2016 Hodge-Podge: Cricket, Pakistan, Russia, Syria And Israel

2016 Hodge-Podge: Cricket, Pakistan, Russia, Syria And Israel

                                                                                    Saeed Naqvi

One enters 2016 with some happy thoughts. Some anxieties too.

Of New Delhi’s umpteen dailies, three had photographs of spin bowlers on the shoulders of their page one on the last day of the year. There were two photographs of R. Ashwin and one of Moeen Ali who helped England beat South Africa at Durban. Two days ago Nathan Lyon, the Australian off spinner was declared man-of-match against the West Indies at Melbourne.

The return of the spinner in 2016 promises to relieve the monotony of pace attack as the only armour in the bowling arsenal. The spinner, with loops of varying heights, a turn both ways and a doubly deceptive capacity to go straight, offers a more intellectual engagement. It causes the batsman to use his feet, reflect. What reflection when Mitchell Starc hurls thunderbolts at 160 kms? Lightening reflex, yes.

I can never forget the hush that descended on Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi, when Bishan Singh Bedi was handed the ball as first change. What magic was he going to weave around the batsman? The performance of Ashwin and Jadeja in the recent seasons could well promise the return of an era of spinners. Yasir Shah, Sunil Narine, Imran Tahir, Rangana Herath and others mentioned above signal the return of the spinner in international cricket.

The other happy development is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise stopover at Lahore on his way back from Moscow and Kabul. There is a cricketing question attached to this initiative. A series of meetings are scheduled but there is hesitation to play what would be the world’s most watched test series.

After the bitterness between the countries in the recent past, a full blown cricket tour by Pakistan to India may strain emotions. But if there is any sincerity in Modi’s Lahore visit, an abridged test series, even in a neutral venue, could be an initiative that would help soften the atmosphere.

The Lahore initiative would be credible only if there is evidence of a changing mindset among the ruling elite. The air has to be slowly cleared of Indo-Pak and Hindu-Muslim tension. A cricket series with the right political backing can go a long way in clearing the air. But if communal polarization is the electoral requirement for, say, the 2016 State elections in Assam, West Bengal and Kerala, improved relations with Pakistan cannot be seriously on the BJP’s agenda.

Arrival of carved rocks for construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, or BJP MP Hukum Singh and MLA Suresh Rana holding Mahapanchayats in Shamli and Muzaffarnagar where large scale anti Muslim pogrom took place in 2013, confirm ones worst fears. There is no intention to keep aggressive Hindutva in check.

If this, indeed, is to be the policy, it will be totally incompatible with any effort at peace with Pakistan.

I have a theory of the triangle for sub continental peace. India-Pakistan, New Delhi-Srinagar and Hindu-Muslim as one triangular complex of issues. It is elementary geometry that a contradiction or expansion of any one of the lines or angles will impact on the other two. Indo-Pak peace will immediately bring down Hindu-Muslim temperatures and cause Srinagar to wonder if some sort of a settlement is round the corner.

Since such a settlement is nowhere in sight, any meaningful progress on the Indo-Pak track is simply not possible. There is a further complication. If Hindu consolidation is the strategic aim of Hindutva, of which the BJP is a part, minorities will be required as the “other”. This again flies in the face of Indo-Pak normalization as a BJP priority. There are impediments to peace on the Pakistani side too.

This is not to argue that peace is impossible. Indeed, South Block is feeling extremely buoyant after the Prime Minister’s Moscow visit where “make in India” received a boost in nuclear and defence fields. In fact, two nuclear plants for Bangladesh will be a joint Indo-Russian project. New Delhi with friends not just in one bloc but in many places feels that much more secure to make appropriate advances towards Pakistan.

Also India takes over as President of BRICS in February. This will entail two Putin visits in 2016 – one to attend the BRICS summit and another overdue bilateral visit. The Chinese President, Xi Jinping will also be here for BRICS. Absence of normalization with Pakistan will stand in the way of India taking advantage of gas pipelines from Central Asia or the Chinese Silk Route initiative.

Modi will be in Islamabad for the 2016 SAARC summit. Between SAARC and BRICS so much can be achieved with a Pakistan which is inclined to be in step.

It turns out that almost the first important Arab leader to visit New Delhi in the New Year (in fact in January) will be Syrian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, carrying a message from President Bashar al Assad.

