Tenth Anniversary Of Syrian Crisis: Home Truths From An Eye Witness

 Tenth Anniversary Of Syrian Crisis: Home Truths From An Eye Witness

                                                                                         Saeed Naqvi

In 1952, like a bolt from the blue, came UP Chief Minister, Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant’s order abolishing zamindari (landlordism). The abrupt drop in prestige and lifestyle caused a relative across the Ganga to hide his arsenal of a few rifles and 12 bore shotguns along with boxes of Eley cartridges with LG or Large-Goose loads.

Whenever courtiers in rags, with some previous pique, stoked his fragile ego with stories of rampant lawlessness in the villages because “huzoor’s” power had ended, “huzoor” would come out with his preferred shotgun. This sad, fake “dadagiri” (gangsterism) lasted as long as the boxes of Eleys did.

This trans Ganga tragic hero came to mind when my eye fall on a bold headline of a piece written by Graham E Fuller, Ex high CIA officer, on the aggressive style of Biden-Blinken early outings in Foreign Affairs:

“Hell Hath No Fury Like A Superpower in decline” said the headline.

Fuller writes: “The US leadership must have set some kind of new record in managing to personally insult the powers of the world within 48 hours of each other in these early days of Biden administration’s Foreign Policy. President Biden called, Vladimir Putin a “killer” and lacking “a soul”. Blinken was equally insulting on China.

“This country has some grounds for pride in its own-imperfect-democratic order. No such democratic orders are perfect. Still, how much reflection does it take to acknowledge what the Chinese communist party has accomplished in the past thirty years? Is it more worthy to bring half a billion people out of poverty into middle class life in a mere generation? Or more worthy to maintain intact an American electoral system in which mediocre or bad leaders emerge as readily as good ones?” He goes on and on, very readably.

Fuller’s invective is focused on the Biden-Blinken’s opening salvos at Russia and China. I would have scoured anything he wrote on the tenth anniversary of the Syrian crisis which has been aggressively observed by five western powers. Fuller knows the area backwards. A key policy document advising the Reagan administration in 1983 for military action against Syria for strategic reasons was his handiwork. I have had this document eversince it was released in 2008, having been in secret vaults for 25 years.

After visiting Damascus and almost all the trouble spots in Syria’s neighbourhood, I had written a paper for the Observer Research Foundation, “The Storm in the Arab Spring”, eye of the storm being Syria. I feel qualified to take a critical look at the statement Foreign Minister of the US, France, Germany, Italy and UK, issued on the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the tragedy.

One allegation the foreign ministers repeat is straightforward: President Bashar al Assad started the ghoulish operation against his own people who were rebelling against misrule, corruption, economic distress. Not true. I was in Damascus at the outset.

There were reports fairly early in the proceeding of the Obama administration leading the global effort to deploy “shadow” internet and mobile phone systems which “dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by shutting down communications network.” James Glanz and John Markoff of the New York Times described one operation in a fifth floor shop in L Street, Washington, where “a group of young entrepreneurs, looking like a garage band, are assembling deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “internet-in-a-suitcase.” It was all part of the big push for “Liberation Technology Movement”. And how comprehensively was it applied against the Syrian regime.

In the case of Syria, the so called “moderate operation” which the “free” world was busting its guts to help, in many cases turned out to be cover for extreme Islamists like Jabhat al Nusra. One such instance Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin admitted before the Senate Armed Services Select Committee, which is even today available on internet. A $500 million project to train the “moderates” to fight Assad, ended up as an embarrassment for Washington. Most of the trainees disappeared, along with the lethal equipment, presumably to join groups like Nusra. Asked by members of the committee, “how many trainees are still fighting?” Austin almost lost his voice. After a lengthy pause he mumbled “four or five”. The US has spent $2 billion on such efforts in Syria.

Among the trick sentences in the foreign minister’s statement is one about Daesh or the Islamic State. “Preventing Daesh’s resurgence remains a priority”, says the statement.

Hadn’t Daesh, in the Administration’s word been “destroyed?” why is its possible resurrection being posed as a threat? Because the threat, when live, can justify air strikes and other forms of intervention?

In the US’s “Sole super power” moment, countries were averse to calling US names: how can the US be accused for nurturing “terrorists” as possible assets in future contingencies.

