This Hatred Hurts Because Tagore And Nazrul Walk Together In Bangladesh

This Hatred Hurts Because Tagore And Nazrul Walk Together In Bangladesh

                                                                                         Saeed Naqvi

The fireball of hatred rolling in Bangladesh takes my mind back to the birth of that nation. When the war to liberate Bangladesh began, I was required to cover it for The Statesman, where I was a junior reporter. The instruction to proceed for the coverage was a puzzle: I would not go to the Bangladesh front. Instead, I would be chaperoned, along with a host of foreign correspondents, by Major Ram Mohan Rao to Chhamb, in the western sector, scene of a major battle in that war.

Why had I been singled out to cover the western sector? Why was I being denied the main theatre? Was I not being trusted?

It turned out that these were ogres of the mind, conjured up by me. The truth was much more revealing of the Bangladesh reality. The editor, in his wisdom, thought that in Bangladesh I would be mistaken for a Punjabi Muslim and killed.

The other reason was even more convincing. The Statesman was very much a Bengal institution, headquartered in Kolkata. I was in the paper’s New Delhi office, emotionally removed from the Bangladesh operations in which our Kolkata colleagues had a “proprietary” interest. It was, for them, an intra-Bengali affair. Reporters from Kolkata would harmonize much more with the emerging elite, which was wrenching itself away from the Urdu-speaking Punjabis of Pakistan.

Linguistic, cultural identity trumping religious identity was clearly in play even when Indira Gandhi placed Sheikh Hasina in Pranab Mukherjee’s care, virtually as his ward from 1975 to 81 when she escaped a threat to her life.

When Inder Gujral, as Prime Minister, was embarked on an audacious three nation summit (Sheikh Hasina, Nawaz Sharif, Gujral) in Dhaka, I received a surprise call from him: would I accompany him to Dhaka? I read his mind instantly. The contingent accompanying him did not have a single Muslim in a summit involving two full fledged Islamic Republics. A quest for a notional Muslim, it turned out, was a bogus one.

Never in my life have I been more lonesome with my Muslim credentials. My colleagues in the press contingent were suddenly lost to me once they were past immigration in Dhaka. The Chakravartys, Mukherjees, Ghoshals, Basus and one Karlekar (more Bengali than most because of his Bengali mother) merged quite indistinguishably with the Rehmans, Haqs, Mujibs, conversing in Bengali with a vengeance. High decibel sounds of “Ki Khabar, Khub Bhalo, Oray Baba” marginalized me completely.

“Illichh Maachh” was the flavour of the trip and my friend Tarun Basu actually returned with the biggest ice box packed with Hilsa, the world’s tastiest fish but so cluttered with bones that one has to be a born Bengali, from either side of the divide, to eat it without choking.

There is a discernable, sometimes pronounced, schizophrenia about Bangladesh. I experienced it during Prime Minister Morarji Desai’s visit to Dhaka when Zia ur Rehman, representing a streak quite different from Sheikh Mujib’s, was in power. New Delhi had complied with Dhaka’s request for food grains but Prakash Shah, Joint Secretary in Morarji’s secretariat, looked in vain for the gesture receiving any notice in the official media. There was a tendency not to be seen clasping India’s hand. In dealing with Sheikh Hasina, for obvious historical reasons, there was always a kind of furtive warmth. But even so, in international relations, particularly with neighbours, the word “obligation”, has a negative fallout. India’s role in 1971 sometimes boomerangs on the relationship.

Sheikh Hasina comes under inexorable pressure when citizenship laws in the contiguous state of Assam are twisted against Muslim migration. She is, after all, a politician, and will always take political steps to manage unsettling events at home. This may involve among a host of steps, accommodating a determined Chinese lobby that much more. So the Citizens issue does not only strain India-Bangladesh ties but it immediately opens up spaces for China.

It is a sub continental irony that the Chinese influence in the neighbourhood became that much more pronounced after India helped create Bangladesh. Until 1971, a large component of Indian diplomacy consisted in neutralizing Pakistan everywhere. Creation of Bangladesh altered the political geography of the sub continent. India became a large country surrounded by small ones. It is clear as daylight why President Zia ur Rehman floated the idea of SAARC. Its political purpose was straightforward: to balance India’s post 1971, enlarged presence in South Asia. Towards this end, each one of the nations bordering India, began to flourish a China card, almost in concert.

When Atal Behari Vajpayee, as External Affairs Minister visited Beijing in 1979, he thought that a thaw in Sino-Indian ties would be a step towards diluting the China card in the pockets of SAARC leaders. The visit ended disastrously. Beijing did not even take the visiting foreign minister into confidence that Vietnam was about to be “taught a lesson”. Under Premiers Rajiv Gandhi, Narasimha Rao and Vajpayee, relations with China cruised and wobbled but never sank to levels prevailing after Narendra Modi brought Ladakh into bold relief having bifurcated Jammu and Kashmir.

