Barrage for a limited period during that dry season. On good faith, Bangladesh agreed to India’s request and allowed it to operate the feeder canal with varying discharges in ten-day periods from April 21 to May 31, 1975, ensuring the continuance of the remaining flows to Bangladesh. Although India was supposed to divert limited quantities of water from the Ganges for the said test-run up to May 31, 1975, it continued withdrawals from Farakka to the full capacity of the feeder canal during the dry season of 1976 without entering into any understanding or agreement on sharing the flows despite Bangladesh’s repeated requests. The consequences of India’s actions had been tragic. The unilateral Indian withdrawals throughout the dry seasons of 1976 caused a marked reduction in the dry season Ganges flows in Bangladesh. This sudden change in the flow pattern caused an alarming situation in the south western region of Bangladesh.
To cut a long story short, Bangladesh repeatedly requested India to stop the unilateral withdrawals but this bore little fruit. Bangladesh then took the issue to the United Nations in 1976 and the General Assembly urged both sides to seek an immediate solution. Between 1977 and 1988 Bangladesh and India signed several temporary agreements but no permanent understanding could be reached. Between 1988 and 1996 there was no instrument for sharing the dry season Ganges flows between the two countries. In the absence of any agreement, India again started unilateral withdrawals from Farakka. It was not until the Awami League returned to power in 1996 in Bangladesh under the leadership of Sheikh Hasina (daughter of the slain leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) that a treaty between the countries was signed on the sharing of the Ganges Water at Farakka. This treaty has not been viewed favourably in Bangladesh as it was felt to be a subservient arrangement without the usual safeguards and guarantees and contrary to norms of international law. It appears these apprehensions were well founded as recent reports suggest that the quantity of water flowing down from the Farakka point has been declining due to the withdrawal of water by India through various canals in violation of the water sharing agreement.
The treaty is now under legal challenge in the Supreme Court of Bangladesh on the following grounds amongst others –
- That Bangladesh has been receiving lesser amounts of flows at Farakka as its share compared to the quanta it should be receiving as agreed between the contracting parties set out in the schedule contained in Annexure II of the Treaty.
- The instruments signed by Bangladesh and India do not provide entitlement to the former to participate or to become party to negotiations on any water course or in any consultations thereof e.g. Bangladesh cannot participate in the bilateral negotiation between India and Nepal which aim to implement projects on major tributaries of the Ganges river emanating from the Nepalese territory like the Pancheswar and Saptkosi High Dam Projects.
- Over the last three decades the Bangladesh government has repeatedly requested India for upstream hydro-meteorological data of the Ganges, Brahamputra and other rivers. The Indian side has declined to supply or exchange such upstream data and information. The 1996 treaty and other Indo-Bangladesh agreements are totally silent about the provisioning of this information.
- India either unilaterally or bilaterally with Nepal and Bhutan are undertaking planned measures for harnessing and regulating water resources of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Meghna and some of their tributaries without informing or providing notification to the downstream riparian country of those rivers which is Bangladesh.
- The 1996 Treaty and other Indo-Bangladesh do not provide for any third-party arbitration on settlement of disputes.
These are only a few of the grounds that are claimed by the petitioner to be in contravention of customary international law and in particular the provisions of the 1997 UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses and the Berlin Rules on Water Resources[ii] which both contain internationally accepted safeguards and guarantees that were omitted from the 1996 treaty. In particular, India’s withdrawal of waters in an unreasonable and inequitable manner and the terms of the 1996 treaty appear to be in violation of Articles 7,8,13,17,29,56,57,58,59,60,68,72 and 73 of the Berlin Rules but most importantly and significantly Article 12 which states –
1. Basin States shall in their respective territories manage the waters of an international drainage basin in an equitable and reasonable manner having due regard for the obligation not to cause significant harm to other basin States.
2. In particular, basin States shall develop and use the waters of the basin in order to attain the optimal and sustainable use thereof and benefits therefrom, taking into account the interests of other basin States, consistent with adequate protection of the waters.
And Article 16 which provides –
Basin States, in managing the waters of an international drainage basin, shall refrain from and prevent acts or omissions within their territory that cause significant harm to another basin State having due regard for the right of each basin State to make equitable and reasonable use of the waters.
Regardless of the outcome of the case, relations between Bangladesh and India are likely to deteriorate as agreement on water sharing in an equitable and reasonable manner appear a distant and forlorn prospect making conflict a more likely scenario. In some respects, a low level conflict has already begun as there are frequent and bloody skirmishes between the two countries border security forces and occasionally fighting has occurred over construction of groins and spurs on the Indian side intended to divert the course of rivers so that they encroach further into Bangladesh territory while supplementing the Indian side.
RIVER LINKING PROJECT
If the Farakka Barrage dispute had been the only bone of contention between the two countries then some minimum resolution to the dispute may have been forthcoming but with India (in total disregard of the environmental harm that would be sustained by Bangladesh) now undertaking the massive River Linking Project (RLP) a further serious deterioration in relations is inevitable. Quite astonishingly, the RLP concept was conceived not by an expert committee or by the relevant government department but instead by the Indian Supreme Court which ruled (in relation to a Public Interest Litigation hearing) that there should be interlinking of rivers to offset drought and flooding in various parts of the country. Justice Kirpal set a 10 year deadline for implementation of the project. A brief six-page order passed on October 31, 2002 formed the basis on which the Indian government set up a high powered task force which devised a Perspective Plan comprising two components -
- Peninsular Rivers Development; and
- Himalayan Rivers Development
The Peninsular Rivers Component envisages the inter-linking of several major rivers at several different points along their course. The Himalayan Rivers Component which poses more serious difficulties for Bangladesh envisages construction of storages on the principal tributaries of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra in India, Nepal and Bhutan. Also, canal systems are to be inter-linked to transfer surplus flows of the eastern tributaries of the Ganges to the West apart from linking the (main) Brahmaputra and its tributaries with the Ganges and the Ganges with Mahanadi.
The effect of the RLP on Bangladesh has been variously described as devastating, catastrophic and also causing incalculable and irreparable damage to the country’s environment and ecological balance. This unfortunately is not mere exaggeration since the Brahmaputra and the Ganges provides more than 85% of the total surface water available in Bangladesh during the dry season. Of the two, the Brahmaputra provides 67% of the water. The diversion and withdrawal of these waters under the RLP would constitute a similar proposition to Bangladesh as the Iraqi WMD program did (under the Saddam Hussain regime) for the United States and the United Kingdom. In the present context the threat to Bangladesh is not hypothetical.
In the face of this looming crisis the Government of Bangladesh has already lodged protests to the Government of India expressing serious concern over the RLP and has urged India to refrain from implementation of the plan. The Government has also communicated Bangladesh’s serious concern over the Indian plan to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank and requested them to desist from providing any support to India relating to this plan. The matter was also raised during several meetings of the JRC where India was urged to desist from such a move without the consent of Bangladesh. It appears, however, that the Indian political leadership is committed to go ahead with this plan at the cost of its neighbours. The feeling is intensifying in the minds of the general public in Bangladesh against the Indian plan and their voice of protest is growing louder with the passage of time.
Considering that the Farraka Barrage and the RLP are only two of the many projects being undertaken by the Indian Government to divert and withdraw waters from the common rivers indicates that water sharing disputes with Bangladesh will progressively increase and naturally lead to growing tensions between the countries. The other major disputes on water sharing now include the Teesta, Feni, Meghna, Mahananda, Monu, Khowai, Gumti, Muhuri and Kodla Rivers and also construction of the Tipaimukh Dam in Manipur district of India. This last mentioned project has had the effect of eroding a large portion of Sylhet district in Bangladesh with almost 5000 acres drifting towards the Indian side following erosion of the riverbanks due to an artificial change in the course of the rivers Surma and Kushiara. All these water sharing disputes and the continued disregard for the concerns expressed by Bangladesh about these projects and the continuation of diversion and withdrawal of water in an unreasonable and inequitable manner is being viewed as an attack on the sovereignty of the country which if not restrained and outstanding issues settled amicably could lead to conflict in the coming decades.
THIS PAPER WAS WRITTEN AS A SPEECH AND HEAVY RELIANCE WAS MADE ON CERTAIN EXPERT PAPERS THAT WERE NOT NOTED AT THE TIME OF WRITING. THE NOTES AND REFERENCES BELOW IS THEREFORE PARTIAL AND IF ANYONE RECOGNISES ANY ELEMENT OF THEIR WORK IN THIS PAPER PLEASE INFORM THE WRITER SO INCLUSION MAY BE MADE IN THE REFERENCE SECTION. ANY OMISSION ON THE PART OF THE WRITER WAS COMPLETELY INADVERTANT. THE PAPER IS BEING RELEASED MERELY FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES AND NOT FOR PROFIT.
NOTES
[i] India constructed the Farakka Barrage on the Ganges to divert the water flowing through Bangladesh to maintain navigability of the Calcutta Port 260 km away, whereas Crow et al. support that stagnation of the Port of Calcutta was due to the decline of the industrial activity and overall economic activity, and that a minimum research efforts or unfinished investigations for possible alternative to the construction of Farakka Barrage was performed. The growth of the Calcutta Port was one-fortieth of the growth of other Indian ports. It was at the acme of development during the British rule in India (1870-1947) when the port carried 40-50% of India’s exports and imports. The port growth had declination of 23%, 11%, and 10% in the mid-sixties, late seventies, and in the late eighties of the last century, respectively. Dredging of the port was the best solution since the port failed to demonstrate convincingly the importance of the Farakka Barriage.
[ii] The Rules present a comprehensive collection of all the relevant customary international law that a water manager or a court or other legal decision maker would have to take into account in resolving issues relating to the management of water resources. These Rules set about to provide a clear, co-gent, and coherent statement of the customary international law that applies to waters of international drainage basins, and to the extent that customary international law applies to waters entirely within a State, to all waters as well. These Rules also undertake the progressive development of the law needed to cope with emerging problems of international or global water management for the twenty-first century.
