Kashmir – after the orgy of stones, pellets & tit-for-tat killings

 ‘Every man’s death diminishes me.’ I quoted these words of 17^th century poet John Donne in 2010 when Kashmir Valley  was witnessing an equally blood spilling summer as this year’s, which hopefully  is coming to an end only if the politicking rabble rousers would allow. A hundred days of unrest with over 80 deaths is more than enough. The toll is awesome. Even one death is too many.

The killing of pro-Pakistan firebrand youth Burhan Wani in July was ostensibly the trigger for  this blood shot season but the cause and consequence are evidently much deeper. Equally clear is the fact that both cause and effect need cooler heads shunning  provocative appeals or resort to stones and gun pellets. While the longer term solution will take time, political heads across the valley and the sub-continent need to re-start the dialogue, interrupted the nth time, a shorter term reduction.

For a start, the use of pellet guns or 12-bore guns which eject splinter shots as a crowd control  weapon should be outlawed, not just in Kashmir but anywhere in the country or world. Civil protests need civil remedies, not an impatient jump to lethal weapons. The administration’s response should be calibrated and gradual. Peaceful marches should be allowed and protesters allowed to use their lung power and shout slogans.

Water cannons should be employed in the first instance if the protesters turn unruly  and refuse to disperse in defiance of official appeals on loud hailers and other modes of persuasion. Water cannons will definitely cool down good numbers of  protesters who will start melting away after one, two or more  charges.

The die-hards can be tackled with  normal policing -- baton or lathi charges assisted by mounted police (on horse) if necessary. In case of  protesters indulging in stone throwing or other violent acts, tear gas and laughing gas, yes laughing gas  -- ask the chemical gas experts, should be tried to turn the tables on the demonstrators.

A small number of hard core protesters could always be there to the bitter end for whom rubber bullets, not rifle shots or pellet guns, may  be necessary. And the police, paramilitary or other personnel must be trained to shoot below the waist and not shoot wildly.  A recent report has suggested that the CRPF men operating in Kashmir and elsewhere are too fat and bad shots for the demanding job that they have to deliver.

Pellet guns and other deadlier weapons like hand grenades and the rest should  be used only against armed militants and infiltrators prowling along the Line of Control or sneaking into the interior.

Such a calibrated approach for crowd control under the command of capable officers with well trained men on the ground could go a long way in avoiding the death toll and injury casualties that are national loss and shame. The events of this summer, undoubtedly the work of agents provocateur from across the LoC, are nevertheless a blot on our democracy.  We shouldn’t let them succeed, certainly we shouldn’t  let them bleed us. Kashmiri lives are our lives and the eyes of  the Valley youths are our eyes. Let nobody blind them. And torching  of  our valley schools is equally unacceptable. Let nobody deprive our children of their right to education. We can’t let down this generation of our children to go without schooling.

Step Number Two  for us is to have a relook at Afspa  (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) which has been in force since 1990.  It has been a standing irritant to all sides for too long. A comprehensive rethink of this measure which has lasted more than a quarter century is long overdue. It calls for a gradual overhaul.

To begin with Afspa’s extensive visibility needs to be reduced. The posting of gun-carrying paramilitary personnel at Lal Chowk in Srinagar or along the Dal Lake Boulevard and other popular spots across the Valley  in full glare of the civilian population does no good to anybody. Billet the armed men  inside offices or buildings from where they can be called out at moment’s notice, if needed in emergency. This constant display of adversarial imagery must be avoided at all costs. Make no mistake, such display of CRPF and other paramilitary presence is highly adversarial in character. It is equally damaging to the psyche of the poor men in military style uniforms. 

The visible presence of uniformed men should be strictly left to the J & K state police personnel.

Gradually when the tempers cool down, as they had cooled down during the previous five years before this year’s eruption, step by step  removal of Afspa forces and regulations from parts of the Valley and interior areas should be undertaken as a demonstration of mutual confidence. The presence of armed forces should primarily be along the Line of Control and border areas. Such steps could have been taken during the previous five years when the so-called militancy was negligible. The opportunity was missed. But soon when it comes up again, it should be taken up with both hands as a show of mutual confidence between the civilian population and the paramilitary forces. The centre and state governments need to accept this challenge with courage and confidence. The nation has erred on the side of caution for too long.

And finally an all-out Indo-Pak dialogue, currently at its nadir since the mid-September Uri strikes, counter-strikes and tit-for-tat killings across the LoC, must be revived. The two neighbours did move a lot closer to each other during the leadership of Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Dr Manmohan Singh, and General Pervez Musharraf but internal circumstances conspired against peace. That wider search for peace and dialogue must resume. Peace is not only possible, it is inevitable. India and Pakistan cannot go on bleeding each other forever. If Europe can establish peace after hundred year wars, so can we.  

Farewell Europe -- UK PM Theresa May rides anti-migrant Brexit wave ........

