Pivot To Poland: Is That The Trajectory Of Ukraine War?

Pivot To Poland: Is That The Trajectory Of Ukraine War?

                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

The Ukraine war has already yielded one of its most important outcomes even though the western media does not dwell on it with enthusiasm. It is now confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt that US hegemony has been irreversibly replaced by a multi polar world. G7 are a grouping in decline; BRICS is the expanding reality.

In this altered order, nations are busy consolidating their slots. The Turkish President, Tayyip Erdogan took another turn in his pirouette: he lifted his objection on Sweden joining NATO and received Volodymyr Zelensky. He repatriated five commanders of the neo-Nazi Azov brigade in clear breach of his understanding with Russia, agreed to support Ukraine’s membership of NATO. His recent alliance with Russia has been more or less discarded.

He likes the multi polarity, but to play a regional role he would not like to be painted on the same page as, say, Iran. Russia is acceptable as a regional power but not as a victor over Ukraine. That would make the Black Sea its lake. Erdogan’s stakes in the Black Sea are considerable.

Turkey’s U-turn is not without reasons: economic crisis, spiraling inflation, unemployment, weakening currency and, above all, falling investments. Apparently his outreach to the Gulf States did not spur investments. Hence this westward lurch. There were speculations in Ankara that he would play the Swedish card if the issue of Turkey’s entry into Europe were reopened. This, if true, is a foolish dream. Former French President Giscard d’Estaing was blunt. “Western civilization is Christian; Turkey can have no place in it.”

Talking of Muslim states and their compatibility with Europe, consider this: when Richard Holbrooke, US special envoy to the Balkans, settled the issue of Bosnia’s statehood he tied a part of it to a district of Serbia – a sort of three legged state, its Muslim identity totally in check.

An unadulterated Muslim Bosnia was not in order. Ironically, a Muslim Kosovo was carved out of Serbia. The Orthodox Church and the Slavic links with Russia create a special bond between Belgrade and Moscow. When Kosovo was being carved out of Serbia without as much as a Russian nod, Russian tanks gatecrashed the US supervised party and occupied Pristina airport.

Diverse policies in Kosovo and Bosnia were explained those days as part of bitter differences between Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Holbrooke.

So proud was Albright of her Kosovo initiative that she asked her Director for Policy Planning, Morton Halperin, to commission a special study of “The Kosovo initiative”. Richard Ullman, a distinguished professor of International Relations at Princeton and a former editor of Foreign Policy Magazine, was provided with space in the State Department to embark on this research. No one has ever heard what happened to the research launched with such fanfare.

There is reason for this extended focus on the Balkans: should the conflict be expanded as a regional destabilization project, the Serbia-Kosovo section lends itself to much mischief. It is a maze of criss crossing interests involving the US, EU, Russia and Turkey which, in its Ottoman Avatar, ruled over large parts of the region. Troops from different European countries guard distinct parts of Kosovo, including the most revered monastery of Dejan.

A daily ritual at Dejan is emblematic of the deep and abiding grudges in the region. Every evening a muscular young priest carrying a heavy rattle called the tallantone runs around the main church in the compound. The noise from the rattle is supposed to alert the inmates against the “Turk”, the eternal threat.

Recently, Zelensky, a Jew, ordered Orthodox priests to vacate Ukraine’s grand churches. The reason for this harsh order? The Orthodox Church has links with its counterpart in Moscow. This link can undermine Ukraine’s war effort, it is argued.

Even otherwise, there is enough conflictual material in the region. Just as Turkey unlocks the gate for Sweden to enter NATO, Sweden emerges in bold relief as the state authorizing Quran burning, enraging Muslims worldwide.

Hezbollah’s supreme leader Hassan Nasrallah has already called for Sweden’s ambassadors to be expelled from Muslim countries. Provide fuel to this and Islamophobia may well be on the way to being resurrected. Are there powerful interests working towards this end?

All of this may be bleak speculation, but the recent NATO summit in Vilnius rubbished any positive spin the western media may have placed on the West’s gains in the war. Public fireworks lent themselves to photographs which were not flattering to NATO at all.