REFERENCES –
Dr. Miah Muhammad Adel – Upstream Controller’s Dual Benefits at the Cost of Downstream Drainer’s Double Trouble (NFB – August 13, 2007)
Megh Barta – River linking project of India (4-August-2007)
International Law Association – BERLIN CONFERENCE (2004) WATER RESOURCES LAW (
The Daily Star – Rivers dying as Ganges project remains in limbo (January 26, 2008)
The Daily Star – Tipaimukh dam to destroy ecology in Meghna basin (October 28, 2007)
The Daily Star – Unilateral withdrawal of Brahmaputra waters? (June 8, 2007)
The Daily Star – We can’t assure availability of water due to climatic reason (May 29, 2007)
The Daily Star – New courses of frontier-rivers changing Bangladesh’s map (May 7, 2007)
The Daily Star – Bangladesh loses land due to erosion by Sylhet border rivers (July 5, 2008)
New Age – Debunking the ‘NASA’ doomsday climate prediction for Bangladesh (July 5, 2008)
New Age – India’s violation of water sharing deal hampers irrigation (April 5, 2008)
New Age – Water should be used to unify South Asian people: experts (July 13, 2008)
The BD Today – Natural catastrophe apprehended along river Padma (May 23, 2008)
The BD Today – Unilateral withdrawal of waters threatens ecology in Padma basin :Indo-Bangla treaty grossly violates water sharing (November 14, 2007)
The News Today – River navigability in southern region on decrease (June 13, 2008)
The News Today – Death of the Rivers (May 23, 2008)
The News Today – Indian Tipaimukh dam to be death trap for Bangladesh (February 12, 2007)
The New Nation – Structure on other side blamed: Ichhamati shifts into Bangladesh (July 6, 2008)
The New Nation – Indian HC’s remark repudiated: Bangladesh deprived of dry season river flow (May 8, 2008)
The New Nation – Damned hearings on Tipaimukh Dam (May 5, 2008)
India Express – River sutras :The river interlinking project is another disaster waiting to happen (April 26, 2005)
John Vidal – India’s Dream, Bangladesh’s Disaster (The Guardian – 24 July, 2003)
Shailendra Nath Ghosh – Interlinking Rivers -The Millennial Folly (Countercurrrnets.org- 15 May, 2003)
Abdur Rahman Khan – Bangladesh drying up as India withdrawing Ganges water (HOLIDAY – April 1, 2008)
NFB – India provides less Ganges water for Bangladesh : Dhaka’s protest remains unheeded (February 17, 2008)
NFB – River Linking Project of India- Expectations (May 16, 2008)
Priyo – Bangladesh drying up as India withdrawing Ganges water (April 3, 2008)
India’s Farakka Barrage to Tipaimukh: Bangladesh’s Options
M.T. Hussain
The unpalatable
After getting nod of Bangladesh for the river Ganges’ water withdrawal by India in May 1974 at the Farakka Barrage point up 17 kilometers of the common border of the two countries, and what is called at the downstream the Padma river of Bangladesh in the west, India has taken now to build two dams at Tipamukh and Fulertal in the east on the river Barak that forms upper riparian of the Kushiara, Surma and mighty Meghna rivers of Bangladesh. The evils of Farakka in the three and a half decades in the downstream incurred yearly losses in money term at 150,000 lakhs crores Taka and the incoming Eastern two are estimated to incur yearly loss for Bangladesh at Taka 225,000 lakhs crores. Farrakka Barrage adversely affected the western and southwestern territory of one third Bangladesh and the eastern two dams to affect one fourth of Bangladesh in the eastern area.
My experience and some works
On the Farakka Barrage issue I had my first book (India’s Farakka Barrage… now out of print) published in 1996. I was then fortunate not only to have facts from documents of the Bangladesh Government source but also from other published documents about the issue here and elsewhere at the international level. I was also fortunate to have a very close rapport with the renowned hydrological expert B M Abbas during his last days before passing away in Dhaka, in addition to useful information I had from his authoritative book The Ganges Water Dispute. Just a few months back I had two articles, one in Bengali and the other in English on the same topic of Farakka losses incurred by Bangladesh that I took advantage of an occasion of follow up of a surface scratching by the BBC Bengali Radio discussion meeting held at Rajshahi a few months earlier on the effects of the India’s Farakka Barrage in Bangladesh as the razzmatazz of the discussion had nothing of losses of Bangladesh in concrete terms of money figure. In the two articles mentioned and published in dailies in Dhaka I cited figures in specific calculated terms. The figure of Bangladesh losses for 33 years since May 1974, the time the Farakka went on in full commission to 2007 at nearly 49 lakhs crore Taka, that made yearly average of about one and a half lakh crore Taka. A research organization based in the USA and corroborated by a local organization in their calculation for likely losses of Bangladesh due to the India’s Tipaimukh Dam would still be higher at over two lakhs crore Taka than the yearly average due to the Farakka, thus exceeding yearly average of about one lakh crore Taka losses that Bangladesh has been incurring due to the death trap of the Farakka Barrage.
Miseries of millions on both sides
Although there were groups against the Farakka project in West Bengal and Bihar before the barrage was erected, as one was renowned irrigation engineer Kapil Bannerjee (See weekly Holiday, 29 May 09), there are groups, as well, against the other two proposed dams. The Tipaimukh dam to be built at 500 meters downstream of the confluence of the Barak and Tuivai rivers is planned for generation of 1,500MW of hydro-electricity and the Fulertal one for irrigation purpose there in the Eastern India. The likely affected ones included common poor people as also objections raised by area experts, environmentalists, etc. Because, the Dam if erected and made operational is certain to affect lives and livings of many people engaged in agriculture in the project region, fisheries and fishing trade, river craft works and to adversely affect ecological balance that may even add to risks of bigger scale earth quakes in the region according to the noted earth science expert and famous geologist like Dr. Soibam Ibotombi, Professor of the Indian Manipur University
International river rules and conventions
International rivers are well designated so for that they flow through many countries. The Ganges and the Barak are international rivers. There are international rules and conventions that guide modes of sharing waters of such rivers between countries in the riparian regions. The upper riparian country, in particular, is not permitted by the rules and conventions to withdraw and divert water of any amount that would harm the lower riparian country/s. The 1997 UN convention adopted two key issues, one, in gist stated by two words, ‘no harm’ and the other ‘equitable sharing’. To elaborate the implications of the two set of terms, one can safely state that the upper riparian country can do no harm to lower riparian country by withdrawing or diverting normal natural flow of water, and if any such withdrawal and diversion is at all to be done, such mode must have prior sanction of the lower riparian country subject to the condition of mutually agreed equitable sharing. There are examples of such water sharing treaties between countries like Egypt and Sudan for the Nile waters, Germany and Hungary for the Danube, Pakistan and India for the Sind just to cite as instances. The Ganges water dispute with India started about four decades ago, but unfortunately no equitable sharing agreement had been possible. In 1974 there had been a memorandum of understanding for ‘experimental operation’ of the Farakka Barrage by India for ‘forty days’ only. But that experimental forty days went on and on, India cared little for the lower riparian Bangladesh. During Presidennt Zia’s time there had been two-year treaty first in 1977 for sharing water of the Ganges and renewed once only, but during President Ershad there had been no treaty at all. Instead the Indian Government suggested the then President Ershad to forget about making any water sharing treaty and advised him to dredge Bangladeshi part of lower riparian area of the rivers for storing bigger volumes of water. Such dredging action program is not only very costly but also a recurring and very expensive matter having no durable solution to the problem due to siltation of river beds for obstruction of flows in the upper riparian region. The 1996 agreement made by the then government for 30 years duration sealed the ill fate of Bangladesh, at least, until the expiry of the period of the unequal an inequitable treaty until 2026.
1996 humiliation
I recall very clearly from a TV news item on the day in December 1996 how the 30-year treaty was undertaken by the then Sheikh Hasina during her visit to Kolakata and Delhi. The day previous to the treaty was signed in Delhi, Hasina not only met the West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, but in her meet she fell on his feet to pay respect in somewhat Hindu style, Shashtyange Pronipat, and so pleased the Chief Minister blessed her as usual putting palm on her forehead and then made a brief remark that said that India would make a treaty for water sharing at the Farakka Barrage point for two to three years. Amazingly, the next day the treaty was signed for duration of 30 years and not for two or three years as Jyoti Bosu had predicted in blessing Hasina.
India pitied Bangladesh
If one would recall further back about the facts about 1974 MOU, 1977 water treaty for two years and renewed for another two years, no treaty whatsoever during the nine years term of Ershad and also none during the first term of Khaleda during 1991 to 1996 with the amazingly 30 year treaty made in December 1996 with P.M. Hasina that Bosu had predicted for a very short period. This treaty had no right standing so far as it did not meet international rules and conventions. Further that the treaty had no guarantee clause at all. These meant that the treaty went against the interest of lower riparian Bangladesh and violated international standard rules, conventions and norms. Thus it became a fait accompli that continues to harm Bangladesh, its ecology, economy and thus subservience to Delhi made in reality a mockery of sovereignty of Bangladesh. During the last 13 years it is the sad reality that India released for Bangladesh less quantities of water than Delhi had promised in the terms and schedule of the treaty; their excuse keeps on telling that they had no flow enough in the upper region and hence the lower quantum for Bangladesh became obvious.
Aggravate further
Having had the sad and painful experience due to India’s Farakka Barrage being operated for the last 35 years, the Tipaimiukh dam has been floated to further aggravate the position of Bangladesh in this case in the eastern region involving one fourth of the much smaller and impoverished geographical area.
Redress at the UN
Being the Tipaimukh a life and death question for Banglkadesh, Bangladesh has to stand solidly united to restrain India to abandon the Tipaimukh dam project for good. But if she does not restrain on their own, Bangladesh has no option left to bring the matter in the knowledge of international bodies like the UN and the possibly into the International Court of Justice at the Hague for appropriate redress.
Filed under: Bangladesh
BDR Revolt: A deadly strategic game plan
Since the independence, Bangladesh Rifles, the first line of defense, have been combating smuggling, human trafficking, drug trafficking and other illegal activities along the border and have made supreme sacrifices to protect the lives and properties of the people from enemy invasion with great courage and valor. Bangladesh Rifles have earned worldwide recognition for its determination, patriotism, and professionalism when they successfully repelled a large invasion by Indian border security force at Roumari point in 2001.
Despite its performance and patriotism, the members of Bangladesh Rifles got little attention from successive governments to alleviate the problem of poor pay and benefit structures allowed for them. Nevertheless, they continued to discharge their duties with utmost sincerity and took part in all nation building activities maintaining professionalism and discipline.
