December 2010′s B-side is the last of 2010 and has its focus on the nightmare that doesnt go away that is American and her predator drones. The other key focus continues to be Kashmir, as has been the case in many previous B-sides here and here, as Kashmir remains close to my heart.

The B-side begins with an article by Mehdi Hasaan on US drone attacks and lays bare Barack Obama for the state terrorist that he is in my opinion. The final article also focuses on the role of America vis a vis Pakistan and is written by a seasoned journalis in H D S Greenway. Sandwiched between these articles is an article on Kashmir’s importance and its brutal occupation by India written by Basharat Peer and Sasha Polakow-Suransky. December 2010′s B-side contents include:

• US Drone Attacks Are No Laughing Matter, Mr Obama by MEHDI HASAN
• All Roads Lead to Kashmir by BASHARAT PEER and SASHA POLAKOW-SURANSKY
• Dealing with Pakistan by H. D. S. GREENWAY

The first article is written by Mehdi Hasan, the political editor of the New Statesmen and not the music genius.

US Drone Attacks Are No Laughing Matter, Mr Obama by Mehdi Hasan

Speaking at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in May, Barack Obama spotted teen pop band the Jonas Brothers in the audience. “Sasha and Malia are huge fans, but, boys, don’t get any ideas,” deadpanned the president, referring to his daughters. “Two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming.” The crowd laughed, Obama smiled, the dinner continued. Few questioned the wisdom of making such a tasteless joke; of the US commander-in-chief showing such casual disregard for the countless lives lost abroad through US drone attacks.

From the moment he stepped foot inside the White House, Obama set about expanding and escalating a covert CIA programme of “targeted killings” inside Pakistan, using Predator and Reaper drones armed with Hellfire missiles (who comes up with these names?) that had been started by the Bush administration in 2004. On 23 January 2009, just three days after being sworn in, Obama ordered his first set of air strikes inside Pakistan; one is said to have killed four Arab fighters linked to al-Qaida but the other hit the house of a pro-government tribal leader, killing him and four members of his family, including a five-year-old child. Obama’s own daughter, Sasha, was seven at the time.

But America’s Nobel-peace-prize-winning president did not look back. During his first nine months in office he authorised as many aerial attacks in Pakistan as George W Bush did in his final three years in the job. And this year has seen an unprecedented number of air strikes. Forget Mark Zuckerberg or the iPhone 4 – 2010 was the year of the drone. According to the New America Foundation thinktank in Washington DC, the number of US drone strikes in Pakistan more than doubled in 2010, to 115. That is an astonishing rate of around one bombing every three days inside a country with which the US is not at war.

And the carnage continues. On Monday, CIA drones fired six missiles at two vehicles in a “Taliban stronghold” in north Waziristan, on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan, killing 18 “militants”. Or so said “Pakistani intelligence officials”, speaking under condition of anonymity to the Associated Press. Today another round of drone strikes is thought to have killed at least 15 “militants” in the same area.

These attacks by unmanned aircraft may have succeeded in eliminating hundreds of dangerous militants, but the truth is that they also kill innocent civilians indiscriminately and in large numbers. According to the New America Foundation, one in four of those killed by drones since 2004 has been an innocent. The Brookings Institute, however, has calculated a much higher civilian-to-militant ratio of 10:1. Meanwhile, figures compiled by the Pakistani authorities suggest US strikes killed 701 people between January 2006 and April 2009, of which 14 were al-Qaida militants and 687 were civilians. That produces a hit rate of just 2% – or 50 civilians dead for every militant killed.

The majority of Pakistanis are against the use of drones in the tribal areas on the Afghan border. Their own government, however, despite public opposition to the bombings, has in private expressed support for America’s drones. “I don’t care if they do it as long as they get the right people,” Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is quoted as saying, in a 2008 cable released by WikiLeaks. “We’ll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.”

This is not a left/right issue; criticisms of the drone strikes have come from figures as diverse as Sir Brian Burridge, the UK’s former air chief marshal in Iraq, who has described the aerial slaughter inflicted from afar by unmanned, remote-controlled aircraft as a “virtueless war”; and Andrew Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency expert and former adviser to General David Petraeus, who says that each innocent victim of a drone strike “represents an alienated family, a new revenge feud, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially as drone strikes have increased”.

Kilcullen is spot on. The cold-blooded killing of Pakistani civilians in a push-button, PlayStation-style drone war is not just immoral and perhaps illegal, it is futile and self-defeating from a security point of view. Take Faisal Shahzad, the so-called Times Square bomber. One of the first things the Pakistani-born US citizen said upon his arrest was: “How would you feel if people attacked the United States? You are attacking a sovereign Pakistan.” Asked by the judge at his trial as to how he could justify planting a bomb near innocent women and children, Shahzad responded by saying that US drone strikes “don’t see children, they don’t see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody.”

But the innocent victims of America’s secret drone war have become “unpeople”, in the words of the historian Mark Curtis – those whose lives are seen as expendable in the pursuit of the west’s foreign policy goals. Killed via remote control, they remain unseen and unremembered. Forgive me, Mr President, for not seeing the funny side.

Published in The Guardian

WASIM VIEW- Mehdi Hasan’s article is a must read for all those who care about peace in Pakistan and South Asia. In the article, Hasan proves that Obama is worse than even the war criminal and warmonger Bush in his evil use of drones to massacre innocent civilians in Pakistan.

Hasan is particularly right to point out the double standards of the West by making reference to Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize award, whilst personally authorising and presiding over the use of state terrorism via US drone attacks on Pakistan. Hasan is also right to draw attention to Obama’s evil drone joke, a joke that degrades his office and shows him up as a man of suspect morals and judgement. I am surprised that the mainstream media has only just taken notice of Obama’s drone joke, diatribe more like, indeed it seems that I led the blogosphere at least on the issue with my post Obama’s Evil: The Drone Joke here.

My views on Obama’s joke and drones have been stated before as have my views on Obama who for me is a first-class con-artist parading as a fine orator and statesmen. In truth he is an arrogant war criminal like Bush before him but worse, as he is meant to be a man of Nobel-Prize winning peace who finds it amusing to joke about and unleash state terrorism against Pakistan.

Kashmir is the focus of the second article and it is a must read for it lays bare India’s brutal occupation of Kashmir.

All Roads Lead to Kashmir by Basharat Peer and Sasha Polakow-Suransky

RICHARD HOLBROOKE spent the final two years of his life struggling to bring peace to Afghanistan and Pakistan, but officially he was never allowed to touch the issue of Kashmir. In the wake of last week’s WikiLeaks revelations of the Indian government’s use of torture against Kashmiri prisoners, the time has come to put Kashmir back on the map and include it in discussions of a broader regional peace — one that would extend to Afghanistan as well.

The longstanding dispute over Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim region, has poisoned relations between Hindu-majority India and Muslim Pakistan for decades; spawned and sustained anti-Indian terrorist groups; prevented Pakistan’s army from fighting extremists along its border with Afghanistan; and proved deadly for the Kashmiris caught in between.

In early July, the bodies of three young laborers killed by Indian troops were discovered in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, unleashing a wave of protests. Police fired tear gas at protesters in Srinagar and killed a 17-year-old student, who was simply passing by. Soon, young Kashmiris armed with stones were battling Indian troops, who responded with bullets. An intense military curfew followed. From July to September, the Kashmiri intifada raged on killing 110 and injuring at least 1,500.

India has long resisted any outside attempt to mediate in Kashmir. The Indian government panicked after Barack Obama’s historic election in November 2008, fearing that Obama might appoint Bill Clinton as a special envoy to Kashmir as he had suggested during the campaign. And even before Holbrooke’s post was announced in January 2009, Indian officials and their allies in Washington lobbied furiously to have the words India and Kashmir excluded from the veteran US diplomat’s portfolio. India did not want to be seen as paying the price for US failures in Afghanistan by being forced to negotiate on Kashmir.

Yet the occupation of Kashmir remains a stain on India’s democracy. Over 500,000 Indian troops and paramilitary forces are stationed there. Killings of civilians by security forces routinely go unreported and unpunished as a result of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which effectively gives Indian troops stationed in Kashmir a de facto license to kill. The most recent trove of WikiLeaks confirmed what human-rights organizations have long alleged: that Indian troops have systematically tortured Kashmiri prisoners. After documenting widespread torture and sexual humiliation of prisoners who “were rarely militants,” the Red Cross told US officials in 2005 that it had concluded that the Indian government “condones torture.”

Even India’s current leaders realize that they cannot suppress Kashmiris’ desire for freedom forever and that they, too, could benefit from a resolution. Sonia Gandhi, the president of India’s ruling Congress Party, recently admitted the need to address “the alienation of the whole new generation of youth that has known nothing but conflict” in Kashmir. Another decade of tear gas and torture will not help India gain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and a larger role on the international stage.

Although the road to peace in Kabul does not necessarily begin in Kashmir, regional experts such as former CIA officer Bruce Riedel have argued that a lasting peace in Afghanistan is impossible without a resolution in Kashmir. So long as Pakistan’s military remains obsessed with the Indian threat and the large number of Indian troops along its eastern border, it is reluctant to redeploy its troops and its resources to go after the Taliban along Pakistan’s western border with Afghanistan. At the same time, Pakistan fears encirclement by India due to growing Indian influence in Afghanistan after the United States withdraws. Meanwhile, hawks in India seem reluctant to make major concessions in Kashmir.

Pakistan’s strategic calculus will only change, says Riedel, “once the logic of confrontation with India begins to be undermined.” And that will require renewed back-channel talks and incremental steps toward peace. An overt US push to resolve the Kashmir dispute along the lines of Washington’s recent efforts in the Middle East would likely fail — angering India and exposing its leaders to criticism from hawks on the right. But a softer behind-the-scenes approach could succeed.

After all, back-channel talks between India and Pakistan in 2006 and 2007 came very close to establishing a largely autonomous Kashmir with soft borders between the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled regions, and a gradual demilitarization of the area. Those talks fell apart when Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf lost power in August 2008, and the issue has been a political nonstarter since the Pakistani-sponsored terrorist attacks on Mumbai that November.

There are signs of hope. Two weeks ago, both Indian and Pakistani officials signaled that some back-channel diplomacy had resumed. More importantly, Syed Salahudin, the Pakistan-based leader of Hizbul Mujahideen, the largest Kashmiri militant group, announced in Rawalpindi that “India and Pakistan should sit at the negotiating table.” It is the first time in 20 years that Salahudin has come out in support of a negotiated resolution to the Kashmir dispute. Washington should seize the moment — but quietly.

