Successful Attack On Aramco Possible Only With Help Inside The Kingdom

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

In a world where the victor’s narrative prevails, there is not even grudging acceptance of the truth that the ‘confident and over lusty’ Saudi’s were trounced in the oil fields of Aramco in the eastern province. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who peers through his binoculars 24X7, instantly raised his finger: “Iran”.

If Iran was the source from where the drones came, where were all the $ trillions worth of defensive batteries sold by the US to protect the very citadel of world oil? Or is it even more humiliating to accept reversal at the hands of an impoverished, ill equipped adversary? Asymmetric victories as in David and Goliath, are demoralizing for arms merchants. In such success, ingenuity trumps vast arsenals.

In recent years, the west has quite unambiguously placed, Houthis, Zaidis, indeed, Yemenis in a huge pile called Shias. The Shia-Sunni faultline has been attempted by East-Coast strategists eversince the Ayatullahs ousted the Shah in 1979 and the Saudis began to have palpitations at the sight of a rival pole in Tehran, as a result of a fracture in the Ummah.

The external fracture was severely compounded by an internal one when extremists opposed to Wahabism occupied the holy mosque at Mecca, demanding that the House of Saud vacate the holy shrines. In the ensuing battle, over 130 people were killed. American and French military help was needed. It must be put down to obsequiousness, a worship of Saudi petro dollars that details of how the West helped lift the siege of Mecca have been removed from the narrative.

It is common knowledge that Saudis do not allow non-Muslims in the city of Mecca, leave alone the great mosque. How then did western, Christian soldiers enter the mosque? Regular Mullahs were mobilized to help them recite the “Kalima”, an essential pre condition for conversion to Islam. Faiths were changed to save the mosque and the face of the House of Saud.

While the revolution in Iran and in Mecca took place simultaneously in 1979, it is the latter event which gives the Saudis nightmares to this day. The enunciation of the Shia-Sunni faultline became possible after the revolution in Tehran. This is supposed to have subsumed the Israel–Palestinian faultiline a turn that is useful to Tel Aviv and Riyadh.

In contemporary diplomacy, where propaganda is all, Israeli publicity lists Hamas in the nasty Iran, Hezbollah, Syria (Alawi) Shia axis when everybody knows that Hamas is 100 percent Sunni. What worries Riyadh and Tel Aviv is something more fundamental. Hamas is Mulsim Brotherhood with deep links in Egypt, Qatar and Turkey.

If Yemen is Shia, why was Prince Naif bin Abdel Aziz, present King Salman’s brother, busy building up a Mujahideen force in Yemen at the same time he was creating such a power in Afghanistan? What was the link?

American expertise, Saudi money and huge Pakistani logistical help created the Mujahideen in Afghanistan who helped expel the Soviets in 1989. It is a measure of the low esteem in which sub continental Muslims are held by the Saudi ruling class, that Naif considered religious zeal being instilled in the Afghan-Mujahideen as a temporary requirement. For the long term, thoroughbred Arabs had to be trained in Yemen because here too there was a real and present “Soviet danger”, in the context of the Cold War.

Aden and Southern Yemen had in 1967 come under Egyptian-Nasserite, and therefore Soviet influence. Naif’s countermove is the origin of the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

When Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman rained bombs on Sanaa, past four years, he may not be aware that he was bruising a city continuously inhabited for 2,500 years. Prophet Mohammad sent his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, as the Qazi of Sanaa. The old city of Sanaa reminded me of Jaisalmer, its narrow lanes hemmed in by multistoryed structures. The facades of these high structure have exquisite geometrical designs. Suited to Jaisalmer’s harsh summers, on the other hand the façade, without colourful design, is easy on the eye because it does not reflect any light.

The Shia-Sunni narrative in Yemen is not straightforward. When Mustafa Kemal Pasha, Ataturk disbanded the Khilafat after World War-I, a system of Imamate continued in Yemen until 1962. A system of Imams leading the community is internal to Shias who may be segregated between those looking upto twelve or seven or an endless line of Imams. Iranian, sub continental, Lebanese, Kuwaiti or Bahrain Shias are known as Isna Ashari or twelvers.

Zayd Ibn Ali, brother of Muhammad al Baqir, the fifth Imam, did not accept the twelve system and shifted base to Yemen giving rise to a whole Zaidi sect. This unique Imamate lasted till 1962.

Since Ali, the first Imam, was the Qazi of Sanaa in 630 where he built a handsome mosque, Zaid could claim that affiliation too. But Yemen was constantly in the eye of the storm because of the shifting Saudi politics. Its personality was riven between its innate Shia roots and external Wahabi pressures.