One photograph shows NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg virtually pushing Zelensky off the stage. Apparently Zelensky, angry because Ukraine had been denied immediate membership of NATO, had clambered onto the stage like an irate heckler.

His protests caused British Defence Minister, Ben Wallace to virtually scold Zelensky. Wallace thought Ukraine should express more appreciation to its supporters.

The rejoinder from Zelensky was sharp. “He should write to me about how he wants to be thanked.” Wallace himself was none too happy because his candidature as the next Secretary General of NATO had been scuttled by the only authority more effective than Britain in the conclaves of NATO – the US.

A prominent Ukrainian activist, asked US National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan a question, in these words, “how to explain to my son, who is sleeping in the corridor due to air raids, that Biden isn’t ready to accept Ukraine into NATO.” She added “Is he afraid of Russia – are there back channel negotiation with Russia and Ukraine’s NATO hopes are a bargaining chip?”

Such scandalous talk plus the Anglo-American differences on Wallace’s candidature as the next NATO Secretary General must have been honeyed music to Putin.

Meanwhile, Putin revealed that reliable intelligence gathered by the Kremlin confirm US plans to insert into western Ukraine a Polish expeditionary force “for a subsequent occupation of these territories.” Should this happen, a part of Ukraine, to be absorbed into Poland, will automatically have NATO protection under chapter 5. What a development.

#          #          #          #

How Muslims In Mandela’s Cabinet Outgrow Their Religious Identity

How Muslims In Mandela’s Cabinet Outgrow Their Religious Identity

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

When a school inviting me for a talk on Mandela Day last week, accompanied by my TV interview with Madiba, as he was affectionately called, I was transported back to one of the most exciting assignments I had done – the end of Apartheid in South Africa in February 1990.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 signaled the end of the Soviet Union. This, in its wake unfroze conflicts across the globe which had been sustained by the West as assets in the Cold War.

I remember how Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and other Commonwealth leaders at a 1986 summit in London failed to persuade Mrs. Thatcher to stiffen sanctions against the Apartheid regime. “More sanctions would hurt black workers”, she argued.

Likewise Christian Democrats were kept in power with the unspeakable corruption which Italian judges subsequently investigated and exposed but only after the Soviet threat had ended. Under leaders like Enrico Berlinguer, the Communist party was a formidable threat.

The congealed sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland was sought to be ended, resulting in the Good Friday agreement of 1998. Former Yugoslavia became seven independent republics. As many central Asian republics emerged.

The unforgettable drive through these republics left two indelible images on the mind.

Impeccably clad saleswomen and men supervised large, well-stocked stores of United Colors of Benetton, lined with fashionable clothes and multiple, expensive decorative items. Remarkably, there was not a single buyer in sight. This was a case of capitalism advertising itself.

The other image was of empty mosques but packed Orthodox Churches celebrating the post-Soviet “freedoms”.

In Northern Ireland, the sectarian animus ran deep, going back to the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant William of Orange defeated the Roman Catholic James II. “Had William lost to James, the throne of England would have been Roman Catholic” Jack Sawyer, the distinguished editor of the Belfast Telegraph, explained to me.

This passionate desire for union with Britain in perpetuity stoked Catholic or Republican anger. Ultra-Right wing Unionists like Rev. Ian Paisley, shunned any accommodation with the Irish Republican Army (IRA), its political wing, the Shin Fein, or with Dublin. The language was particularly aggressive: “We shall never be under the Jack Boot of Dublin.” Then the Soviet Union collapsed and the Good Friday agreement was forged in 1998.

It is in this sequence that the West decided to free itself of the odium of sustaining Apartheid. It was as part of the choreography of this process that Mandela’s release after 27 years in the White man’s prison became its crowning glory.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a friend of Mandela’s and a distinguished leader of the anti-Apartheid struggle encapsuled the consequences of Apartheid in the course of one of his sermons. “When the white man first came to South he had the Bible in his hands, we blacks had all the lands. But as time passed our roles were reversed: we had the Bible and the white man had all the lands.”

