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.
* * *
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.
* * *
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.”
* * *
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". ]
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.
Playing the Fear Card : Diverting Attention from the BDR Massacre Probe?
Dr. K. M. A. Malik
The recent (April 12-13) visit to Dhaka by India ’s foreign secretary Mr Shiv Shanker Menon has raised a lot of questions and speculations. He landed in Dhaka without being invited by the foreign office and met with prime minister Sheikh Hasina and army chief Gen. Moeen, few junior ministers and foreign secretary M. Touhid Hossain. Few details of his discussions with the Bangladesh authorities were made public. It was initially suggested in Dhaka media that he had invited some Bangladesh officials to visit the controversial Tipaimukhi Dam project on the Indian side of the Barak river. But nobody believed this cock and bull story. It was also assumed that the discussions had involved bilateral issues such as cross border terrorism and infiltration, road and river transit facilities, use of the Chittagong port facilities for transporting goods to India ’s north east regions, opening up Bangladesh market for Indian exports and investments, etc. But these are also long-standing issues and could not possibly prompt the Indian official’s surprise visit to Dhaka .
In principle, there is nothing wrong in India ’s foreign secretary visiting Bangladesh by arrangement with foreign ministry to discuss issues that affect the interests of both countries. But there are questions regarding the abrupt timing and the undiplomatic manner in which the visit was conducted. Under normal protocol, Mr. Menon should have met with his Bangladesh counterpart Mr. Hossain to discuss any relevant issue and then probably could have visited the ministers as a matter of courtesy. Instead, he first met with prime minister Sheikh Hasina, without anybody else being present, and then with army chief, Gen. Moeen, obviously to discuss some ‘secret’ issues or a hidden agenda. Naturally one may ask the question: Can Bangladesh foreign secretary go to New Delhi and meet with the Indian prime minister and India ’s army chief on a very short notice and bypassing the South Block? What message Mr. Menon conveyed to Gen. Moeen that cannot be made public ? And is it within the normal protocol for a foreign civil bureaucrat to call on the army chief of another sovereign country? Has Bangladesh under the new regime already become another Bhutan or a satellite state of India ?
The true purpose of the Indian official’s emergency visit to Dhaka is shrouded in mystery. An initial report on April 15 (2009) in The Indian Express [1] revealed that “Menon emphasised the need to crack down on elements that aim to destabilise peace and security in the two countries.” Menon was said to be “very satisfied” with the discussion in Dhaka .
The nature of the ‘elements’ to be cracked down was not made explicit, but one can easily understand that he was talking about the ‘Islamic’ terrorists and ULFA and other insurgents in India’s north east. But these issues again are not new; Indian rulers embedded have been raising these issues for more than a decade now, mainly to corner Bangladesh in international arena and to justify their ever-increasing militarism and subversion in Bangladesh and other neighbouring countries.
Another story on the purpose of Mr. Menon’s visit, according to a report in The Indian Express on April 18 (2009) [2], was to ‘warn’ Dhaka of a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Hasina. The report again said that there was a plot by ‘terrorists’ to target the new Sheikh Hasina Government, which “prompted India to go ahead and warn the Bangladesh top brass of the threat. Given the sensitivity of the information, Menon himself went to Dhaka to convey the information.” Menon also “exchanged notes with his counterpart on the activities of the radical groups operating in Bangladesh and are suspected to have played a role in the recent BDR massacre.”
The plot to assassinate Sheikh Hasina was given extra coverage in the Ananda Bazar Potrika of Kolkata on the same day (April 18, 2009) [3]. The story, written by Mr. Joyanta Ghosal, dealt with the recent BDR rebellion in Dhaka (February 25-26, 2009) and said that the plot was aimed at killing Sheikh Hasina and destabilising her government by ‘Islamic terrorists’. Mr. Ghosal blamed the outlawed ‘Harkat-Ul-Jihad – Bangladesh (HUJI-B) for two earlier attempts to assassinate Sheikh Hasina.
Mr. Ghosal also engaged in shameless fabrication and propaganda against the BDR forces. He alleged that on April 18, 2001, BDR forces under the command of Maj. Gen. Fazlur Rahman abducted and killed a number of BSF forces (Padua–Roumari border area) which was an act of aggression against India and also had militant (Jongi) links.
This type of propaganda carried by the ‘big brothers’ in India and supported by some of their ‘little brothers’ in Bangladesh is clearly motivated. It is clearly directed against the BDR forces by portraying them as aggressors and main barrier for peace along the border. However, for the sake of truth, it should be noted that on April 18, 2001, a contingent of heavily armed BSF forces forcibly entered into Bangladesh territory in Boraibari (Roumari) and faced a fierce resistance by the local BDR soldiers and Bangladesh villagers. About 18 BSF intruders were killed, all inside Bangladesh territories, which confirmed that it was BSF that was the intruder and aggressor and that BDR only did what was required of them, that is, to defend their country’s lands and people from foreign aggression. It is a shame on the part of Bangladesh governments and the self-styled ‘pro-liberation intellectuals’ that the BDR soldiers and common citizens (some of them gave their lives) who faced the enemy aggression have not been accorded their due honour and recognition. A nation that does not honour its heroes, inevitably end up being ruled by cowards, villains and traitors.
That the Indian official went to Dhaka to have exclusive meetings with the prime minister and the army chief just to warn Dhaka of a possible plot to assassinate Sheikh Hasina does not seem credible either. Even if there were a plot, Indian government could have simply passed on the specific information to Dhaka without the necessity of any controversial visit. In recent years, Bangladesh army together with different security and intelligence agencies have suffered setbacks due to a variety of reasons, but the country is still capable of protecting her prime minister by taking the necessary security measures.
The most likely reason for Mr. Menon’s unscheduled visit was probably connected with the investigations of the BDR massacre on February 25-26. By now, Bangladesh army’s own probe committee must have some definite idea about the real criminals and traitors within the BDR ranks as well as their external masterminds. Whether they will disclose the details (or will be allowed to do so) is another matter. But we want to know. Our people want to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The nation would not accept any cover up.
The tragic event has shaken in a very significant way the very fabric of Bangladesh state and its defence forces. The ruling government and their Indian ‘friends’ have been dishing out what seems to be a propaganda ploy by suggesting the involvement of, in their words, ‘anti-liberation forces’, HUJI-B/JMB, opposition Jamat or a section of BNP. Hundreds of BDR forces who took part in the conspiracy and/or the actual mayhem have been taken into custody and being interrogated. But nothing concrete has resulted so far. The investigations that should have taken only one week to finish according to the boastful Home Minister’s original announcement have now dragged on for nearly two months, without any immediate end in sight. The process is very complicated and may take some time, but there is a growing concern regarding the true intentions of the BAL government, since a national tragedy is being manipulated for political purposes.
It is now known that the trial of the BDR personnel involved in the Peelkhana crime would be held under military rules. It is most likely that all those found guilty in the murderous campaign would be given severe punishment including death sentence. But these are the foot soldiers. Many of them would pay a very high price for being involved (willingly or unwillingly) in somebody else’s deadly conspiracy.
But what about those who masterminded the commando-style operation to destroy the country’s defence forces? What about those elements belonging to the ruling BAL party who held conspiratorial meetings before the actual event on February 25? What about those ruling party MPs and leaders who were in contact with the BDR rebels? What about the crores of taka that were distributed within Peelkhana as Mr. Nanak said? What about the various killer groups and their leaders hiding in India during the last 5/6 years (to avoid ‘encounters’ with RAB) but returning home after the present government came to power in January last? Is it not mysterious that Indian Intelligence knows everything that happens or about to happen in Bangladesh while it fails to unearth hundreds of conspiratorial plots within its own boundaries?
What about the possible involvement of foreign commandos capable of planning and executing such a surgical strike against Bangladesh army? Who will gain most if the country and its defence forces collapse? Was the real mastermind ISI, R&AW, MOSSAD, CIA, MI6 or any other foreign agency determined to destroy Bangladesh defence forces? Was it, as alleged by some Indian media outlets, some elements of the Bangladesh Army itself who were supposed to be ‘anti-liberation’ and ousted by the ‘pro-liberation’ Gen. Moeen during the last two years?
We have to wait for few more months to see exactly what the government would do to identify the masterminds behind the Peelkhana conspiracy.