This was the confusing maze, when MbS, his fingers burnt in Syria, embarked on a war in Yemen. Americans gleefully encouraged the war to sell arms to the prince of all narcissists. The war has been a disgraceful stalemate for the Crown Prince. Doggedly battling uneven odds the Houthis (Zaidis who derive their name from their leader Abdul Malik al Houthi) are improving by the day as warriors, fighting for their ancient land, and their faith, which in these four years has by association with the Iranians, been more firmed up with Shias. The Saudis have thrown into the battle money and mercenaries even from such far off places as Colombia and Peru. After the attack on Abqaiq, Aramco, Houthi armed forces duly claimed responsibility: “This operation came after an accurate intelligence operation and advance monitoring and cooperation of honorable and free men within the Kingdom.”

Phrase “within the Kingdom” will give Riyadh sleepless nights for months to come.

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Ill Wind For West: Houthis Hit Aramco, Netanyahu Wobbles

Ill Wind For West: Houthis Hit Aramco, Netanyahu Wobbles

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

Attack on Aramco, decline of Benjamin Netanyahu, departure of John Bolton from the White House are all honeyed music to the leadership in Iran. In April, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, in a talk at New York’s Asia Society, was categorical: dialogue with Washington was not possible because the “B” team wanted war with Iran. The “B” team was Bolton, Bibi Netanyahu, (Mohammad) bin Salman and (Mohammed) bin Zayed. And now the “B” team has disintegrated.

Many foreign technicians are engaged to operate oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. It is interesting that they were not hit. Loss of American lives would have provoked retaliation in Washington. This, though, would not have been the first time the US and British personnel were killed. Over 30 foreigners lost their lives when Islamist extremists attacked three compounds in Riyadh in May, 2003.

That however was a totally different circumstance. There was anger at foreign military personnel on the land which houses Mecca and Medina. The attacks took place within a month of the US occupation of Iraq. The Saudis involved in the attack on the Riyadh compounds were no different from the ones who flew into the twin-towers on September 11.

This time the Saudis who have been relentlessly pummeling Yemen for nearly five years, creating a humanitarian catastrophe of unspeakable proportions are getting their just desserts.

Since news of military reversals is never aired in a society as closed as the Saudis, regimes end up underestimating the tenacity of their adversaries. Ingenuity comes in where military hardware is lacking. It was ingenuity which caused the great Mervaka tank in the Israeli armory look so vulnerable while confronting the Hezbollah in the 2006 war. Also, just the other day, on June 20 to be precise, an inexpensively configured Iranian drone brought down a $15.9 million US drone in the Gulf.

The drone attack by the Houthis on Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq oil processing facility in Buqyaq, is devastating for the Saudis, ofcourse. But it is much more worrying for the American military industrial complex. The question uppermost in the minds of the Saudi ruling elite will be: $ trillions of Western arms which we have bought over the years cannot protect “our crown jewels?” the US arms market may take a profound hit worldwide, not a happy development when Trump is looking for deep pockets to clean out the Chinese in the trade war.

A weakened Netanyahu is further bad news for the “B” team. No cooing dove himself but his high tolerance level for outlandish schools of thought as his projected partners was harmful for Israeli image worldwide.

Netanyahu is not a very “likeable” person. This was seen as one of the ingredients in the anti Semitism sweeping through the western world. The persistent lobbying by the Israeli leader to demonize Iran has not worked. Indeed, it has boomeranged. In fact, he himself has had egg on his face as, for instance, at the high powered conference in Warsaw past February with the known purpose of isolating Iran. Russia slammed the planned meeting at the very outset as “counterproductive” because of its obsession with Iran.

The conference collapsed after Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, crossed all possible diplomatic red lines. “Poles suckled anti Semitism from their mother’s milk” he accused his hosts. The conference was in tatters. A meeting scheduled in Jerusalem to carry forward ideas from Warsaw was cancelled. Can you blame Poles for nursing a guilt for which they are so publicly insulted?

Here is an opportunity for the leader of Blue and White party, Benny Gantz to make Israel not just feared but also loved. I have in years past travelled around the length and breadth of the Israel, Gaza, the West Bank with my dear friend, the late Eric Silver. Israel then was never a harsh, forbidding place it appeared to be in the Netanyahu years.

Just after Trump was elected President, two grand old men, leaders of the strategic community, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski turned up in Oslo as guests of the Nobel Foundation. I could distil two points from their punditry: that the principal task of US foreign policy was to keep two points of the compass, Beijing and Moscow, as far apart from each other as possible. It is clear as day light that not only are the two points not far from each other, but they are getting increasing intertwined. The second point had even greater urgency. The Arab-Israeli faultline was losing saliency to the Shia-Sunni faultline. There was an assumption that the Sunnis, being numerically superior, would in the end prevail. And with US and Israeli support, they could ask for the moon.