The Prime Minister, fresh from his conversations with Putin, will ofcourse note the similarity of views between Moscow and Damascus. He will find these views not out of sync with those being spelt out by Secretary of State John Kerry either. Muallem’s inputs will be crucial because in January begins the process of identifying Syrian opposition groups who will sit at the table along with the official Syrian delegation to focus on government formation in Syria. A huge difference of opinion has erupted on who is a terrorist. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Jordanian lists of terrorists in Syria differ. Ofcourse India has an abiding interest in the outcome but does New Delhi have a role? Muallem may have a suggestion.

Soon Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj will have occasion to compare Muallem’s version with what is furnished to her in Tel Aviv which she visits soon. She may discern in Israel that the Jewish State’s favourite candidate in the US elections is Hillary Clinton and not Donald Trump despite his brazen overtures to Bibi Netanyahu.

It is all happening in the New Year.

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New Year Retrospective: How Catastrophe Was Manufactured In Syria

New Year Retrospective: How Catastrophe Was Manufactured In Syria

                                                                                              Saeed Naqvi

The year end image etched on my mind is not of the US-Russian chess games in Syria but of how I saw the crisis being manufactured in that blighted land. Let me take advantage of the New Year and revisit stories to give you a perspective.

On December 10, 2010 Mohammad Bouazizi set himself on fire after his trawler with meagre merchandize of grocery was upturned by a Tunisian police woman, igniting what came to be known as the Arab Spring.

The uprising took a toll of Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and of the Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak. When the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia returned from convalescence in Europe, he could not believe his eyes. Two American friends had been dethroned. Who would be next?

In panic he charged off to his Kingdom. He was going to take no chances. Just in case his own people turned against him, he rained $135 billion on the people, a sort of opiate to keep them away from revolutionary temptation. No monarchies in the region would be allowed to fall, he declared.

If protective walls were to be erected around Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, where would the tidal wave of Arab Spring be directed?

All the countries listed above have been squarely in the American camp since the end of the Second World War in 1945. Iraq, Syria, Libya were all in the Soviet camp. Therefore as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, the plan to settle scores with the recalcitrants was set into motion by launching operation Desert Storm in Iraq in February 1991 ostensibly to force Saddam Hussain to vacate Kuwait which he had occupied. The more important reason was to signal America’s arrival as the sole superpower.

The “sole superpower” moment did not last long. Economic downturn since 2008, the rise of China, resurgent Russia, decline of Europe, all contributed to a world in flux.

In a world so configured, regime change in Syria became a difficult proposition.

Why was regime change in Damascus required? Because that would break the Iran, Syria, Hezbullah, Hamas chain. Israel, US and Saudi Arabia were keen.

It would weaken Iran which Israel and Saudi Arabia saw as an existential threat.

Also, neither Israel nor the Saudis were keen to have in their vicinity efficient dictatorships as possible role models.

In 2003, the Sole Superpower had occupied Iraq. 2011 was another world. With Afghanistan, Iraq, the economy not going well, the plan for Syria was less grand.

Led by Saudi Arabia, countries abutting Syria would nurture anti Assad groups inside Syria. US, France and Britain would provide military training and, ofcourse, arms.

I was on my way to West Asia when a remarkable article by James Glanz and John Markoff in The New York Times confirmed my worst fears. It read.

“The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy ‘shadow’ internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.” Washington was four square behind dissidents in Syria.

“The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cell phone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase” – all part of what is being called “Liberation technology movement”.

“The suitcase can be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet.”

“The State Department is financing the creation of stealth wireless networks that would enable activists to communicate outside the reach in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya.”

This was the state of play when I found myself in Damascus in the company of Edward Lionel Peck, an Arabist and a former US diplomat with 32 years of experience in the Arab world.

We had driven to Hama in West Central Syria which has traditionally been a Muslim Brotherhood stronghold. The President’s father, Hafez al Assad had once brutally quelled a rebellion in Hama, killing thousands.

The place looked sullen but under control. We were advised against visiting Homs, on the Lebanese border because of disturbed conditions. This was in August 2011. In other words, Syrian restiveness fuelled by outside help was beginning to destablize parts of the country.

One had to be careful to venture out far from Damascus. That is why I was astonished that US ambassador Robert Stephen Ford and his French counterpart were driving to the most disturbed areas of the country. They would collect groups and address them. It was extraordinary. Here were foreign diplomats openly stirring up trouble in a foreign land.