Prime ministers world over have to play the populist card as a survival necessity and Britain’s prime minister, barely 100 days old in her new job, is no exception. Theresa May  has been double quick to recognise the importance of  that necessity. She abandoned her pro–Europe belief at the first opportunity – never mind  her vote to remain in  Europe in the June referendum which the former prime minister David Cameron gambled on and lost, opening the  Downing Street window for her. 

With a little help from fellow Tory hopefuls  like  Michael Gove and Boris Johnson squabbling for the top job, May saw her opportunity and grabbed the prize. Thus began the prime ministerial era of  Theresa May  in her new avatar as anti-Europe head of  Brexiters. No looking back to any earlier belief or vote.

Losing no time she declared the very first day that “Brexit means Brexit”  and she is sticking to it. Asked umpteen times what Brexit meant, she has so far fobbed off all questioners by saying that she is not going to give a “running commentary” on the negotiations which she proposes to enter into with the European Union. In other words: watch the show as she  unfolds it.

However, she  has signalled two broad and definitive roads which her government intends to travel on the home front. One is a more interventionist policy to make businesses fall in line on fair wages for workers  and  tax avoidance and big bonus culture of  corporates. A tall order, perhaps, but a populist necessary promise. The second road is much more clearly marked with barriers against new immigrants. Even the more recent  immigrants, like nearly two million Eastern European  migrants who arrived over the last six years,  have become pawns on the new chess board. Their fate depends on the reciprocal treatment of Britons working in the European Union. No one-way guarantee  for anybody.  Nor any one-way first gesture. Perhaps that is the meaning of ‘hard’ Brexit, so far as the European migrants are concerned. For the non-Europeans from Asia, Africa or elsewhere the doors have been long slammed shut, only the rarest of the rare asylum seekers or refugees to be allowed in . 

The new government is determined to keep the tightest closed door policy on immigration, as indeed it was the central issue in the referendum that had divided the nation, even families across the land. Amber Rudd, new Home Secretary (Home Minister in Indian parlance), has hinted that employers could be asked to reveal how many foreign workers they employed. The measure is aimed at ensuring that foreign workers should not be able to take jobs that British workers can do.

The proposal  has been widely attacked by employers’ organisations as well as some influential Tory leaders, besides the opposition Labour  party. Rudd, however, is not backing away from the plan and putting it up for review  and “consultation”  within the government. “The object, it seems , is to name and shame those employers with a proportion of non-UK workers above some arbitrary level,” said a leading employers’ representative.

Students are the next target of Rudd as she  announced  that Home Office under her would launch “consultation” on student migration intake. She raised the prospect of a multi-tiered visa system tied to English language test and the nature  of  subject  and  the college or institution offering the course. She said that the current system offered all sorts of students, irrespective of their ability and the college or university’s quality, favourable  employment  prospects after finishing their studies.

Her plans have been condemned by academics as well as by the parliamentary group on international students. The group’s  co-chair, Labour MP Paul Blomfield, called the idea ‘madness” and pointed out that : “ International students bring  eight  billion pounds  a year to the UK economy, creating tens of thousands of jobs. Education is one of our most successful  export industries. The only people cheering today’s announcement  will  be our competitors.”

Doctors and medical personnel, the backbone of Britain’s National Health Service , are also  on the government’s immigration target lists. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt joined the chorus by announcing that the government would expand  medical education by training 1,500 more doctors and other staff every year to make health service self-sufficient by 2025. However he didn’t say how he would stop British doctors’ annual exodus for greener pastures in the USA,  Australia and elsewhere.

What is striking in this new anti-migrant wave since about the year 2, 000 is the phenomenon  of  what might be called xenophobia against white Europeans, something which was earlier aimed at only coloured migrants from Asia, Africa, Caribbean islands and elsewhere. For a long time it appeared that anti-migrant feeling was aimed at keeping “Fort Europe”  white and Christian. Now, of course,  it has come to be seen as more inclusive – keeping even white migrants out of national borders.  Germany, on the other hand, has admitted more than a million  non-Christian refugees from Syria, Iraq and other countries in sharp contrast to countries like Hungary and the Czech republic who have shut their doors to Muslim migrants on cultural grounds. An uneven and uneasy Europe, which still remains a magnet  for millions from outside.

The only section of  immigrants whose entry Britain and even other countries  don’t  want to block are the bankers and the rich investors. Addressing Wall Street banking representatives in New York, the Brititish Chancellor, Philip Hammond, categorically said that Theresa May’s government was not adopting any anti-business stance. He told a  TV channel: “ The problem is not highly skilled and highly paid bankers, brain surgeons, software engineers.” People (in Britain) recognise  that the  high earners from abroad “are a positive contribution to the UK economy.”