The threat to Sheikh Hasina’s life is not new; she had been targeted for assassination several times before by some ‘Islamic’ terrorist groups. But assassination of political leaders in South Asia (and also in other countries) is not something new and all the conspirators are not Muslim fanatics. The murderers of Sheikh Mujib and Ziaur Rahman were not ‘Islamic’ terrorists but agents of foreign powers. Assassins who took away the lives of M. K. Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Rajib Gandhi in India were Hindu or Shikh fanatics. The true identities of the assassins of Liakat Ali Khan and Benazir Bhutto are still shrouded in mystery. So, conspiracy for terrorism and assassination is not an exclusive reserve for some ‘Islamic terrorists’ alone, as implied by Indian media and their cohorts in Bangladesh . The culture of terrorism was first introduced in Bengal in early 20th century by the ‘nationalist’ Hindu youths (Anushiloni and similar underground groups). The culture of ‘suicide bombing’ was first introduced in the South Asian region by the Tamil Tigers (Hindu) in Sri Lanka .
The reports on the threat to Sheikh Hasina’s life by ‘Islamic terrorists’ are not ordinary ‘news stories’. These are designed to create an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty in the minds of Bangladeshi people as a part of ‘information war’ by India ’s rulers. This game of the ‘fear card’ is being played by Indian ‘information warriors’ in collusion with their surrogates and agents in Bangladesh . There are many historic and strategic reasons for this game against Bangladesh but the most important one at the moment is to divert public attention from exposing the real masterminds behind the Peelkhana massacre. The dark hands of R&AW and India’s other special forces (trained by MOSSAD) are widely believed to have planned and executed the commando-style operation at Peelkhana, with the use of some misguided BDR soldiers as front covers and cannon fodders. Whether Mr. Menon came to Dhaka to warn Sheikh Hasina and Gen. Moeen of ‘dire consequences’ in case India ’s involvement in the conspiracy is made public is not known. But such a possibility cannot be ruled out.
Let me conclude this essay with a quote from columnist M. Sahidul Islam, “The broader strategy involving the fate of Bangladesh is being implemented by phases. Now that the spotlight is being carefully shifted from the BDR tragedy to the removal of Khaleda Zia from her legitimately owned house, and to the bogey of Islamic militancy, we once again are scared to the hilt by the ongoing deflections and deceptions.” [4]
( Cardiff April 21, 2009)
Notes and references:
[1] http://www.indianexpress.com/news/india-tells-bangla-to-crack-down-on-elements-threatening-peace/447028/
[2] http://www.indianexpress.com/news/india-tells-bangla-to-watch-out-for-assassination-plot/448308/
[3] http://www.anandabazar.com/archive/1090418/index.htm
[4] http://www.weeklyholiday.net/front.html#02
[Dr. K. M. A. Malik is a former Professor of Chemistry, Dhaka University , and a Lecturer in Chemistry, Cardiff University (UK). He has published about 370 research papers in chemistry journals. As a freelance columnist, he also writes regularly on contemporary political and social issues. His published books include: Challenges in Bangladesh Politics - a Londoner’s view (2005); War on Terror - A pretext for new colonisation (2005), and Bangladesher Rajniti - Mookh O Mookhosh (2003). His e-mail contact: kmamalik@aol.com]
President Ahmadinejad’s Speech At The Durban Review Conference On Racism
The following is the speech of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the Durban Review Conference on racism in Geneva on April 20
Mr. Chairman, honorable secretary general of the United Nations, honorable United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Ladies and gentleman:
We have gathered in the follow-up to the Durban conference against racism and racial discrimination to work out practical mechanisms for our holy and humanitarian campaigns.
Over the last centuries, humanity has gone through great sufferings and pains. In the Medieval Ages, thinkers and scientists were sentenced to death. It was then followed by a period of slavery and slave trade. Innocent people were taken captive in their millions and separated from their families and loved ones to be taken to Europe and America under the worst conditions. A dark period that also experienced occupation, lootings and massacres of innocent people.
Many years passed by before nations rose up and fought for their liberty and freedom and they paid a high price for it. They lost millions of lives to expel the occupiers and establish independent and national governments. However, it did not take long before power grabbers imposed two wars in Europe which also plagued a part of Asia and Africa. Those horrific wars claimed about a hundred million lives and left behind massive devastation. Had lessons been learnt from the occupations, horrors and crimes of those wars, there would have been a ray of hope for the future.
The victorious powers called themselves the conquerors of the world while ignoring or down treading upon rights of other nations by the imposition of oppressive laws and international arrangements. Ladies and gentlemen, let us take a look at the UN Security Council which is one of the legacies of World War I and World War II. What was the logic behind their granting themselves the veto right? How can such logic comply with humanitarian or spiritual values? Would it not be inconformity with the recognized principles of justice, equality before the law, love and human dignity? Would it not be discrimination, injustice, violations of human rights or humiliation of the majority of nations and countries
The council is the highest decision-making world body for safeguarding international peace and security. How can we expect the realization of justice and peace when discrimination is legalized and the origin of the law is dominated by coercion and force rather than by justice and the rights?
Coercion and arrogance is the origin of oppression and wars. Although today many proponents of racism condemn racial discrimination in their words and their slogans, a number of powerful countries have been authorized to decide for other nations based on their own interests and at their own discretion and they can easily violate all laws and humanitarian values as they have done so.
Following World War II, they resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering and they sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in occupied Palestine. And, in fact, in compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive racist regime in Palestine.
The Security Council helped stabilize the occupying regime and supported it in the past 60 years giving them a free hand to commit all sorts of atrocities. It is all the more regrettable that a number of Western governments and the United States have committed themselves to defending those racist perpetrators of genocide while the awakened-conscience and free-minded people of the world condemn aggression, brutalities and the bombardment of civilians in Gaza. The supporters of Israel have always been either supportive or silent against the crimes.
Dear friends, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen. What are the root causes of the US attacks against Iraq or the invasion of Afghanistan?
Was the motive behind the invasion of Iraq anything other than the arrogance of the then US administration and the mounting pressures on the part of the possessors of wealth and power to expand their sphere of influence seeking the interests of giant arms manufacturing companies affecting a noble culture with thousands of years of historical background, eliminating the potential and practical threats of Muslim countries against the Zionist regime or to control and plunder the energy resources of the Iraqi people?
Why, indeed, almost a million people were killed and injured and a few more millions were displaced? Why, indeed, the Iraqi people have suffered enormous losses amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars? And why was billions of dollars imposed on the American people as the result of these military actions? Was not the military action against Iraq planned by the Zionists and their allies in the then US administration in complicity with the arms manufacturing countries and the possessors of wealth? Did the invasion of Afghanistan restore peace, security and economic wellbeing in the country?
The United States and its allies not only have failed to contain the production of drugs in Afghanistan, but the cultivation of narcotics has multiplied in the course of their presence. The basic question is that what was the responsibility and the job of the then US administration and its allies? Did they represent the countries of the world? Have they been mandated by them? Have they been authorized by the people of the world to interfere in all parts of the globe, of course mostly in our region? Are not these measures a clear example of egocentrism, racism, discrimination or infringement upon the dignity and independence of nations?
Ladies and gentlemen, who is responsible for the current global economic crisis? Where did the crisis start from? From Africa, Asia or from the United States in the first place then spreading across Europe and their allies?
For a long time, they imposed inequitable economic regulations by their political power on the international economy. They imposed a financial and monetary system without a proper international oversight mechanism on nations and governments that played no role in repressive trends or policies. They have not even allowed their people to oversea or monitor their financial policies. They introduced all laws and regulations in defiance of all moral values only to protect the interests of the possessors of wealth and power.
They further presented a definition for market economy and competition that denied many of the economic opportunities that could be available to other countries of the world. They even transferred their problems to others while the waves of crisis lashed back plaguing their economies with thousands of billions of dollars in budget deficit. And today, they are injecting hundreds of billions of dollars of cash from the pockets of their own people and other nations into the failing banks, companies and financial institutions making the situation more and more complicated for their economy and their people. They are simply thinking about maintaining power and wealth. They could not care any less about the people of the world and even their own people.
Mr. President, Ladies and gentlemen, Racism is rooted in the lack of knowledge concerning the root of human existence as the selected creature of God. It is also the product of his deviation from the true path of human life and the obligations of mankind in the world of creation, failing to consciously worship God, not being able to think about the philosophy of life or the path to perfection that are the main ingredients of divine and humanitarian values which have restricted the horizon of human outlook making transient and limited interests, the yardstick for his action. That is why evil’s power took shape and expanded its realm of power while depriving others from enjoying equitable and just opportunities of development.
The result has been the making of an unbridled racism that is posing the most serious threats against international peace and has hindered the way for building peaceful coexistence in the entire world. Undoubtedly, racism is the symbol of ignorance which has deep roots in history and it is, indeed, the sign of frustration in the development of human society.