Published in The Boston Globe

WASIM VIEW- Peer’s and Polakow-Suransky’s article is not an eye-opener for it states the obvious in highlighting the importance of Kashmir in terms of peace in South Asia. The article however is ground-breaking in that it lays bare thanks to Wikileaks what many Kashmiris and Pakistanis have always known- that occupying India uses state terrorism including torture to bully and coerce the Kashmiri people.

Peer and Polakow-Suransky are right to wish for a peaceful solution and are correct in calling on active US pressure on India to force her to tackle the issue peacefully. Previous B-sides here and here have focused on Kashmir and made it clear that the road to Kabul flows from Kashmir and this article too draws such links.

Peer and Polakow-Suransky are right to point out how candidate Obama and President Obama have treated the Kashmir dispute. To many Kashmiris and Pakistanis it is clear even McChrystal clear that Obama the candidate was faking it in promising to deal with Kashmir as a priority. For early supporters of Obama like me this fact is a bitter pill to swallow for he has proved in his acts and deeds that he is nothing more than a commander-in-speech and that his yes-we-can translates in Srinagar to yes-we-cant be bothered about Kashmir.

The final article is written by a seasonsed journalist in H.D.S Greenway and looks at Pakistan-US relations in the backdrop of Obama’s recent Afghanistan Policy Review.

Dealing with Pakistan by H. D. S. Greenway

’Tis the season to bash Pakistan. That’s the message that leapt from the Obama administration’s Afghan strategy review last week. It’s Pakistan fault that we Americans are not winning the war, so we better get tough with Pakistan.

We “will continue to insist to Pakistani leaders that terrorists safe havens within their borders must be dealt with,” said President Obama. Others, such as retired Gen. Jack Keane, put it more bluntly: “Don’t just put a finger in their chest, put a fist in their chest.” But the message is the same — “U.S. Will Widen War On Militants Inside Pakistan,” headlined the New York Times. “Pentagon Planning More Attacks With Drones And Commandos.”

There can be no doubt of what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, called — in Pentagon-speak — “the criticality of Pakistan in terms of overall success.” But is putting a fist in Pakistan’s chest really going to solve the “criticality” issue?

Pakistan is already permitting drone attacks on its territory — attacks that kill as many or more civilians than militants. It has also allowed limited U.S. special operations within Pakistan. Eighty percent of U.S. war material passes through Pakistan. Put a fist in Pakistan’s chest, as we did in September when a cross-border operation killed three Pakistani soldiers, and you may see some of this support dry up.

I recently drove past the hulks of burned out oil tankers by the side of the Grand Trunk Road headed to the Khyber Pass, torched by militants when Pakistan temporarily halted the convoys in retaliation for our incursion.

One might ask General Keane: What is it you don’t understand about closing the Khyber Pass? What chance would you give either the short-term or long-term sustainability of our Afghan effort without Pakistani cooperation? One hundred dollars worth of gasoline passing through Pakistan costs one thousand to ship though Central Asia.

So let’s stop all this talk of cleaning out the sanctuaries ourselves if the Pakistanis won’t. The United States doesn’t need to get involved militarily in another Muslim country.

The U.S. is extremely unpopular as it is with the Pakistani public. Do we really think we could prevail in the mountains of the Northwest Frontier with the whole countryside up in arms against us? If you really want to destabilize a nuclear-armed Pakistan, that would be the best way to do it.

Pakistanis feel, with some justification, that they are being scapegoated. “I’m not saying we are entirely innocent,” a member of Pakistan’s intelligence service told me, but after nine years of failing in Afghanistan it is easy to “put all the blame on someone else.”

Or as Lt. Gen. Asif Malik, commander of the Pakistani Army 11th Corps responsible for the tribal territories, told me: Organizations such as the Haqqani group are not completely dependent on Pakistani territory. They, and the rest of the Taliban, can operate quite well in Afghanistan without sanctuaries — to which the deterioration of security in northern Afghanistan attests.

And from Pakistan’s point of view, there are Taliban attacking Pakistani soldiers from safe havens in Afghanistan that NATO cannot stop. The frontier with Pakistan will always be porous. The mountainous border cannot be sealed completely.

Yes, Pakistan wants to keep some Pashtun guerilla groups close as a hedge against the future. General Keane says that once we show Pakistan that the Taliban cannot come back to power in Kabul, Pakistan will abandon these groups and get on the team.

But Pakistan’s Afghan policy is consistent. It does not want a hostile neighbor on its western border. Pakistan fears the present Kabul government, dominated by the India-backed Northern Alliance of Tajiks and Uzbeks, unless more pro-Pakistan Pashtuns are better represented.

How can Pakistan be confident that the United States will be able to turn security over to an Afghan Army by 2014? Afghan soldiers regularly loot the properties of the very citizens they are tasked with defending, and the Karzai government is unloved. Although there has been much progress in training the Afghan Army, serious training began only last year. My tennis game can show a lot of improvement in one year, but it doesn’t mean I will be ready to play Roger Federer by 2014.

Pakistanis know that, whether it be 2014 or 2024, Americans will go home, and Pakistan will still be left with Afghanistan next door.

The Obama administration understands the need to work closely with Pakistan, and yes, Pakistan can be endlessly frustrating — even to Pakistanis. But more emphasis on trying to understand Pakistan’s vital national interests — some “strategic patience,” as Admiral Mullen put it, and a little less bullying — might be more productive. Too often, the American attitude is master to servant: We give you money now do what we say, and do it right now.

Published in The New York Times

WASIM VIEW- Greenway’s article is written in the backdrop of the recent US Afghanistan policy review. Greenway rightly concludes that the review has achieved little other than provide an opportunity to blame Pakistan for US failure in Afghanistan. I could not agree more and find it amazing how Pakistan can be blamed when the so-called sole superpower with all its military and economic might has failed to achieve any progress in 11 years of occupation.

Greenway is particularly right in calling on the US to respect Pakistan’s core national interests warning that continued US pressure on Pakistan will yield no benefits. I am amazed and ashamed at US do-more requests and wonder how much more a droned-out and debt-ridden Pakistan can do to serve Washington. Greenway is right to make a reference to the master-servant relationship, a description that is sadly true for Pakistan owing to the betrayal of its leaders in khakis and in suits be it Kayani, Gilani and Zardari and others before them.

Greenway’s article should be read by US policy makers and should be acted upon given that 2011 is an important year for Afghanistan and the region. I fear that the article will not be read and acted upon in the corridors of power in Washington thus providing more opportunities for the dreaded tag-team of Osama and Obama to wreak havoc in the region.

Following the speech there was a ruckus in the assembly against it and more widely it has received much attention  and criticism across India. A Dawn editorial sums up the speech and the situation in Kashmir at present (words in bold added by me for emphasis) and it is shared below:

Indian-held Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah ruffled quite a few feathers when he said what must have appeared as heresy to New Delhi.

Speaking in the legislature of the disputed territory on Thursday, the chief minister scuttled the very basis of the Indian case in Kashmir when he emphasised two points: one, Jammu and Kashmir never merged with India and two, it was an international dispute. No wonder this earned him the immediate wrath of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, which accused him of being anti-national. Mr Abdullah said Kashmir was a dispute between two neighbours and the explosive situation in the valley needed a political solution. This extraordinarily blunt talk goes against New Delhi’s decades-old official line — that Kashmir is an ‘integral part’ of India. While the analogy he drew between Kashmir on the one side and Hyderabad and Junagadh on the other doesn’t concern us here, what deserves to be noted is the background against which Mr Abdullah seems to have been forced to utter words that under normal circumstances he would not have considered prudent to go public with. But such is the impact of the protests now rocking Indian-held Kashmir that the chief minister had no choice but to say something off the beaten track to serve as a sop to the valley’s angry youth.

One major concern for Mr Abdullah must be the realisation that men like him are in danger of being swept away if they do not appear to be sympathetic to the current sentiments in Kashmir, the people’s total disillusionment with Indian rule and the fatalities which have reached more than 100 since the current wave of protests began on June 11. That he was critical of the Indian authorities’ reliance on force to tackle the protests was obvious when he said the situation needed a political solution. Kashmir, he said, was a political issue, and “it cannot be addressed through development, employment and good governance”. This is the crux of the matter. The political issue Mr Abdullah spoke of revolves around a principle which cannot be denied to the Kashmiri people — their right to self-determination.

I have said it before and I will say it again,  the Kashmiri people  cannot be silenced, they will be heard and heard loudly. Omar Abdullah’s speech is an indictment against India and her brutal  occupation. The die has been cast, Kashmir will decide its own future, Kashmir Banega Pakistan.

Courtesy: Frontline Kashmir

The above image is the dreaded writing on the wall that India has feared since its occupation of Kashmir. In the last few months the brutal repression of the Kashmiri people has led to the death of 100 people, yet the Kashmir intifada is alive and kicking, the street is speaking  and promising that it will not fall silent to Indian occupation.

As the jugular vein of Pakistan is strangled and blooded by Indian occupation, Pakistan is as a state and as a people sadly asleep. Except for the meaningless and impotent remarks of the Foreign Minister calling on India to exercise ’restraint’, the Pakistani power elites in khakis and in suits are in the main unmoved.

A good indicator of how uncaring the Pakistani state is to the oppression of the Kashmiri people can be assessed by an unpublished op-ed I wrote two months ago on 11 July and it is shared below:

Kashmir Burns As Pakistan Fiddles

‘The Killers’ are a popular American rock band to some, but for the Kashmiri people that term is reserved only for the occupying state of India. In the past month alone, India has unleashed a new wave of terror with Kashmiri civilians being targeted at will with heavy-handed policing and state oppression amounting to a death tally of 15 deaths.

It all began on 11 June with the martyrdom of Tufail Ahmed Matoo, a young boy who was shot dead by the police. Matoo’s death was alleged by the Indian forces to have been caused by accidental tear gas shelling yet the post-mortem showed he was shot dead by the Indian occupiers. Since that day, 15 innocent civilians have spilled their blood for the Kashmir cause.

The significance of recent events can be gauged by a BBC report on the situation which reported that ‘even the pro-India People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has accused the government of declaring war on its own people’. No friend of Pakistan, the Hindustan Times has understood the significance of recent events and has reported that the situation led Omar Abdullah’s government to formally request for support from the Centre in using the army as “deterrent” and to “assist in imposing curfew and maintaining basic law and order”.