The free run the US and its regional allies like Saudi Arabia had, to alter ground realities in Syria came to an end when the Russians arrived in 2015, boots on the ground et al.

A brief background to place Baghdadi in perspective. President Obama was livid with Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki for not signing the Status of Forces Agreement before the departure of US troops from Iraq. Washington wanted him out.

Just about this time, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi puts out a video from Mosul’s main mosque on July 4, 2014, declaring the formation of an Islamic Caliphate. In August 2014, Obama gives a significant interview to Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Asked why he did not order air strikes against ISIS just when it reared its head in June-July 2014, Obama makes an admission:

Airstrikes on Baghdadi in July, “Would have taken the pressure off Nouri al Maliki” Iraq’s stubbornly anti American Shia Prime Minister. In other words, the rapid march of the ISIS from Mosul to the outskirts of Baghdad was “facilitated” to keep the pressure on Maliki. In September 2014, Maliki was shown the door. Moral: terrorists can be assets in circumstances.

 

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Pope Francis And Ayatullah Sistani Talks: Balm For Bruised Souls

Pope Francis And Ayatullah Sistani Talks: Balm For Bruised Souls

                                                                                   Saeed Naqvi

Pardon my Lucknow chauvinism, but the benighted city once had intimate links with the centre of Shia Islam, Najaf, in Iraq, which Pope Francis visited early March in what must be counted among the Pontiff’s most epoch making journeys. His 50 minutes conversation with Shia Islam’s highest spiritual authority, Grand Ayatullah Ali Sistani, in his modest, rented house in a Najaf alley, must have enriched both.

“A humble and wise man”, the Pope said of Sistani. “It felt good, for my soul, this meeting.” This was no hyperbole; this seemed to reflect the tenor of the conversation, where only interpreters were present.

Yes, that Lucknow link: in 1850, the Begums of Oudh (Awadh) established what came to be known as a Bequest, a trust, of rupees six million to be spent on the maintenance of the shrines at Najaf and Karbala. Stipends for Indian scholars were also established. After the first war of independence in 1857, the British administered the bequest, which gave them leverage over the Shia clerical authority from Najaf to Tehran. By default or deliberation, the system continued until 1979 when Saddam Hussain consolidated power in Baghdad. Saddam’s Ba’ath atheism would have been uncomfortable with Indian indulgence of Shia sectarianism. What would Pope Francis have made of the fact that “Allah o Akbar” was inscribed on the Iraqi flag only after Operation Desert Storm in 1992?

Another Lucknow link would have come up tangentially: Awadh antecedents of Ayatullah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian revolution. Khomeini’s ancestors migrated from Kuntur, a qasbah not far from Lucknow, known for a line of Shia theologians.

The Pope would have been briefed on the vast difference between Sistani and Ayatullah Khamenei (Khomeini before him) on the role of the clergy in the affairs of the state. The issue had divided the Shia clergy down the middle. How can the Iranian revolution of 1979 be deemed to be an “Islamic revolution” without the second coming of the messiah who, in Shia theology, happens to be the 12^th Imam who had “disappeared” in Samarra, Iraq. He would appear only on the Day of Judgement.

The clergy in Qom were on sixes and seven. I was in Qom to meet Ayatullah Montazeri when this was a common topic of discussion. A revolution had come their way, pending Roz e Mahshar, Judgement Day. What label was to be pasted on the great happening? That is when the theory of Vilayat e Faqih or Vali Faqih, the Intermediate Imam, was enunciated. Pending the return of the Imam, an Intermediate system, under the Supreme leader, would govern, guided by the teachings of Islam.

Sistani and a section of the clergy even in Qom see their role differently – as spiritual guides only. Was Francis comfortable with Sistani on this score? The different circumstance of Tehran and Baghdad must have been part of the briefs prepared for Francis.

In 1979, the Shah was eased out and the Ayatullahs ushered into Tehran. Ayatollah Khomeini, who had been moved from Najaf to the suburb of Neauphle-le-Chateau on the outskirts of Paris, was that very year flown to Tehran. Why this complicated trapeze act?

In the mid 70s, the US had communist parties coming out of their ears in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Chile, why, even in Afghanistan. Post Shah fervour in Iran would cause Persian Communist Parties, Tudeh and Mujahedin e Khalq to surface from the underground. The Ayatullahs, the mosques filled with their cadres, would pounce on the communists. That the Ayatullahs would be no friends of the Americans became apparent only when the siege of the US embassy in Tehran lasted 444 days, an embarrassment on a scale the Americans had never experienced.

