The nation today is very different from what it was in 1991 or 2003. Societally, militarily, diplomatically and even morally, it is a very strong country
In a speech in January 1991, the then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had invoked a popular idiomatic expression, exhorting his military and simultaneously warning the US against intervening in his invasion of Kuwait by threatening a “mother of all battles.” Hussein had under his command supposedly the world’s fourth largest Army with over a million and a half in uniform and reserves — a number larger than the US Army and Marine Corps combined. Iraqi forces were also battle veterans of the decade-long Iran-Iraq war and had displayed complex helicopter-borne assault-like commando capability in seizing the Kuwait Emir’s palace much before Iraqi armour columns rolled in. However, there were clear chinks in the Iraqi narrative beyond the presidential bravado. The sheer numbers of the Iraqi forces, who were subjected to an unchallenged pummelling of a 30-day air bombardment that broke the country’s infrastructure and spirit, are testimony. Ultimately, it took less than 100 hours of ground assault for the complete capitulation, destruction and humiliation of the Iraqi retreat from Kuwait. The Second Gulf War in 2003, entailing a more expanded mandate to oust Hussein, lasted only 21 days before the “end of major combat operations” was announced. However, the strategic aim of “containment” was not achieved in either of the Gulf Wars, yet the mainstream Americans believe in their ability to bulldoze any military opposition in the Middle East.
Today, Iran faces a potential military action from the US following the latest escalation of tensions with the shooting down of a $130 million worth ‘Global Hawk BAM-D’ surveillance drone over the Strait of Hormuz. The ratcheting of mutual distrust has been in the making for sometime, with the Iranians and their proxy forces holding sway in the multiple battles in the Iraqi-Syrian swathes, Yemen and Lebanon to even in the Iran-beholden, modern Iraq nation. The sectarian divide in the Middle East is increasingly tilting in favour of the numerically lesser Shia forces, much to the consternation of the US-supported Gulf sheikhdoms and Israel. The decimation of the Islamic State (IS) landmass and its conventional capabilities has shifted the US’ focus onto Iran in order to contain what it calls “the leading state sponsor of terror.” Towards the same, the US has unilaterally reneged on the path-breaking Iran nuclear deal and reinforced crippling economic sanctions, even though the international community remains a mute spectator despite the global nuclear watchdog organisation, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), giving Iran a clean chit in abiding with the terms of the nuclear deal, which Trump accuses Iran of violating.
But Iran has not undertaken any military intervention as done by the US (all inconclusively) in the last 30 years in the Middle East. It has simply put a lot more challenges. First, unlike Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen or even Afghanistan — which were deeply divided and polarised societies from within — Iran is relatively homogenous and united in its animus towards the US aggression. Unsurprisingly, the US-led sanctions have had a “catastrophic humanitarian consequence” on the Iranian civil society and has had no support from any of the Iranian Opposition leadership, inside or outside of Iran.
This is starkly a different situation from Hussein’s Iraq which had well over 65 per cent of its population composed of persecuted Shias and Kurds, who were happy to see Hussein fall. Likewise, a theoretical US intervention in Syria may just be welcomed by the approximate 90 per cent of the Sunni population, who are ruled by the Shia-Alawite Assad Government.
Similarly, any action against the Shia-Hezbollah forces in Lebanon may be acceptable to other competing stakeholders like the Sunnis, Christians or Druze. Not so in Iran, which has over 90 per cent Shias. Even other minorities like the Kurds, Achomis, Turkmen (barring the Balouch) are also reasonably integrated into the Iranian society with no major discrimination. This puts a rock solid block of at least 110 million — 85 million in Iran and at least 25 million co-sectarian Shias in the contiguous western border with Iraq — in direct confrontation with the US. This is demographically an impregnable minefield for the US to potentially penetrate and try to hold ground. Thus, physical land occupation of Iranian soil is absolutely ruled out as can be seen from the parallel fate of the American military, in the face of rag-tag militias in Afghanistan. With 20 per cent of the global oil traded through the narrow Strait of Hormuz (24 miles wide at one point), Iran could pose unimaginable asymmetric threats to the US interests even if its considerable naval fleet of an estimated 15 submarines and anti-ship systems were to be neutralised.
Third, as the emotional flagbearer of Shias globally, Iran commands considerable clout and loyalty via its powerful proxies across the world to inflict severe damage on US’ interests that could be thousands of miles away from the principal battleground. Some of these Iran-supported militias have simply out-performed the Saudi-US supported forces and retained the upper hand, even where out-numbered. Even diplomatically and geopolitically, Iran today is not like Iraq in the previous two Gulf wars ie, internationally isolated, condemned and subjected to multi-lateral sanctions — the recent US moves against Iran have not been met with enthusiasm in the European Union and Donald Trump’s unilateralism may not lead to an effective “coalition” against Iran as was the case in 1991 or 2003.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dashed to Saudi Arabia and the UAE to muster support, who along with Israel remain in the forefront of the very limited anti-Iran sentiment. Unlike the UN-approved sanctions that preceded the US moves in 1991 and 2003, approval of other nations against Iran in the UN Security Council is extremely unlikely. The possible realisation of the cost of misadventure against Iran may have led to the last-minute cancellation of US military operations despite being in “cocked and loaded” status. Perhaps electoral considerations may still lead to a very limited military action, but only that as Iran is no pushover societally, militarily, diplomatically or in the present case, even morally.