So, it is highly unlikely that Britain would do anything that could harm the City of  London, the heart of  UK’s financial services industry, even though it employs nearly 20 per cent workers from outside the UK. Industry groups are already talking about special visas for wealth creators from outside.  After all which banker doesn’t know that Liza Minnelli song that said something like “Life is a cabaret, my chum" and  money  makes the world go round !  

UK PMs Cameron/Blair bye bye -- legacy of war from Iraq to Syria and Libya

Ex-Prime Minister David Cameron, who has just resigned even as an MP, barely a couple of months after quitting as Prime Minister, is a true heir of  ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair, policy-wise  though not party-wise. In foreign policy terms both have pursued a policy of regime change from Iraq and Syria to Libya, wreaking untold misery on the people of the region.

Collectively around one million people have been killed in the three countries and at least five times more made refugees fleeing to Turkey and elsewhere with more than a million having reached Europe in one of the biggest and bloodiest migrations since the Partition of India in 1947.

And this tragedy is still unfolding, without any light at the end of  the tunnel.

Orchestrated by the regime changing leaders in the name of democracy, their actions have spawned demons like Daesh or IS, the so-called Islamic State, and a variety of other fanatical forces.

One of the early assessments of David Cameron’s ‘ill-conceived’ military intervention in Libya comes from none other than the House of Commons foreign affairs select committee which has a majority of members from his own Tory party with a Tory chairman.

The report, like that of the ‘Chilcot’ inquiry into the Iraq war, echoes  the designs, lapses and failures of  Tony Blair’s intervention in Iraq. In no uncertain terms, it slams Cameron’s Libyan adventure which ‘was not informed by accurate intelligence’ – an echo of Tony Blair’s handling of the Iraq situation which plunged the country into bloodshed and chaos, still unresolved.

The report concurs with US President Barack Obama’s observation that he Libyan war was “a shitshow.” In an interview with the Atlantic journal,  Obama had expressed his disappointment with the UK and France that their leadership had not done much on stabilisation and reconstruction of Libya after the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime. “ I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya’s proximity, being invested in the follow-up.”

The report points out: “By the summer of 2011, the limited intervention to protect civilians (of Benghazi wo had broken away from the Gaddafi ambit) had drifted into an opportunist policy of regime change. That policy was not underpinned by a strategy to support and shape post-Gaddafi Libya.

“The result was political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and growth of Islamic State in north Africa. Through his decision making in the National Security Council, former prime minister David Cameron was ultimately responsible for the failure to develop a coherent Libya strategy.”

           

Cameron’s failings in Libya, adds the report, mean that Britain now has a ‘particular responsibility’ to assist the war ravaged country and help deal with the flood of migrants heading for the shores to Europe.”  

Responsibility.  What responsibility? It’s a meaningless word in Blair-Cameron political lexicon. In his first response to a question after the select committee findings, Cameron is reported to have blamed the Libyan people for failing to take the chance of democracy offered by him! Like God-fearing Blair, he  is quite blasé about the whole affair and perhaps equally unrepentant.

And on responsibility for the thousands of people who have been killed or made refugees, the less said the better. During his reign as prime minister he could go no further than promise to allow just 20,000 refugees from Syria, and that too over five years. Compare that with Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel who boldly took in more than one million refugees, uprooted not by German actions but expressly by the armed interventions of Britain and France in Syria and Libya.

Blair still has no qualms about his role in the  war which, on a conservative British estimate, has caused 179,000 Iraqi civilian deaths and cost 179 British soldiers’ lives since 2003. His comment on the war and Chilcot report, if placed in a similar situation again, showed singular defiance when he said: “ I’d take the same decision.” His bond of friendship with the then US President George Bush that “I will be with you whatever...”  is legend for ever.   

The parliamentary committee’s report on Cameron’s war record is only the beginning of criticism of his policies and more will undoubtedly tumble out in days and months ahead. Yet like Blair  he too will get away, pretty unscathed. Perhaps that’s the nature of  power play and short public memory. More so, if it it’s happening to some people far away and not at one’s own home. The long awaited ‘Chilcot’ inquiry report into Blair’s doings is already looking a bit of history.    

Equally, national leaders everywhere are remembered or unremembered for their performance concerning events at home. On that score both Cameron and Blair have a pretty good  record. Both protected and promoted initiatives  and policies in the fields of school education and national health service, in their own way. National economy and jobs situation also held fairly well in comparison with European  and other countries.

So, there is every chance that the two prime ministers, like others before them, will get away with it all, not quite blameless nor quite unsung.   

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Turkey: Sultan Erdogan undoing Kemalist revolution and losing Western support

Turkey’s internal love-hate swing between the mosque and the military barracks holds no surprise. Externally,  however, the emergence of  a stronger  President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after the failed military coup of July 15 giving him a dictatorial image has further pushed back the country’s hopes of  joining the European Union or even remaining a dependable member of  Nato.

