For The Readers, Simple New Year Gifts And Thoughts

For The Readers, Simple New Year Gifts And Thoughts

                                                                       Saeed Naqvi 

In recent years, I have been alert to the possibility that I may one day be identified as a Muslim. Instead of pride, this new sense of being has arrived with doubt. Some items of identity are so close to ones skin that one grows up without noticing them. But we are now advancing towards an age of such concentrated focus that we need to narrow our vision.

I fear I may now be called upon to declare where I stand, say, on the Imam of Jama Masjid or on Khushi Mohammad, the pujari of Goga Mehri temple, the latter being of greater sociological interest because the legend survives tenaciously, away from major highways. I am perfectly willing to put it down to a kind of cowardice, but I have become increasingly quiet on many issues.

Some of this self imposed silence is actually tactical. Since communal polarization is the staple of current discourse, the best step some of us can take for self preservation is to fall deafeningly silent. On provocative issues, if you say nothing, those trying to provoke you cannot retaliate. If you do not present yourself as a foil, communal polarization cannot be affected. Ofcourse, this tactic of silence is offered with the full knowledge that sometimes nothing works.

In Julius Caesar the mob turns upon Cinna the conspirator. The man throws up his hands. “I am Cinna the poet”. Someone in the mob, all charged up, shouts. “Kill him for his bad verses.”

Let us, however, persist with the “silence” theme.

How do you give effect to this policy of silence on a wider, public stage. Well, one trick is to deter self appointed Muslim spokesmen from trooping into prime time TV shows where they are generally knocked out by the double-fisted tattoos of professional harangues.

If this communal polarization can be contained by reigning in the professional Muslim spokesman, the other much more important polarization could grow exponentially – the polarization between good sense and its exact opposite.

A few days ago one thought the nation was on edge because of televised reports of mayhem at cinema halls screening “PK”. But the film, which takes a dig at Godmen, Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, down to sects, Shias and Sunnis, has actually, broken all box office records.

This is the important polarization which is obscured by the TRP chasing prioritization of news. Lumpens digging up pitches is news but management of the world’s largest cricket crowds is not. Vested interests keeping artists in exile is news; exponential growth of art galleries exhibiting their work is not. A few vandals outside cinema halls in opposition to PK is news, but record crowds are not.

My sister, Naheed, has given me a simple New Year gift I would like to share with you. She has returned from a driving holiday from parts of North India with an observation which will appear commonplace but it made my New Year Day.

“Spend a fortnight in rural areas, away from TV and newspapers, and the country is quite as lovely as it was when we were children.”

Brother Shanney’s gift for the New Year is a poem which may well have been the inspiration for “PK”.

“Yeh Mussalman hai, woh Hindu,

yeh Masihi, woh Yehud

Ispe yeh pabandiyan hain,

aur uspar ye qayud,

Shaikh-o-Pandit ne bhi kya

ahmaq banaya hai hamein

Chotey chotey, tung khanon mein

bithaya hai hamein

Koi iss zulmat mein soorat hi

            nahin hai noor ki

Mohr har dil par lagi hai

ek na ek dastoor ki

Ghat tey ghat tey mehr e aalam

tab sey tara hua

Aadmi hai mazhab-o-tehzeeb ka

mara hua

Kuch tamaddun ke khalaf, kuch

deen ke farzand hain

Qulzumon mein rehne wale

bulbulon mein band hain.

Kya karey Hindostan, Allah ki 

hai yeh bhi dayn

Dudh Muslim, chai Hindu, Nariyal Sikh,

ber Jain

Apney hum jinson se keeney mein

bhala kya faaeda?

Tukre tukre hoke jeenay mein bhala faeda.

(Here’s a Muslim, there a Hindu, Christian

jew

Here these rules apply to me, and there

those ones are meant for you

In God’s fair name, these priestly types have made such idiots of us all,

They’ve pinned us down in tiny square, where none of us

            can grow at all,

Man, meant to beam his glorious rays, is now

            all darkness and all strife

Confined to curious, cults and cant,

promoting just some narrow life.

In his imagination man was meant to

            hold the oceans, wide

But he now lives in little bubbles, protected from both, time and tide.

Now our fair India shows these trends, why are

            we worried, you and me?

Muslim milk, and Jaini Jam, Sardarji nuts

and Hindu tea.

Let’s free ourselves of bogus priests,

            who make us quarrel for their gain

let’s fly with birds or hide in groves

            and trample on sweet sugarcane.)