(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry)
SWriter: Bhopinder Singh
Courtesy: The Pioneer
Rising tensions between the US and Iran have put India’s traditional ties with Tehran on test. It’s time New Delhi weighs its options and takes a tactful decision
India is a strategic neighbour of Iran. Both countries are important and effective political and economic actors in South and West Asia. Common culture and communications have strengthened relations between the two since centuries. Over the past 20 years, Iran has put in place three major projects to improve cooperation with India. First was the participation in a mega project for the construction of a gas pipeline, which has long been called the Peace Pipeline. The second relates to the project of drilling and gas production from the Farzad-B gas field in the Persian Gulf. The third is the strategic development of the Chabahar Port. These are three main issues in the prospect of developing economic relations between Iran and India. The implementation of each of these projects can have a positive effect on the development of political relations between the two countries.
Furthermore, for a long time, particularly since the beginning of the economic reforms in the 1990s, India, as a steady buyer of Iran’s oil, has been a reliable partner of the National Oil Company. Several Indian refineries have set up their manufacturing processes in Iran based on the specifications of Iranian petroleum.
In the first round of Iranian oil sanctions between 2010 and 2015, Indians repeatedly negotiated with the US Government on exemptions from Iran’s sanctions and even conducted high-level political consultations in such a way that almost during the entire period, Iran’s oil exports to India, although reduced to a small extent, were never cut off. This was possible due to the apparent determination of India to keep its oil-related cooperation with Iran going than comply with the US Government’s approach. Indians knew it well that they should keep their interests despite the severe tension between Iran and the West.
India has prioritised its national interest by having a stable line of cooperation with its neighbours and major countries in the South and West Asia, where Iran is a key country. This matter led to the continuation of selling oil to India during Iran’s oil sanctions. And after the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal, India was one of those countries which earnestly increased its oil transaction with Iran to a level even higher than before.
At the same time, even though some nations doubted the continuation of calmness between Iran and the US, India, interestingly and undoubtedly, began developing its relations with Iran, resulting in the signing of an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two countries for the development of the Chabahar Port in May 2015. India is well aware that cooperating with neighbours and actively participating in developing projects with them will play a crucial role in its own development and resource management. In fact, India knows that oil from Iran will be in the best interests of its people.
However, with a new round of US sanctions on Iran coming into effect — especially against its oil industry, which was earlier out of the international free trade agreement and against the rules of international law of the White House — India has been compelled to reduce its purchases of Iranian oil and subsequently stopped purchasing it for some months. India is the world’s third largest oil importer and a large share of that comes from Iran (23.5 million tonnes in 2018-19). The stoppage of imports has not only hurt the oil economy but is definitely not good news for New Delhi as this decision can put its bilateral relations with Iran at risk. India and Iran have a deeply historical and cultural relationship and have also maintained robust political relations despite many obstacles. The latter has been a regional partner and a loyal neighbour to the former. Both nations have worked together for the stability of their respective regions.
The handing out of the development of the Chabahar Port to India was of strategic advantage to Iran. The latter looked at the former as a project partner (while the Chinese work at the port of Gwadar) due to the trust it had in India as a loyal neighbour. For India, the Chabahar project is expected to serve as a gateway to central Asia besides promising trade benefits to the country. For the purpose of building further relations as well as for regional stability, it will be in New Delhi’s interest to work more closely with Tehran to avoid any direct backlash.
Throughout the idea of constructing a pipeline for gas export to Pakistan and then extending it to India, Iran encouraged India to participate. India, too, showed great interest and enthusiastically took part in the negotiations. After about 14 years of talks and with a changed regional gas market scenario, India withdrew from the agreement because of security issues and high costs although there was an opportunity for it to cooperate in gas trade with Iran through a straight line of submarine pipelines. Meanwhile, the Farzad B gas field development project in the Persian Gulf, too, is lying in a limbo even as it was provided the highest level of historical flexibility to develop this project. These two major energy projects hold the potential to uplift the Indian economy and boost India’s energy supply requirements for industrial development. Although for Iran, such experiences will not change its approach either now or in the future. After all, economic issues cannot eliminate the essential importance of cooperation between the two great countries.
With Iran being under economic pressure and the US sanctions hovering over it, these are testing times for India. It has to not only deal with the US pressure but has to also secure its interests vis-à-vis Iran. Iran’s oil export and the development of the Chabahar Port are two completely different issues on the face of it. Refineries in India are Iran’s old oil buyers and the Chabahar Port developer has no organisational relationship with them. But the fact is that both these issues are related to the “political will of both countries” to further cooperation.
The catch 22 situation for India lies in managing relations with both, the US and Iran. It will be unacceptable if India acts in accordance with the US’ rules on Iran oil sanctions. However, in the development of the Chabahar Port, it has eagerly pursued discussion for exemption from sanctions. Now is the time for New Delhi to take an important decision. India has a precise programme for development and has made great strides in achieving economic and social success in the last half century. The world views it as an emerging superpower. As a regional power, Iran aspires to consider India as a stable country in its decisions to plan future cooperation on these experiences. It will be practically impossible for India to stop purchasing oil from Iran and pursue the development of the Chabahar port. Both nations need to prove their development potential through the successful implementation of the proposed projects and find ways and means around geopolitics.