Internally,  the coup has thrown the country into unprecedented turmoil because of the sheer numbers of people, detaied,  jailed or fired from their jobs. Nearly 60,000 jobs have been put  on the line, each affecting a family of at least five or a total of 300,000 (three lakh) lives directly. And going by a rough yardstick, each family probably has at least five other families as close friends. In other words a million and a half people could be  living in fear of  Erdogan’s  victorious regime.

 Unlilke in earlier coup des etats since the revolution ushered by Kemal Ata Turk almost a century ago,  when the military had emerged as the successful defender of a secular polity, the  July 15 coup has thrown up the mosque allies as  victors led by Erdogan, whatever his claims to democracy. His followers are euphoric that their man has come on top with the resounding chant of  Allahu  Akbar blaring from the mosque loud speaker and the captive civic theatre. Whether Allah is on anybody’s side, nobody can tell for sure.

Erdogan means business and has already imposed a three-month state of emergency, enabling him and his Justice and Development party (AKP) cabinet to bypass parliament, rule by decree, and suspend rights and freedoms. The first decree, already in operation, extends detention without charge from four to 30 days and orders the closure of more than 2,000 private schools, associations, foundations, unions, health institutions and universities.

The assault on educational institutions , particularly targeting the deans of all universities, is in line with Erdogan’s earlier camouflaged agenda of  bringing  back pre-Kemalist educational ethos. The strident movement for the revival of  Arabic script to slowly replace the Kemalist Latin script  for  official Turkish language, which has been raging  for quite some time, is a pointer to the shape of  things to come, according to secular forces in the country.  A throwback in the name of culture and religion cannot be underestimated, the secularists fear.

Lists of all sorts of ‘dissenters’ -- or ‘anti-nationals’ in current Indian jargon -- 

have gone out sighting  nearly 60,000 thousand people, including 15,000 educationists, 3,000 judges and prosecutors, besides an unknown number of  soldiers and civilians, according to Can Dundar, Editor of Turkey’s leading news daily the Cumhuriyet. “ A campaign has been launched to revive the death penalty, which was abolished in 2002. It is the biggest witch hunt in the history of the republic,” he says.

In the latest count 47 newspapers have been shut down and arrest warrants issued for 47 journalists from the opposition Zaman newspaper which was shut down  back in March. As many as 117 general rank military officers, including 30 from air force and 32 admirals from navy. have been detained. The list of civilian staff from various government departments sectors under fire is still lengthening.

Erdogan blames the current upheaval on plotter linked to the US based cleric Fethullah Gülen, his long-time ally now turned foe, as the mastermind of an  attempted military takeover. He has already branded Gulen’s supporters as Fethullah Terror Organisation (Feto).

He has demanded Gulen’s extradition – a demand unlikely to be met by the US in the absence of any concrete evidence. However, the Erdogan regime has caught hold of the cleric’s nephew, Muhammed Sait Gülen, who was picked up from the  Turkish city of Erzurum.

Pakistan is perhaps one of the few countries which has accepted the Erdogan line in toto but Turkey’s powerful Western allies and financial backers seem to be unconvinced by Erdogan’s evidence against Gulen. Many of them wonder   who is the bigger cleric --  Fethullah Gülen or Recep Tayyip Erdogan who is being dubbed as Sultan Erdogan and Mullah Erdogan by his detractors.

His tirade against Gulen may convince his followers in Turkey but to the outside  world Gulen is  just a symbol of  opposition, even a troublesome opposition but democratic nonetheless. Any advice to show some moderation in his excessive purge of opposition, from American or European friends, seems to make him even more paranoiac. He has accused the head of US Central Command of "siding with coup plotters."

He didn't  name  General Joseph Votel , but it was clear he was railing against the American general who expressed his unease about  many of US contacts or interlocutors have been purged or arrested. Both sides have hardened their stand, deepening a rift between Nato’s two largest military powers.

Relations with Europe are not getting better either. Even Germany, which needs Turkish help most and has entered a $3billion deal to stem the flood of Syrian and other refugees entering Europe via Turkey, refused Erdogan’s request to address  a Turkish immigrants’ rally in Cologne via video-link – a clear signal that Berlin is not siding with any Turkish side.

There has been no approval of  Erdogan’s  crackdown in the European press which has been  pretty critical of his increasingly autocratic rule. There is open criticism of his efforts to garner more  power for himself  by changing the constitution from a parliamentary democracy to a presidential system investing himself with wide executive powers.  Equally suspect in European eyes is the  president’s tilt towards  Islamic ritual and the mosque.

Notwithstanding open or simmering rifts with America and Europe and hugely wide internal divisions, Sultan Erdogan is here to stay for now, with more power to his elbow.

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India positives but missing health, population targets

Two recent positive trends in India’s population control efforts point out a decline in child marriage age among all communities and a sharper decline in Muslim family size compared to majority Hindu community family size, debunking the myth of continued disproportionate rise of Muslim population in the country.