Crucially the Hindustan Times reports that ‘It was after more than 15 years that the army columns were patrolling both uptown and downtown Srinagar. Flag marches were also held in several other districts like Budgam and south Kashmir’s Anantnag districts’. The front page headline ignored in Pakistan is that Indian forces are patrolling Srinagar again after a gap of nearly twenty years.

The fact that the Kashmiri leadership remains largely behind bars proves that the Kashmiri public remain steadfast for their struggle needs no leaders given it is a just struggle of right against wrong. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, an important Kashmiri leader has clearly seen the writing on the wall and has said of the recent events that ’the baton of the freedom struggle has now been passed on to the next generation who by sacrificing their precious lives have reinforced the universally accepted fact that it might be possible to annihilate the body by killing it but no power on earth can subjugate the yearnings of a nation for freedom into submission’.

Meanwhile while Kashmir burns, Pakistan fiddles. The Pakistani reaction to Indian oppression in Kashmir has been silence. Not a word of condemnation has been uttered from the President, Prime Minister and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The holy fathers as Ayaz Amir fondly calls them aka the Islamic parties too have largely remained silent too except for Maulana Fazlur Rahman who has uttered a few choice words of condemnation as per his role as the Chairman of the Kashmir Committee.

The formidable Foreign Minister of Pakistan and his foreign office have remained aloof and unmoved too, indeed a cursory check of the Foreign Office website- http://www.mofa.gov.pk/ shows only in invisible ink a reference to the Kashmir unrest. Instead earth-shattering statements of national and international significance and prominence are reserved for the ‘Pakistan-Netherlands Joint Statement’ and the ‘Inaugural session of Pakistan-Thailand bilateral consultations in Islamabad’.

On a closer check of the Foreign Office website some Indian-related statements do feature such as ‘Indian Foreign Secretary calls on Foreign Minister’, more docile entries include ‘Pakistan hands over list of Indian prisoners in Pakistan whilst a statement of fury is reserved for ’Indian army chief’s remarks about terror camps in Pakistan are baseless’.. Moreover the Foreign Office carries the condemnation of the Foreign Minister no less of the suicide blasts in Mohmand Agency and Lahore in recent weeks, but still has no mention of Kashmir at all, let alone condemnation.

It is criminal act against Pakistan that the life vein of Pakistan, Kashmir is under attack and the Pakistan state is unmoved. The Pakistani state seems preoccupied with issues galore at the cost of the Kashmir cause and this represents the greatest disservice to the people of Kashmir and Pakistan. No-one is asking for a military standoff; however a word of condemnation is not beyond the rulers of Pakistan. It disgusts me that Kashmir is only made the focus for empty sloganeering relating to the pathetic and apathetic Pakistan-India composite dialogue.

It seems that the people of Kashmir and their struggle is no longer newsworthy in today’s troubled Pakistan and that the Pakistani love for Srinagar has disappeared. It is hoped that this article acts as a rallying cry for Pakistan as a state and as a citizenry to renew our love for Kashmir, for the message of our shared history remains that Kashmir is the life vein of Pakistan.

Kashmir can never be ignored nor forgotten, as Kashmir is Pakistan and vice versa. Kashmir Banega Pakistan, Kashmir aur Pakistan Zindabad

What I said two months ago remains true for Kashmir and Pakistan and it is hoped that this post can serve to reawaken Pakistan from its slumber.  Kashmir Banega Pakistan.  

The Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Shah Mehmood Qureshi  yesterday betrayed the Kashmir cause and in turn the state of Pakistan by legitimising the Indian occupation of Kashmir. Moreover, as an important leader of the PPP, Qureshi also betrayed his party and its founder Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was the most vocal voice since the Quaid in his support for the Kashmir cause and never legitimised nor recognised Indian occupied Kashmir. Kashmir for him was never a part of India as the now legendary video below shows:

In contrast the Zardari-led PPP seems timid and foreover on the back foot vis a vis Kashmir and relations with India. A video of the full press conference in which Qureshi uttered his offensive words  has not been made available however Pakistani TV channels have focused on the key aspects.

Indeed the disgraceful remarks of betrayal made by our very own Foreign Minister were missed on the whole except by Talat Hussain it seems who drew his viewers attention to them on Live with Talat aired on 16 July (35 min 35 sec -38 min 34 sec). The cowardly comments of Qureshi have been noted by me verbatim and they were as follows:

‘The Jammu and Kashmir issue and the recent developments in Jammu and Kashmir were taken up in the parleys that we had today. In fact three organisations, Kashmir based organisations wrote to me and wanted me to highlight and discuss these issues, and I did.

Issues of human rights and violations, issue of the imposition of curfew in a number of cities, the issue of the use of the Indian armed forces for the maintenance of law and order and the loss of life are issues of concern of everyone, including the elected government in Jammu and Kashmir. You must have seen a statement, of the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir in which he has welcomed this engagement and is of the view that progress’

The words in bold refer to the offending remarks which legitimise the Indian occupation of Kashmir no less. Never before has any Pakistani official invested with executive authority uttered even a single word that recognised the Indian occupation of Kashmir.

Qureshi went further than that by recognising the ‘elected government of Jammu and Kashmir’, a so-called government that Pakistan has never recognised since its very creation. Furthermore Qureshi adds fuel to his own funeral pyre by quoting the so-called Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir to substantiate his points on engagement.

In summary, the Foreign Minister of Pakistan recognised the legitimacy of the Indian occupation of Pakistani land and then waxed eloquent of its occupiers, all whilst hosting the occupying state’s own Foreign Minister! I am sure that no Bollywood director nor any other Indian enjoying a wet dream could have scripted a better choice of words for the Pakistan Foreign Minister to utter in a press conference with his Indian counterpart.  

Qureshi’s words are I hope, a slip of the tongue and not the new Kashmir policy of the Zardari-led PPP. If it is Pakistan’s new Kashmir policy then it is akin to dancing on the graves of the Kashmiri and Pakistani dead. I await a retraction and a public apology from Qureshi himself, for anything less will be a betrayal of the Kashmir cause and a gross betrayal of the Pakistan’s People Party’s founder and Kashmir’s most vocal voice, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

Source: Shaheed Tufail Ahmed Matoo Facebook Page/AP

‘The Killers’ are a popular American rock band to some, but for Kashmiris the term is reserved only for the occupying state of India. In the past month alone, India has unleashed a wave of terror against the people of Kashmir with Kashmiri civilians being targeted at will with heavy-handed policing and state oppression amounting to a death tally of 15 deaths.

It all began on 11 June with the martyrdom of Tufail Ahmed Matoo, a young boy who was shot dead by the police. Since that day, 15 innocent civilians have spilled their blood for the Kashmir cause. The significance of recent events can be gauged by a report on the situation available on the BBC Website which reports that ‘even the pro-India People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has accused the government of declaring war on its own people’.

No friend of Pakistan, the Hindustan Times  has understood the significance of recent events and has reported of Kashmir that the situation has led to Omar Abdullah’s government formally asking for  support from the Centre to use the army as “deterrent” and to “assist in imposing curfew and maintaining basic law and order”. Crucially the Hindustan Times reports that ‘It was after more than 15 years that the army columns were patrolling both uptown and downtown Srinagar. Flag marches were also held in several other districts like Budgam and south Kashmir’s Anantnag districts’. The headline is thus that Indian forces are patrolling Srinagar again after a gap of nearly twenty years.

The fact that the Kashmiri leadership remain behind bars proves that the Kashmiri public remain steadfast in their struggle,  indeed Mirwaiz Umar Farooq an important Kashmiri leader has said of the recent events that ’the baton of the freedom struggle has now been passed on to the next generation who by sacrificing their precious lives have reinforced the universally accepted fact that it might be possible to annihilate the body by killing it but no power on earth can subjugate the yearnings of a nation for freedom into submission’.

Meanwhile while Kashmir burns, Pakistan fiddles. It is criminal that Pakistan seems preoccupied with issues galore at the cost of the Kashmir cause. Moreover it is the great betrayal given that the Pakistani state has unilaterally chose to ‘switch off’ its focus on Kashmir except for empty sloganeering relating only to the pathetic and apathetic Pakistan-India composite dialogue.

It seems that the people of Kashmir and their struggle is no longer newsworthy in today’s troubled Pakistan. That the Pakistani love for Srinagar and Sopore has dissapeared it seems at least from the Pakistani state who seem unmoved on Kashmir’s recent events with not one word uttered from President Zardari, Prime Minister Gilani and even Nawaz Sharif.

Very few forceful statements have been issued from Pakistan, indeed it seems Kashmiris are on their own and that Pakistan has become both deaf and mute to the plight of ordinary Kashmiris . However a timely reminder to the Pakistani state and Pakistani citizens of the importance of the Kashmir cause is necessary and I seek to use this post as a rallying cry. The reminder comes in the form of a video of Sher-e-Kashmir Syed Ali Geelani, the video below says it all:

The message is clear that Kashmir is the life vein of Pakistan, it can never be ignored nor forgotten for Kashmir is Pakistan and vice versa. 

Kashmir Banega Pakistan, Kashmir aur Pakistan Zindabad

• Kashmir Solution: Imperative for Peace by KHURSHID MEHMOOD KASURI
• Power-less Pakistan by CHARLES K. EBINGER & KASHIF HASNIE
• Faisal Shehzad’s Anti-Americanism by PERVEZ HOODBHOY

Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri is the former Foreign Minister of Pakistan and the author of the first article. Mr Kasuri focuses on an issue close to my heart, Kashmir.

Kashmir Solution: Imperative for Peace by Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri

The biggest problem between Pakistan and India currently is the absence of trust. Anything that addresses this trust deficit is, therefore, helpful. For this reason I warmly welcome the initiative by The Times of India Group and the Jang Group of Pakistan to initiate the project ‘Aman Ki Asha’. Media can help remove suspicions about each other. This is all the more important because the existing suspicions and distrust about each other have been further exacerbated by irresponsible and distorted stories carried by sections of the media in both the countries in the first instance.

For this reason, this initiative is very important. I sincerely hope the other media groups will also play their role. It was precisely for this purpose that earlier on, I had convened a meeting of seven former Foreign Ministers of Pakistan and India in Lahore. Our Indian counterparts have promised to carry the process further by inviting us to Delhi later on during the year.

The Times of India has asked me to write an article on the need for resolving the Kashmir issue and as well as on the direction in which this process is headingí. Some people in both countries may well say that, after all, both Pakistan and India are important countries and could go their own way. It was for good reason that Prime Minister Vajpayee said that you can change history but not geography during a debate in the Lok Sabha.