To cover Mandela’s release from the Victor Verster prison, outside Cape Town, my crew and I would have to enter South Africa before Apartheid had formally ended. How does one enter a country with which India has no diplomatic relations? Informal arrangements were made with the help of the Joint Secretary, Africa, Arundhati Ghosh, a most helpful officer and friend.

Clearing immigration formalities was easy enough, but almost insurmountable was the customs regime. A closed society had exceptionally strict rules for TV cameras and other equipment. I had to find someone in Johannesburg who would stand surety for us. In other words, someone had to deposit half a million rands with the customs authorities. The sum would be returned on our way out “if the regime had found our behaviour satisfactory.” In other words, the guarantee was not so much for the equipment as for our journalistic behaviour. It was an unstated promise extracted from us that our TV shows would not embarrass the departing regime.

Among the phone numbers I had carried with me was one of Yusuf Cachalia whose father, Mohammad Cachalia figures in Mahatma Gandhi’s South Africa years. As soon as Cachalia learnt of our predicament he sent help to what is now Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo airport – a cheque by way of surety included. It was an extraordinary act of generosity because Yusuf bhai (as I began to call him) did not know me at all.

“I wanted an Indian journalist to cover the end of this cruel system.” Yusuf bhai and his wife, Amina, were friends of Mandela’s since his earliest days in the African National Congress (ANC) of which the two were also members before Yusuf bhai branched out into “stocks and shares” in the “interest of family and party comrades.”

It took me a while to understand the presence of nine cabinet ministers of Indian origin in Mandela’s first cabinet. One or two Indian diplomats took a dim view of the fact that only Mac Maharaj and Jay Naidu were Hindus. The remainder were all of Muslim origin. Quite remarkably, Frene Ginwala, a Parsee`, was the first speaker of the National Assembly.

Mandela’s Principal Adviser in his office was Ahmad Kathrada. Mandela’s successor, Thabo Mbeki maintained the pattern: his Principal Adviser was Essop (Yusuf) Pahad. There is a sociological explanation. When ships carrying the first batches of indentured labour docked in Natal in 1860 onwards, to work on the sugar plantations, a majority of their progeny joined the Tricameral legislatures established in 1984-94 to accommodate Indians and coloureds. There was no representation for blacks.

Later when Gujarati Muslim merchants arrived to cater to an expanding Indian community, their children had the means to acquire the best education outside South Africa. It were these graduates of Western enlightenment who returned to join the South African Communist party and the ANC, its affiliate. In the struggle of common purpose, these progressive ideologically motivated youth had miraculously outgrown their religious identity.

#          #          #          #

Why Only Virtual SCO Under Modi’s Chairmanship After “Spectacular” US Visit?

Why Only Virtual SCO Under Modi’s Chairmanship After “Spectacular” US Visit?

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

The passing away of Subhash Chakravarty last month has not been much noticed because Subhash or Dada, as some of us called him, as a long time chief of Bureau of The Times of India did not have the exposure of, say, a Kuldip Nayar. More than his readers, fellow journalists would remember him. He was more of a newshound than a popular writer.

Editors got hooked on him because of the vast quantities of information he furnished for the editor to process. When N.J. Nanporia, the most erudite of editors, moved from The Times of India to The Statesman, his unofficial but regular “tipster” was Dada rather than his counterpart who was on paper’s staff.

The man who could walk unannounced into the offices of the most powerful in the land, was also extremely lonely in his private life. His extraordinary access to politicians like Pranab Mukherjee could be explained in parochial terms too –– he could not conceal his Bengali chauvinism.

In this he was not dissimilar to the late Abu Abraham. A superb cartoonist, Abu was also a Malayali chauvinisist, a tendency which erupted every time he touched on “north Indian culture”.

Dada and Abu have crept into memory simultaneously because they link up in different ways with a China story gestating in my mind.