On 25th Feb, 2009, the nation was shocked at the news that some BDR members had revolted and killed many officers who were on deputation from Bangladesh army to protest against poor pay and benefit structures and alleged corruption by the late Director General.
The mutineers asked the government to implement a set of demands on a priority basis to address the problems of the members of Bangladesh Rifles. Some of these demands are as follows:
1.withdrawing army officers from all command posts of BDR and recruiting new officers from BCS cadres
2.allowing full rationing for BDR members
3.sending BDR personnel to U.N. peacekeeping missions
4.revamping salary structures and promotion procedures
5.allowing defense allowances for BDR members
6.procuring more transportation vehicles to guard the long porous border with India and Myanmar
7.increasing the quality of food and
8.improving educational and medical facilities for the family members of soldiers
Because of defense strategy and lack of manpower, it will not be possible to withdraw army officers from the command posts of BDR, but the rest of the demands deserve due consideration because these are logical and should have been given to the BDR members a long time ago for they put their lives in danger to safeguard the frontiers of the country. It is, therefore, hoped that the government will take appropriate measures to remove the grievances of BDR members to stop the occurrences of similar incidents in the future.
Now, let us examine whether there are any political motivations behind this unfortunate incident that shocked the entire nation.
The revolt: actors involved, motivations and methods employed
The relationship between Awami League and the defense forces of the country has never been cordial because of latter’s security outlook that anticipates no security threat from India and considers defense expenditures needless. A few clauses of the 25 year friendship treaty that virtually eliminated Bangladesh’s sovereign right to seek assistance from other friendly nations to expand and modernize its armed forces and the subsequent step motherly attitude of the government and the formation of Rakkhi Bahini had cerated widespread resentment among the army officers. Instead of taking appropriate measures to remove the legitimate grievances of the army officers, the then government continued with their suppressive and discriminatory policies to neglect, humiliate and alienate the armed forces, which ultimately led to the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman along with most of his family members at the hands of a few young army officers.
Awami League has never forgotten the incident nor forgiven the armed forces for the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and left no stone unturned to avenge the incident in 1975 by creating divisions in the armed forces through various political machinations.
The comments of LGRD minister after the BDR mutiny is a testament to the fact that his party still holds grudges against the army for the death of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and other four prominent leaders of Awami League in 1975 at the hands of a section of army officers. He said, “If the trial of Bangabandhu and four national leaders killing cases were held in time and the offender were brought into justice, the Pilkhana tragedy was not take place” (Feb, 28, 2009, The Daily Star). Does it not show the deep resentment of the current government against the army for the incidents in 1975?
After the political change in 1/11, the military backed government had thrown many Awami League leaders into jail for their alleged involvement in financial scandal and abuse of power, which, many believe, has caused further deterioration in the relationship between the armed forces and Awami League. After the elections, Awami League’s virulent verbal attack on the army for its role in 1/11 is a testament to the fact that they wanted to weaken the army so that the latter could never repeat a 1/11 like situation to bring about political changes in the country.
India has its own agenda to diminish our defense capability because it needs a subservient military in Bangladesh to easily establish total domination on 4096 km Indo-Bangla border and use our defense and intelligence resources to its advantage to quell ongoing insurgencies in its North East region. India’s abortive misadventure inside Bangladesh territory in 2001 forced them to reorganize their security policy vis a vis Bangladesh and emphasize the need to search for new avenues to play larger role in the matters related to defense of Bangladesh and neutralize Chinese influence on our defense forces. But this could only be accomplished through active cooperation from a friendly government in Bangladesh to create tension within our defense forces to break their morale and make it imperative for Bangladesh to seek Indian help in reorganizing the defense system.
So, the BDR mutiny may be the case of a teamwork between a foreign external intelligence agency and some political elements within the country to set the stage for the departure of the army officers from Bangladesh Rifles to weaken it and to tarnish the image of the army before the whole nation to break their morale.
The assertion that some local political elements and India are working together to weaken the security systems of Bangladesh may be true because the government’s quick decision to grant general amnesty to all rebellious members of Bangladesh Rifles without assessing the ground reality and to not allow any military action to quell the rebellion, which gave the mutineers enough time to put forth a set of demands and flee in groups from the BDR headquarters seems to be a preplanned strategy to instigate a rebellion, break the chain of command, kill large number of officers, and to ensure safe exit for the mutineers.
If the local and foreign conspirators who planned, directed, and implemented the rebellion are not identified and the rebellious members of BDR who broke the chain command are not brought to justice such occurrences of rebellion may be repeated in other security forces to destabilize the entire nation and create a situation for external powers to intervene in the name of peacekeeping.
Findings of the army report
The army formed its own 20 member probe committee on 2nd March, led by Lt. General Jahangir Alam Chowdhury, to investigate into the gruesome murder of army officers by the rebels at BDR headquarters on 25th Feb, 2009 and this probe committee acted separately from the committee formed by the government to investigate into the same matter. After investigating for more than two months, the committee has made the summary of their report public for the sake of transparency of their work. The army report published in various newspapers identified the following reasons for the BDR mutiny:
1. Wrong impression about the facilities of the army
2. Lack of transparency in establishing and running BDR shops
3. Delay in payment of duty allowances for the 2008 national elections
4. Misunderstanding about lease and contracts of different works in the BDR headquarters
5. Wrong impression about the BDR’s director general Shakil Ahmed, and his wife Nazneen Shakil and Dhaka sector commander Mujibul Haque’s alleged in irregularities
6. Delay made by the Home and Finance ministries in resolving BDR problems
The army report on BDR mutiny did not find any convincing evidence of any direct or indirect militant links simply because of the fact that the extremists did not have the elaborate network and manpower to plan and execute a mission deep inside the military establishment of Bangladesh with a pinpoint accuracy to kill almost 15% officers of Bangladesh army within the space of 24 hours as the previous democratically elected government had already dismantled the countrywide terror network of JMB, the most powerful extremist group in the country and executed its top masterminds as part of continuous effort to fight terrorists for which Bangladesh has partnered with international community and received high praise from across the world.
Criticism of the army report
In investigating such a complex and dangerous incident that paralyzed the entire defense system of the country, the investigators should have proper authority to contact, interrogate, and collect information from people who had direct or indirect contacts with the rebels before and after the mutiny to explore local and external linkages. They also should have followed a similar structured method described below to accomplish the investigation process:
1. Identifying and defining the scope of the problem
2. Setting and determining the scope of the investigation objectives
3. Assembling adequate manpower with appropriate skills and experience to form a committee
4. Identifying target population for interrogation/questioning
5. Verifying and confirming collected information for accuracy
6. Submitting the findings and recommendations to the government
But the military investigators had to narrow down their scope of investigation to exclude exploring the possibility of political and external connections because of lack of proper government authorizations to contact and interrogate certain people. Many believe, the restrictions on the investigators may have been imposed to protect the local and external conspirators who had teamed up to play havoc with the defense system of the country.
Even though the army report did not find any convincing links of politicians and external powers to this sad episode that shook the entire defense system of the country, the involvement of some elements within the government and some foreign intelligence agencies should not be ruled out because, as per the report, the government imposed restrictions on investigators to limit their power to collect necessary evidence, verify obtained information, and confirm information sources to identify, investigate, establish and confirm involvement of political and foreign elements in the mindless killing of the officers at the BDR headquarters.
The events in the BDR headquarters were meticulously planned by some powerful quarters to use BDR against army to kill as many officers as possible to leave no able hands to lead this force in order to achieve the goals of destroying the border defense system of the country, avenging the incident in Roumari in 2001, proving BDR as an indisciplined force to create a situation to make it imperative to reorganize it with the help of a certain neighbor and creating a permanent mistrust and suspicion between the two forces entrusted with the responsibilities of protecting national security..
The political connections to the incident are visible from a series of events, including a section of politicians and media launched a vituperative attack on the army for its role in the events on and after 1/11 to instigate anti army sentiment across the country; the government did not order 350 RAB personnel, who reached the gate of BDR headquarters at 10:10 am, for an action against the mutineers, who were yet to be organized and set up heavy arms at the gates of the headquarters; the government ordered the 46th brigade of Bangladesh army, who reached the gates of the BDR headquarters at 10:50 am, to go out of sight from the headquarters which gave the rebels enough time to organize themselves to kill and torture more people in the BDR complex; the mutineers were given a chance to contact the media to propagate unfounded accusations against Bangladesh army; and a list was prepared in advance to torture and kill the wives of the army officers.
Even though the army report attributed the failure of Juba League’s president Jahangir Kabir Nanak and general secretary Mirza Azam in the negotiation with the rebels to surrender arms and release the hostages to lack of professionalism, the thing that is still bugging a lot of people is the reason why the prime minister chose these two fellows who had no prior experience in crisis management and had a criminal record of killing 11 Innocent civilians by setting fire to a double decker bus near Sheraton hotel in 2004. Let me quote the passage from the report published in a newspaper( The New Nation, Jun, 3, 2007), where one of the top Awami League leaders, Mr. Sheikh Selim, disclosed the cold blooded murder of innocent civilians by Nanak and Azam:
“He also disclosed that AL’s front organisation Juba League’s president Jahangir Kabir Nanak and general secretary Mirza Azam were involved in killing 11 people by setting fire to a double-decker BRTC bus near Dhaka Sheraton Hotel in 2004. Both Nanak and Azam held a meeting at Juba League office in the evening on that day and made a plan to commit the arson. “I protested the incident to our party chief and told her the politics cannot be done in such a way,” the investigators said quoted Selim as saying.”
Although the investigators were able to confirm the involvement of a local Awami League leader, Torab Ali, in the mutiny, they, however, were unable to establish a link between him and his partners in the political circle due to absence of government authorizations to contact and question the top ruling party leaders. This, many believe, may have been done to conceal the political connections to the mutiny and the subsequent murder of scores of brilliant army officers.
It is astounding that the military investigators did not even try to explore external connections to the mutiny because such an impeccable operation to carryout large scale killings of army officers was not the work of a bunch of youngsters, but rather the work of a professional organization who had inside information to plan and execute such a flawless military mission at the heart of the nation’s defense establishment to take out all the intended targets and ensure safe exit for all those who took part in it.