 The Muslim family size dropped from 5.61 to 5.15  members while the national average family size dropped  from 4.67 to 4.45  in the decade between 2001 and 2011, according to the 15^th  Indian Census (2011).

In the education field student numbers in the 5-to-19 age group have recorded a jump of overall 30 per cent nationally while among Muslims student population rose by 44 per cent, making up some of the ground lost over the previous decades when the community lagged behind others. Within the Muslim community the girls recorded a hefty 53 per cent rise, taking the community’s student population to 63 per cent, which is still behind other communities. The figure for students in Hindu community is 73 per cent, with Christians at 80 per cent and Jains at 88 per cent.

The sharper improvement in social trends among Muslim community appears most probably , rather clearly, due to improvement in education field, though it still has to do a lot of catching up with other communities. A welcome realisation , even if a bit late.  

   

However, the bigger picture shows that overall India’s population increased to 121 crore, indicating a decadal growth of 17.64 per cent which is almost as high as in the previous ten years between 1991 and 2001, a worrying sign.

 In crude numbers the country’s population rose by 182.32 million (18.23 crore) in the decade between 1991 and 2001 while it grew by 181.21 million (18.12 crores) in the decade between 2001 and 2011. Roughly translated India’s net population has been growing by a steady figure of slightly less than 20 million (two crore) every year since 1991, showing a very marginal decline.

Such a persistently high rate of increase over the last 20 years means that India will once again miss the population targets set in previous years. The 1983 National Health Policy target of achieving The current (total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1 children per woman, which is also considered the replacement level, by the year 2000 was missed by a long chalk. Again the 2000 National Population Policy target of achieving 2.1 TFR by 2010 was missed.

With  the current TFR hovering around  2.3, it is nowhere on target. In such a scenario, the  target of stabilising population by 2060 could also meet the fate of our previous hopes, unless we take some urgent steps to significantly slow down our rising population graph.

The current  rate of investment in health care and education, the two pillars of population planning, doesn’t look very promising.

India has the fastest growing population, and an ambitious growth aspiration, but  it has always had a disproportionately small health budget. In 2015, this shrank further to 1.2 per cent of  the GDP, one of the lowest in the world.  China spend three  per cent of its GDP on healthcare while Britain spends as much as eight per cent.  

India needs to significantly increase the budget for the family planning sector, else it may fall short of the commitment,  made last year by Union Health Minister J.P.Nadda, to provide the services to 48 million new users in the country by 2020, says a new  study.

The study by Population Foundation of India (PFI) says the country would need to spend about Rs 15,800 crore, if not more, during 2013-2020, to meet its commitment of providing additional family planning services through public funded providers to 48 million people,  according to Poonam Muttreja, Executive Director, PFI.

Family Welfare, which includes the budget for family planning constitutes only 4 per cent of the 2014-15 Health and Family Welfare budget, she points out. The share for family planning within the larger Family Welfare budget has been further reduced to around 10-15 per cent with subsequent reductions in contraceptive procurement and social marketing.

Under- investment in education and health sectors, the two key instruments for meeting sustainable population targets can only mean a longer wait for poverty reduction. How long more for ‘Garibi Hatao’  -- end to poverty – dream? Next year it will be exactly 70 years since independence. At  the current pace even the 2060 target looks unachievable.

The unending tragedy of farmer  suicides year after year and the recurrent inter–caste battles for ever more reservations for government  jobs and other quotas can be tackled only by aggressively higher spending in education and health sectors – not by budget reductions as we are doing now.

Is any one listening?  

India’s secular and linguistic diversity stamped by new MLAs

India’s diversity was on sparkling display at the oath taking ceremonies by  the newly elected legislators to the State Assemblies after the May 2016 elections.

 In West Bengal new MLAs of the Trinamool Congress Party led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took the oath in the name of Ishwar and Allah  in the State Assembly in Kolkata.

And in Assam the newly elected members took oath in seven different languages from Assamese to Bengali and Bodo to Sanskrit, Hindi, Nepali and English in Guwahati.

  The newly elected  BJP MLA Angoorlata Deka, the Assamese actor, took oath in Sanskrit. The 30-year-old  Assamese actor later said: “Yes, my mother tongue is Assamese, but then Sanskrit is the mother of most Indian languages.”

“When I chose Sanskrit to take oath as an MLA, I not only wanted to focus on the importance of this ancient language – Dev bhasha – but also tried to tell the younger generation of the importance of learning this ancient yet rich, scientific language.” Angoorlata represents Batadrava constituency, which is also the birthplace of Srimanta Sankaradeva, the 16th-century saint-reformer who, she added, enriched the Assamese language by translating several Sanskrit scriptures.

Two more BJP MLAs, Ashok Sarma and Bimal Borah, chose Sanskrit for taking oath in the first sitting of Assam’s 14th assembly.

Among other MLAs, 13 took oath in Bengali, 11 in Bodo, five in English, two in Hindi and the majority 91 in Assamese, including Chief Minister Sonowal, former chief ministers Tarun Gogoi and Prafulla Kumar Mahanta.