Ed Peck, quite as amazed at the spectacle his country’s ambassador was making of himself, wrote the following to a friend:

“I have been dismayed by the accolades and support given to Ambassador Ford, our man in - and now out of Syria, for stepping well out of the traditional and appropriate role of a diplomat and actively encouraging the revolt/insurrection/sectarian strife/outside meddling, call it what you will, that is still going on.  It is easy to imagine the US reaction if an ambassador from anywhere were to engage in even distantly related activities here.  I fear my country remains somewhat more than merely insensitive, and is sliding into just plain rampant and offensive arrogance.”

The Syrian story will be with us for years. Next time Syria pops out of the TV screens or the newspapers, do reflect on this new year retrospective on how the catastrophe was manufactured.

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Is There A Kerry-Lavrov Understanding, Faltering But Steady?

Is There A Kerry-Lavrov Understanding, Faltering But Steady?

                                                                                  Saeed Naqvi

Right wing opinion in the US with Think Tanks like Brookings in the Vanguard is now firm: Shia-Sunni conflict will define West Asian politics in the foreseeable future. The way the dice is loaded at the moment, the West sees its interests served best in alliance with the Sunnis. There is an unstated acceptance of Sunni terrorism as an asset.

At a recent seminar in New Delhi, Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State with President Bill Clinton, minced no words: Moscow will be made to pay by Sunni Muslims in Russia’s backyard for what Putin is doing in Syria.

The implication is that Russian intervention in Syria is decisively helping President Bashar al Assad to remain in power. In the altered vocabulary in West Asia, Assad is not a Baathist but an Alawite leader and Alawites are a variety of Shia who are mortal enemies of Sunnis.

What Talbott is implying is this: for the reverses being heaped on them, the Sunnis are going to take revenge on Russia. Muslim populations across the Caucasus would plague Putin with masterstrokes of terrorism.

When ex Saudi Intelligence Chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan turned up at the Kremlin on July 31, 2013, his conversation with Putin contained just the sort of threat Strobe Talbott’s response exuded. If only Putin would give him Assad’s head on a platter, Bandar would give him the moon. Sochi Winter Olympics would pass without a terrorist incident. Bandar claimed considerable control on terrorist groups in the region.

Americans are miffed that all their efforts at regime change in Damascus atleast since August 2011 have been in vain. How many times ex Secretary of State and now Democratic front runner, Hillary Clinton, imperiously waved her hand: “Get out of the way Assad.”

Well, Assad is still in the Damascus Presidential Palace, exactly as this column had predicted in September 2011. The argument was straightforward. The US had occupied Iraq in April 2003. It had dismantled the Baath Party structure, the army, Presidential guards, the mukhabirat (intelligence), stayed in Iraq for over a decade and then left without any identifiable war aims achieved.

Yes, the Shias in the south oppressed, by Saddam Hussain, were thrilled. Naturally they co-operated – but only upto a point. So moved was Thomas Friedman of the New York Times that he recommended Ayatullah Sistani for the Nobel Peace Prize.

If the Iraqi melodrama now in its twelfth year, has not yet concluded to American advantage, how would Assad, controlling a power structure which is the mirror image of Baghdad, be dislodged by mere cross border terrorism, armed and supported by regional powers and their western patrons but who have, in the midst of battle, been at cross purposes.

Eversince the Russians entered Syria everybody’s bluff is being called. The most embarrassed of the lot has been US Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter. Militants being trained by US officers, surrendered their weapons to heaven knows who and sought safe passage.

Carter had to sheepishly announce to the media that a secret $500 million training programme in Syria has been abandoned. Other, unreported projects in Syria are apparently in similar disrepair. In a Congressional hearing, Senator John McCain asked Carter: “what evidence do you have that the IS was being defeated.” A flustered Defence Secretary said: “Momentum was being built against the IS.”

Meanwhile, Carter’s counterpart in the State Department has proceeded deftly in a terrain full of mines. Unadvertised, the Kerry-Lavrov duet had since their May 12 joint announcement worked towards a political settlement in Damascus. Like good diplomats they proceeded with a script which could be given a suitable spin in Washington as well as in Moscow.

Lavrov could say that Assad will be required in the interim but the future of Syria will be determined by the Syrian people. Kerry meanwhile could cope with Saudi Arabia’s tantrums by saying that Assad’s future was in the balance. In essence Lavrov’s and Kerry’s formulations do not contradict each other.

Under this over all understanding, a ceasefire has been declared in Yemen. Saudis and the Houthis are talking.

The long standing impasse on naming the Lebanese President has been broken. Suleiman Frangieh could well be the consensus candidate.

The US signal to regional players to form an Arab army to fight the IS has prompted the Saudis to scramble and announce an army without soldiers. Various countries, including Pakistan, in the Saudi list have denied they were ever consulted.

