The Easter Sunday self-inflicted tragedy was in military parlance a total command failure, which is likely to take Sri Lanka a decade back

Neither Sherlock Holmes nor Alfred Hitchcock would have been mystified by intelligence oversights that led to one of the world’s most dastardly terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka last month. Simply because it was a case of just connecting the dots — so detailed and specific were the tip-offs. According to a top secret intelligence memo of April 9 (there were two others before the fateful day dawned on Easter Sunday), the country’s intelligence chief had warned the Inspector General of Police that “Zahran Hashim of the National Tawheed Jamaat and his associates were planning to carry out suicide terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka shortly.” How this classified warning was not shared with President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is a riddle. Rarely has there been an intelligence goof-up of this magnitude in recent memory.

That such a catastrophic intelligence foul-up took place in Sri Lanka, which only a decade ago had destroyed the invincible Velupillai Prabhakaran-led Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), ending root and branch a 30-year-long deadly insurgency and becoming the first country to achieve such a feat in the 21st century, is intriguing. The Army, Navy and Air Force have held annual international seminars in Colombo to showcase their military successes, including the Army’s prowess in deep penetration intelligence acquisition skills. According to the then Defence Secretary and brother of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, now a presidential hopeful for the elections this year, the present Government dismantled the elaborate intelligence and surveillance network of 5,000 personnel he had set up in 2011 across the country, including the Muslim majority areas of the east.

Nine suicide bombers, including one woman, struck in coordinated attacks followed by two or three hara-kiri acts by family members and associates of the mastermind Hashim. It is now known that the suicide squad consisted of 15 members and the support group was 150 of whom 100 cadres have been arrested. Thirty-six Sri Lankans are reported to have gone to fight with the Islamic State in Syria and many had returned. The preparation for serial human bombing of this scale and sophistication would have taken months if not years. Sirisena has revealed that planning for the attacks started in Syria in 2017. How this massive diabolical plot escaped detection is a mystery. The Sri Lankan Army Commander, Lt Gen Mahesh Senanayake, in an interview to BBC, has said that the suicide bombers “got some sort of training” in Kashmir and Kerala. This should worry India. Given the severe communal polarisation exacerbated by the elections, major terrorist attacks are not unlikely in India in the near future.

In 2017, I retraced my times with the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) 30 years ago in the east, travelling through Muslim majority Ampara and Kalmunai areas near Batticaloa and saw an increased density of population, mosques and madrassas as also prosperity and development. The Muslims were targeted by the LTTE notably in their massacre in Sri Lanka’s biggest mosque in Kattankudy near Batticaloa in the 1990s. (Kattankudy is the hometown of Hashim, the mastermind of the attacks and its training ground). Later, the Sinhala Buddhist extremists Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), ostensibly supported by the Government, targetted Muslims periodically from 2013, culminating in the big anti-Muslin riots in Kandy last year, which led to the Government declaring an Emergency. The trigger for Muslim alienation and radicalisation is the BBS attacks and objections to hijab and halal. How the Government did not pick up these straws in the wind is an enigma.

Initially, the Government ascribed the horrific attacks to the Islamic State (IS)-inspired Sri Lankan Muslim National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) as retaliation for Christchurch till IS supremo Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi claimed responsibility as revenge for loss of Baghouz, the caliphate’s last bastion in Syria. Sri Lanka’s own counter-terrorism czar, the Singapore-based Rohan Gunaratna, confirmed that IS has created support groups around the world and NTJ has joined the IS.

The rift and infighting between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe is a folklore. The politics of the carnage is beguiling. Sirisena has squarely blamed the Prime Minister, the Defence Secretary and the Inspector General Police and said he was kept in the dark and that he would reconstitute security structures. On his part, Wickremesinghe said, “I did not know…still we have to take responsibility for that part of Government machinery that did not work.” Sirisena is not only the Defence Minister but has also kept the Law and Order Ministry with him, some say, unconstitutionally. This has kept Wickremesinghe quarantined from defence and security, including national security council meetings. That the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing is the black hole in the security system.

Former Army Commander General Sarath Fonseka was the key architect of victory of the LTTE but he fell out with the old regime’s top leaders, the Rajapaksas. The Sirisena Government appointed Fonseka a Field Marshal and a Minister. Speaking in the Emergency debate in Parliament after the bombings, Fonseka lambasted his own Government, including Srisena, Wickremesinghe and other defence and intelligence officials. Demands for making Fonseka Minister for law and order are increasing.