Eastern Ladakh, Pakistan, emergence of Taleban in Afghanistan, a spike in targeted killing in Kashmir were all threatening enough. Reports of attacks on Hindu places of worship in Bangladesh are a multiplier to the menacing clouds gathering all around. What is happening is dangerous and sad. Polarizing communities in India for political reasons may have been somewhere near the ignition point and the world knows it.

The pity is that in its culture Bangladesh is quintessentially composite, incorporating many Hindu motifs into its social practices without in any way impairing its Islamic faith. Tagore, the author of Bangladesh’s national anthem, was influenced by the Brahmo Samaj: Gods and Goddesses do not leap out of his writings. But Shiva, Shakti, Tandav, Durga are integral to Qazi Nazrul Islam’s songs, so much an organic part of Bangladesh’s fabric. What is happening is frightening for Bangladesh’s 15 million Hindus and painful to all of us.

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Excessive Focus On Priyanka Will Help Congress Minimally, Disrupt Opposition Totally

Excessive Focus On Priyanka Will Help Congress Minimally, Disrupt Opposition Totally

                                                                                    Saeed Naqvi

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s presence in Lakhimpur Kheri, scene of recent ghastly BJP callousness, would have electoral potential if, in addition to her personalability, there was also in her makeup a quantity called political stamina. I pray to God that she does not, like the Hare in Aesop’s fable, go to sleep after a few promising hops. But I am afraid she may.

My skepticism is based on experience of her off-and-on style of functioning in both, Rae Bareli and Amethi, the two UP constituencies considered to be the Gandhi Parivar’s “pocket borough”. Erasing public memory is a device in electoral politics which is given acceleration by the magic of television. Priyanka’s resemblance to Indira Gandhi, the way she carries the sari, clear diction, combative demeanour, spontaneous anger, a capacity to connect with the audience, all these are useful attributes. But these also have the potential of blanking out from public memory the electoral reverses the Gandhis have heaped on the Congress party.

Some years ago friends from Rae Bareli turned up in white khadi gear and Bata jogging shoes, looking very athletic. Priyanka Gandhi has invited “carefully selected Congress leaders like us for a Chintan Baithak, or brainstorming.”

The occasion for the “Chintan” was the party’s humiliating defeat in the 2012 UP elections. Worse, in Rae Bareli the Congress lost all the five seats which form segments of a parliamentary seat. In adjacent Amethi, the party lost three out of five.

After the “Chintan Baithak” led by the redoubtable Kishori Lal Sharma, gifted to the Gandhis by the late Satish Sharma, Rajiv Gandhi’s fellow pilot during their Indian airlines days, Priyanka put up her feet and rested.

Just when the 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign was warming up, grass root reports indicated a total rout for the Congress. Rae Bareli and Amethi too may be lost. This rang alarm bells. The prospect of neither Sonia Gandhi nor Rahul being member of the House would spell disaster for the family. They may lose 10 Janpath.

That is when Priyanka Gandhi jumped into electoral battle both in Rae Bareli and Amethi. Single handedly, she held onto the two seats for mother and brother by the skin of her teeth. These were the only two seats the party won from UP. After a spate of dismal performances, Priyanka’s solo notwithstanding, one would have expected the Gandhis to make alternative arrangements and bow out with dignity. They would have to be particularly thick skinned for staying on despite the embarrassments. “But a politician has to be thick skinned.” One of the acolytes chipped in.

Everywhere, in Indian conditions most certainly, politics is a 24X7 business. Party workers, constituents consider it their birthright to lounge on the lawns and amble along the corridor, often past the master bedroom. You cannot be part time politicians. You cannot campaign your guts out in Rae Bareli and Amethi and resume your razzmatazz lifestyle, occupying front row seats at Lakme or Rohit Bal fashion shows. That is not the culture of Indian politics.

Rahul, likewise, has a habit of packing up his bags and disappearing without notice, untraceable, presumably to some exotic locations. At the confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in 2013 he left the captains of Industry baffled, describing his journey from Gorakhpur to Mumbai by the Lokmanya Tilak express. En route he met Girish the carpenter and others whom Rahul described as symbols of India’s aspirations, who, like the billion other Indians, were remote from authority in the capital cities.

The Panchayati Raj system had to be given more teeth. That seemed to be the burden of his song. That was eight years ago. If there is any life in that manifesto, he has been unable to do anything about it because his party has been out of power. And, there is no power in sight for as far as the eye can see.

