Counting Winners And Losers In Ukraine Is Becoming Easier

Counting Winners And Losers In Ukraine Is Becoming Easier

                                                                                         Saeed Naqvi

My great Aunt Nani Ammi, in her fertile imagination had dreamt up war as a tennis match where soldiers shot at each other until dusk, after which it was time for tea and exchanging of samosas and pastries across the trenches.

Therefore, when my first khaki uniform, web belt, beret and army shoes were packed in a black trunk in readiness for my coverage of Chhamb in the Western sector during the 1971 Pakistan war, Nani Ammi lifted the Quran in her right hand, a sort of holy gateway under which I was to pass.

She then produced two Imam Zamins or amulets. One she tied around my right arm as guarantor of my protection. The other amulet I was to carry for my cousin Akbar, a major on the other side, who she was convinced would meet me at night when the guns fall silent.

My great aunt’s touching naivette about warfare came back to me as if it were yesterday. A cocksure anchor, updating the Ukraine conflict, rolled her eyes and asked knowingly. “Who is winning the war?” Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not yet thrown in the towel. Vladimir Putin has not faced an anti war rebellion in the Kremlin. President Joe Biden has not yet leaked the Pentagon report which prohibits upgradation of weapons to Ukraine. None of this has happened. Is the war at a deadlock? Has nothing happened in over a year since Russian troops crossed into Ukraine on February 24, 2022?

The date of the Russian invasion will be prominent in history books for millennia. But in my private notebook will be even more important dates which, according to my lights, begin with partnership “without limits” signed in the Kremlin by Xi Jinping and Putin plus the “new era” in relations between the two spelt out in sequence by Xi during Putin’s visit to Beijing on February 4. While the pretty anchor is inviting viewers to delve into the deepest layers of thought to come up with a victor in Ukraine, may I commend to her the thought that she cast her eyes across the globe, even West Asia where signs of victory and defeat are already under way.

China, with Russia’s robust backing is altering all the key dynamics in the region. Take the Saudi-Iran rapprochement. I remember thinkers like Henry Kissinger giving the Palestinian issue relatively low saliency because the Arab world was riven by the Shia-Sunni divide.

The West never juxtaposed Shah’s Iran as Shia versus a Sunni Arab world. They were both allies. The “Godless” Chinese understood the divide as a political ploy which could only be resolved politically.

Yaroslav Trofimov’s brilliant book ‘The Siege of Mecca’ details Juhayman al Otaybi and his followers’ siege of Islam’s holiest mosque in 1979 exactly as the revolution was toppling the Shah in Tehran. The book established what the Chinese also knew: the existential threat to the Saudis was from the Otaybi variant of the Muslim Brotherhood which was at the root of what subsequently bloomed as Al Qaeda. It was easy sailing during the “Sole Superpower” moment. Just as the Saudis sensed Washington’s grip on the world order slacken, it clasped with alacrity the new future with Iran.

Just as one assassination in Sarajevo led to a chain of events which became the First World War, an unexpected breakthrough for peace between apparently implacable foes leads to a chain reaction.

A lasting peace is very much on the cards between Yemen and Saudi Arabia after an elaborate exchange of prisoners. The consolidation of this peace is because of the Saudi-Iran deal which is owed to Chinese diplomacy. The Houthis of Yemen will now have the time to attend to other details of the regional mosaic. Hashd al Shaabi and Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq, the original Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon and, ofcourse Hamas in Gaza are now relatively free of their Saudi and other GCC anxieties and can focus on Israel and, ofcourse, US bases in the area.

Some days ago Turkish, Syrian and Iranian officials were in Moscow. While a Syria-Turkish rapprochement suits Erdogan because of his elections due on May 14, Assad’s advisers do not wish to foreclose the option for an opening with the multiparty alliance in the opposition. As part of the frenetic activity the Syrian Foreign Minister was in Riyadh on the same day when the Iranian technical teams was negotiating details on exchange of Ambassadors.

So far so good, but Riyadh’s real nervousness is with the Akhwan or the Brothers who are simmering under Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s army repression in Egypt.

The US was divided on the election of Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in June, 2012. The White House and the State Department favoured a gamble on democratic openness but the Pentagon, where Israel is rather more influential, dug its heels in for Morsi’s ouster. The Saudis pleased as punch, turned up with $8 billion to stabilize Sisi. That was then. Radical changes have gripped the region since. In the midst of so much change, will the Sisi dictatorship survive? The possible reemergence of the Brothers will give them coherence with the Hamas in Gaza and much to Israel’s chagrin.

These are stories the anchor at the outset of this column may like to mull over as she looks for victors in Ukraine.

French President Emanuel Macron’s visit to Beijing would by itself have been a breach in the Western façade, but the breach must be more pronounced because the EU President Ursula von der Leyen, a western hawk on Ukraine, also accompanied Macron’s peace mission. Macron’s persistent advice to Europe has been to disengage from US policies whether in Ukraine or in Taiwan.

I hope this is a wide enough gap in the much touted western unity which the anchor of our narrative must begin to realize indicates success or a setback. She will justifiably complain I have not balanced the story. True. After all, the US has opened an embassy in far off Vanuatu to further encircle China.

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Are Hashimpura-Maliana Comparable To Massacre Of Muslims In Srebrenica?

Are Hashimpura-Maliana Comparable To Massacre Of Muslims In Srebrenica?