Sri Lanka is under Emergency rule with the Prevention of Terrorism Act in place but is likely to be replaced with the new counter-terrorism Bill. It is the first country to ban the face veil in South Asia. Both the curfew and ban on social media were lifted after a week. The preliminary report on the bombings has been completed, which Sirisena is keeping close to his chest. A new military command territorially, including parts of west and northwest provinces, including Colombo and Puttalam and strangely called Overall Operational Command, has been established and coastal security beefed up. India’s offer of sending its elite National Security Guards has been politely rejected. The joke in Colombo is about how NSG messed up in Mumbai in 2008 taking four days to complete the operation. Tongue-in-cheek Sri Lankan military veterans say what the IPKF started and did not complete, we finished.

Over-indulgent in its conquest of LTTE, Sri Lanka let its guard down. A dysfunctional cohabitation Government has been rent apart by catastrophic terrorist attacks, which are likely to take Sri Lanka a decade back. The Easter Sunday self-inflicted tragedy was in military parlance a total command failure. That neither the Prime Minister nor President has resigned is to borrow a famous war time Churchillian one liner: A riddle wrapped in a mystery surrounded by an enigma.

(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 local militant Islamist group involved in the attacks neither had the sophistication nor the ability to carry out such attacks. It was clearly steered more by the ISI than IS

Despite all the confusion, carnage and horror of the Sri Lankan suicide bomb attacks, that killed at least 359 people and left hundreds more injured, one thing that is abundantly clear is the utter futility of such attempts by religious bigots to change the world to their likeness. Of course, there is also a stark reality that Governments around the world are forced to confront and for which politicians pay a heavy price: That despite the strictest of controls imposed, little can actually be done to control the turn of such events. In the case of Sri Lanka, the security and intelligence establishment appeared to have become complacent if not comatose after it defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009.

Politicians try and make a living by trying to convince the citizens that they have the necessary expertise and required abilities if given a free hand to make their lives safe, secure and comfortable. Nothing can be further from the truth as at the end of the day, howsoever sophisticated and technology-dependent the data collection, analysis and dissemination process may be, they are all finally subject to the frailties and follies of human beings.

It has emerged that in the case of Sri Lanka, actionable intelligence provided by Indian agencies was not acted upon because of the on-going factional fight between President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. This apart, there’s also the perception that these agencies were keen on creating a rift between Sri Lanka and Pakistan over the issue. Also, there may well have been a sense of complacency, not least given the common perception that Indian agencies rarely get it right — the Pulwama tragedy being the latest one in a long line of such disasters.

Fortunately, the Sri Lankan Government did move rapidly after the attacks. Once it had overcome the initial shock, it was able to identify the perpetrators and put in place a series of measures that have till now prevented a repeat of such attacks from being executed. Also, except for a couple of minor incidents, they have been able to prevent reprisals against the Muslim community, the overwhelming majority of whose members are upright and loyal citizens, who were equally shocked and incensed by the senseless atrocities perpetrated in the name of their religion. This ensured that much of the subsequent intelligence that enabled the police and security forces to stop further attacks was provided from within the community.

Finally, one could not help but appreciate Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s prompt action to publicly apologise for the inability of his Government to forestall the tragedy. He further ensured accountability by sacking the defence secretary and police chief for inaction on their part and for deliberately withholding intelligence about possible terrorist attacks. Our political leadership will do well to learn from this. They must keep their egos under control and focus on accountability every time they come short instead of clinging on to their chairs as they all do.

Interestingly, while the Islamic State (IS) lost no time in claiming responsibility for the attacks, its ability to actually coordinate and execute such a sophisticated and complex attack, involving seven suicide bombers, seems quite doubtful. The fact that it is on the run obviously makes organising such an attack extremely challenging, though it may well have been able to radicalise the perpetrators online.

On the other hand, dismissing their involvement as out of hand would also be quite foolish, given that its ideology has attracted a large number of followers in recent years. We have already seen some pointers towards this in our neighbourhood as well as in Jammu & Kashmir. Moreover, we must also remember that a vast number of our population emigrates to the Middle East in search of jobs and it is not inconceivable that some among these workers may well have fallen prey to this radical ideology and returned to South Asia to carry forward the Islamic State’s war against non-believers. It will indeed be interesting to learn what interrogations of suspects — captured before they were able to act — brings out.

Then there is, of course, the alternative narrative that suggests the involvement of Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) along with Chinese intelligence to create an environment within the country that can enable former President Mahendra Rajapaksa to once again win the presidential hustings due in the near future. That he was rabidly anti-Indian in his past two tenures as President is not under doubt as also his wholehearted support for Pakistan and China.