1979 also happened to be the year in which Saddam Hussain consolidated himself in Baghdad. Neither the Ayatullahs nor Saddam were buddies of the US, but each could easily be tempted to seek US help against the other. This suited US officials like Martin Indyk, former Ambassador to Israel, who devised dual-containment – supply arms to both and make them fight. The monkey-between-two-cats policy lasted eight long years.

More to the point for the Pope would have been the after effects of the post 9/11 wars thrust on Iraq, Syria, Libya, leading to the trek of millions looking for havens in Europe which, in this instance, was fighting xenophobia at home, a creeping aversion to the outsider, resulting in avowedly illiberal politics. Two of the world’s highest religious leaders must have exchanged views on this frightening trend. True they are religious leaders whose mission was not to discuss politics, but rampaging identity politics are nothing but putrefied religious ideas.

Islamic terror, for instance, is cited as a cause for increasing Islamophobia by politicians like, say, Marine Le Pen in France. Such examples are strewn across Europe and other parts of the world. What was at fault was a one sided media focus on Islamic terror, fuelling a Muslim sense of helplessness and anger, there being no outlet for his point of view.

Some of this Sistani must have addressed during their conversation. I hope he reminded the Pope that the first act of occupying forces was to vandalize the National Museum, the great storehouse of artefacts, books, scrolls representing one of the world’s great river civilizations.

It might be something of a hyperbole that his meeting with Sistani, laden with peaceful intent, reversed the Jehad or crusade launched in 1095 by one of his earlier predecessors Pope Urban II. The eleventh century Pope was rattled by the Muslim occupation of the holy lands. Also, within a hundred years of Prophet Mohammad’s death, the Muslims had established their rule over Spain and beyond. The pace of Muslim spread was unnerving. Pope Francis’ expedition on the other hand provides a soothing touch to a people battered and bruised, having been on the declining side of the civilizational giant wheel for too long, a far cry from the days of Pope Urban.

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Indo-Pak Pirouette On Afghan Talks: Will They Be In Step?

 

Indo-Pak Pirouette On Afghan Talks: Will They Be In Step?

                                                                                    Saeed Naqvi

 

It is exactly a decade since President Barack Obama set the deadline to start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Even then, Obama recalled how the 2001 Bonn conference had only “Provisionally” installed Hamid Karzai in Kabul. We all know how long that “provisional” government lasted: 15 years. For Afghanistan, deadlines do not matter.

Are we about to witness Obama’s third term in Foreign Affairs? The question arises because people fear Joe Biden may have inherited some of his previous bosses’ instincts. No sooner had Obama’s intention to withdraw announced than qualifications were introduced: the date of withdrawal is not cast in stone. Reminding us of those days, again there is a deadline – May 1, for withdrawal of the remaining 2,500 troops. True, the deadline was set by the Trump administration. But Zalmay Khalilzad, veteran US diplomat and a Pushtoon to boot is being continued for the time being. Is his earlier recommendation being set aside? Will he be shown the door soon?

Having served four Presidents as Ambassador to Kabul, Baghdad, UN and now trying to bring Taleban, Kabul, Washington on a platform of lasting peace, it is Khalilzad who knows whether or not there is light at the end of this tunnel. But Secretary of State Antony Blinken has, in a letter, revealed a divergent wish for Afghanistan. He may have to replace Ashraf Ghani with someone who the Taleban may be less averse to. This, Khalilzad may not like. Soon Biden will learn that two swords cannot be kept in the Afghan scabbard.

Americans are faced with an impossible task. They do not wish to be seen to be installing a Taleb Emirate in Kabul. If identified with such action they may never look like harbingers of democracy, part of their manifest destiny. There is advantage in striking the modernist stance. They will look loyal to Ghani, whom they installed twice over, by hook or by crook even though Ghani had, in reality not won the elections. His school education in Oregon and his “loyalties” at the World Bank, clearly helped. The 1978 Saur revolution ended 200 years of Durrani rule. Ghilzai, proletariat Pushtoons came to power and they will not let power slip from their hands. Ghani is a Ghilzai but Talebs see him as an American stooge, like the Durranis of yore.