There is a growing fear of Indian involvement in the BDR revolt and the mass killing of the army officers at the BDR headquarters because of the comments of Mr. Pranab Mukharjee who said, “I had to go out of my way to issue a stern warning to those trying to destabilise the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh that if they continued with their attempts, then India would not sit idle.” (OUTLOOK india.com, Mar, 16, 2009) , which is another way of saying that India would have approved a direct military intervention if developments in Bangladesh had gone against their strategic interest.
The same report also said, “New Delhi had conveyed it was willing to take counter-measures in Dhaka, direct intervention included.” Now the question is why did the Indian minister issue such a warning to Bangladesh? Did he not believe the people and the security forces of Bangladesh are capable enough to protect their own prime minister? Or did he want to conceal India’s own involvement in the mutiny through intimidation? Whatever the case may be, India’s over enthusiasm in our internal affairs has raised some serious suspicions about its intentions with regard to our national security.
The order to put Indian air force on a stand by mode (Samachar.com, mar, 2, 2009) and deploy para commandos from Agra to West Bengal (The Times of India, Mar, 4, 2009) to deal with emergency situations can also be construed as Indian attempts to interfere in our internal affairs using the tensions created after the mutiny, and if we combine this with the comments of Mr. Pranab Mukharjee then a strategic scenario emerges where Bangladesh is being destabilized with the intent to force herself into a long term bilateral security arrangements to pave the way for India to play greater roles in the matters of Bangladesh’s security and defense. And the proof of it can be found in a report in The Telegraph, a Calcutta based newspaper, where India offered to send a peace mission to give security to the Calcutta-Dhaka-Calcutta Moitree express and termed it as the first international bilateral peace mission by India after its peace mission in Sri-Lanka (The Telegraph, Feb, 27, 2009).
Another report from the same newspaper that said “Details of the talks were not immediately available but the US has been keen that India plays a stabilising role in the South Asian region. It is in this context that the Indian effort to send a peace mission, not only for the security of the train service between Dhaka and Calcutta, but also in a larger context, preferably on an appeal from Dhaka, will be internationally acceptable to Washington.”(The Telegraph, Feb, 28, 2009) is detrimental to our national security because it proves, in light of recently concluded Indo-U.S. Strategic agreement, there is ample international support for India to play larger role in South Asia, in general, and Bangladesh, in particular. This is what many have been saying for a while that the bilateral task force, military exercise between Bangladesh and Indian armed forces and the revolt by the BDR members are all part of a grand design to make the security forces of Bangladesh subservient to the strategic and political interests of India and Awami League.
External linkages to the BDR revolt can also be found by the seizure of various fire arms, equipment and other military gadgets at the BDR headquarters that are not used by any security agencies in the country (The Daily Star, Mar, 3, 2009). Experts believe such sophisticated military gadgets were supplied by external sources to perform the killings of the army officers in the BDR headquarters complex.
Concluding observations
With the growing suspicion of involvement of some elements within the government in the well orchestrated revolt at BDR headquarters firstly, to rid BDR of army officers for the purpose of weakening our border security and secondly, to kill the brightest army officers with an ultimate plan to destroy our defense system, the government is feeling the heat from both the army and the people of the country.
Sensing the impending danger of being exposed, a certain quarter has revived the old arms smuggling case and is frantically trying to associate the opposition parties, the intelligence agencies, and even Pakistan and its external spy agency, ISI, with ULFA to convince the public of the existence of a nexus among the nationalistic forces and defense establishment of the country, Pakistan and United Liberation Front of Assam with a sole purpose of falsely accuse them of sponsoring terrorism and masterminding the carnage at the BDR headquarters. In order to make their case more convincing and deal a heavy blow to our national defense, they even dragged China, the largest arms supplier and trusted defense partner of Bangladesh, into this complex scenario.
Gruesome murder of the army officers, prompt announcement of general amnesty by the prime minister without properly understanding the ground reality, unabated media propaganda to humiliate the army, reluctance of the government to order for a military action against the rebels, decision to send Jahangir Kabir Nanak and Mirza Azam, who have criminal records of killing 11 innocent civilians, as negotiators, stern warning by Indian minister Pranab Mukherjee of military intervention against Bangladesh, and the subsequent deployment of Indian troops along the border suggest the involvement of powerful local and external elements in the BDR revolt to accomplish a diabolical plan to inflict enormous damage upon the defense system of Bangladesh.
The army investigators should have done an exhaustive investigation into the possibility of involvement of political and foreign elements in the BDR revolt to expose the real conspirators for the sake of our national security, but unfortunately the army report made no attempts to do so probably because it had no mandate to explore political and foreign connections, or the Indian threat of military intervention might have forced them to confine their investigation to only a small area just to identify the BDR jawans who were involved in the killings of the officers and bring charges against them.
Lastly, the defense forces of the country should know that similar attempts to incite rebellions in other security forces will be attempted in future if the real culprits are not exposed and punished with iron fist.
What is Acknowledged and What Remains Unknown
Sexual Torture
By DAVID ROSEN
“Removal of clothing was authorized by the Secretary of Defense [Rumsfeld] for use at GTMO [Guantánamo] on December 2, 2002,” acknowledges the recently released U.S. Senate Armed Service Committee report on the use of harsh interrogation techniques. It also reports that the use of prolonged nudity proved so effective that, in January 2003, it was approved for use in Afghanistan and, in the fall of 2003, was adopted for use in Iraq.
“Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody”
The Senate report came out shortly after a secret International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report on CIA torture techniques used as part of its detention program was leaked by Mark Danner of the “New York Review of Books.” These reports provoked a storm of media attention, much of it focused on the use of waterboarding (or what the ICRC more aptly calls “suffocation by water”) and, in particular, its use on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times and Abu Zubaydah 83 times.
The media paid less attention to the host of what the ICRC calls the other “methods of ill-treatment.” The Senate report identifies these techniques as: use of military dogs, stress positions and physical training, sleep adjustment/sleep management, sensory deprivation and removal of clothing. The ICRC identifies them as: prolonged stress standing, beating by use of a collar, beating and kicking, confinement in a box, sleep deprivation and use of load music, exposure to cold temperature/cold water, prolonged use of handcuffs and shackles, threats, forced shaving, deprivation/restricted provision of solid food and prolonged nudity.
These reports, together with the recent release of Bush-administration “torture memos,” helped focus national attention on a shameful, if not illegal, aspect of mad king George’s War on Terror. However, these reports are “official” documents based on revelations of a very limited number of sources. The information gathered, while invaluable, is limited by these sources.
The limited sources limit the public’s knowledge of the full scope of the torture committed by American intelligence agents, military officers and private contractors. Focusing on the issue of sexual torture, which includes prolonged nudity, reveals what has been made public but also what has yet to become publicly acknowledged.
Failure to publicly acknowledge the full scope of sexual torture, along with all the other “harsh” interrogation techniques, creates a sanitized, “official,” history. Americans will never know what torture was committed in their name, nor be able to hold accountable those who ordered and executed these actions unless they go beyond “official” sources.
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The ICRC conducted interviews with fourteen “enemy combatants” from eight countries. The detainees were arrested over a nearly three-year period, from March 2002 through May 2005. Eleven of the detainees were subject to prolonged nudity “during detention and interrogation, ranging from several weeks continuously up to several months intermittently.”
The ICRC recounts what it calls the “alleged” experiences of seven detaineesm subject to prolonged nudity:
• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – kept naked for one month in Afghanistan.
• Abu Zubaydah– kept naked for two-and-a-half weeks in Afghanistan after recovering at a Pakistan hospital; he reports subsequently being repeatedly provided with clothing and then stripped naked for weeks at a time.
• Walid Bin Attash – kept naked two weeks in Afghanistan and again for a month in a second but unknown detention facility.
• Encep Nuraman (aka Hambali) – kept naked for four or five days in Thailand and a week in Afghanistan, followed by intermittent periods of being clothed and naked.
• Majid Khan – kept naked for three days in Afghanistan and seven days in his third place of detention.
• Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep – kept naked three to four days in Thailand and nine days in Afghanistan.
• Unnamed detainee – kept naked for two to three months in Afghanistan and then faced intermittent periods of being clothed and naked.
The sources of these reports were interviews with the detainees.
The Senate report provides a far different assessment on what it calls “removal of clothing.” It makes clear that the use of prolonged nudity found strong support within the CIA and military as an interrogation technique. It reports that nudity was imported into Iraq, especially Abu Ghraib prison, from Afghanistan and GTMO.
It states that this technique served a number of critical interrogation purposes, including to “humiliate detainees,” to “renew ‘capture shock’ of detainees” and as an incentive for good behavior. It use was extensive, as indicated by two of the many officers interviewed. COL Jerry Philabaum, the Commander of the 320th MP, reports seeing “between 12-15 detainees naked in their own individual cells.” CPT Donald Reese, the Commander of the 372nd MP Company, acknowledged that prolonged nudity was “known to everyone” and it was “common practice to walk the tier and see detainees with clothing and bedding.” Other officers made similar statements.
Like the ICRC report, the Senate report draws extensively on interviews, but these interviews are with Army officers from the Military Police and intelligence. In addition, the Senate report draws on a number of publicly released military report, most notably by Major General George Fay, known as the Fay Report. One of its quotes is remarkably candid, perhaps more revealing than originally intended: detention created an “environment that would appear to condone depravity and degradation rather than humane treatment of detainees.” The report also makes a single passing reference to Major General Antonio Taguba’s report on Abu Ghraib.
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The first “enemy combatants” arrive at Guantánamo on January 11, 2002, nearly a year before Rumsfeld officially authorized the use of sexual torture. According to a CBS timeline, a “U.S. Air Force plane from Afghanistan touches down at Guantanamo carrying 20 prisoners, marking the start of the detention operation.” [CBS News Gitmo Timeline, August 24, 2004] In the Senate report, SMU [Special Mission Unit] TF [Task Force] Commander [name blacked out] states that when he “took command [of Guantánemo] he ‘discovered that some of the detainees were not allowed clothes’ as an interrogation technique [blacked out] said he terminated the practice in December 2003 or January 2004.”
The disclosures about prolonged nudity received little public discussion. Compared to the many far worse techniques employed, most notably “suffocation by water,” head beating, kicking, stress positions, uses of dogs and sleep deprivation, sexual torture seems rather modest. But its purpose was, along with the other techniques, clear. As the ICRC notes, it “was clearly designed to undermine human dignity and create a sense of futility … resulting in exhaustion, depersonalization and dehumanization.”