The drumbeating for the Trinity continues regardless. The party is once again blown to smithereens in 2019 but……but what is the alternative to the Gandhis? This becomes the chant after every debacle. Meanwhile, leaders big and small leave the party in droves and cross over to the BJP, confirming the party’s credentials as the BJP’s B team.

A group of 23 senior Congress leaders, a mixed bag of very successful professionals and some redundant has-beens, write a desperate letter to Sonia Gandhi in August 2020. Please take decisions on the party, its direction. No response. Ok, say the 23, five states will hold elections in May 2021. Maybe, the party will recover some ground. A slightly reassured party leadership may be inclined to bring about changes. Keep our fingers crossed. Come the May elections and, lo and behold, the party is hammered out of the park once again.

Why are you being so uncharitable to the Congress at such a critical time? (They will say) Look, Priyanka is getting so much attention in Lakhimpur Kheri. Who knows, this maybe the recovery curve for the Congress.

This grand delusion is custom made to disrupt any opposition game plan for the 2024 general elections. The delusion is a function of the ruling class dream that India is somehow inching towards a two party system – the two parties are mirror images of each other except for one difference: the Congress will look the other way on allegations of love jihad and oppose lynching alleged beef transporters.

It was a horrendous tragedy in Lakhimpur Kheri which first grabbed primetime attention. But the fact that the cameras have stayed on Priyanka for so long eventually helps the channels and Narendra Modi. By themselves, the sibling are no threat to Modi. To the contrary, excessive media focus on them will only boost their egos to a point from where they will make unreasonable demands of coalition partners without whom there can be no strategy for the 2024 elections.

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BJP Brahmin Solution Crashes Into Farmers Agitation in Lakhimpur

BJP Brahmin Solution Crashes Into Farmers Agitation in Lakhimpur

                                                                                       Saeed Naqvi

 

BJP had a Brahmin problem in UP; the solution has, quite literally crashed into the farmer’s agitation in Lakhimpur Kheri. Before explaining the incident, a look at the Brahmin predicament in UP.

At the very outset in 1947, the Congress more or less internalized the caste pyramid. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru became India’s first Prime Minister. Pandit Govind Ballah Pant, Chief Minister of UP, which Congressmen once tried to name, Aryavart, land of the Aryans. Once Pant joined Nehru at the Centre, the Lucknow gaddi rotated between Kayasthas, Banias, Jats, Thakurs.

Since participants in this musical chair were all part of the Hindu ruling class or the Savarna, the Brahmin did not feel too inconvenienced. From 1971, it was smooth sailing again – Kamlapati Tripathi, Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna, Narain Dutt Tiwari, succeeded each other as Chief Minsters until 1977.

Later V.P. Singh pushed the huge boulder of Mandal Commission into the pond, resulting in a tsunami of caste politics on an unimaginable scale. Mulayam Singh Yadav, and Mayawati surfaced in UP; Laloo Prasad Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Ram Vilas Paswan in Bihar.

UP and Bihar evolved distinctly. Cornwallis’ Permanent settlement yielded a political structure dominated by Sri Krishna Sinha, a Bhumihar and Annugrah Narain Singh, Thakur. It was as a response to this structure that led to a powerful communist movement in Bihar, remnants of which were one of the ignition points for JP’s movement in the early 70s.

In UP, the entire caste pyramid was superimposed on a dying, Muslim dominated feudal structure which had been in abysmal decline since 1856-57. One of the world’s great experiments in cultural commerce when the new rulers adapted themselves to a high civilization with admiration and humility has been hugely misunderstood for a certain reason. It was overlaid on areas which contained all ancient wonders that was India –– Ganga, Jamuna, Triveni, Kashi or (Varanasi), Ayodhya, Vrindavan (Mathura), Hardwar, Rishikesh. This was the spiritual heartland for the children of Pant, Tripathi, Bahuguna, Tiwari and later even Atal Behari Vajpayee. He pitched his political tent in Lucknow. For Nehru, it was a grand romance, the stuff of aesthetic wonder. I am sticking only to Brahmin names for this narrative. Like all men of common sense, Nehru too was aware that these “pavitra sthans” had the power which could be regressively used, as they were, by the new electoral politics which fell to India’s lot.

The Congress was the Brahmin’s natural habitat from the beginning of the republic. But the Ram Janmbhoomi agitation on the cusp of 80s-90s, which was in response to burgeoning caste politics after V.P. Singh’s Mandal-Commission gambit, accelerated the Congress decline. The Brahmin moved in droves from his natural habitat to the emerging power centre, the BJP. The Muslim vote moved in the opposite direction, sandwiched between intra Hindu formations.