(The writer is an Iranian journalist)
Writer: Reza Vosugh
Courtesy: The Pioneer
In a conflict between parallel enquiries into the Easter bombings, the question of accountability will be drowned. The Sirisena Government can’t evade tough questions by vilifying Muslims
Two months after the Easter bombings, while the dots have been connected, accountability is still playing truant. Besides others, India had alerted Sri Lanka on April 4, 10, 16, 20 and 21 but incredibly, security agencies in Colombo took no action. On this page, after the horrendous bombings, this writer had called the catastrophic event a mystery.
Both President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe of what was once a National Unity Government of two rival parties have said they received no official information on terror attacks. Sirisena is the Minister for Defence and Minister for Law and Order, which place all intelligence, defence, security and police agencies under his command. The Minister of State for Defence for good optics is in Wickremesinghe’s Cabinet. While Sirisena has ordered a presidential commission to investigate the bombings, the powerful speaker, Karu Jayasuriya, has appointed a parliamentary select committee (PSC) for enquiry. The PSC has had public hearings aired on television which has upset the President, who has since prohibited all serving defence, intelligence and security officials from testifying before it. It has been boycotted by Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP).
Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando, who was forced to resign, told the PSC that intelligence was available on April 9 of a possible threat on April 21 and had assumed that Sri Lanka’s state intelligence services chief would have informed the President as was the practice. He added that as Defence Secretary, he could not meet the President — not even once in two weeks — as he had no time. The shocker was the revelation that Sirisena had told Fernando not to invite the Prime Minister, MoS for Defence and Inspector General Police, Pujith Jayasundara for National Security Council meetings since November 13, 2018, following the Constitutional crisis in which Sirisena had sacked Wickremesinghe and appointed Opposition leader and his presidential rival, Mahinda Rajapaksa, as Prime Minister, which was later revoked by the courts.
IGP Jayasundara, who refused to resign, was suspended by the President and moved the courts, told the PSC that prior intelligence was available, giving specific details about the catastrophic intelligence failure adding: “No emergency was declared.” He said Sirisena offered him an ambassadorial post for his resignation, assuring him that the presidential commission would clear his name. Jayasundara struck the final nail in the coffin by saying there was “total unpreparedness of Government to act on intelligence reports.”
The head of national intelligence, Sisira Mendis, a former police chief who reported directly to the President, testifying before the PSC said that the bombings could have been averted. Mendis also said that the President failed to hold regular security meetings to assess the threat from Islamic radicals linked to National Towheed Jamaat (NTJ). Sirisena has dismissed Mendis.
Linked to the suicide bombings is the revelation that in 2018, the premier spy agency, state intelligence chief, Nilantha Jayewardene, ordered the IGP to stop investigating Islamic militants as well as NTJ. He also did not take seriously the information provided by India on the radical NTJ. While in India for Prime Minister Modi’s swearing in, Sirisena said there was no proof that the bombers visited India, contradicting Army Commander Mahesh Senanayake, who told BBC that they did go to India for training. Clearing himself of any responsibility for the intelligence failures, Sirisena said: “I was in Sri Lanka upto April 16 before going to Singapore on a private visit. None of the defence Chiefs informed me of any such intelligence”.
All that one wished to know about the nine suicide bombers is now in the public domain. Zahran Hashim, the radical preacher linked to NTJ from Kattankudy in Batticaloa, which has Sri Lanka’s biggest mosque, was the ring leader. How the suicide bomber inside Taj Samudra hotel panicked, walked out and blew himself up along with two others in a small hotel in Dehiwala suburb of Colombo is well-known. None of the nine bombers was impoverished, physically or mentally challenged, but all highly educated and affluent, two of them millionaires and all roped in by Hashim. It was a small group connected with Hashim.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s capacity to self-destruct may be hurtling it towards another ethnic conflict. The majority Sinhala Buddhists, spearheaded by the clergy and political Opposition, have demonised the Muslims. Anti-Muslim riots, surpassing in scale the worst ones in 2018 in Digana, have occurred after the bombings. A false narrative of hatred and prejudice is being spread against Muslims. Fake tales about swords stored in mosques and mass sterilisation of Sinhalese by a Muslim doctor are being circulated.
Vilification of Muslims will further divide society as Muslims live across the country. Calling for unity among communities, it was disingenuous on part of Sirisena to warn them of the emergence of a Muslim Prabhakaran, an avoidable simile to the dreaded Tamil supremo of the LTTE who fought an ethnic conflict for three decades, ending 2009.
The mass resignation of two Muslim Governors and nine Ministers to enable the Government to conduct investigations, clearing them of linkages to suicide bombings, has opened a new front. Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) envoys based in Colombo have appealed to the Government to protect Muslims and their properties.
The presidential pardon to reactionary monk Gnanasara Thero, who was implicated in the anti-Muslim violence of 2018 and stormed a court hearing old cases of “enforced disappearances”, will add fuel to fire. Rumours against Muslims and anti-Muslim riots are a smoke screen to shift focus from the presidential and parliamentary enquiries to resurgent Sinhala Buddhist extremism directed at Muslims. The Government is drafting a legislation to change Muslim laws dealing with burqa, hijab, halal, mosques and madrasas in consultation with Muslim clergy and leadership.
The question of accountability will be drowned in the conflict between parallel enquiries reflecting the breakdown of the co-habitation Government. Why did Sirisena not know about the intended bombings and why did intelligence and security forces fail to act? Sirisena can only be investigated after January 2020 by a new President. But the broken-down Government cannot afford to wait to be fixed till after the elections.
