Sponsors Of Brussels Killers Suffer Crushing Defeat: Why Is West Silent?

Sponsors Of Brussels Killers Suffer Crushing Defeat: Why Is West Silent?

                                                                                                  Saeed Naqvi

The West, with the US always in the vanguard, is wailing and screaming its heart out against the ISIS for the terrible things it has done in Paris and Brussels, but is in stunned silence at the recapture of Palmyra from Islamic State’s clutches by an alliance of the Syrians, Hezbullah, Iran, all under Russian supervision.

Robert Fisk, that splendid chronicler of West Asia, is at his biting best:

“The biggest military defeat that ISIS has suffered in more than two years – the recapture of the Roman city of Empress Zenobia, and we are silent. Yes, folks, the bad guys won, didn’t they? Otherwise, we would all be celebrating, wouldn’t we?”

Murderers of Paris and Brussels have suffered a crushing defeat. Why then is the West and its independent press so glumly silent? Because victory was achieved by the Russian led coalition?

It is not generally recognized that there is widespread suspicion in circles outside the western establishment (this includes the media) that the West is not whole heartedly in the fight to destroy the ISIS. To use a racing metaphor, the West pulls back its horses just when the ISIS is about to be trampled.

I have seen this sport atleast since August 2014 when President Obama blurted out the truth in an interview with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Asked why he did not use air strikes against the ISIS to halt their march towards Baghdad, Obama did not mince words: “That would have taken the pressure off Nouri al Maliki.” Iraq’s obstinate Shia Prime Minister was being blamed by Washington for the “anti Sunni” policies which were being cited as one of the reasons for the rise of ISIS.

It is a convoluted argument that, by not attacking the nascent ISIS, the US was allowing the Caliphate to gain sufficient strength so that it could force Maliki to leave. This would pave the way for the next Shia Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi handpicked by the US. In other words, under certain circumstances the ISIS, like Mujahideen in an earlier game, can be a western asset.

Terrible human dislocations and death in Syria, the refugee crisis on an epic scale in Europe, caused Obama and Vladimir Putin to agree to limit the damage. On May 12, 2015, an understanding was reached between Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov.

They agreed that a political solution was the only way out of the Syrian impasse. Obviously, Kerry had to sell the agreement to Riyadh, Ankara and Jerusalem by maintaining an ambiguity on President Bashar al Assad’s future – he will go but “when” has to be decided. Lavrov spoke a straightforward language: Assad would stay until all inclusive elections by the Syrian people decide on their leader.

The important point is that the Washington-Moscow understanding on Syria held despite Riyadh and Ankara throwing a ginger fit. How else does one explain the presence of the Operations Rooms in Baghdad to co ordinate military activity against ISIS. Russian command of the Air Space over Syria would not have been possible without an understanding between the Air Commands in the region.

The western media did yeoman service by pulling a curtain over US embarrassments in Syria. To balance its attitude it chose not to dwell Russian-Syrian victories. Secretary of Defence, Ashton Carter had his face distinctly in the lower mould when US Special Forces were caught with their pants down. Arms given to the so called “opposition” were handed to militants. The “opposition” sought safe passage to few know where.

Russian and Syrian advances against the ISIS surprised those who did much drum beating to fight the ISIS but somehow minimized participation in real combat. Meanwhile the panic stricken Turkish President, Tayyip Erdogan, by his excesses against the Kurds, pushed them into the Russian embrace. Material and military assistance flowed to the Kurds giving them muscle against Ankara which is reaping a terrible whirlwind in the form of suicide bombings and terror strikes. The Turkish leader has charged off to Washington, imploring Obama for something which has already been denied him before: a no fly zone in Northern Syria to serve as a kind of paddock where Syrian refugees can be parked.

Ofcourse, US think tanks have been spending months in Lebanon to study if the power structure in Beirut can offer a model for Syria to follow. They have also been spending time in Iraq: is Iraq’s federal structure worth emulating? Meanwhile, the Geneva process is stumbling along. Syria is promising a referendum on each issue, including agreements reached at the Geneva dialogue.

All this activity notwithstanding, an end to the Syrian crisis is not in sight. Stakeholders like Saudi Arabia, Ankara and Jerusalem have their eyes set on the US elections. These and other regional players will do whatever they can to allow the problem to linger until a new President settles in the White House. Their approach does not take into account the mounting sense of panic in Europe where each day’s delay to the Syrian conflict means so many more migrants knocking at Europe’s door.

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Madrid Mayor’s Soothing Slogan Against Post Brussels Right Wing Hysteria

Madrid Mayor’s Soothing Slogan Against Post Brussels Right Wing Hysteria

                                                                                             Saeed Naqvi

If “terrorize” and “polarize” is the name of the game, the message from the Brussels terror attack has been transmitted to Madrid with lightning speed. Flares reached the sky opposite the Spanish capital’s main mosque located on a major motorway. A banner read: “Today Brussels, Tomorrow Madrid?”