“Democracy” particularly during the “sole superpower” moment was the cover for advancing American strategic and economic interests. To continue playing that sort of hand requires unbridled power. It vanished for a range of reasons but in popular perception worldwide what stayed were US brutalities in Iraq, Syria, Libya. The image of America as a destructive power gained ground.

When Donald Trump sought Jimmy Carter’s advice on what to do because “China is going ahead of US”, Carter’s response was sobering: “China has not been in a conflict since the 1979 war with Vietnam.” Carter added: “We have never stopped being at war.”

A realization of decline may yet set the US on the path to recovery but in Afghanistan, as elsewhere, a certain fear lurks: a touch of Obama in Biden’s make up. Gen. Lloyd Austin elevated as Defence Secretary, for example, was during Obama years responsible for the entire project of training Syrian “rebels” to fight Assad’s forces.

He did not endear himself to the Senate Armed Services Select Committee who asked him tough questions: what happened to the men he had trained? His answer was “three or four men are still fighting.” The remainder walked away with the equipment and joined the Jabhat al Nusra, the terrorist group. Google for a clip of the classic Senate hearing. This $500 million project was then discontinued. Obviously, Syria for Gen. Austin is “incomplete” business. Little wonder, the administration’s first military action were air strikes on Syria albeit on Iranian supplies to bolster Assad.

The fact that the May 1 deadline for the withdrawal of the remaining 2,500 troops has already been changed to some future date, points to the uncertainties ahead. Austin has vast field experience in Afghanistan. His “ears-to-ground” inputs will therefore influence Afghan policy.

It is nice that the US is including India in the Afghan initiative. But on the Afghan process Pakistan’s centrality has been spelt out by everybody, including Austin. What pleases New Delhi is Austin’s qualifier: Pakistan has not completely put an end to all its terror outfits.

India being included in the Process, significantly moved from Qatar to Turkey, has to be seen in perspective. Pakistan has excellent relations with Turkey, plus, there is universal acceptance of Pakistan’s importance in the process. New Delhi has an opportunity to balance issues. This, ironically, is also where New Delhi may be seen to be placing the odd spanner in the works.

After travelling extensively in Afghanistan some years ago, I had written a paper for the Observer Research Foundation in which I had praised India’s low key diplomacy. This diplomacy had the effect of conferring on India heaps of goodwill among the Afghan people.

A country which has known conflict for 40 years found India’s, non lethal, soft-touch soothing. Schools, hospitals, technical training institutes, hospitality to the injured by flying them to Indian hospitals – all of this found way to Afghan hearts. Visit parts of Hauz Rani opposite Max hospital in Saket, and you have Afghan eating houses complete with Chapli Kebabs, giant size naans, and travel agents offering amazing rates for Delhi-Kabul-Delhi journey. Above all is the magic of Bollywood: India’s most effective soft power. After evening prayers, every house in Kabul is watching an Indian movie. Whatever role Americans assign New Delhi, nothing can compare with the effectiveness of India’s “Diplomacy by Default”. Remember, in 2011, General Stanley McChrystal, US Force Commander, had openly complained that India’s soft diplomacy distracts Pakistan from being constructive in Afghanistan. Who knows, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa-Imran Khan duet may be inclined not to complain on that count.

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Gandhi's have had it if they are Cyphers in May.

 

Gandhi's have had it if they are Cyphers in May.

                                                                                                              Saeed Naqvi

Mullah Nasruddin spread out his ornate carpet on the front lawn of his house. He did  pushups on the carpet to become strong enough to protect his house. . Meanwhile thieves from two separate gates behind him tip toed into his house. Friendly neighbours at the front gate alerted Mullah that his house was about to be burgled by two gangs.

Mullah laughed at them with supreme nonchalance. “You are wrong that they are two gangs”, he said.  “They are together in this scheme and I know what they are upto”.

“What are they upto?” asked the neighbours.

“If I run to chase out one group, the other will steal my carpet” said Mullah, rolling his eyes cunningly, and did another pushup.

The neighbours beat their breasts, even as they saw the burglers cart away every item in Mullah’s house.

The Mullah story possibly has universal application but caution may be in order before transposing it on Rahul Gandhi’s athletic performance at the St.Joseph’s Higher Secondary School, in Mulggumoodubin, Tamil Nadu. He left 10^th grade student, Meroli Shenigha, panting for breath in a competition. Rahul, 50 did 14 push ups in 10 seconds, something of a record.    