It is, therefore, crucially important to trace the manifestations of racism in situations or in societies where ignorance or lack of knowledge prevails. This increasing general awareness and understanding towards the philosophy of human existence is the principle struggle against such manifestations, and reveals the truth that human kind centers on the creation of the universe and the key to solving the problem of racism is a return to spiritual and moral values and finally the inclination to worship God Almighty.
The international community must initiate collective moves to raise awareness in afflicted societies where ignorance of racism still prevails so as to bring to a halt the spread of these malicious manifestations.
Dear Friends, today, the human community is facing a kind of racism which has tarnished the image of humanity in the beginning of the third millennium.
World Zionism personifies racism that falsely resorts to religions and abuses religious sentiments to hide its hatred and ugly face. However, it is of great importance to bring into focus the political goals of some of the world powers and those who control huge economic resources and interests in the world. They mobilize all the resources including their economic and political influence and world media to render support in vain to the Zionist regime and to maliciously diminish the indignity and disgrace of this regime.
This is not simply a question of ignorance and one cannot conclude these ugly phenomena through consular campaigns. Efforts must be made to put an end to the abuse by Zionists and their political and international supporters and in respect with the will and aspirations of nations. Governments must be encouraged and supported in their fights aimed at eradicating this barbaric racism and to move towards reform in current international mechanisms.
There is no doubt that you are all aware of the conspiracies of some powers and Zionist circles against the goals and objectives of this conference. Unfortunately, there have been literatures and statements in support of Zionists and their crimes. And it is the responsibility of honorable representatives of nations to disclose these campaigns which run counter to humanitarian values and principles.
It should be recognized that boycotting such a session as an outstanding international capacity is a true indication of supporting the blatant example of racism. In defending human rights, it is primarily important to defend the rights of all nations to participate equally in all important international decision making processes without the influence of certain world powers.
And secondly, it is necessary to restructure the existing international organizations and their respective arrangements. Therefore this conference is a testing ground and the world public opinion today and tomorrow will judge our decisions and our actions.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, the world is going through rapid fundamental changes. Power relations have become weak and fragile. The sound of cracks in the pillars of world systems can now be heard. Major political and economic structures are on the brink of collapse. Political and security crises are on the rise. The worsening crisis in the world economy for which there can be seen no bright prospect, demonstrates the rising tide of far-reaching global changes. I have repeatedly emphasized the need to change the wrong direction through which the world is being managed today and I have also warned of the dire consequences of any delay in this crucial responsibility.
Now in this valuable event, I would like to announce to all leaders, thinkers and to all nations of the world present in this meeting and those who have a hunger for peace and economic well-being that the unjust economic management of the world is now at the end of the road. This deadlock was inevitable since the logic of this imposed management was oppressive.
The logic of collective management of world affairs is based on noble aspirations which centers on human beings and the supremacy of the almighty God. Therefore it defies any policy or plan which goes against the influence of nations. The victory of right over wrong and the establishment of a just world system has been promised by the Almighty God and his messengers and it has been a shared goal of all human beings from different societies and generations in the course of history. Realization of such a future depends on the knowledge of creation and the belief of the faithful.
The making of a global society is in fact the accomplishment of a noble goal held in the establishment of a common global system that will be run with the participation of all nations of the world in all major decision making processes and the definite root to this sublime goal.
Scientific and technical capacities as well as communication technology have created a common and widespread understanding of the world society and has provided the necessary ground for a common system. Now it is upon all intellectuals, thinkers and policy makers in the world to carry out their historical responsibility with a firm belief in this definite root. I also want to lay emphasis on the fact that Western liberalism and capitalism has reached its end since it has failed to perceive the truth of the world and humans as they are
It has imposed its own goals and directions on human beings. There is no regard for human and divine values, justice, freedom, love and brotherhood and it has based living on intense competition, securing individual and cooperative material interest.
Now we must learn from the past by initiating collective efforts in dealing with present challenges and in this connection, and as a closing remark, I wish to draw your kind attention to two important issues:
Firstly, it is absolutely possible to improve the existing situation in the world. However it must be noted that this could be only achieved through the cooperation of all countries in order to get the best out of the existing capacities and resources in the world. My participation in this conference is because of my conviction to these important issues as well as to our common responsibility of defending the rights of nations vis-à-vis the sinister phenomena of racism and being with you, the thinkers of the world.
Secondly, mindful of the inefficiency of the current international political, economic and security systems, it is necessary to focus on divine and humanitarian values by referring to the true definition of human beings based upon justice and respect for the rights of all people in all parts of the world and by acknowledging the past wrong doings in the past dominant management of the world, and to undertake collective measures to reform the existing structures.
In this respect, it is crucially important to rapidly reform the structure of the Security Council, including the elimination of the discriminatory veto right and to change the current world financial and monetary systems. It is evident that lack of understanding of the urgency for change is equivalent to the much heavier costs of delay
Dear Friends, beware that to move in the direction of justice and human dignity is like a rapid flow in the current of a river. Let us not forget the essence of love and affection. The promised future of human beings is a great asset that may serve our purposes in keeping together to build a new world.
In order to make the world a better place full of love and blessings, a world devoid of poverty and hatred, merging the increasing blessings of God Almighty and the righteous managing of the perfect human being, let us all join hands in friendship in the fulfillment of such a new world.
I thank you Mr. President, Secretary General and all distinguished participants for having the patience to listen to me. Thank you very much.
Filed under: USA
My dear Muhammad Ali:
I told you that it’s a funny world getting funnier. Many American analysts are saying that America’s real economic collapse could come by the end of this year. “It will come to be known as ‘The Crash of 09′, they say. Others, especially a Russian political analyst, are predicting its physical collapse too. There’s no doubt that the country is up the dirtiest of imaginable creeks without a paddle. But what’s amazing is that America remains mired in stunning denial, continuing to make bad situations worse with useless bailout plans and messing around with the world instead of facing up to the reality that its time as a hyper-power is up, that’s its economic system has failed and that its only recourse is to end its adversarial doctrine and get out of its lost wars as painlessly and honourably as possible. There’s no point in going on flogging dead horses. The only sensible thing that survival demands is to craft a new moral economic and financial system and a moral foreign policy.The deep recession verging on depression that we have seen so far was caused by the crash in the US housing market. Since other developed industrialised nations, especially of Europe, were aping the shenanigans of unchecked and poorly regulated American bankers and financiers, the collapse of their markets, banks and economies followed like dominoes. Iceland was the first to officially declare bankruptcy. Its GDP is only about $6.5 billion but its banks had lent something like $65 billion while its regulators were asleep on the wheel. Britain has not declared bankruptcy officially but we all know that it is bankrupt for all intents and purposes and none of its banks and financial institutions has any legs left.
However, this is only the aperitif. Wait for the crash of US commercial real estate, which analysts think will happen by autumn this year.
Shops are closing down and there’s no one to rent them. Companies are retrenching and freeing up a lot of office space or closing down entirely and vacating even more precious office space with no one to rent it again. Huge skyscrapers are becoming ghost-scrapers.
All this expensive commercial real estate is mortgaged to the hilt. With no rental income coming in, the loans against them will become difficult to service and there will be fearsome default. There’s insurance and re-insurance here also and the amounts involved are mind-boggling. No bailout plan would come even close to coping.
When the commercial real estate collapse comes, all hell will break loose. And if multinationals like General Motors and Ford call it a day, it won’t just be thousands upon thousands of people unemployed (though its heartless to use the word ‘just’ here). Two entire towns will be become ghost towns. That’s terrible. If you count the number of people – wives, children and parents – who are dependent on those incomes, it becomes worse than terrible. It becomes absolutely and totally unconscionable, while corrupt and greedy bankers and the likes of Bernie Madoff have made off with billions – perhaps trillions – of dollars and are still doing so because “our contracts say so.”
Then there is Professor Igor Nikolavich Panarin whom I came across in a December 2008 article by Andrew Osborne of the Wall Street Journal no less, not some fly-by-night rag. If he has got it right, next year will come to be known as ‘The Collapse of 2010′ for that is when the USA will disintegrate into six separate entities. Those six entities, says Prof Panarin, are The California Republic, The Central North American Republic, Atlantic America, The Texas Republic, Hawaii and Alaska going back to Russia.
With millions of Chinese living on America’s eastern seaboard (The People’s Daily’s circulation there alone is over five million) The California Republic, Prof Panarin thinks, will either be part of China or come under Chinese influence. The Central North American Republic will be part of Canada or under Canadian influence, Atlantic America may join the European Union, The Texas Republic will be part of Mexico or under Mexican influence and Hawaii will go either to Japan or China.