The banner is a very literal effort at polarization because the rise of Podemos, the Spanish Communist Party, in last December elections, inspired the Left Wing Mayor to hang a giant size placard outside the City Hall: “Welcome the Immigrants.”

Even though the centre-right, Peoples Party and Centrist Socialists won 123 and 90 seats in a House of 350, neither has been able to form a government unless Pablo Iglesias, the charismatic leader of Podemos, throws his 69 seats with friendly parties behind the Socialists. Podemos is not for Catalan separation but supports self determination for Catalan and Basque people. The socialists will not give up on a United Spain. There are differences on economic policy too.

A new government has therefore not been sworn in. Mariano Rajoy, the Prime Minister, whose PP party was brought down several notches for its unspeakable corruption and being in bed with “crony capitalism”, is in the saddle until the next prime minister is selected.

Rajoy cannot carry on as caretaker endlessly. There is talk of fresh elections in June. This is the timing for fire and brimstone outside a mosque. The spectacular demonstration is the handiwork of Madrid Social Home which claims descent from the Fascist party associated the Franco dictatorship.

A quick riposte has come from the soft spoken Mayor, Manuela Carmena. “The response to terror must be solidarity, not fear of the other.” She tweeted: “they are not going to criminalize the Muslim community. We fight together against terrorism.” Her punchline is: “Co-existence=safe cities”.

In Madrid the effort is avowedly by a far right outfit to alter the electoral mood before fresh elections expected in June. But this has not been the drift of discussions CNN has been cluttered with this past week.

A notion popular with panelists has been that Paris and Brussels like terror attacks intensify polarization which Jihadists find useful to lure fresh Islamist recruits. These are therefore, as we know Jihadist inspired attacks. But this line of thinking makes nonsense of the Madrid fascists putting up the show. I don’t think we should waste much time in coming to a simple conclusion: the far right and jihadists are each other’s essential requirements in all such situations.

Madrid is not a city seething with Muslims prone to Jihadism. The hospitality sector of Barcelona on the other hand would collapse without Muslims from Pakistan. They have taken advantage of Catalan autonomy for easy entry. Here the Catalan-non Catalan sentiment overshadows other differences.

It does not require large Muslim populations to affect polarization. In other words, Greece, Ireland or Portugal, where communists are already in the government, have all veered away from the two-party structures which “crony capitalism” milked. Economic concerns, austerity policies have ofcourse angered voters away from the right of centre structures promoted by the post soviet world order. But if the spectre of global terror takes centre stage and National Security becomes the primary concern of states there may still be hope for the right to linger a little longer. But this Right will resemble Marine Le Pen’s National Front which will make Spain’s Rajoy look like a Socialist wimp.

The kind of show mounted in Madrid may not immediately polarize society to the required level when a right wing take over can be contemplated, but it certainly nudges all political discourse a few degrees to the right. It all depends how the electronic media develops the theme.

Salah Abdeslam was arrested on Friday, March 18. It was an important story worth a prime time splash and a discussion or two. But CNN, BBC and Aljazeera, birds of a feather under some circumstances, made it a 24X7 show for four full days without a break until their obsessive harping on one arrest in a Brussels ghetto almost anticipated serial terror attacks on Tuesday at the airport and metro terminal in the vicinity of EU and NATO headquarters.

The reverberations are being felt everywhere, most alarmingly across the Atlantic where Republican front runner Donald Trump with Ted Cruz in distant chase for the party nomination, in the world’s most intemperate anti Muslim, anti Mexican campaign, have found more combustible material to set the Cleveland Republican convention ablaze in the coming months.

The vocabulary of Manuela Carmena is not in order in a country where even Hillary Clinton has had to look hostile and belligerent to come this far for the Democratic nomination. Even before the campaign began she had established her aggressive style.

Remember her imperious wave of the hand as Secretary of State. “Get out of the way, Assad?” But it was in Libya that television suitably amplified her toughness. One frame showed Qaddafi, desperately pleading for his life; he was being sodomized by a knife. The next frame settled on Clinton proclaiming without any sentimentalism. “I came, I saw and he died”.

How the campaigns of Trump, Cruz, Clinton and Bernie Sanders are affected by an interminable 24X7 show focused on Brussels, the city of Hercule Poirot, only time will tell. In fact I can almost see the great detective running his fingers over his moustache. “There’s more coming; the worst is not over yet.”

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UN Spat With Morocco: International Community Shifts On “Self Determination”

UN Spat With Morocco: International Community Shifts On “Self Determination”

                                                                                                Saeed Naqvi

Morocco, Algeria, Western Sahara would not be of the highest saliency in South Block had Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi not indulged in some high wire diplomacy involving all three.