However, drawing upon other sources paints a different picture, one far less sanitized and much more sadistic. What is not known is whether these additional techniques were approved by U.S. military and civilian leaders or were the improvised actions of frontline officers and contractors? A few examples illustrate these techniques.
The best single source on the use of sexual torture at Abu Ghraib remains the Taguba report. In the report’s executive summary, the following “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” are identified as having been used at the prison:
* forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;
* forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;
* videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;
* forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;
* forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear;
* forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;
* arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;
* positioning a naked detainee on a MRE [meals ready to eat] Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;
* placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female soldier pose for a picture;
* sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.
Why did this part of the Taguba report not appear in the Senate report? Its absence speaks to the way official reports are sanitized and an “inside the Beltway” history is written. [see "Sexual Terrorism: The Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror," CounterPunch, May 13, 2008]
The U.S. and international press revealed disturbing episodes of sexual terror used by American forces. For example, The Associated Press reported that a former inmate, Dhia al-Shweiri, was ordered by American soldiers to strip naked, bend over and place his hands on a wall; while not sodomized, he says he was humiliated: “We are men. It’s OK if they beat me,” al Shweiri said. “Beatings don’t hurt us; it’s just a blow. But no one would want their manhood to be shattered.”
Scotland’s “Sunday Herald” reported that a former Iraqi prisoner claimed that there is a photo of a civilian translator raping a male juvenile prisoner; he stated, “They covered all the doors with sheets. I heard the screaming, … and the female soldier was taking pictures.”
London’s “Independent” reported on the experience of Hayder Sabbar Abd, immortalized as the man in the hood in infamous Abu Ghraib photo of Lynndie England. Abd alleges that he was ordered to masturbate as Ms. England “put her hands on her breasts,” which he couldn’t; and to simulate fellatio with another prisoner, which he appears to have done.
The “Sydney Morning Herald” noted: “Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man’s face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider’s written account.”
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Sexual torture served two purposes on those subjected to such abuse: to physically harm and to emotionally scar. It was intended to break male inmates. It sought to inflict both pain and shame, to make the recipient suffer and loathe himself. Sexual torture attempted to break the victim both physically and spiritually, to leave scars on (and inside) the body and in the psyche.
With Obama’s election, the U.S. military has probably ceased employing “harsh interrogation techniques.” Unfortunately, given Obama’s pragmatism, the Congress’ complicity, the military’s bureaucratic zealotry and the CIA’s (and private contractors’) immorality, one can only wonder what would happen if another September 11th occurred.
The full scope of “harsh interrogation techniques” used during the War on Terror is unknown. Nor is it fully known who within the Bush administration approved the use of such technique, not who within the U.S. military and intelligence community (along with private contractors) used such techniques. Answers to these questions should be the first task of any “official” investigation of the War on Terror. And those undertaking the investigation should use a far wider assortment of sources than those deemed “official.” Only then will the American people understand what was done in their name and, hopefully, how to stop it from happening again.
David Rosen is the author of “Sex Scandal America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming” and can be reached at drosen@ix.netcom.com.
Filed under: Religion
Christianity- Islam and the Crusades
Khalil Rahman
The First Crusade was planned by Pope Urban II and more than 200 bishops at the Council of Clermont. It was preached by Urban between AD 1095 and 1099. He assured his listeners that God himself wanted them to encourage men of all ranks, rich and poor, to go and exterminate Muslims. He said that Christ commanded it. Even robbers, he said, should now become soldiers of Christ. Assured that God wanted them to participate in Holy War, masses pressed forward to take the crusader’s oath. They looked forward to a guaranteed place in Heaven for themselves and to an assured victory for their divinely endorsed army. The pope did not appoint a secular military supreme commander, only a spiritual one, the Bishop of Le Puy. Initial expeditions were led by two churchmen, Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless. Peter was a monk from Amiens , whose credentials were a letter written by God and delivered to him by Jesus. He assured his followers that death in the Crusades provided an automatic passport to Heaven.
When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem on the 14th July 1099 , they massacred the inhabitants, Jews and Muslims alike, men, women and children. The killing continued all night and into the next day. Jews who took refuge in their synagogue were burned alive. Muslims sought refuge in the al-Aqsa mosque under the protection of a Christian banner. In the morning Crusaders forced an entry and massacred them all, 70,000 according to an Arab historian, including a large number of scholars. The Temple of Solomon was so full of blood that it came up to the horses’ bridles. The chronicler Raymond of Aguiliers described it as a just and wonderful judgment of God . Even before the killing was over the crusaders went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre “rejoicing and weeping for joy” to thank God for his assistance. Muslim prisoners were decapitated, shot with arrows, forced to jump from high towers, or burned. Some were tortured first. Neither was this an isolated incident. It was wholly typical. When the crusaders took Caesarea in 1101 many citizens fled to the Great Mosque and begged the Christians for mercy. At the end of the butchery the floor was a lake of blood. In the whole city only a few girls and infants survived. Soon afterwards, there was a similar massacre at Beirut. Such barbarity shocked the Eastern world and left an impression of the Christian West that has still not been forgotten in the third millennium.
The Second Crusade was proclaimed by Pope Eugene III in 1145. It was preached by St Bernard, a leading Cistercian theologian who declared that “The Christian glories in the death of a pagan, because thereby Christ himself is glorified”.
The initial object of this second crusade was to recapture Edessa which had fallen to the Muslims in 1144. Initial contingents were lead by military commanders like the bishops of Metz and Toul. On the way, traveling by sea, the Crusaders besieged the then Muslim city of Lisbon . After four months the garrison surrendered, having been promised their lives and their property if they capitulated. They did capitulate and were then massacred. Only about a fifth of the original Crusader force got as far as Syria , where the real crusade started. It proved a failure, at least partially because tactical targets were selected for religious rather than military reasons. A military tactician might have gone for Aleppo , but the Crusade leaders agreed on mounting an attack on Damascus , apparently because they recognized its name as biblical. The leaders argued amongst themselves until the crusade collapsed in 1149, having failed to take Edessa or Damascus . The whole thing had been a disaster.
The third Crusade. Having proclaimed a jihad in 1186, Saladin re-took Jerusalem for the Muslims the following year. Once the battle was over no one was killed or injured, and not a building was looted. The captives were permitted to ransom themselves, and those who could afford to do so ransomed their vassals as well. Many thousands could not afford their ransom, and were held to be sold as slaves. The military monks, who could have used their vast wealth to save their fellow Christians from slavery, declined to do so. The head of the Church, the Patriarch Heraclius, and his clerics looked after themselves. The Muslims saw Heraclius pay his ten dinars for his own ransom and leave the city bowed with the weight of the gold that he was carrying, followed by carts laden with other valuables. As the unransomed prisoners were lead off to a life of slavery Saladin’s brother Malik al-Adil took pity. He asked his brother for a thousand of them as a reward for his services, and when he was granted them he immediately gave them their liberty. This triggered further generosity amongst the victorious commanders, culminating in Saladin offering gifts from his own treasury to the Christian widows and orphans. “His mercy and kindness were in strange contrast to the deeds of the Christian conquerors of the First Crusade”
The Fourth Crusade was preached by Pope Innocent III and lasted from 1202 to 1204. Although intended to regain the Holy Land from the Muslims by way of Egypt , the crusade was hijacked by the Venetians and directed against the Christian cities of Zara and then Constantinople , which offered a softer target and richer pickings. Constantinople was taken, the Emperor deposed, and Baldwin of Flanders was set up in his place. The victorious crusaders amused themselves in the usual way, even though this was the capital of Christendom.
The fifth Crusade. This Crusade was preached by Pope Innocent III but undertaken in the reign of Pope Honorius III. It was lead by Cardinal Pelagius of Lucia, and lasted from 1217 to 1221. Although ultimately intended to recover Jerusalem the main force was initially directed against Egypt . Damietta was besieged. Saladin proposed a deal. He would cede Jerusalem , all central Palestine , and Galilee if the crusaders would spare Damietta . This offer was rejected by Pelagius, despite military advice.
Damietta duly fell to the Christians. The surviving inhabitants were sold into slavery, and their children handed over to the Christian priests to be baptised and trained into the service of the Church. But Saladin soon recovered Damietta by force.
The Sixth Crusade was proposed by Pope Gregory IX, but found few takers, previous crusades having proved such failures. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II organized his own crusade while under sentence of excommunication, and pursued it between 1222 and 1229. Despite the pope’s machinations and much to his embarrassment Frederick’s military and strategic skill led to a negotiated settlement under which Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem came under Christian control.
The Seventh Crusade lasted from 1248 to 1254. It was initiated under Pope Innocent IV, Jerusalem having been lost to the Moslems again in 1244. It was led by King Louis IX of France ( St Louis ) who started by attacking Egypt . Once again Damietta was captured, and once again the Sultan offered to exchange it for Jerusalem . Once again the offer was rejected. And once again the Muslims won Damietta back by force of arms. Louis himself was captured, and had to be ransomed for 400,000 bezants. After his release he went to the Holy Land , but failed to recover the holy cities, and so gave up and went home.
The Eighth Crusade was proposed by Pope Gregory X, but not organized until a later reign. It lasted only from 1270 to 1271, and was initially led once again by St Louis . It collapsed after Louis died of disease while attacking Carthage (modern Tunis ).
The Ninth Crusade continued St Louis ’s eighth crusade. It was led by Prince Edward between 1271 and 1272. Edward, the future English King Edward I, reached the Holy Land . Like earlier crusades, this one fizzled out, a total failure.
Pope Pius II was so keen to revive the Crusades that he went himself, but hardly anyone else could be coerced into going with him. He waited near the coast at Ancona in the summer of 1464, hoping for others to turn up. Sixtus IV made a couple of efforts at organizing crusades against the Turks, but nothing came of them. Leo X planned another one in 1515, but nothing ever came of it either. Clement XI hoped to launch a Crusade early in the eighteenth century but he too failed to win much backing.
[NY Sun: Islam and Muslims are expected to be a priority for Pope Benedict XVI, but he has been publicly quite muted on these topics during his first nine months in office.