Abdur Rahim Ajmal, son of AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal, was among the five MLAs who took oath in English. “I always feel more comfortable in English,” said Ajmal who was elected from Jamunamukh, and educated in Mumbai and Darul Uloom, Deoband.

Assamese is the main official language of the state, Bengali is the official language for the Barak Valley, and Bodo is a Sixth Schedule language used in the four Bodoland Autonomous Council districts, while English has always been in use.

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Bangla Professor’s murder; 'Jamaati' student held

Call them by any name  –  Daesh or IS, Salafis or Wahabis, Taliban or Jamaati fundamentalists --  their killing spree goes on in the name of Islam, the religion of peace. Their soft target: free thinkers or secular scholars, students and professors anywhere, especially in soft countries like Bangladesh where Rezaul Karim Siddiquee, a professor of English at Rajshahi university, was hacked to death last Saturday. This follows the killing of a law student only a fortnight earlier, taking two lives in April alone, besides a temple priest who was done to death earlier this year.

Hafizur Rahman, a student activist belonging to Islami Chatra Shibir wing of  Jamaat-e-Islam has been detained by police over the incident.

Siddiquee had his throat slit before being hacked to death. The IS, which took the responsibility for the killing, claimed he was an atheist, a claim denied by his senior at the university. Siddiquee had opened a school in his village introducing children to the music and poetry of Tagore and Kazi Nazrul  Islam. Siddiquee is the fourth murder victim from Rajshahi university in recent years.

Last year Bangladesh saw seven others, including blog writers, publishers and social workers being killed in broad daylight  by hitmen riding motorbikes .

India - Pakistan dialogue: hope amidst spoiler attack in Afghanistan?

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s impromptu call on Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif  to wish him Happy Birthday in December  has raised a flurry of optimism on Indo-Pak relations. Modi’s drop-in call on Sharif en route to Delhi  from Kabul where he had gone to inaugurate the Indian-built Afghanistan’s  parliament building was welcomed as a happy surprise both in Pakistan and India.

The momentum continues with their likely meeting in Washington where both leaders have been invited to a  nuclear summit hosted by  President Obama on March 31-April 1.  There is also a possibility of  Indo-Pak foreign secretary level  unofficial meeting on the sidelines of a SAARC conference in Nepal  next month in March.

But a sudden jolt to the dialogue hopes has been delivered by a  suicide bomber’s attack (3rd March 2016) on the Indian consulate at Jalalabad in Afghanistan, leaving nine people dead, apparently by Taliban elements in cahoots with Pakistan’s state or non-state operatives. Thanks to the Afghan security forces, all Indian staff were reported safe. Any denial of involvement by Pakistani authorities is simply not believable in India. The umpteenth attack on Indian consulates and other posts in Afghanistan underlines yet again India’s inability to lower its guard against its neighbour.

        

In spite of this latest spoiler, there is hope yet for a dialogue revival after Pakistan’s filing of  an  FIR  against some unknown  persons possibly involved  in the terrorist attack on the Indian Air Forces base at Pathankot. Islamabad’s  further actions of  taking  Jaish -e- Muhammad’s anti-Indian leader  Maulana Masood Azhar  into protective custody and the upcoming visit of Pakistan’s special investigation team to Pathankot, as agreed with India,  lend s some more hope to the revival of a bilateral dialogue.  

Most pertinently comes the reported acknowledgement of  Pakistani Prime Minister’s Adviser on Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz, that at least one call made by the terrorists involved in the Pathankot attack was traced to the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) HQ, the covert-warrior outfit in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

The fly in this whole ointment is the fact that the FIR filed by Pakistan government is against “unknown” persons . The prominent  conspirator,  Masood Azhar , named by India, has not been named even as a suspect in the FIR by Pakistan. Nor has he been arrested; he has been taken only in “protective custody.” No wonder India is going to ask the United Nations once again to include Azhar specifically and individually in the list of banned persons along with the Jaish-e- Muhammad outfit which is already in the UN’s list of proscribed organisations.

Pakistan’s  apparent gestures of  thaw in bilateral relations need to be translated into concrete actions, not just in the Pathankot episode but also in the Mumbai attack which has been hanging fire since 2008. For that to happen , Pakistan  needs to  have a re-look at its overall definition of  terrorism . It must abandon its equation of terrorism on its western Afghan border with terrorism on its eastern Indian border. The two brands belong to different categories. Its western border trouble comes from  the Taliban tiger which it has been riding for long. Riding the tiger has never been easy and Pakistan cannot deflect the issues by saying that the Taliban are funded by India. Nor can anybody believe that the recent attack on Bacha Khan university in its frontier province was Indian inspired or financed. Bacha Khan is the name of  Frontier Gandhi  Abdul Ghaffar Khan, one of the most revered legends in India since before the partition of the subcontinent. No Indian agency can ever think of attacking an institution named after him. Pakistan must look into its own ‘gareban’ or fold !