This, free translation by Shanney of Josh Malihabadi is offered for improvements.

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Indian Navy Ignored During Tsunami For Want Of Media Policy

Indian Navy Ignored During Tsunami For Want Of Media Policy

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

Boxing Day earlier this week reminded me of 26 December 2004, the day the Tsunami trampled Aceh, Galle, Trincomallee and devastated the east coast of India. An air force plane enabled me to be in Galle, Sri Lanka, that fateful day.

Captain Murlidharan Nair, Captain T. Asokan and a host of other naval officers from Cochin were holidaying on the high seas with their families when news of the Tsunami reached them. Families returned home in smaller boats even as reinforcements arrived for the Navy to advance with 37 ships to ports in the eye of the Tsunami.

Galle’s ample harbour was choked with debris, which included giant trees, smashed boats, furniture, doors, household goods and bloated carcasses.

The host country, Sri Lanka were astonished at the efficiency with which Indian officers and men could clear Galle and Trinco harbours. It was a heartwarming Indian show along a vast stretch of the coastline from Indonesia, Sri Lanka to India.

Then something quite extraordinary happened.

A giant US warship docked a few meters at sea, visible from the Galle airport from where I was to be flown to New Delhi. The first passengers to disembark from the warship were two US cameramen. A speed boat brought them ashore where a high platform was in readiness for the cameramen to position themselves.

Then came the marines with gear that would be impressive on film. Americans had arrived on relief duty with great fanfare.

It was dark by the time I reached New Delhi. Next morning’s newspapers were a shock. Across six columns of the Times of India was a photograph of the US ship disgorging marines, engineers, grenadiers. The headline in heavy font was: “American ship brings relief.” Not a word about the Indians.

Here I was witness, yet again, to the triumph of propaganda over fact. Everybody in Sri Lanka knew that Indian ships had arrived the day after the Tsunami hit the coastline. In fact by the time the American ships arrived most of the required relief had already been administered by the Indian Navy. It was a performance the nation could have been proud of. This was the sort of stuff Prime Ministers took special leave to inform their respective Parliaments about. Sadly, no such notice was taken of the Indian Navy.

In this instance there was a total disconnect between soldiers involved in the world’s most challenging expedition and Defence headquarters. In fact the most well informed person in South Block was Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran who could tally the US version from Chanakyapuri and the Indian one from Colombo.

Saran was at this stage managing another issue of some delicacy that the Tsunami had thrown up. The first diplomat to visit him was the Ambassador of Israel. He wanted permission for Israeli pilots to fly a plane to Nicobar Islands to rescue their citizens. What were they doing in Nicobar. The issue resolved itself because the Israelis in Nicobar chose to extend their idyllic holiday once the water level dropped.

Not only was there zero publicity for the extraordinary work done by the Indian Navy, but late comers like the Americans allowed their publicity departments to heap all the credit for the Tsunami management on themselves, the Americans.

This was the period when Indo-US relations were being given the sort of boost that would end up in a huge, strategic embrace after the Indo-US civil nuclear deal. A new term was introduced and promoted by the US ambassador to Nepal, James Moriarty to define regional co-operation between India, US and the European Union. The term was “Tsunami model”. The implication was quite stifling. Regional initiatives would require US, EU endorsement. It has been dropped because it tended to shackle New Delhi regionally rather than confer on it any new authority.

India was ahead of all the other nations eventually involved in Tsunami relief for reasons I have explained at the outset. Boxing Day is plonk in the middle of Christmas, New Year holidays. That is why Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, George Bush, Kofi Annan – indeed most world leaders were on holiday. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, his cabinet colleagues and the armed forces could by contrast meet immediately and act.

The question is: why was the heroic work done by 37 Indian Naval ships in Sri Lanka, Aceh, Maldives and India’s eastern coast completely missed out by the global as well as the Indian media?

The reason is simple. The global media, BBC and CNN, will always aggressively promote their own national interests. For India’s achievements to be noticed, New Delhi will have to have a global media of its own. Otherwise the nation will fritter away its prime time programming on trivia, with little plausibility, brought into focus as aggressive debate.

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Peshawar Army School Song: Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

Peshawar Army School Song: Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

                                                                                         Saeed Naqvi

Ever since US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage threatened to bomb Pakistan to the stone age unless it joined the post 9/11 global war on terror, Pakistan has faced an existential tragedy of choice. It was being called upon to kill the very mujahideen it had trained to become hardened Islamic fighters, also at America’s behest, to help expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan.