To get the calculations right one must set aside Indonesia, world’s largest Muslim country and Malaysia, both Sunni but different from the Arab world. In Indonesia, particularly, there is a quaint coexistence of Islam and Hindu culture. Even though Islam is the religion of an overwhelming majority, Mahabharata and Ramayana define the nation’s culture.

The Gulf Co-operation Council or the GCC put their heads together largely in response to the Iranian revolution of 1979. But it is far from a Wahabi-Salafi dominated homogenous group. In Bahrain, the conflict is unique: an 80% majority Shia population is treated by the Wahabi ruling Sheikhs as the only opposition. In 2011, when the Arab spring was in the air, US diplomat Jeffrey Feltman had very nearly worked out a power sharing arrangement between the Sheikh and the main opposition. The arrangement was scuttled by the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia who saw any arrangement with Shias as a compact with Iran and therefore the devil. He saw Iran as “the head of a snake which had to be cut off.”

Has this approach worked for the Saudis? They are sitting on a heap of rubble in Yemen, in Aramco and in Syria. Iran, meanwhile, has consolidated itself with Hezbollah in Beirut, Hashd al-Shaabi (in Iraq) and the Houthis in Yemen. Will this be sufficient provocation for the scattered “B” team to regroup?

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Is Ladakh Part Of The Buddhist Ring Encircling China?

Is Ladakh Part Of The Buddhist Ring Encircling China?

                                                                                         Saeed Naqvi

Hardline Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka have celebrated the creation of a new Buddhist entity in Ladakh. It is an optical illusion that Jammu and Kashmir has been neatly divided into Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, that is, Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist entities. The projection of Ladakh as purely Buddhist is odd because in the combined population of Kargil and Leh, Muslims are a majority according to the 2011 census.

New Delhi has also been keeping a steady gaze on Sri Lanka where Buddhist, Muslim and Christian factors came into play during the April 21, Easter Sunday massacre. Indian Intelligence had alerted their counterparts in Colombo as early as April 4 that a major act of terror would be executed in the island nation, possibly near Easter. When the bombs were detonated in Colombo’s Churches and hotels killing nearly 300 people and injuring 500 more. Indian Intelligence looked very impressive after the event. Then Intelligence agencies from the US, UK, Israel, Australia, India, all descended on Colombo with state of the art technology. Everyone was out to hold Colombo’s hand. A petrified establishment, it was hoped, would fall into the Western lap. Machinations would then follow to steer Sri Lanka away from the Road and Belt Embrace.

Spanish Anthropologist, Joseba Zulaika’s famous dictum is worrisome: “Counter terrorism is terrorism’s best friend.” Hints of terror cells in South India, the cover up in Sri Lanka, the political turnstile in the Maldives makes this Indian Ocean triangle a source of anxiety.

All the more worrisome because the current phase of terrorism is not just Muslim anger, revenge, vendetta. It has been identified as energy to be harnessed as an asset. It all began with the Afghan Mujahideen in the 80s. Just take a look at what some scholarly investigations in Sri Lanka have found.

Sniffer dogs, making a round of the Hilton hotel found nothing but the hotel staff asked the handlers to examine another branch of the hotel. At this new location something mysterious was experienced. The dogs would not stop barking in front of one room. There was some humming and hawing, and excuses by the management as to why the room could not be opened. It was occupied by employees of the US embassy. According to Dr. Michael Roberts of the University of Adelaide, Australia, when the embassy officials ultimately opened the room, Sri Lankan police found two bomb detectors which, the officials explained, were for their own safety. The overawed Sri Lanka police appears not to have pursued the obvious line of inquiry. Sniffer dogs would bark only if the detectors had been in contact with material which went into the manufacture of bombs.

One complicating factor is the divergent foreign policy preferences of the President, a votary of China’s Belt and Road initiative, and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe who has exerted every muscle to sign the Status of Forces Agreement which would give the US Military a free run of an island. Note the head on conflict. The Prime Minister is keen that SOFA is signed before the Island’s general elections next year.

There are some tell-tale details. I have earlier mentioned a research paper, “Weaponization of Religion” by Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake. According to her, the growing Chinese influence on the island may well have been the target of the Easter attacks.

Not only were hotels targeted which had Chinese affiliations, but the six Chinese who lost their lives were from the South China Institute of Oceanography. Western agencies would not look at this data. They were, quite tellingly, focused only on the clash of civilizations and conflicts across faiths.

Tibet, Ladakh, Bhutan, Sikkim, Mongolia, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, are all bound by Buddhism, though sometimes of distinct Mahayana and Hinayana strands. How many of these would possibly be brought into play in President Donald Trump’s strategy of encircling China?