Terrorism on Pakistan’s eastern border with India is altogether of a different brand. To put it bluntly it is inspired, abetted and activated by Pakistan’s own state or non-state actors. Neither India nor anybody else believes the fiction that Pakistan is a victim on both sides of its border. On the eastern side it is certainly not  a hapless victim. It must restrain its state or non-state actors on the eastern side and act against them with the same vigour as it does with actors on its western border.

Pakistan can do it but it must have the will to do it. If it does it will be a game changer not only in the subcontinent but in the entire region.

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India-Pakistan dialogue : flickers of hope ?

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s impromptu call on Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif  to wish him Happy Birthday in December  has raised a flurry of optimism on Indo-Pak relations. Modi’s drop-in call on Sharif en route to Delhi  from Kabul where he had gone to inaugurate the Indian-built Afghanistan’s  parliament building was welcomed as a happy surprise both in Pakistan and India.

The momentum continues with their likely meeting in Washington where both leaders have been invited to a  nuclear summit hosted by  President Obama on March 31-April 1.  There is also a possibility of  Indo-Pak foreign secretary level  unofficial meeting on the sidelines of a SAARC conference in Nepal  next month in March.

Further  hope for a dialogue revival has come from Pakistan’s filing of  an  FIR  against the possible involvement of some persons in the terrorist attack on the Indian Air Forces base at Pathankot. Islamabad’s  further actions of  taking  Jaish -e- Muhammad’s anti-Indian leader  Maulana Masood Azhar  into protective custody and the upcoming visit of Pakistan’s special investigation team to Pathankot, as agreed with India,  lend yet more hope to the revival of a bilateral dialogue.

Most significantly comes the reported acknowledgement of  Pakistani Prime Minister’s Adviser on Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz, that at least one call made by the terrorists involved in the Pathankot attack was traced to the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) HQ, the covert-warrior outfit in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

The fly in this whole ointment is the fact that the FIR filed by Pakistan government is against “unknown” persons . The prominent  conspirator,  Masood Azhar named by India, has not been named even as a suspect in the FIR by Pakistan. Nor has he been arrested; he has been taken only in “protective custody.” No wonder India is going to ask the United Nations once again to include Azhar specifically and individually in the list of banned persons along with the Jaish-e- Muhammad outfit which is already in the UN’s list of proscribed organisations.

Pakistan’s  apparent gestures of  thaw in bilateral relations need to be translated into concrete actions, not just in the Pathankot episode but also in the Mumbai attack which has been hanging fire since 2008. For that to happen , Pakistan  needs to  have a re-look at its overall definition of  terrorism . It must abandon its equation of terrorism on its western Afghan border with terrorism on its eastern Indian border. The two brands belong to different categories. Its western border trouble comes from  the Taliban tiger which it has been riding for long. Riding the tiger has never been easy and Pakistan cannot deflect the issues by saying that the Taliban are funded by India. Nor can anybody believe that the recent attack on Bacha Khan university in its frontier province was Indian inspired or financed. Bacha Khan is the name of  Frontier Gandhi  Abdul Ghaffar Khan, one of the most revered legends in India since before the partition of the subcontinent. No Indian agency can ever think of attacking an institution named after him. Pakistan must look into its own ‘gareban’ or fold !

Terrorism on Pakistan’s eastern border with India is altogether of a different brand. To put it bluntly it is inspired, abetted and activated by Pakistan’s own state or non-state actors. Neither India nor anybody else believes the fiction that Pakistan is a victim on both sides of its border. On the eastern side it is certainly not  a hapless victim. It must restrain its state or non-state actors on the eastern side and act against them with the same vigour as it does with actors on its western border.

Pakistan can do it but it must have the will to do it. Will it do it? If it does it will be a game changer not only in the subcontinent but in the entire region.

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British PM juggles hot potatoes from home and Europe

 

 London. Immigration has been a long simmering issue in Britain and every now and then it becomes a hot potato rather difficult to be handled even by seasoned  politicians and party leaders. This time Prime Minister David Cameron has been caught singeing, if not burning, his fingers twice within a fortnight. And it has been a double whammy in both instances, getting embroiled in a combination  of, what his critics call, Islamophobia and  fears of  influx of refugees from war-torn West Asia and migrant workers from Europe.

First , in a bid for better integration of already settled migrants at home Cameron announced a £20million programme aimed at spreading the knowledge of  English language among Muslim women to enable them to interact with the host society and to better understand their rights and responsibilities as citizens. The underlying, though unstated, objective of the campaign targeting Muslim women presumably is aimed at asking them to protect  themselves and their children from jihadist  propaganda and alienation from mainstream society. Muslim community leaders were quick to denounce the targeted campaign as naked Islamophobia while other mainstream opponents denounced it as wrong headed and  discriminatory, saying it should have been directed at all communities whose English language skills were less than adequate. One of the prominent critics has been none other than Lady Warsi , Cameron’s former colleague appointed by him as the first Muslim woman cabinet member.   