The RSS-BJP combine had a long term and a short term plan. In the long run, its aim was to recover old glory, with the caste pyramid as its central column. To aspire for this design, it had to recast its short term priority. This was to grab power; only then could the longer plan be implemented. For the immediate future it had to resort to some social engineering to cope with the torrent of caste politics aggravated by Mandal. Therefore, the Hindutva think tank bypassed leaders like Kalraj Mishra and settled for Kalyan Singh, a Lodh, as Chief Minister.

This outcome was something of a disappointment for the Brahmin. It was this disappointment that Mayawati’s henchmen sought to exploit. They promised fully furnished housing, metaphorically speaking to the politically homeless Brahmin.

In the 2017 UP assembly elections, the Yogi Adityanath led BJP trounced the Congress to a cipher and romped home with 312 seats in a house of 403. The Yogi had blown the bugle during the Faizabad riots of November 2020.

“UP ab Gujarat banega

Faizabad shuruaat karega.”

(UP will now follow the example of Gujarat

And Faizabad will start that process.)

The Yogi, a Thakur from Garhwal, ran a tough, police state with a heavy spread of Uttarakhand Thakurs in key positions. For the Brahmins raised on stories of the “Pantji” years, this was status reversal.

“Brahmin is angry; Brahmin is angry” became a chant, frequently heard in Lucknow. While still in the Congress, Jitin Prasada, once an acolyte of the Gandhis, set up a Brahmin Chetna Manch. He thought he was flourishing a magnet for the Brahmin vote. This vote is not numerically impressive; it has influence. Prasada was not taken seriously.

Are the Gandhi trio even interested in the February-March state elections? They may just not wish to pocket another defeat before the general elections of 2024. Or has the televised tragedy of Lakhimpur Kheri and the manner in which the siblings are being welcomed given them ideas?

Jitin Prasada, undervalued by the Congress, somewhat eagerly joined the BJP – to inflate its Brahmin content. But he was too small a fry to make much of a difference. This is when the Centre acted. Power was conferred on Ajay Mishra from Lakhimpur. As Minister of state for Home he proceeded to threaten the famers. In “two minutes” he would teach them a lesson.

Was Ashish Mishra, Ajay Mishra’s son, demonstrating power when his convoy mowed down some people, including four farmers and a journalist? With the Supreme Court involved, the Sangh Parivar’s somewhat convoluted “Brahmin” initiative in New Delhi to influence UP elections appears to be souring rapidly.

The “clan” sympathy for the Mishras will play out negatively for the BJP, as long as TRP ratings warrant the Lakhimpur tragedy as the Prime Time pick. The drama of Vikas Dubey’s dramatic death in an encounter last year is still fresh in minds.

The BJP is in a bind. So close to the most important state elections, sacking Ajay Mishra involves a huge loss of face. Replace him with a spate of Vajpayees, Shuklas, Sharmas will be hurried and unseemly.

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Senate Hearings Do Not Explain Causes Of American Shame

Senate Hearings Do Not Explain Causes Of American Shame

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

The US top brass was on one of its frequent visits to the confessional, the Senate Armed Services Committee, revealing just enough to reassure the American people that they have an open system. Defence Secretary Gen. Lloyd Austin must by now be in drill rattling off boo-boos by the military on more occasions than one. I can never forget his being grilled by the same committee during the Syrian war when he was a four star General.

The issue then was a relatively small matter. Gen. Lloyd was responsible for the training of Syrians who would fight Bashar al Assad’s “militants”. An initial $500 million had been set aside for their wages plus state of the art military hardware. Having received strenuous training, the Americans trained as a mirror image of Jabhat al Nusra just melted away exactly as the celebrated Afghan army did. There was an uproar. Secretary of Defence, Ashton Carter wept before TV cameras. It fell to Gen. Lloyd Austin’s lot to face the then Senate Committee.

Senator: “How many of the men you trained are still with us, fighting.”

Gen. Austin: “four…..or….five.”

The General, now Secretary of Defence, was not as embarrassingly exposed on the Afghan withdrawal. He had the entire top brass for company to face the Senators. As on the previous occasion he was candid.

“We have to consider some uncomfortable truths. We did not fully comprehend the depth of corruption and poor leadership in the senior ranks.” Did he mean that had the senior ranks not been so corrupt, the foot soldiers, all 3,00,000 (three lakhs) of them would have been loyal?

There are lamentations galore on Ashraf Ghani’s “unexplained rotation of commanders”. Austin said “we did not anticipate the snowball effect caused by these deals.” This enabled the Taleban commanders to strike deals with local leaders. In brief “the Afghan army we trained simply melted away, in many cases without firing a single shot.”