This perception is supported by the belief that Indian agencies were able to provide such detailed actionable intelligence only because they had caught and interrogated some members of a module, connected to the perpetrators at Coimbatore.

It has been a long-standing belief within our security and intelligence community that after the withdrawal of the Indian Peace Keeping Force from Sri Lanka and the subsequent refusal of the Indian Government to supply the Sri Lankan armed forces with weapons, the Sri Lankan Government turned to Pakistan for assistance. It is at this time that Pakistan’s ISI established a foothold

in that island nation, which was used to radicalise, train, arm and employ Islamists for operations in South India.

Let us not forget that Sri Lankan Muslims have sided with Pakistan since the Partition. And have been united by the “big” presence of India in the neighbourhood to coalesce their mutual interests. Let us also not forget that during the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh, when India withdrew landing and overflight rights to Pakistan, Sri Lanka extended landing and refuelling facilities to Pakistan International Airlines. As the Pakistan Army launched operations against the Mukti Bahini, Pakistani military aircraft landed and took off from the Katunayake international airport. While Sri Lanka insisted these aircraft were civilian, there were reports that they actually carried armed troops. And as the Tamil separatists also kept the island Muslims at bay, Pakistan’s ISI got actively involved in the local government’s counter-offensive strategies.

In this particular case, while there is the possibility that these elements may well have acted independently, it could just as well have been a “false flag” operation to push the blame on cadres of the Islamic State, who in their present condition, would have been more than happy to accept responsibility for obvious reasons.

One way or the other, the National Thowheeth Jama’ath, the local militant Islamist group involved in the attacks, neither had the sophistication nor the ability to carry out such attacks and clearly unknown foreign organisations provided them with the necessary technical and logistic support.

Finally, in our context, there have been credible reports that Islamists have been successful in establishing a fairly strong presence in States such as West Bengal and Kerala, where they now seem to be becoming increasingly assertive. They have got away with this primarily because local Governments have been reluctant to act against them in the foolish hope that by doing so, they would gain the support of the Muslim community to consolidate power. This bodes ill for the country in the long run and requires the Union Government to undertake necessary measures, some of which may well make them unpopular, if we are to avoid a turbulent and extremely violent future.

(The writer, a military veteran, a consultant with the Observer Research Foundation and a Senior Visiting Fellow with The Peninsula Foundation, Chennai)

Writer: Deepak Sinha

Courtesy: The Pioneer

In the wake of the Easter blasts,the government has found overwhelming support from Lankan Muslims who back it’s crackdown methods against the Islamists. The success of the efforts still hinge on the narrative constructed by the Lankan Govt The Easter Sunday fidayeen attacks in Sri Lanka are unique for three reasons. First, the island nation — unlike its neighbours: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh — had not seen till then any terror act by proclaimed Islamist forces. Second, the perpetrator ISIS, despite being badly battered and ousted from the land of its Caliphate just a month before, has told the world loud and clear that it still has potential to surprise new territories with its lethal action.

Third, the curious selection of the island nation for the suicide blasts by ISIS, in connivance with Lankan-based National Thowheeth Jamaath, raises a pertinent question: Whether the erstwhile ethnic divide in Sri Lanka was reborn in religious radicalisation?

However as there has never been any systemic discrimination against Muslims in the Sri Lanka — an essential ingredient for the breeding of religious radicals — this question warrants special attention, also because experience shows that Islamist forces, particularly ISIS, have flourished only in those regions which are afflicted with pre-existing conflicts –  sectarian, ethnic, or religious.

Despite local and global Intelligence reports suggesting that National Thowheeth Jamaath and its south Indian cohorts have been in touch with ISIS for long, the choice of Sri Lanka for the revolting attacks is more to do with the peaceful island nation being a safe target for ISIS, which is desperate to stay in the reckoning for global Islamist terror leadership. ISIS, which wielded enormous control over huge area stretching from eastern Iraq to western Syria till March this year, is straining every nerve to peddle a global narrative that its loss of 88,000km territory doesn’t mean that ISIS has lost its Islamist appeal for global jehad. And here it needed a solid platform to announce the same.

Seen in this context, the reclusive ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made the first appearance in five years, before the global media in a video message to readily claim the responsibility for the Lankan terror attacks. He used the occasion to outline the crumbling outfit’s vision, calling for jehad via war of attrition, and insisting on its propaganda of robust presence in South-east Asia, including the Philippines.