Some in the Pakistan army got into the drill, led by the Americans, to eliminate the Mujahideen; some did not. The world’s mightiest power and the world’s only nuclear Islamic state have been fighting the Al Qaeda, Taliban, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, one mutating into the other, for the past thirteen years without any conclusion.

Every year, specifically since 2010, the US threatens to leave Afghanistan but finds itself unable to. Islamabad and Kabul are both obliged to fight a continuous war against their own people. To get even in an asymmetrical war, a faction of the TTP has heaped such brutality on the families of school children in Peshawar as to leave human beings everywhere numb and speechless.

Immediately after the carnage in Peshawar, army chief General Raheel Sharif and ISI chief Lt. Gen. Rizwan Akhtar flew to Kabul for an emergency meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. They also met NATO commander Gen. John Campbell. There is no Afghan counterpart to Raheel yet in harness. What would they have discussed? Hot pursuit of Maulana Fazlullah, the faction of the TTP allegedly responsible for the massacre? Can Ghani, who held onto the Presidentship only by the skin of his teeth, oblige? His political rival and the CEO, Abdullah Abdullah has already raised the bar for both sides. There is no such thing as a good Taliban as opposed to a bad Taliban, he says. The implication is to have no talks with Taliban which knocks out the Pakistani expectation to have a structure in Kabul which is leavened by Talibani presence.

Remember the spells of Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani opposite numbers. When they coordinated action against the Taliban, Pushtoon nationalism grew in geometrical progression. When the two became suspicious of each other and relaxed a bit, Taliban mopped up all the sympathy. That dynamic has not changed.

Among the numerous flip flops of the Americans in Afghanistan has been their inability to have a consistent policy on Taliban. Initially, the Taliban had to be destroyed. Then they had to be only weakened. This latter line suited Kabul’s calculations. A weakened Taliban was useful so long as it expanded horizontally. The Pushtoons in control in Kabul believed Taliban expansion was Pushtoon expansion which, in the long run, was in their interest.

NATO never had a strategy in the region because it had no policy towards Pakistan. They knew they could never defeat the Taliban without hitting hard at their bases in Pakistan. And that, NATO could not do. And now, NATO are packing up their bags.

One reason (in addition to scores of conspiracy theories) Benazir Bhutto paid with her life was that she was seen to be an American nominee in an atmosphere of rampaging anti Americanism. Nawaz Sharif, it was believed, would be relatively more acceptable to the Taliban because he had been a Saudi ward.

With the emergence of the Islamic Caliphate of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in Iraq and Syria, a new dimension has been added to the TTP narrative. Names of Maulana Abdul Aziz and his brother Abdul Rashid Ghazi were media headlines when the Pak army Rangers attacked the Lal Masjid in July 2007, which gave phenomenal boost to mutual bitterness. The school massacre in Peshawar is a continuation in that zigzag.

President Zia ul Haq, at whose door lies all the blame for wrenching Pakistani Islam away from Islam’s mellow sub continental culture towards the faith’s more Arabised variant, was the earliest patron of Lal Masjid. Located near the mosque was the world’s biggest Madrasa for women with 6,000 students.

Musharraf’s support for the global war on terror brought him into direct conflict with Lal Masjid. Most of the students were Pushtoon. Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a coalition of religious parties claimed that 400 to 1,000 students were killed – European news channels gave the death figure as 300. That boosted militancy sky high. But the murder of 132 school children in uniforms is an unspeakable tragedy of a different order. It brings to mind Habib Tanvir’s translation of “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” Phool woh saarey gaye to aakhir kahaan gaye?

We now have a leadership in Kabul which is so much a creature of America, that it can never stand on its own feet. Then there is a besieged Nawaz Sharif, half hearted American Forces in the region, and a Pakistan army exceedingly unpopular in the Frontier. The irony is that Pakistan is secure precisely because of its weaknesses. Because, as extremism expands, the shrill chant worldwide will be: Pakistan is too nuclear to fail. A nuclear Pakistan will invite American oversight from the Afghan Machaan or watchtowers which will be required for a long time. On the other front, meanwhile, the bail to Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi has brought out the Hawks in India on their shrillest howl. Pakistan, shortsightedly, has decided to accord a “low priority” in management of cross border terrorism in Kashmir. In other words it will attend to the Afghan front first. The outcome is clear as daylight: it will fall between stools.