This kind of a hearing is like a parade of American democracy in action. It can cause millions of viewers watching the show to suspend critical faculties. Not only did the Afghan army not fire a shot, in places it virtually spread out the red carpet for the Taleban to enter. In revelations like the senate hearing, a great deal is covered up. The real story on an epic scale remains untold. Some really tough question needed to be asked. Why did it end this way? Many observers had told the US that this is the way the cookie would crumble? What the Senators needed to find out is “why” did it crumble this way?

President Joe Biden is right. Any end to a 20 year old involvement, unpopular with the people, would end in a mess. It is just as well that it has ended. But that is Biden’s point of view. The world is running around trying to cope with the void left behind.

“American troops cannot and should not be fighting and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight themselves.” Can this statement of Biden’s be disputed? “We could not provide them with the will to fight for their future.”

The patronizing tone in the last sentence does reek of the quantity called American exceptionalism. This exceptionalism was obsequiously accepted by all in days when the US was paramount. Today even in a grouping like AUKUS, the US stands out as the only country that does not play cricket.

The withdrawal, despite military advice to the contrary, reflects on Biden decisiveness. His boss in an earlier era, Barack Obama became aware of the futility of extending the Afghan expedition, as early as 2010, but he allowed Gn. Stanley McChrystal and Gen. David Petraeus to talk him out of decisive action. They were looking for the perfect occasion, like the Philanderer, postponing his rendezvous until the wife is in another city, servants have taken leave, there is pitter-patter of rain and, at hand, a hubble-bubble charged with aphrodisiacs. Stars were never going to be in such perfect constellation. To that extent, Biden is right.

One could have written the script from the earliest days of the occupation when Americans were raining yellow packets of food to soften the population. The goodwill thus earned would breed informants with solid facts on the location of Al Qaeda operatives. “Red-hot” information would be passed onto the US chain of command right upto the fighter unit, airborne in a jiffy with lethal ordnance. A posse of Al Qaeda were on the march on the other side of the hill, whispered the informant. The group was bombed to smithereens. Field reports next morning revealed that the Americans had bombed a wedding procession. The “informant” had taken revenge on a rival tribe. Such mishaps were common.

Should not the Senators know how many wedding processions were bombed in this fashion? Would such episodes not augment the ranks of US haters by geometrical progression? Lynddie England became the notorious military officer, smiling over a pile of naked Iraqis tortured at the Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. This happened within a year of the US occupation of Iraq. How many Lynddie Englands posed with tortured Afghans by way of trophy over two decades? Torture cages at Bagram were televised recently.

The macabre headlines of marines urinating on a pile of dead Afghans made page one in many newspapers. A clipping from The Guardian is a bleak page in my scrapbook. Thousands of doors crashed open, men kicked and punched in front of their women.

The 3,00,000 Afghan soldiers being trained came from these homes. Green on Blue attacks were a consequence: Afghan trainees would turn upon their trainers, killing them. The collaborating media stopped reporting these incidents because they demoralized the Occupation. This and much, much more the Senators need to know in full public view to cleanse the soul of America and restore to it the élan which was its pride.

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The Hokus Pokus About The Quad and AUKUS

The Hokus Pokus About The Quad and AUKUS

                                                                                  Saeed Naqvi

 

Robert Blackwill, US ambassador at the time of anti terror fireworks over Afghanistan, had established a tradition of seating guests at lunch around a circular table, where he grandly held forth, initiating a discussion. “Imagine I am Henry Kissinger” would be one of his opening gambits. An idea was tossed up. A discussion followed. The one who spoke the most, ate the least, because all plates were removed in one swoop.

On one such occasion, before soup was served, the ambassador announced with considerable satisfaction that Pakistan’s President Musharraf had decided to join the global war on terror as the frontline state.

Seated to my right the late Pranab Mukherjee, was agitated. He whispered his anger to me. It was uncanny. What he whispered was exactly the question shaping up in my mind. I raised my hand: “You are aware that New Delhi had complained consistently about cross border terrorism from Pakistan particularly since 1989.” Pranab Da (as Mukherjee was affectionately addressed) completed my question in his typical arrangement of words: “It is most worrying no doubt – you now have Pakistan as the frontline state in your war against terror?” pause. “They perpetrate terror against this county.”

Blackwill spoke volumes in two brief sentences:

“Musharraf has joined us in our global war on terror. What you are talking about is your old regional quarrel.” Juxtapose this with the Quad-AUKUS equation.

Atal Behari Vajpayee, as Prime Minister, had hosted President Bill Clinton for full five days in January 2000, just the previous year. Clinton spent just five hours in Islamabad, mostly chastising Musharraf for disrupting regional peace since Kargil. New Delhi was in seventh heaven. Terms of endearment with Washington had radically altered.