The issue has popped up again because the Royal Palace in Rabat and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have locked horns over Western Sahara, where a movement for self determination has for decades been led by a Left inclined group called Polisario. The Secretary General is now endorsing a “referendum” for Western Sahara, something that Morocco was able to thwart with US support for over 40 years. That the US aversion for “self determination” in the disputed territory is weakening should be a matter of some interest in New Delhi.

Spanish dictator, General Franco’s death in 1975 caused two claimants, Morocco and the Polisario Liberation movement, to make a bid for what had thus far been Spanish Sahara.

After Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Euro communism in Italy and France, the cold war was going badly for the US. So, Washington dug its heels in support of Rabat’s claims. Algeria, a staunch ally of Moscow, allowed the Polisario to set up its headquarters in Tindouf, Southern Algeria.

When Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister, his Foreign Secretary, Ramesh Bhandari, promptly escorted him to Moscow in May 1985 to meet the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. To restore balance, Rajiv was off to Washington, within a fortnight of the Moscow visit, to remain in President Ronald Reagan’s favour.

On the way he stopped over at Algiers to meet President Chadli Bendjedid who enlisted the young prime minister’s support for the Liberation movement he so aggressively backed.

Polisario delegations were promptly invited into his chambers in Algiers. Decision to recognize the Saharwi Arab Republic was more or less taken but an announcement would be made only after the delegates returned home.

That no Indian had ever set eyes on the “Republic” New Delhi had so abruptly set its heart on, gave this reporter an opportunity to fill in the gap. Tindouf was a sprawling city in tents, neatly arranged along streets and boulevards in the midst of handsome sand dunes. Military, police, civil administration and Health Services had all been trained and supervised by Cubans.

Little wonder Washington would not budge from its stout support for Rabat. UN Special Representatives for Western Sahara were such favourites of the Washington establishment as Sahibzada Yaqoub Khan, former Pakistan Foreign Minister.

Chastened by an audience with Reagan, when the delegation returned home, an anxious Bhandari called the ambassador in Algiers, K.V. Rajan and asked him to hold his horses on the Polisario recognition issue. There had been a change of heart.

The ambassador threw up his hands. Bendjedid had already kissed him on both his cheeks with fulsome Arab affection for his effective diplomacy. Meanwhile the Polisario had lost no time in renting suitable property for an embassy.

To recognize and de recognize an entity in a matter of weeks or months would have been awkward. But His Majesty Mohammad V was hopping mad in Rabat. Former Foreign Secretary, M.K. Rasgotra, who knew the King, was dispatched as special envoy to mollify the Rabat palace. A mollified King would also placate the Reagan White House where Ambassador K. Shankar Bajpai had exceptional access.

By way of a brief digression, the Reagan-Bajpai combination was to cause an even more dramatic policy reversal after Rajiv Gandhi, in some haste, asked Foreign Minister Bali Ram Bhagat to lead a delegation of foreign ministers from four non aligned nations, who were holding a session in New Delhi, to Tripoli to commiserate with Muammar Qadaffi whose baby daughter had been killed in the US bombardment of Tripoli and Benghazi in April, 1986. It all seemed in order. But by the time Bhagat returned, the Prime Minister had been persuaded by Bajpai’s cohorts to correct his course. Bali Ram Bhagat was summarily sacked.

Let me, after this digression, revert to the saga of Western Sahara. What was to be done with the Polisari embassy? MEA had little time for it. Since its budgets were meagre, even the professional embassy free-loaders steered clear. Embassies in the Soviet camp remained steadfastly supportive. But once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990-91, the Polisario embassy was orphaned. It was left to Jaswant Singh, External Affairs Minister for the BJP led government, to wind up their shop in 2000.

New Delhi generally gets goosebumps at terms like “self determination”, but so long as the US was determinedly opposed to the Polisario, there were no apparent risks.

In recent years the US has reset its global compasses. In his latest interview with the Atlantic magazine President Obama has talked of American inability to be everywhere. This is the background to Ban Ki-moon’s change of stance on the disputed territory.

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His Bookshop Represented His Adoration For Lucknow

His Bookshop Represented His Adoration For Lucknow

                                                                                 Saeed Naqvi

An Urdu aristocracy on its knees, was beginning to make adjustments with the new British rulers when Ram Advani arrived in Lucknow. He set up Ram Advani Booksellers in a prominent corner of Hazratgang. This remained his eye on Lucknow for 65 years – until his death at 95 last week.