When Trump entered the White House in 2016, his avowed aim was to upturn everything Barack Obama had ever erected in the arena of foreign affairs, as in other areas. But his demoniacal desire to eradicate Obamaism from its root has run into that constant called American national interest.

The Obama-John Kerry team’s priority became the nuclear deal with Iran, signed in 2015 for a reason: focusing on West Asian affairs on a daily basis was keeping the administration away from other global priorities that required urgent attention – the pivot to Asia, for instance. Despite Israel and Saudi Arabia throwing every monkey wrench at hand into the 5+1discussions with Iran, the team determinedly concluded the deal with several objectives but one which often goes unnoticed.

Lyndon Johnson’s colourful image was instructive. “It is better to have the camel in the tent, peeing out, than to leave him out peeing in.” Iran was going to be part of West Asian balance of power along with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Qatar. Washington would then have the time to focus on Asia Pacific.

To be characteristically contrary, Trump walked out of the nuclear deal, made a mess with Europe, North Korea, raised stakes everywhere. But eventually he picked up the thread where Obama had left it: “Pivot to Asia” but only after having soiled much turf enroute. The US support to the protests in Hong Kong, playing up the Taiwan-China differences, shady US behaviour in Sri Lanka, the Economic showdown with Beijing are all part of Trump’s risky, untidy “contain China” movement set by his predecessor. But with Trump you know nothing until you do. Who would have expected him to propose a meeting with President Hassan Rouhani on the margins of the UN General Assembly? Or that he would initiate direct talks with the Houthis in Yemen either with Saudi concurrence or without it, sailing above their heads? Either Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be hopping mad at this turn or he will be pleased as punch in case he was in the loop and these leaks are only designed to set up adversaries. Who knows?

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Modi Feted By Muslim Countries: For Indian Muslims “Umma” A Mirage

Modi Feted By Muslim Countries: For Indian Muslims “Umma” A Mirage

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

“A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country.” This Biblical dictum would fit Prime Minister, Narendra Modi like a glove, because Indian Muslims continue to paint him in lurid colours while leaders of the global Umma shower petals of adoration on him.

When Saudi Arabia’s highest Civilian Honour, King Abdulaziz Sash was conferred on Modi by King Salman bin Abdulaziz at the Royal Court in Riyadh on April 3, 2016, the acceptance of it was an act of supreme selflessness on the part of Indian Prime Minister.

Selfless, because any other Indian politician so honoured by the Keeper of Islam’s two holiest shrines, Mecca and Medina, would have publicized the event for Muslim votes. But Modi has been quite clear on this one point: he is not interested in Muslim votes.

On the contrary, his growing unpopularity among Indian Muslims is in inverse proportion to his expanding popularity among Hindus with geometric progression.

In fact a case study for social psychologists might well be traces of masochism in the behavior of President Mahmoud Abbas. He conferred “The Grand Collar of the State of Palestine” on Modi who happens to be the closest friend, indeed soulmate, of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Mahmoud Abbas’s dedicated tormentor. Abbas’s obsequiousness may well be traced to his fervent hope that Modi will put in a good word with his Israeli friend.

Mahmoud Abbas’s voiceless wailing is, for that reason, also inaudible. None of the GCC or other significant Arab countries are interested in the Palestinian cause eversince US and Israeli strategists have given a new blue print for West Asia. The Sunni-Shia faultline supersedes the Arab-Israeli faultline focused on the Palestinian issue. Iran is the only regional country single mindedly dedicated to Palestinian rights. Iran considers Hamas as the authentic voice of Palestinian resistance. The Ramallah leadership is seen as a Western poodle.

Other than fawning over Modi, Riyadh keeps a steady gaze on other power centres, near and far. Saudi princes have visited the Maldives to receive the island nation’s highest honour – “Rule of Nishan Izzuddeen”. The US and all its allies out to play a helpful role in making things difficult for China’s Belt and Road initiative, are making a beeline for any real estate in the Indian ocean – Maldives, Sri Lanka, an atoll anywhere. Little wonder, then, even this Muslim nation (Maldives, that is) has held Modi in a loving gaze. The Nishan Izzuddeen has been conferred on him too.

Modi being the apple of Saudi eyes has obviously been infectious in other GCC kingdoms. Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa conferred “Kind Hamad Order of the Renaissance” on him. The ruler of UAE, Shaikh Mohammad bin Zayed graced Modi with the “Order of Zayed” medal, the Kingdom’s highest civilian order. Zayed has done one better. He has set aside acres of land around Abu Dhabi’s grand Akshardham temple.