In a little over a year, had George W Bush, reversed that equation? Pakistan was incorporate into the global war on terror even as New Delhi cried foul. Pakistan was in the “A” team against terror; we were not.

Likewise, there is this idea of Quad in which New Delhi is such an enthusiastic participant. Australians and the Japanese did, frequently, vent their skepticism, invested as they were in the Chinese economy. After the American debacle in Kabul, however, Tokyo’s misgiving on Quad were all over the Japanese media. The hemorrhage had to be forestalled.

With the suddenness of revelation came the announcement of AUKUS (Australia, UK, US), the powerful military alliance in Indo-Pacific of which India alas, is not a partner. So New Delhi is trying to pack content into an abruptly devalued Quad. Did Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s photograph with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on the margins of the UNGA, flatter New Delhi? Pardon my complexes, does not a leader wearing AUKUS plus Quad badges dwarf the one with a frayed Quad pinned to the lapel? I would not go as far as the wag who takes the uncharitable view that the US takes India for granted exactly as secular political parties regard the Muslim vote: where else can they go?

AUKUS must have been in the works for some time but it was sprung upon the world when the US felt the earth move from beneath its feet in Kabul. The furious response from France only disguises anger in the EU which is talking of security outside NATO. That AUKUS is a purely Anglophone grouping should not be a surprise. Games have been played before to keep some clubs racially segregated.

For instance, when the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 placed a question mark on the need for NATO, Margaret Thatcher, then on a trip to Helsinki, was asked by a reporter: Now that the Soviet threat has gone, what was the justification for Britain’s nuclear deterrent?

Thatcher shot back “We still have a problem in the Middle East.” Thereafter, along with George Bush the senior, she began to put together “a coalition of the willing” ostensibly to oust Saddam Hussain from Kuwait. Saddam-in-Kuwait was the ignition point, not the larger perspective against which Operation Desert Storm of 1991 was designed.

Anglophone dominance of the world order since World War II, faced a challenge. Soviet collapse had brought about a reunification of Germany. This at a time when the Japanese economy was booming. It was easy to raise the spectre of AXIS, without actually mentioning the “A” word.

France, always ready with its own compass to navigate world affairs, initially dragged its feet on the coalition led by US and UK. President Francoise Mitterand was among the last to join the “coalition of the willing”. It was the biggest military coalition since 1945 – a grouping of 39 countries. Given their obsession, Pundits may be interested to know that Pakistan was part of that coalition.

As one who covered the story from Baghdad, I am possibly the only Indian witness who can confirm that the show was run exclusively by US and Britain. There were two separate press briefings, for the US and British media by their respective spokesmen. French journalists, like the lonesome me, were on the outside. It may be added in parenthesis, that the British media on this occasion were the poor cousins. From the terrace of the Al Rashied hotel, Peter Arnett of the CNN inaugurated what came to be known as the global media. The war was brought live into the world’s drawing rooms. John Simpson of the BBC, by comparison, cut a sorry figure, walking around with a satellite telephone. It was only after being beaten by the CNN during Operation Desert Storm that the BBC World Service TV was launched.

To revert to AUKUS, yes the French fury is understandable. Not only was a $90 billion submarine order being stolen, but an Anglophone dominated world order was being perpetuated. This is what infuriated President Emmanuel Macron. It just so happens that the turn of events has also provided Macron with an occasion to fall back on a de Gaulle style nationalism just when his ratings are plummeting and all manner of candidates are tossing their hats in the ring for the next elections.

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Limits To Power: Taleban In Kabul, Jailbreak In Israel

Limits To Power: Taleban In Kabul, Jailbreak In Israel

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

 

What could possibly be common between the Taleban brandishing their weapons in Kabul and Palestinians twirling their spoons (yes, tea-spoons) with a flourish? Well, the latter were celebrating because six Palestinian prisoners had pulled off a seemingly impossible escape from the high security Gilboa prison in Northern Israel. Clearly an embarrassment for a state which flaunts national security as a marketable commodity. The spoon has become an emblem because the six used it as an implement to dig a hole in the toilet attached to their cell.

The prisoners, according to Israeli authorities, were affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. According to the Times of Israel, the leader of the group, Zakaria Zubeidi, was “a former commander in Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.” That Zubeidi and three others (at the time of writing) have been arrested is a separate chapter. Kabul and Gilboa establish without any shadow of a doubt a reality all too common in history: limits to power. In this instance, the US globally and its ally Israel, regionally – particularly considering its stalemate with Arab militias like Hezbollah.