"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Sept. 12, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI
The Vatican has confirmed that it is negotiating for permission to build the first church in Saudi Arabia . Time Magazine Wednesday, Mar. 19, 2008
Sun Mar 23, 2008, The Vatican City (Reuters) - A Muslim author and critic of Islamic fundamentalism who was baptized a Catholic by Pope Benedict said on Sunday Islam is "physiologically violent". ]
Indo-Bangla Relation: A Strategic Analysis
Shah Mohammed Saifuddin
The independence movement under the leadership of Congress was for establishing independent undivided India through the eviction of British rulers from the soil of India, but the degeneration of Hindu-Muslim relation into hostility and the demand of Muslim league for a separate state for the Muslims of the region thwarted the dream of an independent undivided India and made the partition of subcontinent inevitable. While the initial proposal for the partition met with steep resistance as most of the senior leaders of Congress namely, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawharlal Nehru, and Moulana Abul Kalam Azad vehemently protested such proposal and termed it as British conspiracy to divide India, the Congress finally gave its nod of approval in the fear that outright rejection of the partition proposal might be used by the British colonial rulers against the independence movement to perpetuate their political domination over the country, and in the hope that with a small resource base, peculiar geographic reality that separates both the wings of the country by one thousand miles and paucity of leaders with political experience, Pakistan would not survive too long and would return to India in the end.
There is no surprise that partition of India came as a shock to Congress leaders and that they could never reconcile themselves to the idea of an independent Pakistan because their freedom struggle was for undivided India, and therefore, they wanted to roll back the geographical changes made to Indian subcontinent through partition and their intention was clearly demonstrated to Pakistan from the very beginning, which gave rise to a plethora of problem and a paucity of trust between the two nations.
What Pakistan needed in those formative years was national unity and balanced development in the two wings to ensure security and progress to consolidate its position as a powerful nation in the subcontinent to thwart Indian attempt to undo the partition. But the then Pakistani leaders’ myopic failure to recognize Bengalis as equal partners and give them due share of political power and economic resource caused widespread resentment among the East Pakistanis, which was cunningly used by India against Pakistan in the subsequent years. The Indian political leaders in later years used their diplomatic channels and intelligence agencies to cultivate close relations with East Pakistani political establishment in order to involve themselves in almost all political movements in East Pakistan to use the prevailing sense of deprivation among East Pakistanis to their own political advantage and instigate East Pakistanis against West Pakistanis to accelerate the process of disintegration of Pakistan firstly, to weaken it and then to bring it back to India’s lap through various political machinations to realize the dream of undivided India.
No amount of political negotiations between the two wings could improve the situation in Pakistan due, mainly, to the stubbornness of West Pakistanis, which gave rise to increasing sense of alienation and deprivation among the people of East Pakistan and finally when Sheikh Mujib was denied the premiership in 1970, Bengalis decided to get out of the relationship once and for all. So, for the first time and certainly for the last time in history, the disintegration of Pakistan became a common goal for both India and the Bengalis as the former wanted to break Pakistan to realize its vision of undivided India and the latter wanted to establish a separate independent nation to rid themselves of an insensitive and repressive political regime.
As soon as the Pakistani army cracked down on the unarmed East Pakistanis, India, under the leadership of Indira Gandhi, took bold steps to help the Bengalis in their just struggle for independence against the fascist regime of Yahya Khan. The Indira government set their objectives to do the following things to ensure a desired outcome in the war for both Indians and East Pakistanis:
- To give safe passage to top Awami League leaders to India and help form Mujibnagar government
- To help form Mukti Bahini and provide necessary training and weapons
- To form Mujib Bahini as an alternative force and use them in special operations
- To provide asylum to ten million refugees from East Pakistan
- To launch a vigorous diplomatic campaign worldwide through its foreign services to garner support for East Pakistan’s just struggle for freedom
- To use its military and intelligence resources to the extent possible to help freedom fighters sustain a prolonged war against the powerful Pakistan army
India never lost sight of its strategic goal
Some people may argue that India’s decision to help in 1971 was based purely on humanitarian grounds, but the reality is that India’s decision to extend its wholehearted support to Bangladesh’s liberation war was a premeditated one and was primarily based on its own strategic goal of disintegrating Pakistan to undo the changes made through partition. Former Indian foreign secretary Mr. Dixit said, “We helped in the liberation of Bangladesh in mutual interest, it was not a favor,” and a senior RAW intelligence officer said, “Bangladesh was the result of a 10 year long promotion of dissatisfaction against the rulers of Pakistan” (RAW: Top-Secret Failures, p: 5 ). These statements from two top former Indian government officials are testament to the fact that Indian help for Bangladesh was not an altruistic one, rather it was for implementing India’s own strategic goal of disintegrating Pakistan and that the intelligence agencies of India were also engaged in fomenting unrest in East Pakistan. With their strategic goals in mind, India concluded a seven point agreement with the Mujibnagar government to seal the fate of a negotiated settlement between East and West Pakistan, and to cripple Bangladesh by depriving it of its sovereign right to raise a standing army and to independently formulate foreign policy. Now, for the benefit of the readers let me briefly describe the points of ’seven point agreement’:
- Bangladesh government will select only those people for administrative posts who have actively participated in the liberation war and any shortfall therein will be filled by the Indian government officials.
- A joint force will be formed comprising of the Indian army and the Mukti Bahini and this force will be placed under the command of the chief of staff of the Indian army who will lead the liberation war.
- Bangladesh will have no standing army
- India will help raise a paramilitary force to protect the internal law and order of the country.
- Open market will be the basis for trade relation between the two nations and this arrangement will be subject to periodical review.
- The Indian army will be stationed in Bangladesh for an indefinite period of time but the time frame for their gradual withdrawal will be determined through annual meetings between the two governments..
- Bangladesh will formulate its foreign policy only in consultation with India.
The conclusion of the seven point agreement only ensured that the Mujibnagar government would continue the war until Bangladesh gained full independence from Pakistan, but it did not give the guarantee that China and America would not intervene in the event the Indian army directly involved itself in the war. So, the Indira government approached to former Soviet Union to extract security guarantee against impending Chinese and American threats and it was made available to them in the shape of ‘25 year friendship treaty’ by the erstwhile Soviet Union, which was also seeking to play greater role in the subcontinent to expand its own sphere of influence.
The signing of the seven point treaty with Mujib Government and the 25 year friendship treaty with the Soviets removed all obstacles for the Indian forces to directly intervene in East Pakistan and it took them less than two weeks to overrun the defensive positions of the Pakistan army, which was already exhausted by a nine month long guerrilla war against Mukti Bahini and was at the final stages of disintegration and collapse. At the end of the war, Bangladesh got its much cherished independence and India could break Pakistan into two pieces for which it had been scheming since 1947.
Bangladesh steps into a strategic trap
While the public of Bangladesh, in general, and the Mujib government, in particular, was extremely grateful to India for her help and support in the war of liberation and wanted to maintain the best possible relationship with the Indian people, the political and military establishment of India had already done their strategic planning in line with the seven point agreement to reduce Bangladesh’s relevance as an independent nation through limiting her power to formulate national policies. The strategic trap was set for Bangladesh in the form of ‘25 year friendship treaty’ which took away most, if not all, options for Bangladesh to independently establish foreign, defense, and economic relations with other nations in the world. I would like to briefly mention a few clauses of the ‘25 year friendship treaty’ that had a deleterious effect on our foreign, defense, and economic interests:
Article 4: Both the nations will hold regular meetings with each other at all levels to discuss major international issues for mutual benefit.
Article 5: Both the nations will cooperate with each other in the fields of trade, transport and communications on the basis of equality, mutual benefit and the most favored nation principle.
Article 8: None of the nations will ever enter into a military alliance against each other and will refrain from allowing a third party from using their soil for military purposes that could constitute a threat to national security of either nations.
Article 9: Both the nations will refrain from providing any assistance to a third party taking part in an armed conflict against either of the nations to ensure regional peace and security.
Article 10: Neither of the party will undertake any commitment, secret or open, toward one or more states, which may violate the spirit of the treaty.
Article 4 practically eliminated Bangladesh’s power to devise an independent foreign policy and made it compulsory for Bangladesh to consult India about any major foreign policy matter.
Article 5 forced Bangladesh to confer most favored nation status on India to clear the way for India to capture Bangladesh’s economic market without any restrictions, but Bangladesh being a smaller economy was unable to avail itself of the opportunities of most favored nation status.
Article 8 ensured that if there was a military conflict between Bangladesh and India, Bangladesh, as a weaker power, could not seek help from outside world to protect its territorial integrity.
Article 9 was included to protect India’s strategic interest in its insurgency infested North Eastern states by imposing restrictions on Bangladesh to provide help and support to the insurgents, but India itself broke the sanctity of this clause by providing military and political assistance to Shanti Bahini in Chittagong Hill Tracts.
Article 10 restricted Bangladesh’s power to sign a defense deal with a third party to improve its armed forces.
By dint of this treaty India was able to diminish Bangladesh’s power to protect herself and the right to establish political and economic relations with other nations independently and consequently became the de-facto power over Bangladesh to whom the new born country had to depend for her security and economic development only to lose her relevance as a sovereign nation. Thus the entrapment of Bangladesh was complete.
Political change in 1975 and new equation in Indo-Bangla relationship
After the independence, the war ravaged country needed solid leadership with political maturity to overcome the seemingly insurmountable problems created by nine month long war of liberation and steer the nation to build a society free from corruption, deprivation and exploitation through creating national unity, establishing rule of law, strengthening democratic institutions, and creating economic opportunities for the people. Unfortunately, within three years of its rule, the new government banned all but four state owned national newspapers, dissolved the parliament to create one party rule, put incompetent party men in different state owned industrial establishments, neglected and humiliated the military, raised an alternative security agency to suppress oppositions that destroyed all hopes for the new born country to establish democracy and attain economic self sufficiency. This created widespread discontent throughout the country which resulted in a military coup in 1975 to end the rule of this unpopular regime.
The new government was installed and gradually undertook plethora of measures to restore law and order of the country, to bring back discipline in economic sector, to lift ban on national newspapers and political parties, to increase budgetary allocation for the defense forces, and to change foreign policy direction to establish close and productive relationships with China, the U.S.A., Europe, and the Middle Eastern countries so as to diminish Indian influence over the nation created through signing of the controversial 25 year friendship treaty. The inevitable result of such a drastic measure by the new government of Bangladesh was confrontation with India which saw it as an attempt to challenge its supremacy in the region and considered it a security, political, and strategic threat from a country which it helped gain independence from Pakistan. Strategically Bangladesh was too important for India to let it slip off her radar so they adopted a new set of strategies to keep Bangladesh within her sphere of influence in light of new political reality. The next section of this article will discuss the strategic importance of Bangladesh and elaborate the strategies India had undertaken to get a firm hold on Bangladesh.