Modi has not left untouched the destroyed nation of Afghanistan as well. On June 4, 2016, he became the recipient of the nation’s highest award named” Amir Amanullah Khan”. A pity, he will not be able to catch up with Morarji Desai. The late Prime Minister received Pakistan’s highest honour, Nishan e Pakistan in 1990.

For the self flagellating Indian Muslims, a scrutiny of the catalogue listed above may be instructive. The lesson is not that Modi is the darling of the Muslim world. Individual Muslim countries ingratiate themselves with India, which he represents. Raw self interest is the operating factor. That Indian Muslims are under pressure does not matter a jot to the great “umma”. That is the point.

In the days of yore these very same nations had erected a body like the Organization of Islamic Conference but it looked operational only so long as there were competing blocks affiliated to one or the other power centre. In those days, India mattered.  The Indian “Muslim” factor was of some consequence but only minimally.

Did we not send a thoroughbred Muslim, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmad to the OIC in Rabat and were snubbed? We fell between stools on that and other occasions. Why did we need to have a Muslim, and none else, as ambassador to Riyadh? To neutralize the influence of the Ambassador of Pakistan who, by virtue of being Muslim, would strike a better rapport with the Saudis? Did the Americans, Europeans and the rest of the world send Muslim envoys to Riyadh? South Block’s job should have been to identify the best person for that posting – Hindu, Muslim, Sikh anybody, based on merit and not on communal considerations.

You miss the basic point (they will say) there are those arrangements to be made for thousands of Haj pilgrims. Fair enough, for that kind of assistance the mission in Jeddah could have been suitably staffed.

Has not the logic of New Delhi’s appointments to that one station for the past 70 years been made to stand on its head by Modi. Despite his record with Muslims, he has been graced by award after award by Saudis and others on the US leash.

Saudi monstrosity in Yemen, repression in its Eastern oil being province; Bahrain where an overwhelming majority are the opposition; UAE, financing mercenaries (along with the Saudis) and firepower to destroy Yemen, once a proud, civilized nation.

Is this the “Umma” from which you, Indian Muslims, expect Modi to have picked up lessons of peace, compassion, charity? And is this Umma of any value to you in your distress, whether in Kashmir or elsewhere?

Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran, Turkey are all Muslim but caught in the whirlpool which is what the current world order is. When President Bill Clinton decisively intervened during the Kargil war, there was still hope that some kind of order was being sought to be imposed. That hope has dissipated in the Trump era.

In brief, Muslims must remember that their holiest of shrines are elsewhere, but their salvation is here in India and its people, all of whom are under pressure. Together, we shall overcome. Hundreds of years of social, cultural commerce cannot be wilfully rubbed out.

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Why Scale Walls When Two Constables Could Have Arrested Chidambaram?

Why Scale Walls When Two Constables Could Have Arrested Chidambaram?

                                                                                           Saeed Naqvi

Bollywood stunt artistes would end up with fractured bones if they tried to imitate CBI’s field staff scaling the high walls of former Home Minister, P. Chidambaram’s Jor Bagh bungalow with orders to arrest him. The swoop, in full glare of the media, would have unnerved the “D” company, or El Chapos but they would have dug tunnels in the loo, predictable means of escape. A sophisticated mind like Chidambaram’s, cool and calculating, contrived cunning passages to the Congress office for a press conference that evening.

It was not a simple arrest. That would have required barely two constables. It was mounted as a TV extravaganza for the entire nation – and beyond – so that they would be in awe of the power of the state. It requires mastery of the electronic media for perfect choreography on such a scale. Consider the contrast of Sonia Gandhi making a weak tepid intervention. “Rajiv Gandhi also won with two thirds majority” but he did not indulge in “actions like this” or words to that effect.

Chidambaram’s arrest has come as a shock to the party which has only one of its wings operating coherently – it’s legal team, particularly the Kapil Sibal-Abhishek Manu Singhvi duet. Let the party now prepare itself for more tantalizing television.

Open rebellion in Madhya Pradesh is on the cards, where Jyotiraditya Scindia may change sides as a conscientious objector along with a number of MLA’s. Should that happen, Rajasthan cannot be far behind.

Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s rebellion in Haryana will unnerve the Gandhi family that much more because Robert Vadra owes a few to him.

My crystal ball tells me that the BJP’s relentless hunt for states is designed to accumulate a sufficient number of states to make a bid towards major constitutional changes. The BJP likes milestones. Who knows in 2022, the 75^th anniversary of Independence, the nation may wake upto a Presidential form of government. The climax, ofcourse, will be reached in 2025, Centenary of the RSS, by which time the Ram Mandir may have been built, as the crowning glory, preparatory to the declaration of Hindu Rashtra. At this point my reverie is broken by a whisper: “Your fantasy has not taken into account the plummeting economy, the common people, the diversity of India.”