Prof Panarin is a former KGB analyst and a Russian professor of political science, Dean of the Ministry of the Foreign Affairs Diplomatic Academy in Moscow and author of several books on geopolitics. Thus one can hardly call him a fruitcake. Actually, he first made this prediction not after the economic meltdown that started last year but in Linz, Austria, in September 1998 in front of 400 delegates at a conference devoted to information warfare and the use of data to get an edge over a rival. Of course it was received with consternation. “When I pushed the button on my computer and the map of the United States disintegrated, hundreds of people cried out in surprise,” he says. Later, many delegates asked him to sign copies of the map. Its like when the French political scientist Emmanuel Todd made his famous forecast in 1976 about the collapse of the Soviet Union 15 years before it actually did and many people laughed. But Todd had the last laugh.
Prof Panarin doesn’t say that America’s collapse is a forgone conclusion. “There’s a 55-45 percent chance right now that disintegration will occur,” he says. But if it comes it will be driven by three factors – “mass immigration, economic decline and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar.
Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the US will break into six pieces… He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the US. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the Union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The US will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.” All we Pakistanis thus have to do is hang in there and soon America will not be meddling in our affairs any more, what to talk of General Patraeus’s adviser David Kilcullen saying that Pakistan could fall apart in five or six months.
It’s not easy to comprehend the collapse of an empire or a superpower. When termites are eating away at their vitals for years one cannot see it. People are too much in thrall of their power, wealth and panoply. Thus when the collapse comes it seems sudden, and takes people by surprise. “I went to sleep last night and when I woke up next morning the Soviet Union was gone.” The most powerful war machine ever built couldn’t save it. Remember the British Empire on which “the sun would never set”? It set so firmly that only six decades later Britain is not only bankrupt, it has become America’s appendage, a third rate power and could itself disintegrate soon with Scotland seceding. The history of the world is replete with the demise of civilisations, empires and superpowers. The graveyards of nations are full of their bones.
That there may be something to what Prof Panarin says is borne out by the fact that the late Bush Administration made contingency plans to impose martial law in case of economic collapse or massive and violent social unrest with blood on the streets.
His predictions seem plausible, even probable, if all the dire scenarios come right, as they have thus far. According to Rand Clifford the US has already made plans to “round up insurgent US citizens” and detain them in what are called “Rex 84″ camps. Plus they have made “safe facilities” for members of Congress and their families. A report by the Phoenix Business Journal says: “A new report by the US Army and War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.” The Journal’s story quote from the War College report: “Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defence establishment to reorient priorities in extremist to defend basic domestic order and human security.” It needs saying that the military regularly makes plans for the most dire of situations, however seemingly unlikely.
Let Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter and an early supporter of Barack Obama have the last word. The US is “going to have millions and millions of unemployed people really facing dire straits. And we’re going to be having that for some period of time before things hopefully improve. And at the same time there’s public awareness of this extraordinary wealth that was transferred to a few individuals at levels without historical precedent in America…hell there could even be riots.”
The writer is a senior political analyst E-mail:
humayun.gauhar@gmail.comThe Sugar-coated Poison: India’s offer of ‘help’ to restructure BDR
Dr. K. M. A. Malik
Introduction
The Indian Border Security Force (BSF) headed by its Director General (DG), M. L. Kumawat, and Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) led by its DG, Maj. Gen. Mainul Islam, had a three day ‘Border Coordination Conference’ last week (March 30-April 1, 2009) in New Delhi. This kind of conference is held more or less on yearly basis to discuss various problems along the Indo-Bangladesh border. And as usual, the BDR and BSF agreed to strengthen joint efforts for preventing trans-border crimes like illegal movements across the border, trafficking in women and children, drugs smuggling and gunrunning. The BDR chief on return home said on April 2 that both sides agreed for ‘closer cooperation’ between the two forces’ to deal with the complex range of issues on the border. He praised BSF for their professional role in maintaining peace and tranquility on the border during the recent BDR crisis [1].
We do not know exactly what was discussed and agreed upon in the latest meeting. Full details or records of the meeting are not available except few points on what both the BSF and BDR authorities want us to know. There lies the problem: the ordinary public in both India and Bangladesh are given only a partial picture of the situation, they are never presented with the ‘full story’. Although Bangladesh has been a victim of constant hostility and aggression along the border areas (hundreds of Bangladeshi civilians being abducted and killed by BSF every year) since its birth, its past and present rulers have never refrained from propagating the false idea that India is a ‘friendly neighbour’. Our people have been kept in the dark about the true design of BSF consistent with the policies of Indian rulers.
It has been reported that ‘the BSF chief praised Bangladesh government’s commitment not to allow use of Bangladesh territory for any activity against India [1], but it is not known if the BDR chief had also asked the Indian authorities not to allow different elements and outfits to use their territories for carrying out anti-Bangladesh activities [2]. It is also unknown if Gen. Islam has accepted the long-standing Indian allegation that the armed insurgents in India’s north east have hundreds of bases and training camps in Bangladesh and that Bangladesh security forces guided by Pakistan’s ISI provide active help to the insurgents to destabilize India. To our knowledge, this type of allegations (among many others), raised by India but denied by Bangladesh, has been a running theme in all past meetings between the two sides, especially on issues related to terrorism, security and border management.
The most significant, but not at all surprising, point is the offer of ‘Indian help’ by the BSF DG in ‘reorganizing’ BDR [3]. When asked how the Indian BSF would assist ‘reorganization’ of the BDR as reported by the Indian media, Gen. Islam said it could be through exchange of information between the two border guards. To another query about how some Indian media people had received information about the killing of BDR DG Shakeel Ahmed and other army officers on February 25-26 before the news broke out in Dhaka, the General said that ‘it was the responsibility of the Indian media to explain how they had received the information’ [1]. This was most probably not to imply that some Indian agents or pro-Indian sources were active inside Peelkhana or monitoring the tragic event from a very close distance from the very beginning of the tragedy. Such an implication, obviously, would have highly embarrassed the ‘friendly hosts’.
Awami League leaders linked with BDR Massacre?
It is now about 5-6 weeks that the Peelkhana massacre was perpetrated by the enemies of Bangladesh and her people. The ‘India-friendly’ government of Sheikh Hasina initially promised to find out the culprits within one week but nothing significant (apart from taking about 800 BDR soldiers in detention) has happened. The prime minister as well as her several cabinet colleagues have been blaming the ‘Islamic militants or (Jongis), opposing political parties and leaders as possible perpetrators even when the enquiries by government agencies and army are in progress. Obviously they have taken cue from the Indian propagandists linked with R&AW and are trying to divert public attention from the ‘real directors’ of the tragic drama. It has been already reported in the media that some Awami League leaders had prior contacts with some of the leaders of the BDR rebels and that they might have been involved in the conspiracy. According to a report in the American Chronicle, names of a number of leaders belonging to Sheikh Hasina’s party and supporters such as Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir, Mirza Azam, Jahangir Kabir Nanak, Barrister Fazle Noor Taposh, Hasanul Huq Inu, Rahsed Khan Menon, Abdul Jalil, Liakot Sikder, Sajeda Chowdhury, Joinal Hazari, Haji Mockbul, Shamim Osman, Abul Hasnat Abdullah, Pankaj Deb Nath, Bahauddin Nasim are already in the list of suspects in the BDR massacre case [4]. Instead of advising the civil and military investigators to question these and all other probable suspects outside the BDR forces, the prime minister and her commerce minister Faruk Khan who is ‘coordinating’ the enquiries are both saying different things on different occasions. Doubts are already being raised about the true motives of the government and if the results of the investigations would be published at all. The reason is that the government is trying to ‘discover’ a Jongi-Jamat-Pakistani link with the Peelkhana Massacre at the exclusion of any probable Indian link. If the first link cannot be established beyond doubt or if any Grand Alliance-Indian link is discovered, then one can rest assured that the investigations results would never be published.
Silence of the army chief
The government has shown utter incompetence and naivety in dealing with the Peelkhana crisis and its aftermath. They are playing dirty politics with the national tragedy. Surprisingly, the very talkative (and India-friendly) army chief, General Moeen, who played crucial role in bringing Sheikh Hasina back to power, has remained conspicuously silent since the Peelkhana massacre. Ordinary soldiers and most officers of the armed forces are blaming the army chief as well as the prime minister for ‘negligence’ of duty and their failure to respond in time to the SOS call from General Shakil before he and other army officers were gunned down on February 25.