Strategic importance of Bangladesh
Despite her small size, Bangladesh does have certain geographical advantages that make her important to regional and extra regional powers which may drag her into a complex strategic scenario created due to rivalries between big powers. Bangladesh may be seen as a key player in strategic game plans of India, Pakistan, the U.S.A. and China because of the following reasons:
1. Bridge between India and North East: The unique geographic location of Bangladesh which cuts the troubled North East region of India off from mainland constitutes a significant security weak point for India for the fact that the region shares border with China and that various insurgent groups are active within the region who are fighting against the Indian government for self determination. In light of their experience in Indo-China war in 1962, the Indian defense planners consider the strategic chicken neck to be inadequate and see Bangladesh to be the safest and the shortest route to transport military logistics to North East region in case of a military conflict between India and China in the future. A strategic corridor through Bangladesh is also seen as important to conduct sustained military campaign against the insurgent groups in North East.
The corridor through Bangladesh has economic significance as well because it is the most cost effective route to connect North East with the rest of India for the transshipment of industrial goods to and from North Eastern states, which is vital to improve the economic condition of this land locked region.
2. Bridge between SAARC and ASEAN: Bangladesh, which is seen as a bridge between SAARC and ASEAN, also has enormous geographic advantages for its proximity to Myanmar and other South East Asian nations to promote interregional economic, political and security cooperation. Once connected via Asian Highway and Trans-Asian Railway, the South and South East Asian nations will be using Bangladesh as the main transit point to increase economic interactions amongst themselves. Bangladesh with appropriate policies and infrastructures in place will be playing pivotal role in defining the direction of economic relations between the two emerging regional groups.
3. Gateway to Bay of Bengal: Bangladesh is considered the gateway to Bay of Bengal with its 45000 sq. miles of sea territory in which lies valuable marine resources such as hydrocarbon, fisheries etc. Its well developed sea ports offer both economic and military opportunities because India can use the port facilities to increase trade with its land locked North East region while other South and South East Asian countries and China can use the same facilities to increase interregional economic interactions. With the ambition to protect the oil transshipment and trade routes in the Indian Ocean, the Chinese navy is making rapid progress in developing relations with the coastal nations such as Myanmar and Bangladesh to gain access to their port facilities so as to conduct sustained naval operations in the sea. In light of recently concluded Indo-U.S. Strategic agreement, it can be assumed that the U.S.A might also seek similar facilities from Bangladesh as a response to Chinese naval presence in the Bay of Bengal.
4. Energy security: Because of her burgeoning population, high economic growth, and rapid industrialization, India has become the sixth largest energy consumer in the world, but she has to import oil to meet 70% of her domestic demand which cost 40% of her total export earnings. She has to diversify import sources for uninterrupted supply of energy, but due to international politics importing hydrocarbon from Iran and Venezuela has become uncertain leaving Bangladesh and Myanmar as only cheap and secure sources of energy supply. While Bangladesh has a speculative gas reserve of 33 TCF, its proven reserve is only 12 -15 TCF which is inadequate to meet its own domestic demand so the government has already decided against exporting gas to other countries unless new reserves are found. Even though Bangladesh has expressed her inability to export gas at the moment, India considers Bangladesh a major source of energy in the long run because of its potentials to discover huge hydrocarbon reserves in the Bay of Bengal. Bangladesh also is the most cost effective route for India to import gas from Myanmar, therefore, Bangladesh may emerge as a significant player in regional strategic energy game.
5. Balance of power: Bangladesh is significant because of the complex strategic scenario that has emerged due to India’s strategic alliance with the U.S.A to contain China and its rivalry with Pakistan for regional supremacy. India has to take cognizance of the fact that Bangladesh has established deep military relations with China and repaired her relations with Pakistan to correct the problem in balance of power in her relation with India. So, the possible military role of Bangladesh in case of a war either between India and China or between India and Pakistan could be a strategic concern for India.
Indian strategies to dominate Bangladesh
In light of Bangladesh’s endeavor to take control of her own affairs and her attempt to seek greater independence in foreign policy matters, India formulated a set of strategies to isolate, intimidate, and coerce Bangladesh to submit to Indian domination to reap the strategic benefits of break up of Pakistan. The following strategies have been put into action by Indian foreign and defense services to create pressure on Bangladesh:
1. Delaying tactics to solve bilateral problems: Having shared land and maritime borders, both Bangladesh and India should have demarcated their borders based on mutual cooperation, trust, and interest for peaceful co-existence, but regrettably, despite a series of diplomatic efforts by Bangladesh, India refused to respond adequately so as to resolve border disputes in an amicable fashion and employed a delaying tactics to create pressure on Bangladesh. Bangladesh, on the other hand, showing political maturity and the spirit of amicable co-existence has already ratified the border agreement signed between the two governments in 1974 and also made several diplomatic moves to demarcate maritime border only to be frustrated by lukewarm Indian response. Non ratification of the border agreement by India and its reluctance to find solution to maritime border dispute has caused a gradual deterioration in bilateral relations giving birth to mutual suspicion and mistrust.
2. Show of force: The aggressive posture of its border security forces along 4096 km. Indo-Bangla border and the deployment of its navy near a disputed Island in the Bay of Bengal named South Talpatti in the 80s are signals that in case Bangladesh fails to accommodate Indian interests causing further deterioration in bilateral relations, India will not hesitate to use military power against Bangladesh.
3. Policy of supporting secessionist movements in Bangladesh: Chittagong Hill Tracts, which is one tenth of the total size of the country, with its enormous natural resources and strategic geographic location is vital for the existence of Bangladesh. Taking advantage of geographic proximity to its Tripura state and the desire of the local Chakma tribes for greater autonomy with an ultimate goal of creating Jumma land—an independent state for Chakmas— India used its military and intelligence resources to provide help and support to Shanti Bahini. The surreptitious Indian involvement in providing money and weapons to tribal insurgents in the Chittagong Hill Tracks since 1976 was acknowledged by Bimal Chakma—a Shanti Bahini official– in an interview with ‘The New York Times’ in June 11, 1989. India used the insurgents against Bangladesh as a tool to gain political, and economic concessions which she would not othrwise be able to extract from the government of Bangladesh. Finally, Bangladesh entered into a peace agreement with Shanti Bahini in 1997 to end insurgency and restore law and order in Chittagong Hill Tracks, but the security and intelligence agencies of the country are still convinced that a lot of ex-Shanti Bahini members and other terrorists are still getting help from Indian security agencies and are hiding in the North East states of India.
4. Policy of proving Bangladesh as a safe haven for Indian insurgents: Because of India’s step motherly attitude towards its landlocked North Eastern states, a growing sense of deprivation, exploitation and insecurity is prevalent among the people of this region, which has contributed to give birth to a number of insurgent groups who have taken up arms against their own government for self-determination. India’s myopic decision to crush insurgency through military means without finding the root causes to better understand the problem and the absence of a mature policy of providing economic and social incentives to remove inequalities have created myriad of problems causing further alienation of indigenous people. India in an attempt to portray itself as a victim of terrorism is now trying to find a scapegoat in Bangladesh to blame for the insurgency to conceal its failure to contain insurgencies in the North East and disprove its own involvement in secessionist movement in Chittagong Hill Tracks.
5. Media propaganda: Notwithstanding its small landmass, Bangladesh, in terms of population, is the eighth largest country in the world and a home for 130 million Muslims. She has been playing a major role in international peace efforts and war against terrorism through contributing the second highest troops to U.N missions and introducing tough anti terrorism ordinance with a provision of death sentence for those convicted of terrorism. The then U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns termed Bangladesh as a unique example of democracy in South Asia region, and as a model for democracy and tolerance by Harry K Thomas—ex U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh. Disregarding the support and appreciation of International community for Bangladesh’s role in the war against terrorism, Indian media keeps inventing fictitious stories about Bangladesh’s alleged inability to respond to the security needs of India, in particular, and the world, in general to create pressure on the government of Bangladesh. But the fact of the matter is, Bangladesh takes regional and global security matters seriously and working closely with the international community to stop its soil from being used by elements inimical to regional and global security. It can be mentioned that the international community including the United States has welcomed Bangladesh’s dismantling of the terror network of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and the execution of its top leaders after following due process of law and termed Bangladesh as a valuable partner in war against terror..
6. Trade imbalance: In bilateral trade relations with its neighbors, India follows a policy of deriving maximum benefits by securing duty free access for its commodities and cornering other smaller regional countries by not allowing them similar privileges and imposing non tariff barriers on their exports. Bangladesh is a victim of the same exploitative Indian trade strategy and suffers from a trade deficit to the amount of $2 billion with India which can be attributed to non removal of tariff and non tariff barriers on its exports. To offset the negative impact of this yawning trade gap, so far no significant amount of investments and loans were made available to Bangladesh by India.
7. Water sharing: The Indian strategy of bilateral ism and non implementation of water sharing treaties has caused enormous difficulties to its lower riparian neighbors because India uses prevailing asymmetry of power to its own advantage to deprive its neighbors of their due share of water. This has caused enormous ecological damage to riverine Bangladesh as supply of water during dry season has dwindled at an alarming rate.
Asymmetry in power and strategic options for Bangladesh
With 20 times larger landmass, 10 times larger population, and 10 times larger military, India is placed in an advantageous position to negotiate with Bangladesh from a position of strength to define the bilateral relation that suits its own political, strategic, and economic interests.
Being the weaker party, Bangladesh has to be creative in devising strategies to utilize India’s geographic and security vulnerabilities to its advantage by using geographical advantages, forming alliances with strong friendly nations and being part of powerful international security forums to reduce its own strategic vulnerabilities that arise from asymmetry in power vis a vis India and protect its strategic, political and economic interests.