Well, it is these democratic roadblocks that the power of electronic media helps remove. The 2019 election results are a classical example. Economy, on which so much breast beating is taking place today, was as bad prior to the elections. In the interest of electoral victory, the cameras were not allowed to pry into that story. A requirement of the present regime is not just a control of the media but its “comprehensive” control.

It is generally not recognized that the mushroom growth of the electronic media is a gift of neo-liberal economic policies inaugurated in 1991by Finance Minister, Manmohan Singh. It was in admiration for these economic policies that Sonia Gandhi made him Prime Minister. Chidambaram was Finance Minister in this sequence.

When the Babari Masjid was demolished in December 1992, the event was covered only by Doordarshan and a VHS weekly magazine called Newstrack. New Economic policies proceeded to spawn a culture of consumerism which clamoured for more advertisement space. Followed the mushroom growth of TV channels. Competition for TRP ratings conditioned programmes – four “Cs”, Cinema, Cricket, Crime and Communalism, emerged as the favourites. Communalism it was that the politician latched onto, and with rich dividends.

Meanwhile, accelerated globalization was reinforcing trends in India. For instance, the post 9/11 Islamophobia amplified by the global media, coincided almost exactly with the explosion of communalism in India. When Narendra Modi arrived in Ahmedabad in October 2001 to replace Keshubhai Patel as Chief Minister, he was not even a member of the assembly. That is when the world’s (and India’s) attention was riveted on the occupation of Afghanistan. Islamophobia was in the air globally, reinforcing saffron in India. Modi was in luck.

Televised fireworks on an unprecedented scale in Afghanistan, targeting Osama bin Laden, must have gone some distance in muffling the world’s reaction at the horrors of Godhra and the 2002 Gujarat pogrom. An already unbridled western media broke loose in Afghanistan. I shall never forget Geraldo Rivera of Fox News flourishing a revolver in front of the camera: “I shall shoot Osama dead if I see him.” This was the new tone of the “free media” at its best command performance. Can you see traces of this intemperance in the copycat Indian media?

The Chidambaram drama draws inspiration from another genre of western media. Colour revolutions, the Syrian uprising, numerous examples, most recently, the continuing protests in Hong Long. Let us consider Hong Kong, for example.

To stop criminals from becoming fugitives elsewhere, the Hong Kong administration proposed an Extradition Bill, extradition to the mainland, that is. Groups in Hong Kong saw this as an encroachment on their special status (echoes of Kashmir?).

Violent protests led to the withdrawal of the Bill, but the protests, begun in March, would not end. It was generally speculated that western agencies were stoking them. A photograph appeared in local newspapers of leader of the protests, Joshua Wong, discussing strategy with Julie Eadeh of the US Consulate in a Hong Kong hotel. This tended to confirm foreign interference. But quite brazenly, the protest continued.

The point is this: supposing scores of western journalists had not descended on the territory with their multiple camera units, would the protests have continued?

Conversely, the yellow vest protest movement has lasted for nearly a year in France and elsewhere in Europe without the spur of a saturation coverage. What explains its longevity? It is a genuine movement – one that western establishments are not interested in playing up, unlike the one in Hong Kong.

Against this perspective, the highly televised drama of walls being scaled by cops betrays a purpose much larger than the simple arrest of Chidambaram.

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Kashmir: Will BBC Once Again Lift The Veil Of Secrecy?

Kashmir: Will BBC Once Again Lift The Veil Of Secrecy?

                                                                                  Saeed Naqvi

It is just as well that the BBC has decided to expand its shortwave radio service in Kashmir to beat the communications blackout. This is not the first time the BBC has played this role – and for good reason. Because the supine, mainstream media in L.K. Advani’s words crawls when it is asked to bend.

Prime Minister, Narendra Modi had touched on the reasons for this spinelessness in his very first speech in Parliament in May, 2014. Although he did not mention the media, he traced the general obsequiousness to 1,200 years of “ghulami” or subjugation. Moghuls cannot be blamed for warts on the media’s face because in their period there was no media to speak of. Yes, one great editor of a paper called Urdu Akhbar, was tied to a cannon by the British and blown to smithereens for his critical writings. The Editor, Molvi Mohammad Baqar was the son of the greatest stylist in Urdu literature, Mohammad Hussain Azad.

The media, as we know it today, was a gift of the British. The imperial DNA is indelibly embedded in this media, both electronic and print, which dominates the Indian mindscape.

Mark Twian had put his finger on the nerve. “There are only two forces that carry light to all corners of the globe – the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.”

It is this western “ghulami”, which tempers our nationalism. To wear the badge of nationalism, the formula is simple: heap hatred on Pakistan and work assiduously to have your progeny parked permanently in the US.