Moreover, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh echoed similar sentiments also in a debate in the Lok Sabha, where he said as neighbours it is our obligation to keep our channels open. Unless we want to go to war with Pakistan dialogue is the only way forward. I was encouraged to note during the recent meeting of the Aman Ki Asha in Lahore that some distinguished Indian participants said that India felt the need to resolve the issue of Jammu & Kashmir inter alia for two reasons.

Firstly, that India being a democracy could not resort to force in Jammu & Kashmir for an indefinite period, and, secondly, that India could achieve its real potential and play a major role on the world stage only after resolving its disputes with Pakistan.

Speaking for myself I can say with confidence that as a politician all my life, belonging to a political family as I do, also as one who has been elected a member of parliament from a constituency in Central Punjab on the Indian border – and as former Foreign Minister for five years, I can say with confidence that peace with India is not only in the national interest of Pakistan but can also be sold to the people of Pakistan provided it is peace with honour.

History teaches us that only peace with honour can be lasting. India is a big country and may have extra regional ambitions. As far as Pakistan is concerned, our very doctrine is one of minimum credible deterrence aimed at protecting Pakistanís national security.

Another reason that gives me confidence is that every major political party of Pakistan supports a negotiated settlement. This implies that if India were to show flexibility, Pakistan would reciprocate similarly. In this connection it is correct that while the agreement was arrived at during our tenure in office, former Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Atal Behari Vajpayee showed leadership and courage in restarting this process in February 1999 when Mr. Vajpayee undertook his famous bus journey on the invitation of the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Similarly, Mohtarama Benazir Bhutto during both her tenures made concerted efforts to improve the relationship between the two countries. MQM, ANP and even Jamiat Ul Ulema Islam, under the leadership of Maulana Fazal Ur Rehman, have supported a negotiated settlement on Kashmir.

Perhaps one reason why there is such a strong need for a negotiated solution of Kashmir is the recognition in both countries that Pakistan and India have tried everything in their power to enforce their version of a Kashmir settlement. They had fought five wars including two minor ones in the Runn of Katch and in Kargil. There had been various mobilizations of troops, including the largest one since First World War (Operation Parakram), in which a million soldiers remained eye ball to eye ball for almost a year. After Nuclearization of South Asia, following tests by India and Pakistan, war between the two countries has become nearly impossible.

That being the case, it was equally clear that any solution we found would not be an ideal one from the perspective of the Kashmiris, Pakistanis and the Indians. It could be the best under the circumstances. It had to be one that the Kashmiris would accept, and one, that the leaderships of India and Pakistan could sell to their respective peoples whose perspectives were radically different. It would seem to many people that such a solution could just not be found.

It was precisely to find such a formula that the two leaderships directed their representatives involved in the backchannel to remain engaged. No wonder the non-papers went to and fro innumerable times. The backchannel negotiators met in different locations in many countries to preserve the secrecy of the process. They brought the drafts to the principals in both the countries, where changes were made and sent back to the other side and so on and so forth. It was after approximately three years of such pains taking work, which sometimes even involved changing punctuation in different drafts, that the two governments felt that they had agreed on the draft of an agreement towards the end of 2006 beginning 2007. They felt that on the basis of this draft they would be in a position to present an agreement to their respective constitutional authorities for their approval. It was felt that this draft would be acceptable to an overwhelming majority of Kashmiris, Indians and Pakistanis.

The major features of the draft Kashmir agreement involved, inter alia, a gradual demilitarization as the situation improved, self governance and a joint mechanism involving Kashmiris from both sides as well as presence of Pakistani and Indian representatives in this process. The purpose was to improve the comfort level of Kashmiris. The joint mechanism envisaged cooperation in various fields including exploitation of water resources and hydro-electric power.

Self governance also provided maximum possible powers to Kashmiris to manage their political, economic, financial and social matters and those pertaining to economic development as well as for enhanced travel and economic interaction on both sides of the LOC. For practical purposes, as for as the Kashmiris on both sides are concerned, the border would be made irrelevant for movement of goods and people. The agreement though not ideal, was the best possible under the circumstances.

The agreement provided for a review after 15 years. The Pakistani and Indian sides realized that in view of the history of the Jammu & Kashmir dispute, no solution that they could think of, would be an ideal one since it had to be made acceptable to all three. We were aware of the fact that there would be overwhelming support for this agreement; but, we also realized that there would be criticism from some sections in Kashmir, Pakistan and India.

In the very nature of things, it is impossible to produce a solution which will be equally acceptable to every one. It was for this reason that we decided that the arrangement that we had arrived at would need a review at the end of 15 years during which its implementation would be monitored with great care by all the parties concerned, and in the light of the experience, this arrangement could be further improved.

Another question that people sometimes ask me in hushed tones these days, now that President Musharraf is no longer in power, is whether the agreement that we have arrived at had the support of the Pakistan Army. Of course, it had the support of all the stakeholders. It is unthinkable that an issue of this nature could be negotiated without having all the stakeholders on board. Besides the Foreign Office and the Presidency, the Military was appropriately represented.

Former President Musharraf in response to a question whether he took into confidence his Corps Commanders, is on record in saying on more than one occasion that he used to take everyone on board. Furthermore, Pakistan Army high command is highly disciplined and sophisticated and understands clearly that national security is a very broad concept and military preparedness is only one, albeit, a very important component of it.

The concept of national security includes economic and political stability and a settlement with India on honourable terms strengthens Pakistanis national security. It is also pertinent to mention here that while President Musharraf may not be on the scene presently, institutional thinking does not change so rapidly Ofcourse, for tactical reasons, adjustments are made keeping in view time and circumstance. I am aware of the current differences between Pakistan and India on Afghanistan following President Obamaís announcement regarding Americaís intentions in Afghanistan. If trust deficit between the two countries can be bridged, all differences between the two countries can be resolved.

Before I conclude, I would like to welcome the statement of Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani that efforts are being made through the backchannel to resolve all outstanding issues with India. It is important that negotiations be resumed soon because Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government with which we negotiated the agreement is still in power, and, the BJP, the other major national party in India, had started the process during the tenure of former Prime Minister Vajpayee.

I welcome the statement of our Prime Minister, despite being in the opposition, because I believe that in matters of national interest one has to rise above the spirit of partisanship. I am sure Indian politicians would have a similar approach. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. A lot of detailed work has been done and we can start from where we left. This piece was commissioned for and published in the Times of India.

Published in The News

WASIM VIEW- Kasuri’s article is a must read for all Pakistanis as it details how the Kashmir dispute has been debated and discussed over recent years.  As a Pakistani Kashmiri, I can comment on the issue and Kasuri’s proposals without fear and favour and I will do so.

Before I pass comment, its need to be stated at the outset that Kashmir is, was and will always be for me at least the jugular vein of Pakistan. That said it is also clear from the lessons of six decades that the geopolitical environment in South Asia is fashioned by hostile Pakistan-India relations, both of whom are opposed to the Kashmiri independence which many Kashmiris still aspire to. Therefore the most credible solution to the Kashmir dispute must be based on a compromise and with reference point, the much trumpeted solution to the Kashmir dispute needs to be read.

The so-called Kashmir agreement that Pakistan and India negotiated on the back channels is shared in Kasuri’s article. The Kasuri Kashmir solution included gradual demilitarization, self governance and a joint mechanism that involved Kashmiris from both sides as well as presence of Pakistani and Indian representatives in this process. The purpose was in Kasuri’s words to improve the comfort level of Kashmiris.

The joint mechanism envisaged cooperation in various fields including exploitation of water resources and hydro-electric power. Self governance also provided maximum possible powers to Kashmiris to manage their political, economic, financial and social matters and those pertaining to economic development as well as for enhanced travel and economic interaction on both sides of the LOC. For practical purposes, as for as the Kashmiris on both sides are concerned, the border would be made irrelevant for movement of goods and people. The agreement provided for a review after 15 years.

My views on the agreement is that there is no such agreement until it is signed and  more importantly implemented, thus it is premature for a seasoned politician like Kasuri to argue otherwise. On the specifics I do agree with Kasuri albeit with a number of provisos ‘that the agreement though not ideal, was the best possible under the circumstances’. The provisos include the level of Kashmiri support for the agreement and how this is to be ascertained via referenda or other ways.

Demilitirazation is another concern given India has a smell for Kashmiri blood and how it will be achieved is a key make-or-break issue. Other questions include self-governance means what exactly and how bound are both Pakistan and India to the joint-mechanism given India has a history of breaking accords in Kashmir and in the region more widely a la the Indus Water Treaty.

All in all, Kasuri’s Kashmir solution has many questions that need answering before it can be fairly assessed. Nevertheless on the evidence before me, I believe it could be a step forward.

The second post looks at Pakistan’s power problems in detail within the broader vision of Pakistan-US relations.

Power-less Pakistan by Charles K. Ebinger & Kashif Hasnie

Pakistani leaders preoccupied with a Taliban insurgency and political infighting also face an explosive issue that could damage the credibility of governments for years to come: nationwide power outages. Attention was refocused on the energy crisis after recent high profile talks in Washington in which long-time allies, the United States and Pakistan, outlined steps to refurbish power stations in Pakistan.

Many Pakistanis, who face hours of crippling power cuts each day, doubt their government will take decisive action, despite a U.S. warning that the crisis threatens this nuclear armed nation’s economic and political stability.

The promised 4 Es – Employment, Education, Energy, Environment – of the current Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government are falling apart. Promises of tackling the recent energy crisis by building 8,000 Megawatts (MW) of new coal, solar, hydroelectric and wind electric generation plants have fallen through the cracks of the proverbial dilatory Pakistani political and bureaucratic elites.

Small towns and villages are experiencing power outages from 20 to 22 hours daily, whereas large cities such as Karachi, Lahore, Hyderabad, Faisalabad, Peshawar and Quetta are without power for at least half of every day as a result of shortages in power generation. An ageing transmission and distribution system, power theft, large commercial losses owing to poor billing and collection systems, and a power tariff scheme in desperate need of revision, are reasons for the current crisis.

With power demand at about 14,680 MW and current supply at 10,200 MW, the power supply shortage stands at 4,480 MW, which provides fertile ground for social and economic chaos. Nevertheless, despite these “apparent” dire power shortages there is a path forward if only Pakistan embarks on a vigorous action program where it produces energy to its full capacity while ending power theft, improving billings and collections while reducing its technical losses. After researching the gap between the demand and supply and total capacity (19,000 MW) of electricity, we came to the following reasons for the shortage:

1. Hydropower contributes 6,500 MW of energy in the total energy mix of Pakistan. Recent excessively dry seasons, mismanagement and trans-boundary water issues have restricted this capacity to only 1,500 MW. Resulting in a shortage of 4,000 MW.