During the last 2 years, Gen. Moeen has spent too much time in trying to restructure the country’s politics and publishing books rather than concentrating on the defence and security aspects of the state. At the present time he is allegedly interested more in getting another year’s extension to his service as army chief than in finding out the actual planners and instigators (foreign and local) of the Peelkana Massacre. Deaths of about ten BDR rebel soldiers while in custody for questioning and of the Imam of the Peelkhana Mosque seem to be ‘too many’ for accepting them as ‘natural’ and questions are being raised if these deaths are due to torture for extracting confession or to eliminate ‘wrong’ witnesses. It is very sad that all our institutions have become suspects in public eyes mainly because of the lack of transparency in the activities of our leaders.
It is no secret that Sheikh Hasina and her foreign mentors are implementing a controversial and highly disastrous ‘restructuring programme’ of the armed forces and intelligence agencies, and that Gen. Moeen is a partner in the process. The ‘restructuring programme’ involves the retirement and removal of officers allegedly sympathetic to BNP/Jamat or linked with ISI/Islamic terrorists. Sheikh Hasina’s controversial son, Sajib Wajed Joy, who lives in the USA and also claims to be the prime minister’s adviser, has openly argued that Bangladesh army is riddled with ‘Islamic fundamentalists’ and that it should be remodeled by recruiting members from the ‘secularist’ forces [5]. This essentially means that the armed forces must conform to the so-called pro-Awami League and pro Indian policies, even if these policies are detrimental to Bangladesh ’s security and national interests.
Restructuring of BDR with India ’s ‘help’?
Let us return to the question of India ’s ‘help’ in restructuring BDR. It is true that BDR rebellion on February 25-26 and the associated tragedy have exposed the vulnerability of the country’s border defence forces in particular and the armed forces in general. It is also very clear that something went wrong somewhere and it is absolutely important that existing deficiencies within these and intelligence agencies are pinpointed and remedial measures implemented for the sake of the country’s security and defence.
The new BDR DG has spoken about the need for restructuring and remodeling the border security force including the change of its name from Bangladesh Rifles to something different. Different people may have different views about the change of name but considering the nature and ferocity of the rebellion and the large number of active participants in the heinous crime within Peelkhana as well as desertion from duties by large number of soldiers at many border posts require that the rebels and their sympathizers should be excluded from the new force. BDR soldiers who did not rebel or were not associated with the rebels should not be punished by early retirement or by other means. New members should be recruited on the basis of traditional recruitment rules and not based on the so-called ‘secularist’ criteria as proposed by Mr. Sajib Wajed Joy. Of course, the matter relates to the defence forces and appropriate decisions should be taken on the basis of our own experts from the armed forces.
Bangladesh authorities should reject the so-called offer of help by India to reorganize BDR, since whatever may be the PR campaign, R&AW and/or another secret arm of Indian defence forces are widely suspected as the planner and instigator of the Peelkhana Massacre. Different pro-Indian people have tried to link the JMB-type ‘Islamic’ terrorist groups to the massacre, but investigations carried so far have not found any evidence for such a link. On the contrary, some of those arrested and/or suspected to be involved in the conspiracy belong to the Awami League and their allied groups [4]. Many of these elements, previously accused of toll-collection, smuggling, terrorism, murder, arson and other serious crimes, fled the country after 2001 when the BNP-led government came to power and were sheltered by India. Kolkata and some districts in West Bengal became a haven for these criminals. Many Awami League leaders including Nanak and Mirza Azam also fled the country and lived in India during the military-backed Fakhruddin government. It is highly probable that some of these elements were groomed by R&AW to act as their operatives in Bangladesh . It is very hard to prove these accusations with documentary evidence, but it is widely believed that the R&AW network in Bangladesh (and other neighbouring countries) is widespread incorporating elements within political, academic, legal, media, cultural, NGO, business and religious (including JMB) organizations. It is also highly probable that the civil administration, military and BDR forces and intelligence agencies have long been infiltrated by R&AW agents.
Considering the long-standing record of anti-Bangladesh, anti-Muslim covert and overt actions by India on different fronts, it would be foolish to accept India ’s offer of help to reorganize and restructure BDR. India has never wanted a sovereign Bangladesh with relatively strong and credible border and defence forces that, at least, can thwart all aggressive foreign designs; it wants a subservient neighbour with only a nominal defence capability, which can be blackmailed and kept under Delhi ’s hegemony.
Indian rulers often remind us of their help in Bangladesh Independence Struggle in 1971. We have never denied their help, especially the help provided by the Indian people in sheltering and feeding millions of refugees who were forced to cross over the border due to the barbarity of the Pakistani occupation forces. But the help provided by the Indian government and its armed forces was not that benign or one-sided. India ’s main purpose was to dismember and weaken Pakistan , its arch-enemy since 1947 and the main obstacle in realizing its geo-strategic aim of establishing itself as the undisputed leader in South Asia and Indian Ocean regions [6]. And India , indeed, has succeeded, to a great extent, to fulfill its strategic aims to get a ‘great power’ status. Nobody should ignore the break-up of Pakistan and creation of Bangladesh as a contributing factor to India ’s self-confidence and gradual rise as a significant economic and military power.
Tajuddin Ahmad’s seven-point secret agreement
That Indian rulers did not want a fully independent and sovereign Bangladesh, but a client state under its hegemony, from the very beginning was made clear in a less publicized seven-point document which Mr.. Tajuddin Ahmad, the prime minister of the Bangladesh government-in-exile in India in 1971, was obliged to sign as a condition for India’s direct military campaign in Bangladesh accelerate the defeat and surrender of the Pakistani occupation forces and to install a puppet government in power.
The seven-point document referred to above reads as follows [7]:
(1) A para-military armed force for Bangladesh will be raised under supervision of the Indian military experts; this force shall be stronger and more active than the regular armed forces of Bangladesh .
(2) Bangladesh shall procure all military equipment from India and under planned supervision of the Indian military experts.
(3) Bangladesh shall direct her foreign trade under supervision and control of the Indian government.
(4) Yearly and five-yearly development plans for Bangladesh shall conform to Indian development plans.
(5) Foreign policy of Bangladesh must be compatible with and conform to that of India .
(6) Bangladesh shall not unilaterally rescind any of the treaties without prior approval of the Indian government.
(7) In accordance with the treaties signed before December (1971) war of Pakistan and India , Indian force shall enter into Bangladesjh at any time and shall crush any resistance that may erupt there.
The above document should act as an eye-opener for all Bangladeshi citizens since it reveals the true nature of Indian ‘friendship and help’ towards Bangladesh and her people, right from the beginning of the liberation struggle. And there is no evidence to suggest that the India ’s mindset has changed even after 38 years to accept and respect Bangladesh ’s legitimate rights as a fully sovereign state.
Conclusion
The ‘India-friendly’ Hasina government, her top advisers, top military leaders and civil bureaucrats should remember that the people of Bangladesh have never wished to surrender to the dictates from Delhi and they will never do so without a fight. The present government has an overwhelming majority in the parliament, but they must not go against the collective will of our people and make our border and armed forces dependent on India ’s ‘help’. Any attempt to reduce the strength and status of our armed forces or the border security forces to the status of ‘Rakkhi Bahini’ under Indian advisers (as was done during 1972-75 during the first Awami League government) would have disastrous consequences for both the government and the country.
Notes and references:
[1] http://www.newagebd.com/2009/apr/03/front.html
[2] For detailed discussions on the Indo-Bangladesh border problems and BSF aggression (including Indira-Mujib Border Agreement (1974), please refer to the series of highly informative and analytical essays written by some prominent experts from Bangladesh and India and published in Bangladesh Defence Journal, September 2008, pp. 14-55.
[3] The topic was initially carried in the April 2 (2009) issues of only two (out of several dozens) daily newspapers in Dhaka : Prothom Alo (http://www.prothom-alo.com/archive/news_details_home.php?dt=2009-04-02&issue_id=1237&nid=MjI5MjY) and Naya Diganta (http://www.dailynayadiganta.com/2009/04/02/fullnews.asp?News_ID=137425&sec=1).
[4] http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/96992
[5] http://www.harvardir.org/index.php?page=article&id=1784&p=1
[6] This point is also confirmed by the Indian diplomat and writer, Mr. J. N. Dixit, in his comment, “Our political establishment, the media and academics are quite clear that India got involved in the Bangladesh liberation movement not only on the basis of human and political justification of the cause but also for meeting India’s own political and strategic interests” (J. N. Dixit, Liberation and Beyond, The University Press Ltd, Dhaka, 1999, p. 270).
[7] Oli Ahad, Jatio Rajniti (1945 to 1975), 2nd Ed. , Bangladesh Cooperative Book Society, Dhaka , p. 450. It is also said that Tajuddin Ahmad signed this infamous instrument for surrender to Indian hegemony against his will and that he fainted after he put his signature on the document.