The other day The Indian Express devoted its entire front page to an advertisement about itself. The heading was: “Is Your Opinion Yours?”

“Your opinion should belong to you.”

The ad signs off:

“The Indian Express.

For the Indian Intelligent.”

The ad is loaded with irony. One full inside page of the newspaper, atleast three to five times a week, is a straight lift from The Economist including its main editorial. Why Xi Jinping is slipping, how Putin’s end is round the corner, why Maduro must quit Venezuela, how the Jewish museum in Berlin reflects the Muslim-Palestinian perspective and so on. This is in addition to countless other news items from French, British and American news agencies.

How then do you explain the July 28, 2019 page one of the Indian Express asking a young lady, stepping out into the world, “Is your opinion yours?” It is a little impertinent of the newspaper to pose the question when its own opinions on foreign affairs are The Economist’s, and sundry western agencies. Most newspapers are guilty on that count.

The Economist is a great magazine but it represents interests of the right-wing western establishment. By having this publication saturate our media space, we expose our ruling class to a point of view which is not ours, unless we have avowedly surrendered our independence to our previous masters.

What the BBC is proposing now is to expand its short wave radio to beat the blackout in what is now “undisputedly” India. Here is yet another irony. The BBC has always had credibility in a state where a balanced, fearless Indian media would gone miles to win hearts and minds.

When the senior Mirwaiz Mohammad Farooq, the present Mirwaiz’s father, was assassinated in 1990, I accompanied BBC’s Satish Jacob, to cover the Mirwaiz’s funeral at the Idgah. Why did Mark Tully the Bureau Chief himself not cover the most important of stories? After all, 72 men and women were killed in the violence. Since the BBC radio was the only credible media which covered Kashmir, Tully would be mobbed because he was too well known. Satish, his deputy, would turn up with his fancy recorder but he would project himself as “German radio” which the agitated Kashmiris had no interest in.

I sought protection joining the funeral as Satish’s sidekick. My appearances on Doordarshan were on issues unrelated to Kashmir. But the agitated processionists put two and two together and, not only did they identify me, they turned upon me with unspeakable fury. They had recognized me from my Doordarshan appearances. I had incurred their wrath because in a BBC radio interview I had pointed my finger of suspicion for the murder of Mirwaiz at various groups in the valley but not on Indian agencies. “You are a sarkari chamcha” they jeered at me.

The mob multiplied in geometrical progression. Soon I had thousands, arms raised, about to assault me in unison. It was a frenzied, lynch mob. Just then a short man with light eyes, wearing a blue shirt and trouser, whipped out a revolver. He shouted above the din. “I shall finish him off.” Then he waved his revolver at the howling, screaming mob. “Move back.”

He dragged me by the sleeves to the exit. “Now you can go, and do not be seen here.” he was Feroz from the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front JKLF. This was the Front’s signal that it was not anti-India.

The story now has taken a much more blistering turn. The BBC’s credibility will grow astronomically unless strings are pulled at its head office in London with the following message: “Look, you have turned your face away from the Palestinian story under pressure of the Jewish lobby. Why can’t you turn your face away from this one? BBC will have to ponder. The Arab audience has been neutralized by Israeli stratagem, Saudi money and the western media. But is the BBC prepared to forgo the steady, reliable clientele in Pakistan?

The only balm on the wounded Kashmiri psyche will be to shut up the screaming jingoist anchors controlling the multiple channels. Open the valley to a balanced, independent media. It may take time but it will work in the long run. Ofcourse, I may be speaking out of turn because no one quite knows the depth of the brutality inflicted on the people. Only when the dark curtain of secrecy is lifted from the valley will we know whether the wounds are amenable to any kind of cure.

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Ladakhi Magic: Disappearance Of The Muslim Majority From All Discourse

Ladakhi Magic: Disappearance Of The Muslim Majority From All Discourse

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

In a sense, the circumvention of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir by the Narendra Modi government concludes the fierce debate between Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Deputy Prime Minister Vallabhbahi Patel on the Kashmir file in December 1947. The issue has not only been settled in favour of Sardar Patel, the disciple has exceeded the Guru. Recklessness was not Patel’s style although he once suggested the valley go to Pakistan if it wished. That would have made India comprehensively a Hindu Raj, something which most Congressmen desired.