The ultimate irony for Sri Lanka was when Wickremesinghe, after a meeting with Modi, who was on a five-hour visit to Colombo this month, sought India’s help in counter-terrorism. Since 2009 after vanquishing LTTE, Colombo has proudly showcased its unique prowess and skills in eliminating root and branch, terrorism in the 21st century — a historic first!
(The writer is a retired Major General of the Indian Army and founder member of the Defence Planning Staff, currently the revamped Integrated Defence Staff)
Writer: Ashok K Mehta
Courtesy: The Pioneer
The ‘special relationship’ between the UK and the US is elusive. Trump’s visit to Britain nailed the optics of an empire that was wilting under the weight of an ‘unequal’ relation
Romance and nostalgia surrounding the grandeur of the British empire in the 19th and 20th century is predicated on “the empire on which the sun never sets.” This pomposity was extended to include emerging America in the mid-19th century to posit the Anglophone domain, as noted by Alexander Campbell in 1852, “To Britain and America, god has granted the possession of the new world; and because the sun never sets upon our religion, our language and our arts…” Subsequently, the two world wars of the 20th century changed the global narrative and the churn of history left the British empire to hold on and cast its equation with the US in a Churchellian expression, “special relationship.” Befittingly, British Prime Minister Theresa May sought “a new special relationship”, while not one to be left out, US President Donald Trump added his own to the lexicon by claiming the bilateral relationship to be, “the highest level of special!” However, the stark reality of the two nations clutching the straws of history was inevitable as Trump made his state visit to the UK as May was in the last week of her notice period.
The usual blusters, clichés and gaffes notwithstanding, the visit nailed the optics of an empire that was wilting under the weight of an “unequal” relationship that besets any relationship with the US President Donald Trump. The quintessential English “correctness” of May helped her mumble over the contentious issues between the two nations, namely, on how to handle Iran, China or even Brexit. Even the ostensibly “nasty” past of the once-American and now the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, was providentially avoided as she was on maternity leave. Yet, the cracks in the sovereign outlook and intrusions into the domestic affairs of the UK by Trump, had all the hallmarks of a very “Un-English” inelegance and mannerism. From opining on members of the royal family, the mayor of London, Opposition leaders, Brexit negotiations, to even his own preferences for the next incumbent of the 10 Downing Street — Great Britain was made to look rather pedestrian and beholden to its “special” ally.
Undercurrents of suspicion across the Atlantic have simmered for long and even the victory in World War II was marred with private concerns in the UK, over the ruthless negotiations done by the US, to extend crucial support during the war to its “special” ally. Beyond the exacting commercial terms enforced on the post-war UK, the US denied support to its “special” ally on Suez Canal, leading to its humiliating retreat. In 1983, the US invaded Grenada in the Caribbean, then supposedly a member of the British Commonwealth. Even the reciprocal disinterest in both the Vietnam war and later, the Falklands, owing to their individual compulsions militated against the publically postured alliance. The US Secretary of State during the Vietnam War, Dean Rusk, had famously told a British journalist on the cold feet developed by the British Government in contributing military wherewithal: “When the Russians invade Sussex, don’t expect us to come and help you.” Deep in the psyche of the Trans-Atlantic world, only the fear of the “others” in the Cold War era kept the portents of “special relationship” going — but the writing was always on the wall, and with the advent of the businessman-turned-President, the worms came out of the woodwork.
Serendipitously, a 2003 British comedy film, Love Actually, has a role played by Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister of Great Britain, who stands up to the roughshod antics of the visiting US President. In it, the British Prime Minister calls the bluff on the “special relationship” by saying on the podium with the US President by his side, “I love that word relationship. Covers all manners of sins, doesn’t it? I fear that this has become a bad relationship. One that is based on the President taking exactly what he wants and casually ignoring all those things that really matter to Britain. We may be a small country, but we’re a great one too” and then adds for good measure, “A friend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward, I will be prepared to be much stronger. And the President should be prepared for that.”
Unfortunately, in 2019, none of that happened and May stood meekly by the side of the US President as he railed against the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, by calling him a “not good mayor who had done a poor job.” He then added, condescendingly and lordly, that the mayor had criticised the “representative of the US that can do so much good for the UK.” Further, with the British Prime Minister acquiescing, Trump went on to call the head of the Opposition party, Jeremy Corbyn, a “negative force.” Completing the picture of servility was the final comments by May, addressed to both the Mayor of London and Corbyn, about the “greatest alliance” that “ensures our safety and security and the safety and security of others around the world, too.” That May was no Winston Churchill or even Margaret Thatcher was all too clear and visible.
Trump merrily waded into the bitterly divided waters of Brexit with his own opinions on its (mis)handling, while making the protocol exception to meet the divisive figure of Nigel Farage at the US Ambassador’s residence. He reiterated Brexit “will happen and it probably should happen”. A hapless empire was left with a visiting US President telling them about his personal preferences for the next Prime Minister in Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt.
Clearly, the days when a blunt Margaret Thatcher could stand up to the Yankee Republican President, like Ronald Reagan, who while urging her to go slow on Falklands, was told off chillingly by the ‘Iron Lady’: “I didn’t lose some of my best ships and some of my finest lives to leave quietly.” Since then, the sun has indeed firmly set on the empire’s “greatest alliance.”
(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry)
Writer & Courtesy: The Pioneer
Twenty-two years after Beijing took over the administration, it wants its writ to run in the city state.