Massive intelligence failure attended both the events. True, a jailbreak cannot be compared with the reconquest of a country but that is not the way Palestinians see it. The Times of Israel reports: “the escape is considered a highly symbolic success for the terror groups. It is being celebrated with ‘euphoria’ among Palestinians.”

Taleban, likewise, in the initial flush are folk heroes in Afghanistan and beyond having done a David on Goliath. To bring out the irony in sharp focus on the US debacle in Afghanistan, recall the January 29, 2002, State of the Union address by President George W Bush. The President sketched in bold colours the “Axis of Evil.” Ironies upon ironies attend that speech. Bush welcomes Hamid Karzai as “leader of liberated Afghanistan.” Karzai is now under house arrest. Bush gloats “Terrorists who once occupied Afghanistan now occupy cells at Guantanamo Bay.” There is a disconcerting update on this too. Not only have Taleban returned to power in Kabul, atleast five in the new Kabul power structure were released from Guantanamo Bay in 2015.

What does all this portend? Is a phase of Imperialism coming full circle? One cannot expect US President Joe Biden to say it in quite that language, but what else does one make of his promise to end “never ending” wars. American youth who are now 20 years of age, have never seen “America at peace.” Suicide rate among military veterans as high as 18 per day? Biden, clearly abhors this data.

The problem, ofcourse is, that Biden is only the President, not the system. Even so he is proceeding with some sense of the consensus he has forged around him. For him to declassify secret FBI report which reveals the connection of Saudi Nationals to 9/11, indicates a sharp departure from past practice. Remember the days of George W Bush and his buddy Saudi Ambassador Bandar bin Sultan, or Bandar Bush as he was called because of his chumminess with the President? Those days seem like ancient history, days when Israel and Saudi Arabia were equally sacrosanct. Both had to be protected from bad copy.

And now even military protection is being withdrawn. In recent weeks the US removed its most advanced missile defense system, and Patriot batteries from the Kingdom which faces attacks from, say, Houthis in Yemen. Troop reductions from Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan have also been confirmed by the Pentagon. Departure from Afghanistan will remain vivid in our minds for years. Despite these stories every American strategist will tell you “the Middle East is not being abandoned.” There is that “over the horizon” capability which includes updated drones. British premier Boris Johnson calls it “outside-in” ability.

Israel, which is busy adjusting to limits on its power as a concept, must place in its calculus the US distancing itself from the Arab theatre. Yes, support for Israel in the US remains durable – Jewish control of banks, media, institutes of learning, election, finance. What is not so well known is what Noam Chomsky describes as much the most powerful support for Israel – Christian Zionism. Former Israeli Ambassador in the US, Ron Dermer, has urged Israel to prioritize maintaining the support of the American evangelical Christian. It must be assiduously wooed. “People must understand that the backbone of support for Israel in the US is the evangelical Christian.” The quote is from The Palestinian Policy Network, Al-Shabaka. Israel can breathe easy because there is no indication of Biden distancing himself from this line of thinking.

US thinning out from the region will accentuate popular perception of Israel’s exclusive support base inside the US. As Israel rolls its eyes around to size up the neighbourhood for subtle adjustments, it will find to its chagrin, Iran undiminished. Houthis in Yemen, Hashd al Shaabi in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, groups supportive of President Assad in Syria and increasing reports of Iranian role in Afghanistan, initiated by the late Quds Commander, Qasem Soleimani – all of these enhance Iran’s position in the region. The cookie in Afghanistan having crumbled the way it has, Iran’s role in this theatre may in the future be of interest to the US.

The launch of AUKUS (Australia, UK and US) an idea borrowed conceptually from ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand and US) against the Soviet Union shows the urgency Biden accords to what Barack Obama called “pivot to Asia”. The pivot was of much greater saliency. West Asia, though still important, had placed a disproportionate demand on Washington’s attention. The nuclear deal conferred on Tehran the kind of legitimacy that was to have enabled it to balance power in the region. This would be in concert with Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, Turkey. The regional balance of power would then require less day to day attention, freeing Washington to pay greater attention to the pivot. That appears to be the route on Biden’s GPS.

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Is Biden Ending Islamophobia? What Shall We Do Then?

Is Biden Ending Islamophobia? What Shall We Do Then?

                                                                                Saeed Naqvi

Our media has been pegging away, at a nagging length, on the “terrorists” in the Taleban cabinet and who are controlled by Pakistan. The information available to us would have been so much more reliable had our embassy not shut entirely. Our ambassador had to leave early because in the Taleban versus US-Ghani conflict we clearly sided with the losing side. Is the media campaign against an alleged Taleb-Pak compact part of our rearguard action? Considering that the first demonstration by women was against Pakistan interference in Kabul proves two things: that a demonstration can take place under Taleb rule and that Pakistan being the target is occasion for reflection: Indians are not unpopular at the street level, Pakistan is.