Among the many remarkable cartoons the late Abu Abraham sketched the one he prided most was of Mao Zedong walking upto an Indian diplomat, Brajesh Mishra, smiling mysteriously, eye contact and all. The enigmatic smile, at a time when relations between two nations were in a “chill” phase, became the subject of continuous discussion and punditry. Abu’s caption of the cartoon were words of inspiration: “Mao-Lisa”.

The Mao-Lisa smile may well have been one of the ingredients in K.R. Narayanan being named ambassador to Beijing in 1976 after a 14 year lapse. The date of Narayanan’s appointment overlapped with the Emergency.

When Indira Gandhi was routed in the 1977 and Morarji Desai became Prime Minister, the Ministry of External Affairs fell to the lot of Atal Behari Vajpayee. The office he occupied near South Block’s main staircase was exactly the one that Pandit Nehru occupied as Prime Minister.

“I am about to occupy the chair on which Pandit Nehru sat.” Vajpayee was full of emotion.

Among his earlier visits as Minister for External Affairs, Vajpayee and his cerebral Foreign Secretary, Jagat Mehta, embarked on was to China, in February, 1979.

N. Ram, Dada and I were part of a small team of journalists invited to accompany the delegation. Dada was never short on tips on chopsticks at the Great Hall of the Peoples, the essential protocol of climbing the Great Wall –– with an empty bladder. In February’s biting cold there would otherwise be that embarrassing search for a toilet.

One big advantage of having Dada by our side was actually quite priceless. Since he called up his editor, Girilal Jain twice a day we were regularly updated on how our stories were faring. The Editor’s approval of the drift of one’s stories was clear from the display given to what one was writing. It was all very satisfactory until one reached Hangzhou, the great cultural centre.

After a memorable banquet by the local party chief, we retired to our rooms in an exquisite hotel. This was usually the time for Dada to walk to the press room for his confabulation with his editor. Such was Dada’s demeanour that it appeared to those who were listening to the conversation that Dada was actually scolding his editor. That was his style.

This particular conversation with Girilal Jain ended dramatically. Dada let the handset dangling by the spiral cord, rather like the climax of Dial M for Murder. He ran toward Jagat Mehta’s room and began banging on the door. “Jagat, open the door” he thundered ominously, “China has invaded Vietnam”.

It was feared from the first day of Vajpayee’s visit that Deng Xiaoping might actually do what he verbally threatened: “teach Vietnam a lesson.” Some action was expected after Vietnam occupied Kampuchea and removed the Khmer Rouge supported by China.

Considering that the Indian Foreign Minister was in Beijing on something of an epoch making visit, military action against Vietnam without as much as taking the visitor into confidence was construed an insult. What compounded the insult was the fact that the Foreign Minister of Yugoslavia who was in Beijing at the same time, was kept in the loop.

What took place in Vajpayee suite that night was something of a somber variant of pajama party. Vajpayee’s mind was made up. He cut short the visit and returned home via Hong Kong.

This was Chinese behaviour at a time when Deng’s four modernizations had barely been announced as state policy. China, like India then, was a poor, developing country.

Did China deliberately insult Vajpayee? I would say no. The element of secrecy with India was dictated by India’s deep relations with the Soviet Union. Vietnam at this stage was largely in the Soviet camp.

What Vajpayee’s successor, Narendra Modi is coping with is China risen to the height of Gulliver, challenging not India, but the US, India’s patron. Circumstances of a changing global order have placed India on a sweet spot, wooed by both sides. In this situation, India’s commitment to strategic autonomy is credible.

This credibility has to be sustained by managing the autonomy of action without ever looking like the leaning tower of Pisa.

Village “Nutts” walk on ropes tightly held by two poles. A fall, if ever, is after all only before a small village audience. A high wire act before a global audience the one India is embarked on demands exceptional agility. Just because we are satisfied with the optics of the US visit, we cannot let our guard down. Our slipping into a virtual mode for SCO will have the world scrutinize the shift. Strategic autonomy as a policy will have to be sustainable. As a trick it will be found out.

#          #          #          #