2. Independent Power Plants (IPPs) produce 6,250 MW. Due to non-payment in the energy pyramid, a circular debt (currently around $1.3 billion) has been created, resulting in a shortage of 1,500 MW.

3. Government owned power generation plants are underutilized. Most of them working way far below their capacity, either because of lack of funds for maintenance or unavailability of spare parts.

4. Power infrastructure, especially in transmission and distribution is old and defective, causing heavy line losses of electricity.

5. Power theft. Public and private theft of power contributes to 32% of the ‘line losses.’

Keeping the above factors in mind, we know that the relevant Pakistani authorities are trying their best to gather foreign financial and technical assistance to address this crisis. A new $125 million USAID Energy Program will upgrade five major power stations, replace more than 11,000 tube wells producing water for agriculture, and boost Pakistan’s overall power production by 10 percent.

In mid-January, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke launched the first phase of these energy projects in Islamabad, announcing the United States will contribute up to $1 billion to the energy sector. Technical support from the U.S. also is being provided by the private sector, when GE’s CEO, Jeff Immelt met President Asif Ali Zardari last year, resulting in signing a Memorandum of Understanding this year to help Pakistan in the energy, water and transportation sectors.

But the crisis cries out for far more help than that being offered. Pakistan’s energy crisis which has raged for more than 40 years is more due to ill planning, short sightedness of successive governments, including the current one, mismanagement and corruption. For the government of Pakistan and the international donor community wanting to help them, here is an agenda of actions that will begin to stabilize the country’s economic and political future.

1. Both, the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines and the Sui Southern Gas Company Limited should make it a priority to produce a 300-400 million cubic feet of gas which is well within their reach if gas tariffs are raised to economic levels. This will provide enough gas to fuel an additional 2,000 MW of electricity in the mix. The circular debt between every company in the electricity mix – PEPCO, WAPDA, IPPs, fuel suppliers and refineries – need to be settled to bring modern accounting practices into the sector. Until this is done there can be no real assessment of the future economic and financial needs of the sector.

2. The power infrastructure should be upgraded with a modern efficient grid. Without such an investment there will be little improvement even if major new generation facilities are built.

3. Accounts receivables from the public and private sector, including the military, for electricity should be recovered. Nothing is ‘free’ and electricity is no different.

4. The relationship of furnace oil and natural gas prices should be monitored closely. Since furnace oil is more expensive, its excessive use has contributed $571 million out of the current $1.3 billion of circular debt.

5. Energy prices throughout the economy must be rationalized and raised to the level required to pay for their full cost while returning a profit to the producers. Where subsidies are required for social reasons they should be targeted and paid for out of government revenues not by energy producers.

6. Government owned power generation companies should be technologically refurbished. This could close the demand and supply gap by 1,500 MW.

7. Finally, Pakistan needs to manage its water resources more efficiently. Historically, Pakistan has been a very ‘water conscious’ country. At independence, despite British efforts to steal its valuable water resources for India, Pakistan obtained access to the headwaters of the Indus and the rivers of the Punjab. The country has made great strides in dealing with water logging and salinity in the world’s largest contiguous irrigation system. During the 1960s, the Harvard Water Program worked closely with Pakistani experts to negotiate the classic Indus Water Treaty. During this time, Pakistani engineers built the giant Tarbela Dam, the largest reservoir in the world formed by an earthen dam. Today, Pakistan faces the “Malthusian-plus” challenge of dealing with rapidly growing water demands (for energy, agriculture and people) from a resource base that is likely to change substantially as the glaciers of the western Himalayas melt and monsoon patterns change under the onslaught of climate change.

We were compelled to write this article to highlight the fact that even if the Taliban and its Pakistani allies were to disappear tomorrow, Pakistan in the absence of a plan to deal with its energy crisis will remain in darkness – literally and figuratively.

If Pakistan is to emerge economically healthy and politically stable, the U.S. must realize, given the stakes involved and its own growing political and military involvement, that its commitment must be a sustained one. One that may need to last for decades not months or years!

With promises and prospects of a long term engagement, we believe that ‘smart American power’ projection lies in addressing issues such as energy and water. While short term aid and a few promises can start to mend a relationship, sustained partnerships as we have learned in Afghanistan, require a lot more.

Published by The Brookings Institution

WASIM VIEW- The power crisis in Pakistan is perhaps the most pressing live issue facing the Pakistani masses today. Ebinger & Hasnie’s article is nothing less than a masterpiece of an article for it details both the problem and the solution to Pakistan’s power crisis. Indeed the article sets the US in particular a challenge that can be institutionalised in the ongoing Pakistan-US strategic dialogue, namely how the US will help Pakistan tackle its power crisis.

The article needs to be considered in the background of the love-fest between Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Hillary Clinton during the recent Pakistan-US strategic dialogue which was high on style and offered little in substance to helping Pakistan. Mr Qureshi would do well to send this very article to Hillary Clinton from his desk in Pakistan’s Foreign Office adding these words ‘ Pakistan expects US action and support on all of the solutions put forward in the article as per the Pakistan-US strategic dialogue, its time to stop talking the talk, lets walk the walk, PS the $125m offered to Pakistan on energy is a pittance compared to the cost Pakistan has endured in financial terms alone of $35bn, so get moving Madame Secterary and fast!

As a critic of the way America has used and abused Pakistan since 9/11, I still am ready to give Uncle Sam a chance to redeem herself in the eyes of the ordinary Pakistani whom they kill via drones and much more. And so, let the one test of so-called Pakistan-US friendship be this, can the US deliver on projects that add many hundreds of megawatts of electricity by 2012, I for one suspect that the US will not rise to the challenge for security not solar-powered energy is all that America cares for vis a vis Pakistan.

The final article focuses on Pakistan-US relations and particularly so-called anti-Americanism and is written by the one and only, Pervez Hoodbhoy.

Faisal Shehzad’s Anti-Americanism by Pervez Hoobhoy

The man who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square was a Pakistani. Why is this unsurprising? Because when you hold a burning match to a gasoline tank, the laws of chemistry demand combustion.

As anti-US lava spews from the fiery volcanoes of Pakistan’s private television channels and newspapers, a collective psychosis grips the country’s youth. Murderous intent follows with the conviction that the US is responsible for all ills, both in Pakistan and the world of Islam.

Faisal Shahzad, with designer sunglasses and an MBA degree from the University of Bridgeport, acquired that murderous intent. Living his formative years in Pakistan, he typifies the young Pakistani who grew up in the shadow of Ziaul Haq’s hate-based education curriculum. The son of a retired air vice-marshal, life was easy as was getting US citizenship subsequently. But at some point the toxic schooling and media tutoring must have kicked in.

There was guilt as he saw pictures of Gaza’s dead children and related them to US support for Israel. Internet browsing or, perhaps, the local mosque steered him towards the idea of an Islamic caliphate. This solution to the world’s problems would require, of course, the US to be destroyed. Hence Shahzad’s self-confessed trip to Waziristan.

Ideas considered extreme a decade ago are now mainstream. A private survey carried out by a European embassy based in Islamabad found that only four per cent of Pakistanis polled speak well of America; 96 per cent against.

Although Pakistan and the US are formal allies, in the public perception the US has ousted India as Pakistan’s number one enemy. Remarkably, anti-US sentiment rises in proportion to aid received. Say a good word about the US, and you are labelled as its agent. From what TV anchors had to say about it, Kerry-Lugar’s $7.5bn may well have been money that the US wants to steal from Pakistan rather than give to it.

Pakistan is not the only country where America is unpopular. In pursuit of its self-interest, the US has waged illegal wars, bribed, bullied and overthrown governments, supported tyrants and undermined movements for progressive change. Paradoxically America is disliked more in Pakistan than in countries which have born the direct brunt of its attacks — Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Why?

Drone strikes are a common but false explanation. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi implicitly justifies the Times Square bombing as retaliation but this does not bear up. Drone attacks have killed some innocents but they have devastated militant operations in Waziristan while causing far less collateral damage than Pakistan Army operations.

On the other hand, the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong were carpet-bombed by B-52 bombers and Vietnam’s jungles were defoliated with Agent Orange. Yet, Vietnam never developed visceral feelings like those in Pakistan.

Finding truer reasons requires deeper digging. In part, Pakistan displays the resentment of a client state for its paymaster. US-Pakistan relations are transactional today but the master-client relationship is older. Indeed, Pakistan chose this path because confronting India over Kashmir demanded big defence budgets. In the 1960s, Pakistan entered into the Seato and Cento military pacts, and was proud to be called ‘America’s most allied ally’. The Pakistan Army became the most powerful, well-equipped and well-organised institution in the country. This also put Pakistan on the external dole.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, even as it brought in profits, deepened the dependence. Paid by the US to create the anti-Soviet jihadist apparatus, Pakistan is now being paid again to fight that war’s blowback. Pakistan then entered George W. Bush’s war on terror to enhance America’s security — a fact that further hurt its self-esteem. It is a separate matter that Pakistan fights that very war for its own survival and must call upon its army to protect the population from throat-slitting fanatics.

Passing the buck is equally fundamental to Pakistan’s anti-Americanism. It is in human nature to blame others for one’s own failures. Pakistan has long teetered between being a failed state and a failing state. The rich won’t pay taxes? Little electricity? Contaminated drinking water? Kashmir unsolved? Blame it on the Americans. This phenomenon exists elsewhere too. For example, one saw Hamid Karzai threatening to join the Taliban and lashing out against Americans because they (probably correctly) suggested he committed electoral fraud.

Tragically for Pakistan, anti-Americanism plays squarely into the hands of Islamic militants. They vigorously promote the notion of an Islam-West war when, in fact, they actually wage armed struggle to remake society. They will keep fighting this war even if America were to miraculously evaporate. Created by poverty, a war culture and the macabre manipulations of Pakistan’s intelligence services, they seek a total transformation of society. This means eliminating music, art, entertainment and all manifestations of modernity. Side goals include chasing away the few surviving native Christians, Sikhs and Hindus.

At a time when the country needs clarity of thought to successfully fight extremism, simple bipolar explanations are inadequate. The moralistic question ‘Is America good or bad?’ is futile.