Second, while the targeted promotion of English language skills among  Muslim women is still under cloud, the Prime Minister has let fly another language shot calling asylum seekers from Syria and elsewhere as ‘a  bunch of migrants.’   The phrase came up in the cut and thrust of  debate during Commons  PMQs (Prime Minister’s Questions hour). Cameron was referring to Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn’s interaction with  migrants waiting to cross over to Britain from the French camp at Calais known as the ‘Jungle.’ Critics were quick to attack  Cameron for describing poor refugees  as insignificant as a ‘bunch of  bananas.’ The Tory press, on the other hand, went into overdrive  defending Cameron’s phrase as pretty innocuous and normal grammatic usage.  Either way some mud appears to have stuck , especially as it came not too long after Cameron’s earlier description of  migrants as a ‘swarm’ of people which was taken up by critics for comparing migrants to a swarm of  wasps or stinging bees. Perhaps both phrases would not have attracted so much publicity  had they not  come after a much more pejorative description by Cameron’s cabinet colleague Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, who in a moment of thoughtlessness called migrants as ‘marauders’ waiting to barge  into Britain.

A large part of anti-immigrant feeling in more recent years is directly related to fear of jihadist cells at home and abroad.  News stories of young men and women travelling abroad to join the so-called Islamic State or Daesh  add to the climate of suspicion against the community majority of whom are law-abiding citizens. Images posted by Daesh recruits wearing balaclavas and holding AK47 guns and some of them even executing hostages produce revulsion  against terrorists and suspicion against the innocents. The most recent case of  a young mother who escaped from Britain with her toddler son to join Daesh in Syria only to flee back to Britain after  tasting life in Raqqa  for a year under Islamist control naturally hit the headlines. On return she was jailed for six years by a judge at Birmingham Crown Court for knowingly participating in jihadist  terror machine. Her own plea that she had been radicalised and soon disillusioned did not wash. Nor did her father’s plea on similar grounds. The judge said she had been convicted as a terrorist and her movements should be watched for the next 15 years. 

Similar cases and resultant publicity naturally make life more difficult for innocent members of  the community. 

Nor is immigration phobia  a particularly British issue. It is sweeping across the entire continent of  Europe. After Germany’s initial open door welcome to refugees fleeing Syria and other countries, Europe is clearly having second thoughts. The atmosphere has been severely vitiated by the happenings in Cologne during New Year Eve celebrations when several women were sexually harassed and molested by some lone wolves or small groups of refugee hoodlums, apparently from north Africa and West Asia.  A few bad apples, perhaps. But they have tarnished the image of  thousands of  luckless asylum seekers fleeing war and misery at home. The tide is turning against migrants, thanks to the hoodlums, some of whom were perhaps acting as agents provocateur in the name of jihad.   

The Danish parliament’s passage of a law to confiscate any money in excess of just 1,000 euros carried by refugees or asylum seekers seeking shelter in Denmark  has bared the new depth of  feeling against migrants. The explanation  that  the confiscated money would be ploughed back into their rehabilitation expenditure  may sound hollow, yet it underscores  withdrawal symptoms of  Europe’s initial generosity.   Not all of the one million refugees who have entered Germany are sure of being granted final asylum or refugee status. There is loud talk of  migrants  to  be sent back after three or four years when a modicum of peace returns to the war ravaged lands of  Syria , Iraq and the region. The architect of German refugee welcome policy Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own chances of return to power at the next elections are at stake now.

On top of all this, the very stability of European Union is under unprecedented pressure. Britain’s demand for curbs on the free movement of  workers from within the EU member states has entered the final stage. No benefits like the unemployment dole for a number of years or Brexit is the challenging new mantra of  Prime Minister David Cameron. Grant the demands or Britain  exits European Union via  referendum is his clear challenge to EU. He is optimistic about winning some concessions like an ‘emergency brake’ on benefits claimed by incoming workers, mainly from central and Eastern Europe. Questions like the length of the brake, four years as Cameron is demanding, and whether the brake could be applied almost immediately after the referendum, have still to be sorted out. The details of  EU’s draft offer, trumpeted  by him as an ‘important milestone,’ still face objections from EU member states. 

Much tougher opposition to Cameron’s preferred policy of staying in the EU comes from within the UK, and most hawkish elements from within his own party. The opposition Labour party, by and large, favours retaining EU membership. But it is the die-hard opponents within the Conservative fold who, as one commentator said, could do the self-destruct. Basically, it all depends on the final concessions Prime Minster Cameron can extract from the EU and, even more, will they be enough to satisfy the nay-sayers who want  strict border controls to limit the intake of  European migrants.

The referendum, likely in June this year, is unstoppable. Till then it is an open question.

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