( Cardiff , April 4, 2009)
Dr. K. M. A. Malik is a former Professor of Chemistry, Dhaka University , and a Lecturer in Chemistry, Cardiff University (UK). He has published about 370 research papers in chemistry journals. As a freelance columnist, he also writes regularly on contemporary political and social issues. His published books include: Challenges in Bangladesh Politics – a Londoner’s view (2005); War on Terror – A pretext for new colonisation (2005), and Bangladesher Rajniti – Mookh O Mookhosh (2003).. His e-mail contact: kmamalik@aol.com
South Asian Terrorism: All Roads Lead To The British Empire
By Ramtanu Maitra
This is the first part of a two-part series. Next week:“Baluchistan and FATA in Pakistan.”
The growing violence throughout Pakistan since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the Winter of 2001, the November 2008 attack on Mumbai, India, and many other smaller terrorist-directed killings in India, and the gruesome killing of at least 70 top Bangladeshi Army officers in a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed last month, were evidence that the terrorists have declared war against the sovereign nation-states in South Asia. The only bright spot in this context is Sri Lanka, where a powerful terrorist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), better known as the Tamil Tigers, are about to lose their home base. That, however, may not end the LTTE terrorism, particularly since it is headquartered in London, where many South Asian terrorists are maintained in separate cages for future use by British intelligence, with the blessings of Her Majesty’s Service.
Since none of the South Asian countries, where the terrorists are gaining ground, have, so far, shown the ability to evaluate, and thus, eliminate, the growth of this terrorism, it is necessary to know its genesis, and how it has affected the leaders of the South Asian nations to the detriment of their respective security. What is evident is that the South Asian terrorism has little to do with territorial disputes among nations, but everything to do with the past British colonial rule which poisoned the minds of the locals, so they have become disloyal to their own countries.
In this article, we will deal with the terrorism that continues to prosper in India’s northeast; and the terrorism in Sri Lanka, brought about by the British-induced ethnic animosity among its citizens. This history is the narration of a tragedy, since those who fought for independence in these South Asian nations, made enormous sacrifices to bring about their independence; many of those heroic figures turned out to be mental slaves of the British Empire, and pursued relentlessly the policies that the British had implemented to run their degenerate Empire.
India’s Northeast
Six decades after India wrested independence from its colonial rulers, its northeast region is a cauldron of trouble. Located in a highly strategic area, with land contiguous to five countries—Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and China—it is full of militant separatists, who take refuge in the neighboring countries under pressure from Indian security forces. Since most of these neighboring countries do not have the reach to control the border areas, the separatist groups have set up armed training camps, which, over the years, have attracted international drug and gun traffickers. As a result of such unrelenting terrorist actions, and violent demonstrations over the last five decades, this part of India remains today a dangerous place.
These secessionist groups were not created by New Delhi, although New Delhi failed to understand that the promotion of ethnic, sub-ethnic, and tribal identities were policies of the British, who had come to India to expand their empire. The British Empire survived, and then thrived, through identification, within the subcontinent, of various ethnic and sub-ethnic groups and their conflict points; and then, exploited those conflict points to keep the groups divided and hostile to each other.
India and the other South Asian nations failed to comprehend that it was suicidal to allow a degenerate colonial power to pursue such policies against their nations. As a result, they were carried out by New Delhi for two ostensible reasons: One, to appease the militants, and the other, to “allow them to keep” what they wanted— their sub-national ethnic identity. The policy deprived the majority of the people of the Northeast of the justification for identifying themselves as Indians.
The die was cast in the subversion of the sovereignty of an independent India by the British Raj in 1862, when it laid down the law of apartheid, to isolate “the tribal groups.” The British came into the area in the 1820s, following the Burmese conquest of Manipur and parts of Assam. The area had become unstable in the latter part of the 18th Century, following the over-extension of the Burmese-based Ahom kingdom, which reached into Assam. The instability caused by the weakening of the Ahom kingdom prompted the Burmese to move to secure their western flank. But the Burmese action also helped to bring in the British. The British East India Company was lying in wait for the Ahom kingdom to disintegrate.
The Anglo-Burmese War of 1824-26 ended with a British victory. By the terms of the peace treaty signed at Yandaboo on Feb. 24, 1826, the British annexed the whole of lower Assam and parts of upper Assam (now Arunachal Pradesh). The Treaty of Yandaboo provided the British with the foothold they needed to annex Northeast India, launch further campaigns to capture Burma’s vital coastal areas, and gain complete control of the territory from the Andaman Sea to the mouth of the Irrawaddy River. What were London’s motives in this venture? The British claimed that their occupation of the northeast region was required to protect the plains of Assam from “tribal outrages and depredations and to maintain law and order in the sub-mountainous region.”
The ‘Apartheid Law’
Following annexation of Northeast India, the first strategy of the British East India Company toward the area was to set it up as a separate entity. At the outset, British strategy toward Northeast India was:
• to make sure that the tribal people remained separated from the plains people, and the economic interests of the British in the plains were not disturbed;
• to ensure that all tribal aspirations were ruthlessly curbed, by keeping the bogeyman of the plains people dangling in their faces; and,
• to ensure the tribal feudal order remained intact, with the paraphernalia of tribal chiefs and voodoo doctors kept in place. Part of this plan was carried out through the bribing of tribal chiefs with paltry gifts.
Lord Palmerston’s Zoo
The British plan to cordon off the northeast tribal areas was part of its policy of setting up a multicultural human zoo, during the 1850s, under the premiership of Henry Temple, the third Viscount Palmerston. Lord Palmerston, as Henry Temple was called, had three “friends”—the British Foreign Office, the Home Office, and Whitehall.
The apartheid program eliminated the Northeast Frontier Agency from the political map of India, and segregated the tribal population from Assam, as the British had done in southern Africa and would later do in Sudan. By 1875, British intentions became clear, even to those Englishmen who believed that the purpose of Mother England’s intervention in India, and the Northeast in particular, was to improve the conditions of the heathens. In an 1875 intelligence document, one operative wrote: “At this juncture, we find our local officers frankly declaring that our relations with the Nagas could not possibly be on a worse footing than they were then, and that the non-interference policy, which sounds excellent in theory, had utterly failed in practice.”
Apartheid also helped the British to function freely in this closed environment. Soon enough, the British Crown introduced another feature: It allowed Christian missionaries to proselytize among the tribal population and units of the Frontier Constabulary. The Land of the Nagas was identified as “virgin soil” for planting Christianity.
“Among a people so thoroughly primitive, and so independent of religious profession, we might reasonably expect missionary zeal would be most successful,” stated the 1875 document, as quoted in the “Descriptive Account of Assam,” by William Robinson and Angus Hamilton.
Missionaries were also encouraged to open government-aided schools in the Naga Hills. Between 1891 and 1901, the number of native Christians increased 128%. The chief proselytizers were the Welsh Presbyterians, headquartered in Khasi and the Jaintia Hills.British Baptists were given the franchise of the Mizo (Lushai) and Naga Hills, and the Baptist mission was set up in 1836.
British Mindset Controlled New Delhi
Since India’s Independence in 1947, the Northeast has been split up into smaller and smaller states and autonomous regions. The divisions were made to accommodate the wishes of tribes and ethnic groups which want to assert their sub-national identity, and obtain an area where the diktat of their little coterie is recognized.
New Delhi has yet to comprehend that its policy of accepting and institutionalizing the superficial identities of these ethnic, linguistic, and tribal groups has ensured more irrational demands for even smaller states. Assam has been cut up into many states since Britain’s exit. The autonomous regions of Karbi Anglong, Bodo Autonomous Region, and Meghalaya were all part of pre-independence Assam. Citing the influx of Bengali Muslims since the 1947 formation of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh in 1971, the locals demand the ouster of these “foreigners” from their soil.
Two terrorist groups in Assam, the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the National Democratic front of Bodoland (NDFB) (set up originally as the Bodo Security Force), are now practically demanding “ethnic cleansing” in their respective areas. To fund their movements, both the ULFA and the NDFB have been trafficking heroin and other narcotics, and indulging in killing sprees against other ethnic groups and against Delhi’s law-and-order machinery. Both these groups have also developed close links with other major guerrilla-terrorist groups operating in the area, including the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Muivah) and the People’s Liberation Army in Manipur. In 1972, Meghalaya was carved out of Assam through a peaceful process. Unfortunately, peace did not last long in this “abode of the clouds.” In 1979, the first violent demonstration against “foreigners” resulted in a number of deaths and arson. The “foreigners” in this case were Bengalis, Marwaris, Biharis, and Nepalis, many of whom had settled in Meghalaya decades ago. By 1990, firebrand groups such as the Federation of Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo People (FKJGP), and the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU) came to the fore, ostensibly to uphold the rights of the “hill people” from Khasi, Jaintia, and the Garo hills. Violence erupted in 1979, 1987, 1989, and 1990. The last violent terrorist acts were in 1992.