There is little doubt that the US has committed acts of aggression, as in Iraq, and maintains the world’s largest military machine. We know that it will make a deal with the Taliban if perceived to be in its self-interest — even if that means abandoning the Afghans to bloodthirsty fanatics. Yet, it would be wrong to scorn the humanitarian impulse behind US assistance in times of desperation. Shall we write off massive US assistance to Pakistan at the time of the earthquake of 2005? Or to tsunami-affected countries in 2004?

In truth, the US is no more selfish or altruistic than any other country. And it treats its Muslim citizens infinitely better than we treat non-Muslims in Pakistan.

Instead of pronouncing moral judgments on everything and anything, we Pakistanis need to reaffirm what is truly important for our people: peace, economic justice, good governance, rule of law, accountability of rulers, women’s rights and rationality in human affairs. Washington must be resisted, but only when it seeks to drag Pakistan away from these goals. More frenzied anti-Americanism will produce more Faisal Shahzads.

Published in Dawn

WASIM VIEW- Hoodbhoy’s  article could have been written by an American neo-con like Richard Perle for its content are full of pro-US drivel and a rejectionism of many US crimes against Pakistan and the wider world. Hoodbhoy is right to bemoan many ills of the Zia era and army rule, a price which Pakistanis pay for in blood on a daily basis in the form of a bigoted state as evidenced in Lahore in recent days.

However Hoodbhoy for the main part of the article is plainly lost at sea for he makes childish and elementary schoolboy-type points to support his views. The intellectual rigour and cogent arguments that are synonmous with supposed intellectuals of his stature go missing when he chooses to support drone attacks in Pakistan.

The best evidence of this is demonstated shown when he foolishly brackets Pakistan with Vietnam and asks why Pakistan has visceral feelings towards America due to the drone attacks when Vietnam does not. To quote Hoodbhoy ‘the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong were carpet-bombed by B-52 bombers and Vietnam’s jungles were defoliated with Agent Orange. Yet, Vietnam never developed visceral feelings like those in Pakistan’. The answer to his ludicrous point is this, that Vietnam was at war with America whilst Pakistan is supposedly an ally of America, Vietnam was a foe and treated accordingly and Pakistan is a friend and not treated accordingly, rather it is treated as a foe as the drone attacks prove and that is why Mr Hoodbhoy, Pakistanis have such visceral feelings against America, duh!

The rest of the Hoodbhoy article is an exercise in futility  for all it does is reaffirm his liberal credentials and includes a cheap shot attack on  the media for its supposed ‘media tutoring’ of Faisal Shehzad, which is an unproven allegation.

On the more substantive point, Hoodbhoy is right to bemoan Faisal Shahzad’s acts in New York which are undefendable. Indeed I will go further in my condemnation and say that many Pakistanis like me are disgusted by his actions which have sullied Pakistan’s name once again in the world and want to see him face a fair trial and face exemplary punishment if he is found guilty. The Faisal Shahzads of this world are the enemies of Pakistan, period. On that point at least, Wasim Arif and Pervez Hoodbhoy are on the same page.

Aman ki Asha is a worthwhile peace initiative by The Jang Group and the Times of India, the leading media houses of both nations. Destination peace is its singular aim and it is an initiative that Other Pakistan is happy to support for we too support peace between Pakistan and India. 

The use of doves to signify peace is a good omen we hope and the slogan’Aman ki Asha’ and the choice of  those words deserves a mention too. Aman means peace and is an Urdu word from Pakistan, ki is a word used in both Pakistan and India and serves as the the link for bringing the slogan together and a metaphor for bringing the countries together too. Lastly the word Asha means hope and is a Hindi word from India ensuring both countries can claim one word each in a three-worded slogan.

The joint-statement by the editors of The Jang Group and the Times of India sets out the aims of the initiative as shown below:

Aman Ki Asha

Peace between India and Pakistan has been stubbornly elusive and yet tantalizingly inevitable. This vast subcontinent senses the bounties a peace dividend can deliver to its people yet it recoils from claiming a share. The natural impulse would be to break out of the straitjacket of stated positions and embrace an ideal that promises sustained prosperity to the region, yet there is hesitation. There is a collective paralysis of the will, induced by the trauma of birth, amplified by false starts, mistrust, periodic outbreaks of violence, suspicion, misplaced jingoism and diplomatic doublespeak. Hypnotized by their own mantra, the two states are reluctant to move towards normalization until certain terms and certain promises are kept.

In this perennial season of inertia and zero-sum calculations prejudices continue to fester, stereotypes are entrenched and myth replaces reality. Tragically, opportunity knocks unheard on doors bolted on the inside. Opportunism, that appeals to atavistic passions, elicits an instant response to every single knock. It is one of history’s ironies that a people who share so much, refuse to acknowledge their similarities and focus so avidly on their differences. We believe it is time to restore the equilibrium. Public opinion is far too potent a force to be left in the hands of narrow vested interests. The people of today must find its voice and force the rulers to listen. The awaam must write its own placards and fashion its own slogans. The leaders must learn to be led and not blindly followed. Skepticism about the given is often the genesis of faith. This skepticism has been brewing. It can be unleashed to forge a new social compact between the people of this region. A social compact based on a simple yet powerful impulse – Aman ki Asha. A desire for peace.

The media in India and Pakistan speaks directly to the hearts and minds and stomachs of the people. It can help in writing a final chapter, adding a happy twist to a story that seemed headed for tragedy. It can do so by shaping the discourse and steering it away from rancour and divisiveness. It has the maturity to recognize the irritants and obstacles to peace and will not take a timid stance towards the more intractable and contentious issues – whether relating to Kashmir, water disputes or the issue of cross-border terrorism. It can offer solutions and nudge the leadership towards a sustained peace process. It can create an enabling environment where new ideas can germinate and bold initiatives can sprout. The media can begin the conversation where a plurality of views and opinions are not drowned out by shrill voices. It can cleanse polluted mindsets and revive the generosity of spirits which is a distinctive trait of the subcontinent. It can help cool the temperature and wean away the guardians from fortified frontiers. It can argue the case for allocating scarce resources where they are needed the most. It can begin the process of converting swords into plough shares.

The Times of India Group and the Jang Group have come together to energize the process of peace between our two countries. We believe that this is an intervention whose time has come. We recognize that set backs will occur but these should not derail the process. We will need to reach out and pluck the low hanging fruit in the beginning before we aim higher. Issues of trade and commerce, of investments, of financial infrastructure, of cultural exchanges, of religious and medical tourism, of free movement of ideas, of visa regimes, of sporting ties, of connectivity, of reviving existing routes, of market access, of separated families, of the plight of prisoners, will be part of our initial agenda. Through debates, discussions and the telling of stories we will find commonalities and space, for compromise and adjustment, on matters that have bedevilled relations for over 60 years.

When the two neighbors meet they move almost seamlessly into the shared cultural and human ethos. They talk to each other about food, about music, about poetry, about films, about theatre and about the prolonged absences spawned by lost years. They share anxieties, discuss rising prices, seek advice on their children’s education, gossip about their in-laws, trade anecdotes and laugh at the foibles of politicians. We want to lower the walls so that the conversation continues. We have to nurture the seeds of peace that have nestled, untended, for decades in hostile soil.

We owe our unborn generations the right to rise out of the depths of poverty, and squalour. It is embarrassing to read the statistics confirming our resistance to positive change in the fields of education, health and poverty alleviation. All social indices are stacked against us and will remain so unless we scatter the war clouds that menace our skies. There are external elements at work in the region that thrive on the animosity between the two neighbours. They have a stake in keeping the region in turmoil. We need to combat them by making them irrelevant.

A surge of goodwill and flexibility on the part of civil society and the media will push these forces back by denying them the raw material that manufactures hate.

Our subcontinent needs to follow the footprints left behind by the great poets, sufi saints and the bhakts who preached and practiced love and inclusiveness. This is the land of Tagore and Ghalib, of Bulleh Shah and Kabir, of Nanak and Moinuddin Chisti. It is their spirit that will guide us in this journey. The one and half billion people of this region await the dawning of an age where peace, equality and tranquility prevails. This will happen when every heart beats with Aman ki Asha.

The statement does well to chart the history of Pakistan-India relations and sets out the untapped but Himalayan potential for improved Pakistan-India relations. On the crucial issues such as Kashmir the statement can only promise that  they will ‘recognize the irritants and obstacles to peace and will not take a timid stance towards the more intractable and contentious issues – whether relating to Kashmir, water disputes or the issue of cross-border terrorism’.

Other Pakistan’s hope for peace  or ‘Asha’ is minimised when the statement laters warn that  ’we will need to reach out and pluck the low hanging fruit in the beginning before we aim higher. Issues of trade and commerce, of investments, of financial infrastructure, of cultural exchanges, of religious and medical tourism, of free movement of ideas, of visa regimes, of sporting ties, of connectivity, of reviving existing routes, of market access, of separated families, of the plight of prisoners, will be part of our initial agenda’. The words in bold italic are done so deliberately with a view to drawing readers attention to the fact that these are the traditional areas of interest for the Indian government over many decades.

The fear is that a focus on trade and commerce, reviving existing routes, and of market access as recently trumpeted via the seedy backdoor of a Pakistan-Afghanistan transit trade agreement that is currently being considered with whispers of benefitting India will be the main focus at the cost of the core issues of Kashmir. It is feared that this focus on market access and trade is deliberate as per a covert Indin aim aimed at putting to the backburner the Kashmir issue amongst others, a campaign that does not involve of the media houses it needs to be said.

It needs to be stated that my position remains the same on India’s evil in destabilisng Pakistan and her occupation of Kashmir, the blatant stealing of our waters and I can go on and on for the list of evil deeds is endless. Thus my support for ‘Aman ki Asha’  is a personal endeavour to support peace even though the Indian government is only planning for war, death and destruction just take Gen Kapoor’s warmongering talk of recent days as an example.

In the end let us say it again Other Pakistan supports Aman ki Asha, for our destination too is peace.

More than a week has passed since the tragic death of the brilliant journalist and commentator Khalid Hasan. I feel the loss personally as reading Khalid Hasan’s Postcard USA column in the Daily Times was a regular Sunday treat of mine.

Every Sunday I would religiously follow a rigid routine that involved reading numerous blogs and newspapers in order saving the best column till last namely Khalid Hasan’s Postcard USA column in the Daily Times. It was Khalid Hasan’s incomparable wit and incisiveness that I liked the most and though I know that all good things come to an end, I cannot help but mourn his loss.