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

One way to cope with the agony of Hashimpur-Maliana is to look around the debris we stand on. There is that heartwarming figure of the tall (in every sense of the term) IPS officer, Vibhuti Narain Rai, Superintendent of Police in Ghaziabad all those 35 years ago.

On hearing that the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) had picked up 50 young men, in a truck, carried them to the Gang canal, shot them and thrown the bodies in the canal for easy disposal, Rai rushed to the scene and shouted. “Is anyone there?” groans of one Babuddin, the accidental survivor, gave Rai an opening for investigation. After doggedly searching into all the circumstances, Rai spotted a shaft of light. Justice Murlidhar found 16 PAC men guilty, deserving life sentences.

So, it is not that a few good men pitted against state impunity do not make a difference. There is always enough humanity around us which pitches its tents against the horrors like those of Hashimpura and Maliana.

Social activist, Nandita Haksar, lawyers Vrinda Grover, Rebecca John, Colin Gonsalves have played exceptional roles. There are countless others. Umpteen journalists with Sankarshan Thakur and Qurban Ali in the vanguard, who have followed the case doggedly and not without success.

Remembering Hashimpura and Maliana in today’s atmosphere of anti Muslim impunity by the BJP, can cause an almost deliberate amnesia if you happen to be in the ranks of secularists. “Please don’t pile up blame against the Congress” they implore. “It will only embolden the BJP to greater impunity.” So, what do we do?

How does one alter the calendar? The ghastly events took place when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister; the Congress had Bir Bahadur Singh as Chief Minister of UP. Did the PAC go berserk on its own, or it received a signal from someone higher up to teach Muslims a lesson. Who was this higher up? We have the doubtful testimony of Subramanian Swamy in the Rajya Sabha. He points the finger at Minister of State for Internal Security P. Chidambaram.

During Shab e barat fireworks, a fire cracker hit a constable on duty who, as a kneejerk reaction, shot dead two Muslims. This ignited riots of a fiercely communal nature in April.

Violence which continued for over a month were, actually, clashes between two communities – not one sided pogroms which became the vogue later.

A pre condition for riots is communalism in the air. Rajiv Gandhi’s cohorts had filled the cauldron with every communal ingredient and allowed it to boil over. One does not have to go back to the “Hindu” in the Congress DNA. Well, for a flavour, take this one example. In his memoirs, A Life of Our Times, Rajeshwar Dayal, ICS, records an incident when he was the first Home Secretary of Uttar Pradesh. One day he and his police commissioner, turned up at Chief Minister Govind Ballabh Pant’s residence with a trunk full of evidence against RSS Chief Guru Golwalkar. Guruji, according to the evidence in Dayal’s possession, was planning widespread disturbances in Meerut, Muzaffarnagar and other parts of Western UP. Dayal thought Pant would be pleased with the catch. Pant placed a huge dampener on Dayal’s initiative. He said the cabinet will have to consider the sensitive issue. Meanwhile Guruji was allowed to escape.

Although rioting in Meerut erupted on a small scale in April, 1987, tensions in the area were high soon after Rajiv Gandhi opened the locks of the Ram Temple, leaving the BJP far behind in the Ram Mandir stakes. Kamal Nath as his sidekick, crowed with amplifiers on. “We have taken the first initiative to build a Ram Mandir.” As soon as the Mandir issue was brought into bold relief, Babari Masjid came into focus as a target. Competitive Ram Bhakti took over.

About the same time, the Shah Bano judgement granting maintenance to a Muslim divorcee, caused the Muslim clergy to see red. With consummate cowardice Rajiv Gandhi’s men rolled back the judgement in Parliament. If the charge of appeasement of Muslim was ever valid, this was that occasion.

Topsy-turvy decisions involving Mandir, Masjid, Muslim Personal Law gave a handle to communal forces. Communal flames were stoked.

The tit-for-tat clashes in Meerut took a toll of 50 or so lives. It was then that someone in government took the decision to call in the notoriously communal PAC and let it loose on the Muslim-mohallas. And what a job the force did – lined up men by the Gang canal and shot them dead. Headlights of a Mother Dairy van were mistaken by the PAC as their pursuers. In panic they clambered onto these trucks and accelerated towards Hindon River on UP-Delhi border. The petrified Muslims were off loaded – and summarily shot and thrown in the river.

Atleast a handful of PAC murderers of Hashimpura have received sentences. But the widows of Maliana, (those who have not died a natural death) must wait for justice in a continuous daze. More than three decades and 900 hearings after the massacre in which 72 Muslims were killed, all 39 accused have been acquitted.

A daughter of ours, then a reporter in her early 20s, covered Maliana. The memory still haunts her. I was in Zagreb during the Bosnian war in 1994-95 when a posse of armed Serbs rounded up 8,000 young and able bodied Bosnian Muslims at the village of Srebrenica. Lined them up, shot them and buried them in mass graves. Dutch Peace Keeping Forces nearby took no notice.

The difference between Srebrenica and Maliana is this: Srebrenica massacre, though on a larger scale, was heard by the International Court of Justice within a decade of the ghastly events. The guilty were punished. An elegant Srebrenica memorial in nearby Potocari sends shivers down the spine. By contrast the families of the victims of Maliana have already waited 36 years for justice. Appeals in higher courts will be as lengthy, and for how long? Ultimately, as Groucho Marx said, we are all dead –– in this case, without justice.

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