When the United Kingdom surrendered control of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1997, it was a momentous occasion with China assuring the world that as part of regaining control of the island city, it would respect legal and cultural differences. The process of ‘Sinafication’, as China absorbed the highly westernised entity into its legal and administrative processes, would be gradual. That was apparent in the title of Hong Kong as a Special Administrative Region. It retained its unique British-style legal system, people still drove on the left side of the road and it had an independent immigration system and currency. While Hong Kong was undeniably Chinese, it participated separately in international and sporting events.
But in 1997, the PRC was not the economic behemoth it is today and Xi Jinping was still a middle-ranking official, destined for great things with the ‘Xi Principles’ still years away. But President Xi, who has now centralised power in himself, possibly sees Hong Kong’s special status as an irritant and a blot on Chinese supremacy. Rather than being an adjunct of China, it is the alternative polarity, where dissent has found a new home. The unique legal system and freedom of speech in the city have led to it becoming a hub of anti-Xi sentiment. While the PRC has effectively stage-managed Hong Kong’s elections in the past few years, there is obviously a feeling that the city-state is like an irritating small dog that keeps barking all night. So recently, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam proposed a new law that allows Hong Kong to extradite suspects to China, which in other words means a clampdown on the former’s democratic spirit and right to dissent. This has led to hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers going out in the streets to protest, only two years after the ‘Yellow Umbrella’ rallies effectively shut down the city in October 2017. Those as well as these agitations are against what protestors call the ‘creeping’ Sinafication of the island, which is happening faster and quicker than citizens had anticipated. They want Beijing to respect the differences of the city but unsurprisingly, Xi is tightening his grip and is using the protests to justify that. However, he should be careful that he does not kill the golden goose. Hong Kong’s unique status has made it a major economic and cultural hub that attracts a global workforce. Even though China wants more control, it should be careful not to drive the workforce away. While the country is within its rights to stop the barking, it might be better to learn from Hong Kong and apply a bit of that model to the mainland itself.
Writer: Pioneer
Courtesy: The Pioneer
The Janjaweed don’t care how many people they kill, and none of the most powerful Governments in the Arab world do either. Pro-democracy leaders have been carrying out campaigns but unless they take back control of the streets, it’s all over
It’s like the Tienanmen Square in miniature and maybe not all that miniature. The reported death toll in Khartoum after the recent massacre stands at more than 100, but the whole city is still locked down, with columns of Rapid Support Forces (RSF) vehicles driving through the streets, firing at practically anything that moves. There may be a lot more dead.
The RSF used to be known as the Janjaweed and they are not soldiers; they are professional killers. They are the local solution to the problem any dictatorship faces when it decides to end a non-violent protest by murdering the protesters. By that time your soldiers will usually have been on the streets for a while and will have had personal contact with the people you want to kill.
The ordinary soldiers come from exactly the same society as the protesters and, knowing who these people really are, will by now be quite reluctant to kill them. Dictators know that you must never give your soldiers an order you know they will disobey, because that creates a dilemma for them that they can only resolve by killing you. So you must find some other group to do the massacre. They may just be soldiers you bring in from out of town, who have had no previous human contact with the protesters before the order to kill is given. That’s what the Chinese regime did before the Tienanmen Square massacre in 1989.
They may be special forces troops and secret police, left over from the old dictatorship and long rewarded for abusing and murdering the old regime’s enemies, who will gladly serve a new dictatorship. That’s who General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi used to kill at least a thousand non-violent protesters on Rabaa Square in Cairo after his military coup overthrew Egypt’s elected Government in 2013.
In Sudan that group began as a bunch of camel-herding tribesmen, already at war with the local farmers, who were then recruited by the old regime to torch villages and slaughter their inhabitants in western Sudan. They acquired a taste for rape, pillage and murder and became known as the Janjaweed. They are now called the RSF.
Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s dictator since 1989, originally created them to carry out a genocide in the separatist western province of Darfur, a crime for which he has been indicted by the International Criminal Court. They were never seen in the capital in those days, but now they have uniforms of a sort and they are all over Khartoum.
They are doing the job that the soldiers of the regular Army may have balked at: Killing enough citizens, more or less at random, to frighten the rest back into submission. The ordinary soldiers’ reluctance was often on display in the early days of the Sudanese revolution, when they sometimes intervened to protect the protesters from the RSF.
The generals, who have now unleashed the RSF, never felt that reluctance themselves. Unlike the private soldiers, they have profited greatly under Bashir’s rule and have no intention of giving up their own privileges and power. They were happy enough to sacrifice Bashir to the protesters (he’s now under arrest and awaiting trial), but they don’t do self-sacrifice.
So they played for time, negotiating a ‘democratic transition’ with the protest leaders while waiting for the support to flow in from other Arab tyrannies. It duly arrived: An immediate gift of $3 billion from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt to help Bashir’s military heirs buy back support and the promise of political support for any killing that they saw as a necessary part of the process.
The military junta, calling itself the ‘Transitional Military Council’, kept up the facade of power-sharing with the opposition ‘Alliance for Freedom and Change’ right down to last weekend. Last week, the Transitional Military Council (TMC) spokesman said that a deal was almost done: There would be an election in two years and civilians would have a majority of the seats on the interim council.