He brought the energy of the newcomer when he arrived in the early 1940s from Karachi, in Sindh, where he was born in 1920. It took Lucknow almost a century to recover from its first trauma when, in 1857, even its Begums joined in the door to door combat with the British who proceeded to empty the city of its citizens for fear of unexpected snipers. A year earlier, Wajid Ali Shah had been dispatched to Matia Burj, near Kolkata, where he lived for 31 years, unlamented, unsung. Some of the aftermath was still playing itself out which Ram witnessed and internalized as themes on which his book shop prided.

A shattered intellectual elite, silenced by change, slowly began to engage the new masters on their terms. If Punch was the supreme publication of satire and wit in London, some of the finest Urdu writers like Akbar Allahabadi would elevate Awadh Punch to an even higher level of elegant lampooning.

Ram’s was not an Urdu Book shop but copies of Awadh Punch he would obtain from his sources. When Prof. Mushirul Hasan published Awadh Punch in English, copies were instantly available on his shelves. Books were never flaunted in a commercial scale; they were meant for the connoisseurs for whom the book shop was a meeting place, sometimes with the original authors themselves – Violette Graffe, the French scholar on Lucknow, V.S. Naipaul (India a million mutinies), Veena Talwar Oldenburg (Making of Colonial Lucknow), Rosie Llewellyn-Jones (Lucknow, City of Illusion) and Cambridge Historian, Prof. Francis Robinson, William Dalrymple, Mark Tully, Dom Moraes – and every Indian of cosmopolitan interests who visited Lucknow. The spate of Western visitors to the Book Shop places Ram as an interpreter of Lucknow’s deeper culture which still bustles in Chowk and Nakkhas.

Hazratganj actually divides Lucknow into two cultures. One side are the cantonment, Civil Lines and sprawling bungalows, corroborative evidence of those who saw the writing on the wall early and made cunning adjustments with the new ruling class.

In the other direction beyond Aminabad are chowk and Nakkhas the very core of classical Lucknow. Of this area, the old description is still stunningly accurate: “Gandi galiyan, saaf zabaan”. (Dirty lanes but impeccable speech)

Not only did Ram know this, other Lucknow, but he was also familiar with Lucknow’s other great book shop, Daanish Mahal, which translates as the Palace of learning. This is where Urdu’s greatest critic, Saiyyid Ehtesham held court. Josh Malihabadi occasionally climbed down from the Central hotel where he stayed, to enliven the conversation. In Ram’s persona were integrated these two milestone book shops.

It was Lucknow’s Catholicism which never allowed Ram Advani to claim any exceptionalism. The city’s Ganga-Jamni culture was celebrated, ofcourse. But that did not tell the full story. Recently Sanatkada, a group which dedicates itself to the celebration of Lucknow touched the heart of the matter. It celebrated Lucknow’s “Rachi Basi”, or all inclusive culture.

Infact I recall the expression having originated in Ram’s mind.

Mir Taqi Mir and others, have written copiously of Delhi’s destruction at the hands of Ahmad Shah Abdali, Nadir Shah etcetera. But Lucknow’s destruction, being more recent, has generally been a casualty of the “Victor’s narrative”. Why would the colonial masters dwell on the desolation they had brought about?

Ram was sensitive to the fact that in a century, Lucknow had taken atleast four major hits. The exile of its beloved king in 1856, the destruction of Lucknow in 1857, Partition in 1947 and Zamindari (Landlordism) abolition in 1951 which finally broke the back of the Muslim aristocracy.

Remarkably, as Ram reminded me over and over again, Lucknow picked itself up each time and put up the Welcome sign for all.

Nowhere in the country was there a city which proudly announced: “To be a doctor you have to be a Bengali first”. Lucknow University’s intellectual life was controlled by Radha Kumud and Radh Kamal Mukherjee. Lucknowis proudly accepted “Madrasis” (anyone below the Vindhyas) as brilliant administrators. President of the University Union was Iqbal Singh, a chain smoking Sikh who recited Urdu poetry. Among Lucknows “bakaits”, tough’s or mini gangsters was one Kaul Sahib, a short, muscular man with very broad shoulders. Imagine a Kashmiri Pandit with a reputation that earned the respect of Lucknow’s “badmash” (bad men) like Buddhu Pahelwan, Funtoo, Nannhe, Rashid Ghosi and Pyare Jaani with a revolver in his trench coat.

You would never have imagined Ram Advani to be familiar with this infinite variety. But he was.

Heaven knows how scotch whiskey and soda came up for mention in his shop. A man contemplating a book, spun around in some anger. Traces of paan were virtually dripping from a corner of his mouth. “Mixing soda with scotch was the barbarous custom of the Sassenach”, he growled. He was a somewhat dilapidated scion of some unknown aristocracy. To our astonishment he knew that Sassenach was a derogatory slang Scots (who were the masters of the amber stuff) used for the English. This anecdote says something of Lucknow of the 60s as also of Ram Advani until his death.

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