Consistency continued to define coordination with the defeated occupiers at the UN where, as rotational President of the Security Council, we navigated a resolution on Afghanistan on terms which caused Russia and China to abstain.

This does not mean we are not on talking terms with Moscow. In fact Nikolai Patrushev, Russian National Security Chief was in the capital on the same day as CIA Director William Burns. It may be too early to spot a pattern, but overt engagement by the NSA with his counterparts and a low key if not exactly covert contact with the Taleban by the MEA –– this seems to be the emerging pattern. The Shanghai Co-operation Organization sponsored regional conference on Afghanistan in Dushanbe on September 16-17 may clarify future approaches.

How long will the media froth in the mouth about Taleb-Pak perfidy? Supposing the Talebs consolidate themselves independent of Islamabad, will the media change? How will it make the summersault? The town criers have their difficulties. Having spread saffron with a sense of dedication over decades, they surely cannot be expected to abruptly put saffron back in the bottle.

The Modi regime’s requirement are not for short term Taleban bashing. It would like the “ogre” in public view at least until UP elections, February to March. What with the farmers agitation, joblessness, dipping economy, scary price rise, vaccine vacillations, Covid confusion, demoralizing Bengal defeat, courts finding their feet, all these and more can only be thwarted by a double fisted saffron punch. There is nothing else in the toolkit. Political fortunes would sink if, say, Yogi Adityanath were by some miraculous trick seen with a Taleban. In other words, all regional initiatives involving Talebs have to be kept on hold. In any case, Muslim bashing is almost a reflex action.

The recent controversy sought to be created on Naseeruddin Shah’s oracular sermon distancing Indian Muslims from Taleb celebrations in Kabul was a function of the majority community’s stereotype expectations of Muslim behaviour. Naseer, his supporters and detractors completely misread the Muslim reaction to the emergence of Taleb power in Kabul. Muslims are thrilled at the Americans being trounced, not Talebs coming to power. That the Talebs beat the mighty power entitles them to admiration, not their Islamism and the accompanying optics.

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invited President George W Bush, during his March 2006 visit to New Delhi, to address a joint session of Parliament, Muslims protested in such large numbers that Ramlila ground overflowed onto the roads. It was acute Muslim anger at Bush for having spread Islamophobia worldwide in the guise of the global war on terror. Bush’s address to the two Houses was called off. The President picnicked at the Old Fort instead. In other words, anti Americanism is all pervasive among Muslim for an obvious reason: US led war on terror indiscriminately cast them in unacceptable stereotypes.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi may know a thing or two about political profit from the war on terror. By an amazing configuration of stars. Modi was sworn in as Chief Minister of Gujarat on October 7, 2001, exactly the day when US began air strikes on Afghanistan. When the world’s most spectacular fireworks dominated TV screens 24X7, terrorism became the flavour of the season for our leaders. When I turned up at Godhra after the train carnage, Collector, Jayanti Ravi, was unable to give details because, she said, the case had been instantly handed over to Vijay Vipul, DIG anti terror squad even before preliminary inquiries had been made. The carnage was on act of terror: period.

The rise and rise of Modi was in an atmosphere of the global war on terror, the musical score taken to its crescendo by what Ravish Kumar calls the “godi” (to rhyme with Modi) or “lapdog” media. Deafening reverberations from that music predictably greets the arrival of Taleban too. The Modi regime’s political baptism took place when the world was in the grip of high decibel Islamophobia. Historical Hindu grievances were reinforced by the US war on terror. An anti Muslim edge now defines our DNA.

With the suddenness of revelation Joe Biden has announced an end to “never ending” wars on terror, a stance most disorienting for the rulers who cannot conceive life sans Islamophobia.

Taleban is not the only problem. All countries ringing Afghanistan are Muslim. The only non Muslim neighbour is China, which is worse. EAM Jaishankar has been meeting Iranian leaders in Tehran. He may be able to corroborate well known Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan who is convinced that the ferocity of the Taleban advance was not the only reason for victory. Covert help from Russia and Iran were too. One reason for eliminating the iconic Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani was the fact that he planned military strategy for Taleban, persuaded them to shed their anti Shiaism and convinced his regime that the Taleban was the only force with wide support among the country’s 18 million Pushtoon – they alone could forge a wider coalition to defeat America. He appointed Esmail Qaani as the Liaison Officer with the Taleban. Qaani is now Soleimani’s successor.

All of this should provide comfort. Pakistan may not be the only puppeteer pulling the strings.

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