Then early this week, the Rapid Support Forces/Janjaweed went in shooting and cleared the square in front of Army Headquarters that had been occupied by pro-democracy forces for the past two months. The TMC’s head, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, declared on state television that the military had decided to “stop negotiating with the alliance for freedom and change and cancel what had been agreed on.” What had changed? Nothing. The military was never negotiating in good faith; it was just buying time. The Sudanese Professionals Association, which spearheaded the nationwide protests, is calling for a campaign of “sweeping civil disobedience to topple the treacherous and killer military council,” but unless it can take back control of the streets, it’s all over. Can it do that? Probably not. The Janjaweed don’t care how many people they kill and none of the most powerful Governments in the Arab world do either.
(The writer’s new book is Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy and Work)
Writer: Gwynne Dyer
Courtesy: The Pioneer
Thirty years after the brutality at Tiananmen Square, China has become a powerhouse nation. But it can’t erase its past
One of the enduring images of protest in the 20th century is that of the ‘Tank Man’. Who he is? Nobody knows but the image of a man standing up to a tank, it’s gun raised in anger, moving to the centre of Beijing likely to fire on Chinese youngsters has become an iconic image of a common citizen protesting Government excess. Unfortunately, the ‘Tank Man’ was unable to stop the Chinese Army from senselessly killing its own 20-year-old soldiers firing at 20-year-old students. We will never know the scale of brutality — China has never revealed the actual death toll and if it were not for hundreds of dissidents escaping to the West, this story might have been buried forever. The demonstrators in the Tiananmen Square were screaming for democracy, communism had collapsed across Eastern Europe and for the young students, it was their turn. The authorities did not get the message about democracy but Chinese leaders realised that without economic progress and more wealth in the hands of the citizens, protests would erupt again. In a way, China’s economic miracle was built on the foundation of the dead bodies of the Tiananmen Square protesters. But what a story of economic growth: China today stands alone in challenging Americas global hegemony with its Belt and Road Initiative, it has a modern-day East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere that Imperial Japan envisaged before World War II, but on a grander scale.
China has substituted democracy for development, its rapid industrial and manufacturing prowess has become the strongest case against democracy, leading many Indians to also believe that democracy is a hurdle to development. We should not let this narrative succeed. As India has proven, democracy can be a force for good in this, the world’s largest multiethnic nation. Democracy gives a voice to the subaltern, and they can roar. China might have grown dramatically but that growth has not been completely even — some have benefited more than others and many have been left behind. The protesters in the Tiananmen Square were not what the Communist Party of India Marxist shamefully called counter-revolutionaries, they were demanding a voice. But China changed as a result and moved away from communism just as much as Eastern Europe did. The protesters did achieve something, not democracy but a changed China. It is up to today’s leaders in China whether they see themselves as a force for good or not.
Writer: Pioneer
Courtesy: The Pioneer
Communist dictatorship survived in China while it peacefully expired in Russia. It still looks solid even today: Xi Jinping effectively declared himself President-for-life. But communist rule in China has now reached the magic age of 70. Is it immortal? Probably not
Another of the five-yearly anniversaries has rolled around and it’s time to write another think-piece about the long-term meaning of the massacre on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. But 30 years later, what is there left to say?
Great changes were already underway in the Communist-ruled parts of Europe in 1989. Mikhail Gorbachev, the reformist Soviet leader, visited Beijing after the students had taken over the square in late April and he obviously thought that the same process was underway in China. Maybe it was, but it was violently aborted — and it has still not recovered.
That’s not what people thought at the time. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of students were killed on the square — the soldiers burned the bodies in a massive pyre right on the square, so there was never an accurate count. Hundreds or thousands more died elsewhere because similar demonstrations were put down in every major Chinese city. And we all thought: This will never be forgotten.
The students weren’t counter-revolutionaries. Their hero, the man whose death they were honouring when they occupied the square, was Hu Yaobang, a life-long communist, a veteran of the Long March, who believed that it was high time to ease up on the controls four decades after the communists took power in China.
For that Hu, the then General Secretary of the Chinese communist party, had been forced into retirement by the party’s hard-liners in 1987. But everybody knew what he wanted and when he died two years later, the students came out to demand it again: Government accountability, freedom of the press, freedom of speech and free trade unions.
The dominant conservative faction in the Chinese communist party responded by killing them and then set out to erase all popular memory of what had happened. It can’t be done, said all the journalists outside China: They will never be forgiven. The crowds will be back on the streets one of these days and there will be a great reckoning and radical change.
Well, not. Thirty years later, most Chinese millennials are ignorant of exactly what happened in 1989. The older generation remember, but they dare not mention it in public and they are a dwindling minority. Journalist Louisa Lim has accurately described contemporary China as the “People’s Republic of Amnesia”.
Why did this happen and has the notion of a freer future really gone down the memory hole in China? Start with the fact that the Soviet Union was 72-years-old in 1989, whereas the Chinese People’s Republic was only 40.
That extra generation meant that there was nobody still in power in Russia who had actually ordered the deaths of thousands of people. Not only the revolutionary generation but also the Stalinist generation were gone and by the 1980s, the career communists, who had climbed the greasy pole of power, were mere bureaucrats.
They thought they were hard men, too, but in fact, they weren’t anything of the sort. A few of them tried to carry out a coup and restore communist rule in 1991, but they were actually trembling with fear as they spoke on TV and they were seen off in a couple of days. Whereas China’s rulers in 1989 still had lots of hands-on experience with killing people. Some of them, like Hu and his successor Zhao Ziyang, were genuine idealists, who felt that the party’s controls must be loosened now that the revolution was an accomplished fact. Zhao actually went to the square at dawn on May 19 and addressed the students, urging them to hold fast to their demands.