Khalid Hasan’s was clearly a one-off but I leave the glowing tributes as to his stellar work in the fields of literature and journalism to far more eminent commentators than I  who have written at length of his magic. As a fellow Kashmiri I also mourn his loss for he was a passionate Kashmiri who was the voice for Kashmir and I cannot do better than echo the words of Khalid Hasan’s  son that ‘the people of Kashmir have lost a great son and advocate’

Goodbye Khalid Hasan Sunday.

- WRITTEN UNDER MARTIAL LAW (My thanks to cowards Tariq Pervez. Sabihuddin, Sardar Raza & Co for selling out)

January’s B-side contents are:

• The Gaza Genocide by WASIM ARIF
• Imran Khan’s Open Letter to President Obama by IMRAN KHAN
• David Miliband’s Kashmir Comments by WASIM ARIF

The Gaza genocide … need I say more?

The Gaza Genocide by Wasim Arif

Other Pakistan’s unwritten rule and remit is that it focuses strictly on Pakistan. However as a lifetime supporter of the Palestinian people I cannot go on without passing comment on the recent genocide of Gaza.

In calling the collective punishment and massacre of innocents a genocide I echo the words of the President of the UN General Assembly Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann who condemned Israel’s killings of Palestinians in its Gaza offensive as “genocide”.

Israel’s evil since its bastard birth (meant in its true form as an illegitimate entity) can be taken as a given. However the Gaza genocide broke its previous records in evil for it was a massacre engineered as a crude electioneering exercise to show a strong Israel to the brainwashed Israeli masses.

However the fools of Israel have only won a battle and not the war as today Israel stands isolated in the world. Even Israel’s arch-supporters namely Uncle Sam stand disgraced and degraded with their words of support today. However the best comment of condemnation has come from the legendary British parliamentarian Sir Gerald Kaufman.

For your information Sir Gerald Kaufman is a British Member of Parliament, who was raised as an Orthodox Jew. In the House of Commons he delivered a blistering attack on the evil of Israel declaring that Israel was taking advantage of the guilt many non-Jews feel over the Holocaust to ruthlessly press ahead with its offensive in Gaza.

In a thundering speech Sir Gerald Kaufman spoke the raw truth saying that “the present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from Gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians.” The full speech can be seen below:

Imran Khan’s open letter to President Obama is analysed in detail.

An Open Letter To President Obama by Imran Khan

Dear President Obama,

Your extraordinary ascent to the U.S. Presidency is, to a large part, a reflection of your remarkable ability to mobilize society, particularly the youth, with the message of “change.” Indeed, change is what the world is yearning for after eight long and almost endless years of carnage let loose by a group of neo-cons that occupied the White House.

Understandably, your overarching policy focus would be the security and welfare of all U.S. citizens and so it should be. Similarly, our first and foremost concern is the protection of Pakistani lives and the prosperity of our society. We may have different social and cultural values, but we share the fundamental values of peace, harmony, justice and equality before law.

No people desire change more than the people of Pakistan, as we have suffered the most since 9/11, despite the fact that none of the perpetrators of the acts of terrorism unleashed on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, were Pakistani. Our entire social, political and economic fabric is in a state of meltdown. Our sovereignty, dignity and self-respect have been trampled upon. The previous U.S. administration invested in dictators and corrupt politicians by providing them power crutches in return for total compliance to pursue its misconceived war on terror.

There are many threats confronting our society today, including the threat of extremism. In a society where the majority is without fundamental rights, without education, without economic opportunities, without health care, the use of sheer force and loss of innocent lives continues to expand the extremist fringe and contract the space for the moderate majority.

Without peace and internal security, the notion of investing in development in the war zones is a pipe dream, as the anticipated benefits would never reach the people. So the first and foremost policy objective should be to restore the peace. This can only be achieved through a serious and sustained dialogue with the militants and mitigation of their genuine grievances under the ambit of our constitution and law. Since Pakistan’s founding leader signed a treaty in 1948 with the people of the country’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and withdrew Pakistani troops, they had remained the most peaceful and trouble-free part of Pakistan up until the post-9/11 situation, when we were asked to deploy our troops in FATA.

Even a cursory knowledge of Pushtun history shows that for reasons of religious, cultural and social affinity, the Pushtuns on both sides of the Durand Line (which marks the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan) cannot remain indifferent to the suffering of their brethren on either side. The Pushtuns are proud of their history of resisting every invader from Alexander onwards, to the Persians, Moghuls, British and the Russians (all superpowers of their times) who were all bogged down in the Pushtun quagmire. So, no government, Pakistani or foreign, will ever be able to stop Pushtuns crossing over the 1,500-kilometer border to support their brethren in distress on either side, even if it means fighting the modern-day superpower in Afghanistan. Recent history shows how the mighty Soviet Union had to retreat from Afghanistan with its army defeated even though it had killed over a million Afghans.

To an average Pushtun, notwithstanding the U.N. Security Council sanction, the U.S. is an occupying power in Afghanistan that must be resisted. It is as simple as that. Therefore, the greatest challenge confronting U.S. policy in Afghanistan is how to change its status from an occupier to a partner. The new U.S. administration should have no doubt that there is no military solution in Afghanistan. As more innocent Pushtuns are killed, more space is created for new Taliban and even Al-Qaida recruits-revenge being an integral part of the Pushtun character. So, as with Iraq, the U.S. should give a time table for withdrawal from Afghanistan and replace NATO and U.S. forces with U.N. troops during the interim period.

The Pushtuns then should be involved in a dialogue process where they should be given a stake in the peace. As the majority’s stake in peace grows, proportionately the breeding ground for extremists shrinks.

The crucial lesson the U.S. needs to learn-and learn quickly-is that you can only win against terrorists if the majority in a community considers them terrorists. Once they become freedom fighters and heroes amongst their people, history tells us that the battle is lost.

Terrorism worldwide is an age-old phenomenon and cannot be eliminated by rampaging armies, no matter how powerful. It can only be contained by a strategy of building democratic societies and addressing the root causes of political conflicts. The democratization part of this strategy demands a strategic partnership between the West and the people of the Islamic world, who are basically demanding dignity, self-respect and the same fundamental rights as the ordinary citizen in the West enjoys. However, this partnership can only be forged if the U.S. and its close Western allies are prepared to accept and coexist with credible democratic governments in the Islamic world that may not support all U.S. policies as wholeheartedly as dictators and discredited politicians do in order to remain in power.

The roots of terror and violence lie in politics-and so does the solution. We urge the new administration to conduct a major strategic review of the U.S.-led war on terror, including the nature and kind of support that should realistically be expected of Pakistan keeping in mind its internal security interests. Linking economic assistance to sealing of its western frontier will only force the hand of a shaky and unstable government in Pakistan to use more indiscriminate force in FATA, a perfect recipe for disaster.

The stability of the region hinges on a stable Pakistan. Any assistance to improve governance and social indicators must not be conditional. For the simple reason that any improvement in the overall quality of life of ordinary citizens and more effective writ of the state would only make mainstream society less susceptible to extremism.

However, if the new U.S. administration continues the Bush administration’s mantra of “do more,” to which our inept leadership is likely to respond to by using more force, Pakistan could become even more accessible to forces of extremism leading to further instability that would spread across the region, especially into India, which already faces problems of extremism and secessionist movements. Such a scenario would benefit no one-certainly not Pakistan and certainly not the U.S. That is why your message of meaningful change, Mr. President, must guide your policies in this region also.

Imran Khan is chairman and founder of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (Movement for Justice), and served as an elected member of Pakistan’s parliament from 2002-08. The captain of the Pakistan team that won the cricket World Cup in 1992, he founded the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Center, the biggest charitable institution in Pakistan. He is chancellor of the University of Bradford, in the U.K.

Published in Forbes

WASIM VIEW- Imran Khan’s letter to President Obama is spot-on. The references to the history of the passionate Pashtuns who have and never will cow in to occupiers is essential reading for the new American administration and must frame their policies in the region. Obama promised change within and without, however the newest drone attacks ordered by him alone do not provide me with any hope and I fear worse.

Indeed if not careful Afghanistan could become Obama’s Vietnam. In his urge to prove his strongman credentials his sanctioning of drone attacks could just be a trailer of the feature film and the beginning of another Vietnam of another American century.

Instead of listening to wise advice and counsel from regional experts who denounce the present US strategy I believe Obama could commit Uncle Sam to more ignomy in Afghanistan and Pakistan by opting for a gung-ho option that will bring only more turmoil. The continuing drone attacks need to stop, the Taliban need to be brought into the electoral arena and a regional strategy to stabilise Afghanistan can only be the solution. Afghanistan and Pakistan desire a change in US policy, remember President Obama change we can!

And I finish January’s B-side with some praise for David Miliband because of his ‘the-truth-hurts’ statement on Kashmir that riled India.

David Miliband’s Comments on Kashmir by Wasim Arif

The British Foreign Secterary David Miliband and I have not always seen eye- to-eye in terms of Pakistan-UK relations. However David Miliband’s recent comments on Kashmir have knocked me for a six.

In an article for The Guardian newspaper David Miliband wrote that the ‘”resolution of the dispute over Kashmir would help deny extremists in the region one of their main calls to arms and allow Pakistani authorities to focus more effectively on tackling the threat on their western borders”.

Furthermore good old Dave even had the tenacity to discuss the Kashmir issue with his Indian hosts during his trip to India. The truth hurts and the absolute truth hurts absolutely with the Indians not best pleased expressing displeasure at the “aggressive style, the tone and manner in which David Miliband conducted himself during talks with the prime minister and the foreign minister”

The Indians then went in overdrive in rubbishing Miliband as “a young man, I guess this is the way he thinks diplomacy is conducted,” said an unidentified official. The Hindu newspaper quoted an Indian official saying the two government meetings with Miliband were “pretty awful”. Even when Miliband was in India, the government made its displeasure known. “We do not need unsolicited advice on internal issues in India like Kashmir,” said the foreign office spokesman Vishnu Prakash.

Since the Mumbai massacre, India has been seeking to rally the international community to pressure Pakistan to become subservient to Indian hegemony and how they have failed! The fact that David Miliband discussed Kashmir in India face-to-face proves Indian pretensions of becoming an emerging global player are delusions of grandeur.

What the Indians ignore or rather choose to ignore is that what David Miliband said is the truth and that until the Kashmiri people are free from occupation they will never sit easy. This truth hurts and the cumulative effect has been that the Indian’s chief cheerleader midget Mukherjee has grown even smaller on the world stage after the world shunned their blame game, and his boss Manmohan Singh is bed-ridden, need I say more….