Why this Saudi impatience to announce an Arab army without any prior consultations? What is the Saudi anxiety? The answer may lie in a counter question: which is the battle ready Arab army with an incentive to destroy the IS? The Syrian army, ofcourse.

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Right in France, Left in Madrid because Voters disgusted with establishments

The astonishing success of the far-right National Front in France is part of a global trend  challenging  establishments.  Neither the far-Left nor far-Right have been universally embraced. But the voter everywhere is expressing his exhasperation with the two party system which has its apron strings tied to corporates and, thereby, to international finance.

Two-party systems are as old as the hills, but the ones in bad odour with the electorate are part of the post Soviet world order erected directly or indirectly, under American auspices. This world order did not come riding a crest of democracy and human rights. It was brazenly sold as the triumph of the market. Capitalism, it was, that had won.

The popular imagination shaped by the market mythology found the 2008 collapse of capitalism’s citadel, Lehman Brothers, inexpicable. The economic downturn would just not be arrested.

The first installment of Manmohan Singh’s Prime Ministerial year from 2004 to 2009 glided smoothly because not only was the global economy holding but also free market excesses were being kept in check by a large contingent of Left parties supporting the government.

The second term was so badly tainted by corruption and a popular disgust with the Gandhi      family that the corporates switched. They mounted the world’s most expensive media campaign which brought Narendra Modi to power.

While the corporates imagined Modi would do their bidding (give them unfettered access to, for instances, mines, that tribals jealously guard), the voter experienced a huge anti climax. He had brought down Manmohan Singh and the Gandhi family. This one negative act, had the consequence of placing Modi on the Prime Ministerial gaddi.

What erupted as a record success of AAP in Delhi was actually the voter’s realization that he is hemmed into a system of two parties which, post poll, are controlled by the same set of interests – the corporates. Whether AAP falls in that category will be known later.

There is good reason why the two premier political parties in India are frequently described as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

The shocking endorsement of Marine Le Pen by the French voter does not necessarily signal a dark cloud of racism over France. Le Pen is the beneficiary of terrorist attacks in Paris three weeks ago. Had elections taken place in the shadow of some economic debacle, a major corporate scandal, elements of the French Left would have asserted themselves. Electorate in other words is not rushing towards something it likes. It is demonstrating a sense of fatigue with what has been its lot for too long.

Even the Tweedledum – Tweedledee image fits nicely. Francois Hollande’s Socialist party has decided to withdrew from the second round of voting this Sunday (December 13), so that his floating voters can help the Republican Right’s Nicolas Sarkozy  prevent the National Front from winning. The future of refugees from Syria is tragically in the balance.

I saw a completely different picture in Madrid. A placard, as big as a cinema screen, is pinned on  the facade of the newly elected communist Mayor’s office : Refugees Welcome. This is the sentiment in Valencia, Barcelona. Photographs of Pablo Iglesias, charismatic leader of Podemos, the communist party are common. The party did well in a different context. Spain’s economic predicament was desperate. Over 55 percent of the under 35 years were unemployed. Its speculative builders had, with government help, built 40 million housing units, more than the total constructed by UK, France and Germany. The bubble burst in 2009 and angry  demonstrators crowded the city squares. The political system imploded. It is in this mood and the shadow of Catalan separatism that Spain awaits its historic general election on December 20.

The establishment, including the media is still throwing its weight behind the discredited Peoples Party and the Spanish Socialist Party. Do Podemos- like electoral eruptions have the strength to take on the might of well entrenched establishments? This is precisely what will be on test in the December elections.

While Podemos takes heart from the fact that the Communist Party is part of the ruling coalition in Portugal, the compromises made by Styriza, the Communist Party of Greece, have demoralized left forces in Europe.

The important point is the widespread disenchantment with the post cold war structures erected in the name of democracy and the unfulfilled promise of never ending boom for the market.

Jeremy Corbyn in UK, the Scottish vote for separation, Joko Widodo as a surprise President of Indonesia and a host of others are all symptomatic of popular restiveness with established structures.

Who knows the world may be inching towards the Day of Judgement. Why are Pundits not giving eredence to the fact that Donald Trump is front runner for the Republican nomination – atleast at the moment.

The media may have blacked out Bernie Sanders but he is  giving Hillary Clinton the run for her money. Wall Street Journal, reports that 18 to 29 year olds polled by the Harvard Institute of politics prefer anti establishment candidates like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. While 35% favoured Clinton, 41% favoured her insurgent challenger Sanders.