There was the hope that after picking up the trophy in Cuba, Barack Obama may be eyeing the bigger prize in Tehran. But that may give heart to the Northern Alliance elements in Afghanistan. Would that not bring the Pushtoons on both sides of the nonexistent Durand line closer together? Why would the Americans worry on that count?

As former US ambassador in Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, used to say: there can be no coherent US game in Afghanistan and Iraq without Iran being on board. Khalilzad was US ambassador to Iraq too.

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Putin Returns Reassured After Talks And Agreements With Old Ally

Putin Returns Reassured After Talks And Agreements With Old Ally

                                                                                              Saeed Naqvi

 

Who knows, Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have added non alignment to his bow in the conduct of foreign affairs. He stood firm by the side of President Vladimir Putin at a time when Washington has all but given notice that it seeks regime change in Moscow.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov tweeted as much.

“We have a strategic partnership that is incomparable in content.” Having said this after his talks with Putin, what turn of phrase will Modi employ during President Barack Obama’s visit on January 26? “Even if India’s options have increased, Russia remains our most important defence partner.”

Deals in oil exploration, infrastructure, nuclear energy, defence and diamond could exceed $100 billion. Russia, China, Japan, Vietnam have all measured upto Modi’s emphasis on economic diplomacy. Will the US too?

The end of the cold war had rendered non alignment redundant. But a new and imminent cold war is creating room for India to reinvent it.

Among the earliest to warn the US against targeting Moscow was the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. His advise was to keep a steady focus on “radical Islam”. In fact, in this enterprise the West needed Russian co-operation. The incentive for Russia to join this coalition were its own anxieties about Islamic radicalism in the Caucasus, Blair said.

Last month, the Jewish-Saudi lobby in Washington was worried that the November 24 deadline for a nuclear deal with Iran might actually be met. Secretary of State John Kerry was advised to stay his hand in Vienna. A technically feasible agreement was thus politically postponed.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani who had captured the world’s imagination after his impressive debut at the UN General Assembly in September, has today lashed out against “Muslim treachery”. There was also a hint of a western conspiracy to damage Russian and Iranian economies by bringing down oil prices.

It is strange that Washington and Riyadh should be jointly interested in keeping the price of oil below $70 because plummeting price of US shale oil would hold back investments in this new sector. Indeed, shale production is expensive business and many new investors may simply shut shop. Does the Saudi move have multiple targets?

Shia Iran and Bashar al Assad’s backer, Russia, both make sense as plausible targets. But are they also upto something else? Would they like to delay US independence of West Asian oil by retarding the shale industry in, say, Texas?

Iran’s earlier moves in the West Asian chessboard were guided by extreme caution because the nuclear deal was in the balance. Freed of that consideration for the time being, Iran is taking a more robust interest in dealing with the ISIS threat to Iraq.

In June, Obama explained his delayed response to the ISIS in a strange way: ISIS pressure on Baghdad was essential to ease Nouri al-Maliki out of the Prime Ministership. Was ISIS a force at his command?

Even after the change of guards in Baghdad, differences persisted with the US approach. Complaint from Najaf was that the US was not holding ISIS back from its advance towards Baghdad. ISIS men had moved into Iraqi villages on motor cycles. After planting their flag, they had moved on, inviting air attacks on targets the US had no idea about. These, it turns out, were ISIS targets.

In early stages of their Afghan operations in 2001-02, US had been likewise lured to attack bogus targets, sometimes becoming unintentional parties in local, tribal conflicts.

US military has been arguing that Iraqi Shia militias should not attack ISIS positions before the US air force is in possession of ground intelligence. But Baghdad believes Militia operations against the Islamic State have created a sense of security in the Shia south.

The ISIS is, by most accounts, a double edged sword. It has Salafi and Baath mutated-to-Sunni forces focused on the Shia enemy. Its even more virile Muslim Brotherhood forces are a nightmare to the Saudis at the other end of the spectrum. If they are thwarted in their purposes in Iraq, they could well turn their attention elsewhere and appeal to the Brother’s extensive support base inside Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

This is complicating enough. To add to the West’s headaches, Putin has shut down the South Stream pipeline to Europe and has struck a bold new deal with Turkey.

Modi is in the midst of foreign affairs at a time when the world is in the grip of dizzying change.

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