   Yen  for physical fitness is in his DNA. His great grandfather, Nehru’s, Yoga was incomplete without an extended shishasana or headstand. But while Nehru was private about his exercises, the great grandson is demonstrative. Nehru may also have been proud of his Kashmiri Pandit heritage, but never of ritual religiosity. In his will , he shunned rituals for his cremation. His colleagues, more “Hindu” than him, thought it unwise to have  the last rites of the countrys first Prime Minister, a Pandit to boot, be concluded without vedic ritual.

Taking his cue from there, Rahul Gandhi’s most reliable town cryer Randeep Surjewala, declared him a “Janeudhari” Brahmin, a  declaration Rahul took to heart, touching base with every temple in town. Not to be outdone, sibling Priyanka, too has been wearing tilaks on her forehead, large enough for a Yogini. She has been dipping in holy rivers in severe cold. If her brother has added gymnastics to his repertoire, Priyanka has fallen back on ethnic tourism in fancy dress. With expert ease she plucked “two leaves and a bud” in Assam’s tea plantations.

The Gandhi siblings are busting their guts to hold onto the carpet as in the Mullah story. As for the Congress party (The House), senior members have already bolted and joined the BJP. The remainder are running helter skelter because the Gandhi family is unwilling to show them the road ahead. It is possible they themselves do not know.

Their Gandhi’s state of funk may have been enhanced last week by Gujarat where, contrary to the promise of 2017, the Congress has been beaten to pulp by the BJP in Local Bodies Elections. Indeed, new entrants, AAP and Owaisi have impressively opened their accounts.

    The G23 Congress rebels are what rural folk in North India call Shivji Ki Barat, representing all manner of fauna. Ghulam Nabi Azad has been grieving since atleast the 2019 elections: “They are not asking me to campaign”. Those were days when Rahul, as Congress President had resorted to practical politics : he would not be seen with Muslims during elections because that would enable the BJP to polarize the vote.

 What Rahul appears not to have learnt since then is  that policies and strategy, not tricks, build a party’s elan. When in the 2019 general elections, the BJP won 303 seats as opposed to Congress’s 52, Rahul owned up to his responsibility and resigned as Party President.

A chapter in Congress’s and the nation’s political history was over. Or so one had thought. But no, his cohorts like Surjewala would dance around him with deafening chants of “Congress revival”.

            Kuchch to hotey hain Mohabbat mein junoon ke aasaar,

            Aur Kuchch log bhi deewana bana detey hain

            (as it is, there are signs of monomania in obsessive Love,

            Self serving busy bodies further enhance this streak )

Slowly, one saw him trek back from political  wilderness, to attempt, like Sisyphus, the climb again without ever bothering to ask – why is there so much focus on a leader with 52 members in a House of 545? Why does a media owned by industrialists and controlled by the ruling party, heap such generous attention on the Gandhis?

  Because they are no threat. Anything of a leftist hue, with the capacity to mobilize the people on a platform of  roti, kapra, makaan, healthcare, universal free education, must be thwarted. By this criteria, the Congress is no threat. Policy differences between the BJP and the Congress are minimal. Foreign, economic, even social policies are more or less similar. The BJP’s Anti Muslim stance is for Hindu consolidation. The Congress’s  studied neglect of Muslims serves the same purpose, only with better table manners. Also, Gandhis and the residual Congress serve as an essential counterpoint in the BJP’s musical score.

Essentially, the establishment has a high comfort level with two ruling class parties. One of them may be down and out, but it must remain in occupation of that slot. A vaccum will open up chances of confusing, unknown amalgamations, making a  bid for power.

How long can Mother, Son and his sister hang by a thread for sheer survival?  G23 are at the moment,

willing to wound and yet afraid to strike,

Just hint a fault but hesitate dislike.

Hesitations may well give way to a day of the long knives in May when results to elections in West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry will be out. If the Congress does well enough to preserve its self respect in even two of the five states,  the Gandhis may yet be able to keep the carpet. But should they be trounced, in all five, well, they better look out. Little wonder all round uncertainties are promoting a buzz about a National Government, an absurd thought unless the RSS and India inc show interest.

 

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