It was nobody’s case that the Partition plan announced by Lord Mountbatten on June 3, 1947, envisaged a “Muslim Pakistan” and a “secular India”. It was a straightforward division on religious lines – Hindu and Muslim. Patel, like Babu Rajendra Prasad, Purushottam Das Tandon, J.B. Kripalani, would have been happier with a “Hindu Raj” or Hindustan as a counterpoint to the Muslim Raj, or Pakistan. The Congress was opposed to the Two-Nation theory. It would therefore seem absurd that the Congress would accept half of the theory, namely, Pakistan but demur on the other half, India. Obviously, Nehru and the ICS, the aristocracy around him (today’s Khan Market crowd are their poor cousins) found something “mofussil” about Hindu India. There was another, deeper reason. Hindu India could not have kept Kashmir on the contiguity principle.

Kashmir had a Hindu Maharaja ruling a Muslim majority. Which way should Kashmir go? The answer should be straightforward but it is not. Nehru drooling on the state’s accession to India, persuaded Mahatma Gandhi to visit Kashmir, just when the build upto Partition was rising to a crescendo. Ian Stephens, the Editor of The Statesman, during the crucial years from 1942 to 1951, gave much credence to the Mahatma’s visit to Kashmir. He thought the “saintly man” was also “one of the world’s most ingenious politicians”. Stephens then speculates: “It is hard to think what could have drawn him, as a saint, to Srinagar at this moment.”

For Stephens, the mystery of Kashmir deepened “when I read in September that Goplaswami Ayyangar, a very able and reputedly anti Muslim Madrasi Brahmin, who was the Prime Minister of Kashmir from 1937 to 1943, had been made Minister without portfolio in the new Indian cabinet, I said to our editorial conference in Calcutta: “that really looks as if India is upto something at Srinagar, and our correspondents were told to watch for news.” And news there was aplenty.

Nehru was keen on Sheikh Abdullah as Prime Minister. Meher Chand Mahajan, once the Maharaja’s trusted “Prime Minister” was a Patel favourite. He also became Patel’s informer: “As advised I am quietly watching the trend of events without in any way interfering in the government. Sheikh Sahib has got dictatorial powers which are being exercised in a dictatorial manner regardless of rules and forms of law.”

Mahajan whom Patel was backing for the top job in the valley came under the searchlight of Ved Bhasin, a distinguished editor of Kashmir Times. Let Bhasin speak: “Mahajan told a group of Hindus who met him in the palace in Jammu that now, when power was being transferred to the people, they should demand parity” (with Muslims).

How could parity be claimed when Muslims were in a majority? Mahajan pointed to bodies of Muslims smoldering after the previous day’s killing. “The population ratio too can change”. The Spectator, and the Times of London on August 10, 1948, estimated that anywhere between 2,00,000 and 2,37,000 were exterminated by the Maharaja’s Dogra forces. My attention to the genocide in Jammu was drawn by Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar’s article in the Times of India of 18 January 2015.

Nehru did have his way. Sheikh Abdullah did become Prime Minister but to what end. In 1953 Nehru jailed his “closest friend”. I must put it down to dynastic consistency that Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister asked Gopalaswami Ayyangar’s son, G. Parthasarathy to resume talks with the Sheikh in 1972, resulting in the Indira-Sheikh accord of 1975, restoring the Srinagar gaddi to him again. Nothing in the valley brought down the Sheikh’s image more than this “capitulation”. This is how the Kashmiris saw it. This is when other political formations began to sprout.

In 1984, the Sheikh died; Indira Gandhi was assassinated the same year. This opened the way for the next generation of dynasts – in New Delhi as well as Srinagar.

There is an old Persian saying:

Agar pidar na tawanad

Pisar tamam kunad

“That which father (or mother in one case) has left incomplete,

It is the responsibility of the son to complete.”

Farooq Abdullah, practicing medicine in London, came back to take charge of his patrimony. After a few unseemly summersaults, Congress and the National Congress joined hands to contest the 1987 elections. Together, they raised the bar of rigging elections to record heights. Kashmiris had been cheated again. That was the beginning of the insurgency in the valley. In 1989, the Afghan Mujahideen, having helped push the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, found themselves looking for work. The situation in the valley beckoned. Indigenous insurgency was helped by battle tried Mujahideen: it was a lethal mix.

While the people groaned, princely dynasties of the Abdullah’s luxuriated. I do hope Farooq will still have access to the magnificent golf course he built with such passion. Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s dynasty was not far behind. Both the dynasties are now over. A former senior State Department official asks a good question: “the status quo ante was not working for the Kashmiris, was it?”

The August 5 decision is an onion which has not yet been peeled. To the common man, the breaking up of the state into two Union Territories looks like a cake sliced into Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist parts. That is an optical illusion. The Centre has set up two three-legged races – Hindus and Muslims yoked together in in J & K and Muslims and Buddhists in Ladakh. The Gogia Pasha trick here is this: the Muslims of Kargil and elsewhere in the district, much the majority in Ladakh, have been made to disappear – from all discourse, to begin with.

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