Similar “anti-foreigner” movements have sprouted up across the Northeast, from Arunachal Pradesh in the East and North, to Sikkim in the West, and Mizoram and Tripura in the South. Along the Myanmar border, the states of Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram remain unstable and extremely porous.
While New Delhi was busy maintaining the status quo in this area by telling the tribal and ethnic groups that India is not going to take away what the British Raj had given to them, Britain picked the Nagas as the most efficient warriors (also, a large number of them had been converted to Christianity by the Welsh missionaries), and began arming and funding them. The British connection to the NSCN existed from the early days of the Naga National Council. Angami Zapu Phizo, the mentor of both factions of the NSCN, had led the charge against the Indian government, spearheading well-organized guerrilla warfare. Phizo left Nagaland hiding in a coffin. He then turned up in 1963 in Britain, holding a Peruvian passport. It is strongly suspected that the British Baptist Church, which is very powerful in Nagaland, is the contact between British intelligence and the NSCN terrorists operating on the ground at the time.
‘Dirty Bertie’ and the Nagas
Once Phizo arrived in Britain, Lord Bertrand (“Dirty Bertie”) Russell, the atheist, courted Phizo, and became his new friend. Russell was deeply impressed with Phizo’s “earnestness” for a peaceful settlement. What, perhaps, impressed Russell the most is that Phizo had control over the militant Nagas, who had launched a movement in the mid-1950s under the Naga National Council (NNC) to secede from the Indian Republic. In a letter dated Feb. 12, 1963, Sir Bertrand told Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, “I find it hard to understand the difficulty of coming to an agreement which would put an end to the very painful occurrences incidental to the present policy of India.”
It is believed in some circles that New Delhi’s 1964 ceasefire with the Nagas might have been influenced by the letter from Russell that was handed to Nehru by Rev. Michael Scott. Scott later went to Nagaland as part of a peace mission, along with two senior Indian political leaders.
While Russell was pushing Nehru to make the Nagas an independent country through peaceful negotiations, British involvement in direct conflict continued. On Jan. 30, 1992, soldiers of the Assam Rifles arrested two British nationals along the Nagaland-Burma border. David Ward and Stephen Hill posed as members of BBC-TV, and were travelling in jeeps with Naga rebels carrying arms. Subsequent interrogation revealed that both were operatives of Naga Vigil, a U.K.-based group. Both Ward and Hill claimed that they started the organization while in jail, influenced by Phizo’s niece, Rano Soriza. Both have served six-year prison terms for various crimes in Britain. Naga Vigil petitioned for their release in the Guwahti High Court. Phizo’s niece took up the issue with then-Nagaland Chief Minister Vamuzo.
Sri Lanka’s Violent Ethnic Strife
In Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tiger terrorist group is in its last throes. Ousted by the Sri Lankan Army from almost all of its “claimed” territories, the militants are now holding on to about 19 square kilometers of land, with about 70,000 Sri Lankan citizens, mostly of Tamil ethnic origin, as their hostages. It is evident that they will be totally routed by the end of this month.
While the U.S. Pacific Command personnel in contact with New Delhi are formulating an evacuation plan for the hostages, London and the European Union are trying to protect the last vestiges of Tiger territory by urging Colombo to work out a cease fire with the terrorists.
The emergence of violent conflict between the Tamil Sri Lankans and the Sinhala Sri Lankans, which gave birth to the London-backed Tamil Tigers, was yet another product of the British colonial legacy. This ethnic conflict, which has engulfed this little island, and unleashed unlimited violence in the region for almost three decades, is, as in the case of Northeast India, due to the British mindset of the Sri Lankan and Indian leaders involved in “resolving “the crisis.
To begin with, Sri Lanka (then, Ceylon) had the misfortune to be colonized by three brutal European colonial powers—the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British. Nonetheless, it is to the credit of the locals that they withstood these brutes and prevented the break-up of the country.
After the Dutch ceded Sri Lanka in the 1801 Peace of Amiens, it became Britain’s first crown colony. Immediately, the British colonials started setting up the chess pieces. The ruling Kandyan King, of Tamil ancestry, was ousted with the help of local chieftains of Tamil and Sinhala origin. The coup set up the British crown as the new King.
As part of the “divide and rule” policy, the British colonials promoted the Buddhist religion, resulting in the 1817 Uva rebellion. The Buddhist religion was given protection by the Crown, and the people were told that Christianity would not be imposed on the unwilling masses as had happened during Portuguese and Dutch rule. Following the quelling of the rebellion, the British did what they do best: They carried out one of the worst massacres of the 19th Century, wiping out all able-bodied Sinhalese men from the Hill Country, and 80% of the native population of able-bodied, according to one report. The Kandyan Kingdom was the kingdom of both the Tamils and Sinhalas—both these groups came from India to settle on that island.
One specific impact of the British colonial presence was the emergence of English as the local language, undermining both the Sinhala and Tamil languages. According to one historian, the two most important effects observed during British rule were: one, by the start of 20th Century, the English language became the passport to getting employment; and those who had an English education became dominant in Britain’s handcrafted Sri Lankan society. Due to input of the Christian missionaries, more minority Tamils could read and write English, as opposed to the southern Sinhalese and Kandyan Sinhalese.
The other observed impact on Sri Lankan society of British colonial rule, was the reconstituting of the Legislative Assembly. The Assembly of 1921 had 12 Sinhalese and 10 non-Sinhalese, at a time when the Sinhalese constituted more than 70% of the population. Things changed in 1931, when, out of 61 seats, the Sinhalese won 38. This troubled the Tamils, because they had had special privileges under British, and never wanted to accept the dominance of the Sinhalese majority.
In addition, the British also brought to the island a million workers of Tamil ethnic background from Tamil Nadu, and made them indentured laborers in the Hill Country. This was in addition to the million Tamils already living in the provinces, and another million Mappilla Muslims, whose mother tongue is Tamil. Thus, the British sowed seeds of ethnic discord. During the colonial rule, the minority Tamils had a disproportionate representation in the bureaucracy.
The Role of British Assets in Independent Sri Lanka
However, when in 1948, the British finally left the island, they left behind their assets, in powerful places, many of whom were educated at Oxford-Cambridge, and some of whom had adopted Christianity, on both sides of the ethnic divide London had so carefully created.
Instead of seizing the opportunity to build the nation and set about undoing the misdeeds they were forced to carry out under British rule, beginning in the 1950s, Sinhalese-dominated governments implemented public policies that would institutionalize the majority community’s dominance. Sinhala was declared to be the country’s sole official language; Buddhism was favored as the state religion; and the unitary nature of the state ensured Sinhalese political domination. Major Sinhalese-Tamil riots in 1956, 1981, and 1983 further heightened Tamil insecurities.
Meanwhile, the Tamils began to press for autonomy. Political parties, such as the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), utilized conventional means, which included participating in coalition governments. Militant Tamils, the LTTE, sought the creation of an independent Tamil state, referred to as Tamil Eelam, which would comprise the North and East of the country.
Throughout the 1980s, various Tamil rebel groups engaged in attacks against the Colombo government and its security apparatus. However, the situation worsened on that island because of the British mindset of New Delhi, which made a number of attempts to intervene in the violent Sri Lankan situation. Besides helping the Tamils to get armed training and intelligence, New Delhi, under late-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, deployed around 50,000 Indian peacekeepers (IPKF) in Tamil areas in Sri Lanka to help ensure peace. In return, the Sri Lankan government agreed to devolve power to the North and East through the creation of autonomous provincial councils.
Neither Colombo nor the Tamil militants were sincere about the deal; both were looking at the Indian troops as the barriers against their independent state. The failure of the Indian intervention led to more deaths and the assassination of Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, and India’s Rajiv Gandhi, among many other high-level Sri Lankan officials, by the terrorist Tamil Tigers.