- WRITTEN UNDER MARTIAL LAW (My thanks to cowards Tariq Pervez. Sabihuddin, Sardar Raza & Co for selling out)

The Monster in the Mirror by Arundhati Roy

We ‘ve forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching “India’s 9/11?. And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we’re expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it’s all been said and done before.

As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn’t act fast to arrest the ‘Bad Guys’ he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on ‘terrorist camps’ in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India’s 9/11.

But November isn’t September, 2008 isn’t 2001, Pakistan isn’t Afghanistan and India isn’t America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.

It’s odd how in the last week of November thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India’s richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara-one of Kashmir’s most ravaged districts.

The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all Indian nationals, it obviously means something’s going very badly wrong in this country.

If you were watching television you may not have heard that ordinary people too died in Mumbai. They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a public hospital. The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich. They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness.

The Indian media, however, was transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of India Shining and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish centre. We’re told one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That’s absolutely true. It’s an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day.

On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically, one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company I think) said ‘Hungry, kya?’ (Hungry eh?). It then, with the best of intentions I’m sure, informed its readers that on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia.

But of course this isn’t that war. That one’s still being fought in the Dalit bastis of our villages, on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Lalgarh in West Bengal; in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa; and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities. That war isn’t on TV. Yet. So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one that is.

There is a fierce, unforgiving fault line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let’s call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially ‘Islamist’ terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.

Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm’s way. Which is a crime in itself.

The sayings of Hafiz Saeed, who founded the Lashkar-e-Toiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hardline Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolster the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shias and Democracy, and believes that jehad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the world. Among the things he has said are:

“There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy.”

And, “India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir.”

But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera):

“We didn’t spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire…we hacked, burned, set on fire…we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don’t want to be cremated, they’re afraid of it…. I have just one last wish…let me be sentenced to death…. I don’t care if I’m hanged…just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs of these people stay…. I will finish them off…let a few more of them die…at least twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand should die.”

And where, in Side A’s scheme of things, would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or Our Nationhood Defined by M.S. Golwalkar ‘Guruji’, who became head of the RSS in 1944. It says:

“Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening.”

Or:

“To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races-the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here…a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.”

Of course, Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu Right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently in Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two-and-a-half months of violence which left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from their homes, half of whom now live in refugee camps.

All these years, Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which many believe is a front organisation for the Lashkar-e-Toiba. He continued to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jehad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11, the UN imposed sanctions on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure, putting Hafiz Saeed under house arrest.

Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and continues to live the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide, he left the VHP to join the Shiv Sena. Narendra Modi, Bajrangi’s former mentor, is still the chief minister of Gujarat. So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was re-elected twice, and is deeply respected by India’s biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata.

Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, has recently said, “Modi is God.” The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted.The RSS has 45,000 branches, its own range of charities and seven million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but also former prime minister A.B. Vajpayee, current Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats and police and intelligence officers.

And if that’s not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organisations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry.

So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I’d pick Side B. We need context. Always.

In this nuclear subcontinent, that context is Partition. The Radcliffe Line which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain’s final, parting kick to us. Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history.

Eight million people-Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India-left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Each of those people carries and passes down a story of unimaginable pain, hate, horror, but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can’t seem to emerge, a nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives.

Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic republic, and then, very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other faiths. India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi’s predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India’s bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born. By 1990, they were ready to make a bid for power.

In 1992, Hindu mobs exhorted by L.K. Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it. By 1998, the BJP was in power at the Centre. The US War on Terror put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy. This happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international finance, and it was in the interests of international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu Nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed. This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism in the subcontinent, and of the Mumbai attacks.

It shouldn’t surprise us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Toiba is from Shimla (India) and L.K. Advani of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan).

In much the same way as it did after the 2001 Parliament attack, the 2002 burning of the Sabarmati Express and the 2006 bombing of the Samjhauta Express, the Government of India announced that it has ‘incontrovertible’ evidence that the Lashkar-e-Toiba backed by Pakistan’s ISI was behind the Mumbai strikes. The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies, the Lashkar operates in India through an organisation called the ‘Indian Mujahideen’.

Two Indian nationals-Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working for the Jammu and Kashmir Police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Calcutta in West Bengal-have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks. So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy. Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot-soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and undercover intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives, working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously. In today’s world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation-state is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It’s almost impossible.

In circumstances like these, air strikes to ‘take out’ terrorist camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not ‘take out’ the terrorists. And neither will war. (Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let’s try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighbouring Sri Lanka, one of the world’s most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the Indian army.)

Afghan revenge: America’s debris, our headache

Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America’s ally, first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening towards civil war. As recruiting agents for America’s jehad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistan army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organisations.

Having wired up these Frankenstein’s monsters and released them into the world, the US expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to. Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in the heart of the Homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently re-made.

Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan’s borders. Nobody, least of all the Pakistan government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world is mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistan government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more, than it does on India.

If at this point India decides to go to war, perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India’s shores, endangering us as never before. If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of ‘non-state actors’ with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbours. It’s hard to understand why those who steer India’s ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan’s mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents.

On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it’s the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front.

The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at ‘ground zero’ kept up an endless stream of excited commentary. Over three days and three nights, we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men armed with guns and gadgets exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation.

While they did this, they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion or nationality.Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields are used. (The US and Israeli armies don’t hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.) But this was different. And it was on TV.

The boy-terrorists’ nonchalant willingness to kill-and be killed-mesmerised their international audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news. Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that’s worth.

Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may never know.) Throughout the stand-off, the terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people and inflict as much damage as they could before they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered. When we say ‘Nothing can justify terrorism’, what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it’s precious. So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they’ve died, they’ve journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.

Gujarat ’02: The elephant in the room

One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself ‘Imran Babar’. I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the ‘terror e-mails’ that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don’t want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir. “You’re surrounded,” the anchor told him. “You are definitely going to die. Why don’t you surrender?” “We die every day,” he replied in a strange, mechanical way. “It’s better to live one day as a lion and then die this way.” He didn’t seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.

If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, why didn’t it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for? Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don’t figure in its calculations except as collateral damage.

It has always been a part of-and often even the aim of-terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden fault lines. The blood of ‘martyrs’ irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project.

A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theatre, spectacle and symbolism, and today, the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV.Even as the Mumbai terrorists were being condemned by TV anchors, the effectiveness of their action was magnified a thousand-fold by TV broadcasts.

Forgotten man: Former PM V.P. Singh’s death passed without a mention

Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Instead, we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed (is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?).

We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation. We had the death of former prime minister V.P. Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes and villain of upper-caste Hindus, pass without a mention.

We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir, give us his version of George Bush’s famous ‘Why They Hate Us’ speech. His analysis of why “religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim”, hate Mumbai: “Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness.” His prescription: “The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever.” Didn’t George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can’t seem to get away from.

Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and left-wing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army, and virtually asking for a police state. It isn’t surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of ‘pickings’ is long gone. We’re now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.

Dangerous, stupid television flash cards like the Police are Good, Politicians are Bad/ Chief Executives are Good, Chief Ministers are Bad/ Army is Good, Government is Bad/ India is Good, Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria.

Tragically, this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see that the business of terrorism is a hall of mirrors in which victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles. It’s an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we’re still learning. (If Kashmir won’t willingly integrate into India, it’s beginning to look as though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)

It was after the 2001 Parliament attack that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation. Eventually the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including S.A.R. Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Shaukat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offence.

The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgement, the court acknowledged that there was no proof that Mohammad Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, “The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender. ” Even today we don’t really know who the terrorists that attacked Indian Parliament were and who they worked for.

More recently, on September 19 this year, we had the controversial ‘encounter’ at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008. An Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the Parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well.

He was one of India’s many ‘encounter specialists’, known and rewarded for having summarily executed several ‘terrorists’. There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists, all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident. In response, the BJP and L.K. Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a ‘Braveheart’ and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying it was ‘suicidal’ and calling them ‘anti-national’. Of course, there has been no inquiry.

Only days after the Batla House event, another story about ‘terrorists’ surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to the court, the CBI said that a team from Delhi’s Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted 2 kg of RDX and two pistols on them, and then arrested them as ‘terrorists’ who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and Qamar, who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false charges.

This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts, arrested a Hindu preacher, Sadhvi Pragya; a self-styled godman, Swami Dayanand Pande; and Lt Col Prasad Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian army. All the arrested belong to Hindu Nationalist organisations, including a Hindu supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat.

The Shiv Sena, the BJP and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that “Hindus could not be terrorists”. L.K. Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble-rousing speeches to huge gatherings, in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.

On November 25, newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high-profile VHP chief Praveen Togadia’s possible role in the Malegaon blasts. The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai attacks. The chances are that the new chief, whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation.

While the Sangh parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television channel, has stepped up to the plate.He has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several times.

At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to the camera; “Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan,” he said, “I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting.” For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today amounts to incitement as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job.

So according to a man aspiring to be India’s next prime minister, and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police. This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake ‘encounters’.

This in a country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the world and yet refuses to ratify the International Covenant on Torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they’ve escaped being ‘encountered’ by our encounter specialists. A country where the line between the Underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.

How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them? There are those who point out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11.

However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse. If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colours, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The US army is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unravelling of the American economy and, who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire. (Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?)

Hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of American soldiers, have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on US allies/agents (including India) and US interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11. George Bush, the man who led the US response to 9/11, is a despised figure not just internationally but also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that the United States is winning the war on terror?

Homeland security has cost the US government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has been. It’s not that kind of homeland.

We have a hostile nuclear weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbour, we have a military occupation in Kashmir, and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than a hundred and fifty million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalise, end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world. I

If 10 men can hold off the NSG commandos and the police for three days, and if it takes half-a-million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir Valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India?

Nor for that matter will any other quick fix.Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they’re for people that governments don’t like. That’s why they have a conviction rate of less than two per cent. They’re just a means of putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually letting them go. Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It’s what they want.

What we’re experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet’s squelching under our feet.

The only way to contain (it would be naive to say end) terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We’re standing at a fork in the road. One sign says ‘Justice’, the other ‘Civil War’. There’s no third sign and there’s no going back. Choose.

Published in the Guardian

- WRITTEN UNDER MARTIAL LAW (My thanks to cowards Tariq Pervez. Sabihuddin, Sardar Raza & Co for selling out)