“We are already old, we do not matter anymore,” he told them — but Zhao already knew that he had lost the argument and that the communist party leadership had decided to clear the square by force. He had also been stripped of his own position and would live the last 15 years of his life under house-arrest.
The actual massacre was delayed for a further two weeks because the soldiers in Beijing had been fraternising with the students and could no longer be trusted to kill them. It took two weeks to replace them with fresh troops, who knew nothing about what was happening in Beijing and would obediently kill the ‘counter-revolutionaries.’
So the communist dictatorship survived in China while it peacefully expired in Russia. It still looks solid today: The current leader, Xi Jinping, has just effectively declared himself president-for-life. But communist rule in China has now reached the magic age of 70. Is it immortal? Probably not.
Communist rule in the Soviet Union would probably have survived if the economy had been growing strongly. What brought it down was the insolence of absolute power combined with an abject failure to deliver the goods economically. The Chinese communist regime is very insolent, but it will probably survive as long as it delivers the goods.
However, China has a market economy now and market economies have recessions. The official Chinese growth rate is still six per cent, but the real rate of growth has already fallen to somewhere between three per cent and zero. The next five or 10 years should be quite interesting.
(The writer’s new book is Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy and Work)
Writer & Courtesy: Gwynne Dyer
The US President has walked the talk and removed India from the preferential trade list. The ball is now in our court
Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal could not have expected that soon after the smiles and photo-opportunities ended, he would be thrust into the deep end of India’s trade problems, with United States (US) President Donald Trump keeping his promise to remove India from the General System of Preferences (GSP). This programme allowed Indian exporters access to US markets at zero duties to the tune of $5.6 billion every year. While Trump’s trade wars across the world have focussed primarily on China and the European Union, India has never been far away from his gaze. He had warned that the GSP would be lifted back in March and the US Commerce Secretary even visited India last month in the midst of the elections. The US might have been persuaded to delay any punitive action until the new government was sworn in but that it was single-minded and unwavering was evident from its decision taken hours after Goyal barely took over from Suresh Prabhu at Udyog Bhavan. Goyal will have to use his experience of working in the US as an investment banker to good use now. Trump’s entire economic agenda has been based around removing what he considers ‘unfair’ trade practices by other nations on American imports. This has completely upended the global trade applecart and it is ironic that a President from America’s pro-Capitalist Republican Party has almost torn globalisation asunder. Negotiations with the US will not be easy, it wants more access to the Indian market for its agriculturalists. The US has also complained about sourcing rules for e-commerce firms like Flipkart, now owned by American retail giant Walmart. American financial services firms such as MasterCard have complained vociferously against India’s data localisation laws.
At the same time, India has been a rich hunting ground for American technology and services firms such as Google, Facebook and Uber. And US foreign policy advisors see India as a bulwark against China’s increasing economic and military might, with India being an essential part of the ‘Quad’, a nebulous alliance between Australia, India, Japan and the US. It is essential for the US to realise the strategic importance of India in the coming decades, particularly as the trade wars with China are effectively the first shots in the conflict between the two nations. At the same time, India has to balance some of the US’ more legitimate demands for lower duties and greater access. Goyal, therefore, has a difficult time on his hands, balancing flagship programmes like ‘Make in India’ with Trump’s ego. But he has no options.
Writer: Pioneer
Courtesy: The Pioneer
Britannia once ruled the waves and much of the world, today British polity is in a shambles
When Theresa May exits 10 Downing Street soon most likely having failed to deliver Brexit, it would mean that Queen Elizabeth II would have seen off 14 Prime Ministers. One cannot forget that two of those leaders — Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair — served for over a decade. And Britons are not placing much hope on the choice of leaders that will replace her in the Conservative Party. In such a situation, one would have supposed the Opposition to rise to the challenge but the Labour party is also riddled with strife. While voters in the prosperous south-east of England are still opposed to leaving the European Union and are demanding another referendum, it is almost certain that parties advocating leaving the European Union will do extremely well in, ironically, elections to the European Parliament. Where Great Britain goes from here is anyone’s guess, but it is not going to be a land of milk and honey. At least, England stands a good chance in the cricket World Cup.
Other democracies in the world must learn from Britain that direct democracy, where the electorate is asked to take a decision on a major economic and political issue, is not advisable. David Cameron, the former Prime Minister who called the referendum, will go down in history as being the man who threw the country into turmoil and promptly ran away from the mess he had created. Much has been written about the Brexit campaign on both sides and now movies are being made as well to unequivocally state how easily the ‘leave’ campaign hijacked certain issues and how false narratives can confuse and terrify voters. There is a reason we elect politicians into Parliaments. They have to take the tough decisions. Sure, they should listen to the worries of their constituents but one expects them to be better informed and educated than the average voter and not let emotive issues change the way they vote. The Brexit referendum was a disaster at many levels but it was at its core an abdication of responsibility by politicians. And as the rest of the world is learning that promising your voters that they could eat their cake and have it, too, when those promises depend on someone else acquiescing, is nothing better than lying. The British negotiations to leave the European Union have been torturous for the rest of the world to watch, let alone for British citizens. Britain has produced some remarkable leaders over the years, it might be time for some to emerge again.
Writer: Pioneer
Courtesy: The Pioneer
In 2007, Pakistan spiralled downwards amid violence, political polarisation and economic recession. However, some normalcy was restored. Is it heading that way again?