The tables below demonstrate comparative military and economic power of both the nations:
|
Comparative Indo-Bangla Economic Strength |
| Economic Indicators |
India |
Bangladesh |
|
| GDP (PPP) |
$3.267 trillion |
$224 billion |
|
| GDP – per capita (PPP) |
$2,800 |
$1,500 |
|
| Exports |
$175.7 billion |
$13.97 billion |
|
| Imports |
$287.5 billion |
$20.17 billion |
|
| Reserves of foreign exchange |
$250 billion |
$5.934 billion |
|
| Debt |
$163.8 billion |
$21.72 billion |
Source: CIA fact book
|
Comparative Indo-Bangla Military Strength |
| Countries |
Army |
Navy |
Air Force |
||||||
|
Men |
Tanks |
APC |
Artillery |
Men |
Ships |
Men |
Aircrafts |
||
| India |
1263000 |
3500 |
317 |
4350 |
53000 |
155 |
110000 |
738 |
|
| Bangladesh |
150000 |
200 |
250 |
200 |
15000 |
83 |
17000 |
83 |
|
Source: Official military websites, Jane’s Defence weekly, and csis.org
The government of Bangladesh will define the responsibilities of different agencies to design, implement, and enforce strategies to deal with existing power inequalities with India, and they will also establish policies to review the current strategies to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses to ensure effectiveness to respond to current risks and to adjust to future risks.
No single strategy is enough to deal with a country as big and powerful as India, so Bangladesh has to employ several different strategies to diminish India’s strategic advantages over Bangladesh through identifying India’s security weak points and using them as Bangladesh’s own strategic assets, and through internationalizing bilateral issues to seek help from powerful friends and international forums so as to force India to resolve any disputes on the basis of justice, equality and mutual respect.
In light of the above discussion, Bangladesh may employ following strategies to protect its national interest vis a vis India:
- Diplomacy: To use bilateral diplomatic channels to resolve disputes in an amicable manner, and if that fails then use regional forums to raise the issues and involve other regional actors in the dispute resolution processes, and if still that doesn’t work then use the United Nations to take diplomatic actions to prevent disputes from escalating into conflicts.
- International security forums: To make exhaustive efforts to raise bilateral security issues with India in ASEAN Regional Forum in an attempt to engage all the members of the forum in constructive security dialogues to resolve disputes through confidence building or preventive diplomacy.
- Strategic alliance: To form strategic alliance with China to obtain security guarantee in the event of a military conflict with India, and to obtain political guarantee that China will use her veto power to thwart Indian attempt to use the United Nations Security Council to legalize its actions with respect to disputes with Bangladesh. Bangladesh will also work with China on matters that affect Chinese security interests based on mutual cooperation, interest, and utmost respect for each others sovereignty.
- Strategic chicken neck: To consider the ‘chicken neck’ as strategic asset and take political decision based on national consensus to not allow India to get transit rights on a bilateral basis through Bangladesh to transport goods, military or industrial, to its North East region. This will give Bangladesh a clear strategic advantage over India because the latter will be forced to rely on Bangladesh for the stability and economic development of its North East region.
- Military strength: To gain substantial military power to tie the entire Eastern Command of India in a long term war to cause erosion in its ability to fight a simultaneous war against Bangladesh, and China or the insurgents in North East region, and give Pakistan an opportunity to escalate the dispute over Kashmir into a major conflict on the Western side.
To the path of cooperation and partnership
Despite a few irritants in their bilateral relations, Bangladesh and India, being so close neighbors and part of so many regional and international forums, should try to take solid actions to minimize differences to foster understanding and cooperation in various socio-economic and security issues for amicable co-existence and regional stability. The following set of actions are recommended to achieve a peaceful bilateral relation:
- To promote regional cooperation to harness water resources for the benefit of agriculture and electricity production
- To provide duty free access for each others commodities to promote greater economic cooperation
- To take prompt diplomatic actions to demarcate land and maritime borders in the spirit of justice, equity and good neighborliness
- To work closely to combat sea piracy, illegal arms trade, drug trafficking, and human trafficking for the sake of regional security and stability
- To create culture of non-interference in each others internal affairs to promote trust, confidence, and cooperation
http://www.bdsdf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=33265&pid=85001&st=0&#entry85001
Filed under: Religion
When, Where The Pope Inspires No Hope
By Nicola Nasser
Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to be the third pontiff to visit the Holy Land from 8 – 15 May, following in the footsteps of Paul VI in 1964 and John Paul II in 2000, on a mission officially described as a “pilgrimage” and one of “peace and reconciliation.”
However, the Pope will be stepping into “a diplomatic minefield,” where the Catholic highest spiritual authority will be unmercifully scrutinized by the protagonists of the one hundred year old Arab – Israeli conflict for the Holy Father’s every step, word and handshake, which would force him into the defensive in an impossible balancing act that will rule out any hope his presence is supposed to inspire, especially among the down-trodden Arabs of Palestine, whether those who are “Israelis” living as second class citizens since 1948 or those Palestinians living under the Israeli military occupation since 1967.
Even the pontiff’s own Catholic diminishing flock in the Holy Land seems in controversy over the timing and the itinerary of his pilgrimage. “We will ask him why he came, what he intends on saying … and why he isn’t coming to Gaza,” Father Manuel Mussalam, the pastor of the only Catholic church of about 300 believers in Gaza, out of 3000 Christians in the Israeli besieged Mediterranean strip, was quoted by AFP as asking. “We’ll tell him that this is not the right moment to come and visit the holy places, while Jerusalem is occupied,” Mussalam added.
In November 2006, long before Gaza Strip came under the control of the Islamic movement Hamas, which is cited as the casus belli for the Israeli latest three – week bloody and destructive war on Gaza as well as for the nine – year old Israeli military blockade of 1.5 million Palestinians since 2000, Father Mussalam described the situation there: “Gaza cannot sleep! The people are suffering unbelievably. They are hungry, thirsty, have no electricity or clean water. They are suffering constant bombardments and sonic booms from low flying aircraft… They have no income, no opportunities to get food and water from outside and no opportunities to secure money inside of Gaza. They have no hope and no love. These actions are War Crimes!”
Vindicating Mussalam’s statement, the World Bank reported on April 24 that a serious environmental threat is evolving in Gaza where only one tenth of water meets the world health standards, a fact that is responsible for a quarter of the disease cases, and creating a water crisis similar to that in Sudan and Congo.
Nonetheless, the Holy See is determined to rule out Gaza from the Pope’s itinerary. In a recent letter to the Vatican 40 prominent Christians from the occupied Palestinian territories appealed to the Holy See to add Gaza to his itinerary. They could not understand how the Pope has been to Auschwitz to pray for the people murdered there, “as a duty to truth and to those that suffered,” as he said, but could not similarly heal the wounds of those who are still suffering in Gaza.
The Vatican cites security reasons, according to the spokesman of the Apostolic Nuncio to Israel, Father Peter Madros. Israel recently barred the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Antonio Franco, from Gaza. But security did not prevent Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General from visiting Gaza when the guns were still smoking, nor did it prevent Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, to name only a few.
The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Fouad Twal, in an interview provided by the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land and published by Zenit.org on April 22, acknowledged that the Pope’s trip has undoubtedly a “political dimension”: “We mustn’t fool ourselves: there is 100% a political dimension … everything will have a political connotation. Here we breathe politics, our oxygen is politics.” But Twal has three explanations. First, “it is difficult to find a good balance and to maintain it.” Second, “imagine the negative consequences it would have on the pilgrimage industry, if the Pope himself was afraid of coming on pilgrimage.” Third, “what should be done? Wait for better times … until the Palestinian question is resolved? I’m afraid that two or three Sovereign Pontiffs will pass before it is definitively settled.”
The three reasons Twal cited are shocking, but his conclusion devastates whatever hope the papal visit might inspire: “The more the Vatican is a friend of Israel, the more it will be able to draw profit,” otherwise, “we will all lose, we Christians and we Arabs”!
When His Holiness is to meet on April 14 with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has dispelled all hopes for even the resumption of a peace process, let alone peace, both by his on-record political platform as well as by the composition of his extreme right ruling coalition, and when he will meet with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem, the spiritual capital of Christianity and Islam which his Israeli hosts are determined to Judaise as theirs only eternal capital, and to visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, the Islamic Al-Buraq Wall as the Jewish Western (Wailing) Wall of the Temple, and when Israel forces his protocol team to drop from the list of his Arab audience in Nazareth the Palestinian mayor of Sukhnin, Mazen Ghanaim, because he rallied against the Israeli war on Gaza, then the itinerary of his pilgrimage could be described as anything but being apolitically balanced when Gaza is ruled out.
In his Easter message on April 12, Benedict XVI noted the world food shortage, the financial turmoil, the old and new forms of poverty, the disturbing climate change, the violence and deprivation, “the ever present threat of terrorism,” to conclude that, “it is urgent to rediscover grounds for hope,” and urged his audience to spread the kind of hope that inspires courage to do good even when it costs dearly. But his oversight that did not make him mention military occupation and the long standing refugee problem emanating therefrom, as it is the case in Palestine, to where he is heading as a pilgrim, dispels any hope that he will say, let alone do, anything that would inspire hope.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli – occupied Palestinian territories.
http://www.countercurrents.org/nasser110509.htm
Filed under: USA
Trilateral Commission:
World Shadow Government
Although the initial arrangements for the commission were laid out in a series of meetings held at the Rockefeller’s famous Pocantico Hills estate outside New York City, Rockefeller first introduced the idea of the commission at an annual meeting of the Bilderberg group, this one held in Knokke, Belgium in the spring of 1972.
RULING CLASSES UNITE
“The Commission’s purpose is to engineer an enduring partnership among the ruling classes of North America, Western Europe and Japan — hence the term ‘Trilateral’ — in order to safeguard the interests of Western capitalism in an explosive world. The private commission is attempting to mold public policy and construct a framework for international stability in the coming decades.
David Rockefeller and Brzezinski then began the process of selecting from among the “Trilateral” nations the several hundred elite power brokers who would be permitted to join in Trilateral policymaking in the coming years.
Rockefeller had longtime ties to the local Atlanta political and economic Establishment. In fact, much of Rockefeller’s personal investment portfolio is in Atlanta real estate. (According to David Horowitz, co-author of The Rockefellers, “Atlanta is Rockefeller Center South.”)
From that point on, it was all cut and dried. According to Goldwater: “Rockefeller and Brzezinski found Carter to be their ideal candidate. They helped him win the Democratic nomination and the presidency.
The CFR and the Trilateral Commission …
dominate key positions in America’s government, military, industries, media outlets, educational foundations and institutions.