London: Break Up India into 100 Hong Kongs
But, the British were in the middle of all this. Besides the fact that the LTTE was headquartered in London, and raising most of its illegitimate funds from Britain and its former colonies in Australia, South Africa, and Canada, within ten days of Gandhi’s death, Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, who would be assassinated by the LTTE in May 1993, forced the hasty departure from Sri Lanka of British High Commissioner David Gladstone. The charge was that Gladstone, a descendant of the Victorian-age Prime Minister William Gladstone, was interfering in local election politics. But he had also been criticized earlier for allegedly meeting with known drug traffickers in Sri Lanka. Gladstone, who had previously spent years in the Middle East, was a known British intelligence link to the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, which was involved in training both the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and the LTTE
Britain’s continuing intent to break up India was also expressed openly in this political context. On May 26, 1991, only five days after the British-controlled LTTE-led assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the Times of London, the premier voice for the British Foreign Office, put forward this view in an editorial entitled “Home Truths”: “There are so many lessons to be learnt from sorrowing India, and most are being muttered too politely. The over-huge federation of almost 900 million people spreads across too many languages, cultures, religions, and castes. It has three times as many often incompatible and thus resentful people as the Soviet Union, which now faces the same bloody strains and ignored solutions as India. . . .
“The way forward for India, as for the Soviet Union, will be to say a great prize can go to any States and sub-States that maintain order without murders and riots. They should be allowed to disregard Delhi’s corrupt licensing restrictions, run their own economic policies, and bring in as much foreign investment and as many free-market principles as they like. Maybe India’s richest course from the beginning would have been to split into 100 Hong Kongs
http://www.countercurrents.org/maitra250309.htm
Tibet in India’s Web
INTRODUCTION:India portraying itself a secular and peace loving country to the world is a mocking style and a mask drawn to shield her monstrous activities architected by the RAW. Though the foreign companies are pushing the economy of India to bring her in league with the superpowers but its hegemonic nature and imperialistic attitude having disparaging niche towards the South Asia and other neighbouring countries in the surroundings has always become victim to the tautness atmosphere created by her.
India is following the footprints of Israel having militarized adventurism in West Asia, is in consonance with the historic juxtaposition of one and the other to incline towards the U.S. to implement its hegemonic will in South Asia. Bangladesh and Pakistan are mostly at receiving end of India’s launching of multi projects on the rivers which flow through her to turn their land in to desert apart from erection of the fences on border of both the countries. Sri Lankan and Tamils both have suffered at the hands of India, experiencing its intriguing imperialism, as when Tamil Tigers were being trained & equipped by RAW, simultaneously the government of India was showing her muscles to Sri Lanka to purchase weapons from not other than India and also while leaving the choice of armament to her. In 1980s dispatch of Indian Peace Keeping Force to Sri Lanka was a brutal act parallel to the sovereignty and integrity of an independent state.
The small nations like Nepal, Maldives and Bhutan are forced to act in a manner like a servant to the master who is totally disregardful to the rights of people. Indian military presence and ensuing human rights abuses in Kashmir is well known to the world where she is bent upon turning the heaven of Kashmir in to cemetery. Where India’s regional hegemony is dressed in conspiring knavery and dual diplomacy, Tibet remains sandwiched in the hypocritical fashion designed by the same. India came off badly when in 1962 picked up a fight and was bitten severely by the Dragon thus accepting the claim of China over Tibet.
KANGAROOING DALAI LAMA
India after having been defeated morally, materially and psychologically by China in 1962 has extended open arms for America to face the dilemma of Tibet to prick the dragon and within her own ability kangarooed Dalai Lama to house in Dharamsala since 1959. The Dalai Lama’s flee to India and formulation of “Government-In-Exile” has brought India in the forefront to face the noose of China. India now is home to approximately 120,000 Tibetans, the world’s largest community outside of Tibet.
The RAW has since long been trying to crown Dalai Lama as the head of state instead of simply a spiritual leader who remains contended with his sayings. That is very important for China to hold Tibet as its part, if lost then will break the fabrics of nationhood. There is a fear that if Tibet gets independence then Uighurs and Taiwan will want independence, as says the expert on China’s affairs, Adam Segal. RAW is exerting its all out efforts to train the rebellion groups of Tibetan refugees to use them against China to heal its wounds of lost war. The training pertains to the small arms fire, physical fitness and the guerilla operations.
The men are given money as an incentive to join the force to prepare them for the future operations to be launched in Tibet, exactly on the lines of Mukti Bahnis used in East Pakistan. The most favourable side is that Tibetan refugees are being motivated & brain washed by the RAW to carry the wrath and venom against China who booted them out of their homeland. Moreover being son of the soil the force of Tibetan refugees can sustain the rigours of worst weather conditions and hostile terrain unlike India which withered away due to the extreme weather conditions and the unfriendly mountains when conducted operations against China in 1962. Kangarooing old Dalai Lama of 75 years age for so many years is a burden being felt by India and now seriously looking forward for his death and searching for the successor who takes the interests of India as supreme.
INDIAN XENOPHOBIA
Since its birth Indian xenophobia within and without its territories is an aiguilles. India has succeeded in attracting the United States and the West to exert pressure on China while keeping Tibetans in exile in front to foment its dual policy. During the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency covertly had funded and armed Tibetan guerilla forces to fight against communist China. But even during this period also Washington never supported Tibet openly thus moving cautiously to avoid jumping in to the ambers ignited by India. In 1971, CIA stopped funding the guerilla forces as the aid was being provided through India which complicated the policy environment.
After seeing the whole affair a flop and the deprivation of monetary benefits from the U.S., India launched a new strategy of pushing the old hag like Dalai Lama to visit and make speeches in the West to fetch some fortune. This strategic initiative went successful due to the addresses made by Dalai Lama before the Human Rights Forums in Washington as well as in the European Parliament in Strasbourg. But India got annoyed when publicly Dalai Lama accepted something less than independence for Tibet. Calling for genuine autonomy for Tibet to rest within the framework of China having the domain of Foreign Affairs and the Defense but the domestic affairs should be dealt by the same old ladder of Dalai Lamas which was called the Middle Way Approach.
Though the middle way approach was applauded by all the spheres even by Hollywood actors like Richard Gere but India could not tolerate this issue be ever resolved that too, for carrying the baby kangaroo of Tibet in its sack for so many years without injuring the Dragon. May it be South Asia, Northeast Asia or even Tibet, Indian xenophobia is a serpent always ready to gobble the peace.
FRACAS WITH CHINA
The first Tibetan uprising of 1959 resulted in the flight of the Dalai Lama and about 80,000 Tibetans. In 1978, when Deng Xioping came in to power in China, he came up with a new idea of resolving the issue of Tibet. Besides reaching out to Dalai Lama in exile in India, the Chinese authorities also initiated a more conciliatory ethnic and economic development policy. Tibetans were encouraged to revitalize their culture and religion. Infrastructure was developed to help Tibet grow. But India always stood against all these measures whenever these were put to practice by the Chinese authorities while playing the card of Tibetan refugees.
To beat back the Indian propaganda and Tibetan shield, a programme of rapid economic development was adopted which included induction of non-Tibetans, mostly Han Chinese, in to Tibet. This Beijing hopes, will form a new generation which will be sound enough to face the religious and ethnic exploitation spread by India generally painting a ghostly picture of Tibet to the world. Tibetan refugees, mostly the youth are indulging in the business of narcotics, drug trafficking and arms selling. They were purposely kept illiterate, so to write on the clean slate of their mental canvass as wished by the RAW to make them robots to take the revenge of Indian defeat. But this fracas with China has now brought India on the brim of a ditch and ready to make her fall in to it when Tibetan refugees force will turn the direction of their guns provided by the RAW.
POLITICAL CATHARSIS
The political catharsis prevails in Tibet. The question of political status is imbedded in an atmosphere of uncertainty. The name Tibet is acceptable to China only to satisfy the Western block and Central areas, the area which now is called Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). This area was directly ruled by the Lhasa government when China occupied in 1950. But Tibetan exiles on behest of India are demanding a Greater Tibet which includes political Tibet in modern era and also an ethnic Tibetan areas east of TAR, most of which Tibet had lost in the eighteenth century. These areas, earlier known as Amdo and Kham, are now spread among parts of Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Gansu. In March 2008, anti-government protests which had started in Lhasa soon spread among the ethnic Tibetan provinces. The Chinese are fully aware that Dalai Lama has been in India ever since China occupied Tibet. The Chinese regard him as an Indian puppet. They claim the latest unrest in Tibet was on the instigation of RAW fully supported and funded by the government of India.
CONCLUSION
India is in the process of performing ablution with the blood of Tibetan refugees which are being trained by the RAW to move them in to the altar. But who knows the flames of hate go in which direction! The region counts on 30 major insurgent outfits coupled with the numerous smaller ones. This has resulted in the longstanding, massive and extremely oppressive presence of the Indian military indulging in the large scale human rights abuses. The history of India is replete with the atrocities and brutal activities which has always created turbulence in the aura of peace. China is going to hold Tibet at any cost and the card of Tibetan refugees to be used by India will remain stuck in the fingers of RAW as in the index of its monogram.
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