On September 30, 1965, the Communist Party of Indonesia — Parti Komunis Indonesia (PKI) — attempted a coup d’etat through a clandestine organisation embedded within the Indonesian armed forces. The PKI was close to the Indonesian nationalist hero and first ruler President Sukarno. PKI’s embedded organisation, the 13th of September Movement, believed that a large portion of the country’s armed forces was anti-Communist and under the influence of the US, which was planning to topple Sukarno.
Sukarno was not a communist himself. In her book, Maoism: A Global History, Julia Lovell writes that he had kept the large PKI on his side to neutralise the influence of the military. Nevertheless, in the early 1960s, as tensions between the military and PKI mounted and the economy began to unravel, Sukarno made an alarming speech in August 1964. Alluding to the developing crisis, Sukarno stated that the country was “living dangerously.”
The 1965 coup attempt was brutally thwarted by anti-communist military factions. The coup was crushed by Major-General Suharto. Adrian Wickers, in his 2013 book, A History of Modern Indonesia, writes that the military gave far-right Islamic and Catholic groups ample space and impunity to carry out some of the worst massacres of the 20th century. A 1977 Amnesty International report suggests that “about one million” Indonesians — believed to be PKI members or sympathisers — were mercilessly slaughtered and these included pregnant women and children.
The Australian novelist Christopher Koch dramatised the carnage in a 1978 novel. The title of the novel, The Year of Living Dangerously, was inspired by Sukarno’s speech. Since the novel was turned into a film in 1982, the expression “year of living dangerously” is often used by writers and journalists to describe a tumultuous year in the life of a country and/or a particularly violent period in which a country spirals into anarchy and unprecedented bloodshed.
If one sets aside 1971’s bloody civil war in former East Pakistan, then the year in which Pakistan lived dangerously (in the context of the mentioned expression) has to be 2007. It is remarkable that the country actually came out of it at all.
The year got off to a terrible start when, in January, an Al Qaeda suicide bomber killed 12 policemen in Peshawar. Then in February, military chief and president Pervez Musharraf suspended the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Chaudhry, accusing him of corruption.
The lawyers’ community rejected the suspension and began a movement. It was soon joined by both big and small Opposition parties, whose rallies were often attacked by riot police. As the movement transformed into a populist anti-Musharraf drive and spread from Punjab to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, its leaders decided to take it to Sindh’s capital city, Karachi. Karachi’s then largest party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), was a staunch ally of the Musharraf regime.
The MQM wasn’t happy when the suspended judge and his supporters arrived in Karachi on May 12, 2007. As the judge was waiting at the city’s airport, riots and open gun battles between MQM activists and those belonging to the anti-Musharraf alliance such as the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP), Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N) and Awami National Party (ANP), erupted on the roads and streets of the city. Government buildings, media outlets, cars and buses were fired upon and torched. Snipers took positions on overhead bridges and mowed down opponents with bullets.
The city came to a standstill as armed men roamed the streets amid dead bodies, abandoned cars and burning motorbikes and buses. According to a May 13, 2007 report by CNN, 33 people were killed and dozens were wounded. The MQM and the Musharraf regime accused the Opposition parties for the violence, whereas the former and most local and foreign news outlets put the blame on the latter and Musharraf.
Then in June, unprecedented monsoon rains in Karachi killed over 200 people. The very next month on July 3, militant clerics and their ‘students’ fired at security forces posted outside Islamabad’s Red Mosque. The mosque and its seminary had been taken over by radical clerics and their supporters, who for months had been harassing the people of the locality on the pretext of “vanquishing anti-Islamic activities.” As tensions between the clerics and the state rose, security forces moved in after it was confirmed that the clerics and their “students” were heavily armed. The major siege took place on July 10 and 11 when Pakistan military commandos entered the building and eliminated the militants.
On July 13, newspapers reported that 102 people had been killed. These included 91 civilians (most of whom were militants holed up in the mosque), 10 soldiers and one ranger. As the political and economic situation continued to deteriorate, while terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda-affiliated outfits increased in number, the exiled chairperson of the PPP Benazir Bhutto, returned to Pakistan in October. A large rally in Karachi that was escorting her from the Jinnah International Airport was attacked by suicide bombers and 124 people were killed in the carnage. Al Qaeda-affiliated groups were suspected of carrying out the attack.
On November 3, Musharraf declared a state of emergency. The same month, sectarian violence in Kurram Agency killed 80 people and Islamic militants began to take over buildings in Swat. On November 22, Pakistan was suspended from the Commonwealth for refusing to lift the emergency. On November 26, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif returned from exile.
On December, 13 Islamist militant groups formed the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which would go on to kill thousands of Pakistanis in the following years. On December 27, suicide bombers assassinated Benazir Bhutto. Dozens perished with her and dozens more were killed in the riots which spread across Pakistan for three days. Enraged mobs ran amok, setting fire to buildings and automobiles, especially in Punjab and Sindh.
Things almost completely fell apart in 2007. However, the country managed to limp back to some “normalcy” but the economy continued to plummet and terrorist attacks became endemic. Things in this respect began to somewhat improve from 2015 onwards. But an economic downturn, the recent spike in terror attacks and intense political polarisation, are once again threatening the country. Are we once again moving towards a year of living dangerously?
(Courtesy: The Dawn)
Writer: Nadeem Paracha
Courtesy: The Pioneer
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