Baghdadi also exhorted the “believers” for hijrah (migration) to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region for recruitment of jehadis. The ramifications can be found in Sri Lanka Army Commander Lieutenant General Mahesh Senanayake’s interview to the BBC in which he claimed that some of the “suicide bombers visited Kashmir and Kerala for some sorts of training or to make some more links with other foreign outfits”. Maybe this explains why Sri Lanka became the sure-shot target for homeless Baghdadi, who has lost his last redoubt in Syria.

Although Baghdadi claims caliphate is not bound by the geography, he is raring to gain lost ground in Iraq and Syria. ISIS already has a covert network in Iraq. Therefore, it is essential that the coalition forces should maintain its hold in the areas of ISIS caliphate till it destroys the outfit’s raison d’être.

As for Sri Lanka, the island nation needs to ensure ISIS doesn’t succeed in having local franchises there. Considering the sophistication of the highly coordinated attacks all by Lankan nationals, the bigger riddle for Colombo is to unravel whether any of its citizen ever fought for ISIS outside the country, and, more specifically, to ensure, if they did, they land in prison.

Although Sri Lankan Muslims have supported the Government’s crackdown methods against the Islamists in the wake of the Easter bombings, the success of the efforts hinges on the narrative the Government is able to construct. Any ostentatious action against religious-cultural symbol is fraught with the danger of spawning more radicals born out of the narrative of the State operation. Therefore, the burqa (face veil) ban may be a pragmatic decision — considering the facts that some of women accomplices of the suicide bombers had fled the scene in burqa — for the time being till the raids and investigation are over, the ban should be lifted as soon as possible before Islamist outfits can exploit the situation with newfound purpose and energy.

(The writer is Associate Editor & News Editor, The Pioneer)

Writer: Swarn Kumar Anand

Courtesy: The Pioneer

What is Zelensky going to do for Ukraine now that he has been swept into office with a landslide majority? Nobody actually knows and this may include Zelensky himself. But Ukrainian voters are no fools

Ukraine has a new President and he’s a comedian. Oh, wait a minute, that’s not such a big deal. Guatemala was the first country to elect a comedian as President: Jimmy Morales in 2015. Although Morales turned sort of serious once he took office: He’s a Right-wing nationalist, who supports death penalty and opposes abortion. Whereas Volodymyr Zelensky hasn’t turned.

Right through the presidential election campaign in Ukraine, Zelensky avoided speeches. Mostly, he just toured the country with a comedy troupe, performed in skits and did stand-up. And he’s not just a comedian, he’s a Jewish comedian — the very best kind. His style is south Ukrainian, sort of vaudeville, with a distinctive Jewish inflection and people love it.

Congratulations to Ukraine, by the way, for having Jews as both President and Prime Minister (Volodymyr Groysman) at the same time in the heart of traditionally anti-semitic Eastern Europe and not even making a fuss about it. But what is Zelensky going to do for Ukraine now that he has been swept into office with a landslide majority (73 per cent)? Nobody actually knows and this may include Zelensky himself.

When Zelensky did offer more than jokes, in the short videos he released from time to time during the campaign, it still wasn’t policies. More like mood music, really.

“He’s from a family of Jewish Soviet intellectuals from a Russian-speaking industrial region (in eastern Ukraine,” Vyacheslav Likhachev of the National Minorities’ Rights Monitoring Group in Kyiv told the Haaretz newspaper. “He has repeatedly made fun of over-the-top (Ukrainian) national patriotic discourse.”

“Zelensky might make some symbolic gestures toward nationalist sentiment to fend off accusations that he’ll sell us out to Russia,” Likhachev continued, “but that seems unlikely to me. He probably realises that it’ll be hard for him to win over the most nationalist-oriented part of society, so he’ll wash his hands of them so as not to alienate the majority.”

That will be a welcome change after five years of the pompous nationalist bilge of billionaire Petro Poroshenko, who won the presidency in 2014 after a popular revolt overthrew the pro-Russian stooge Viktor Yanukovych.

In a video Poroshenko released just before the sole presidential debate in Kiev’s huge Olympic Stadium last Friday, he tried to play the patriotic card: “There’s no room for jokes here. Being a President and supreme commander is not a game… it means being responsible for the people, for the country.” It would have sounded more persuasive if Poroshenko had done something about the corruption that has made oligarchs like him rich.

Zelensky’s response was lethal: “I’m not your opponent. I’m a verdict on you. I am the result of your mistakes.” And by a majority of almost three-to-one, Ukrainians voted to put their future in his hands. Although, to be frank, most of them doubt that he can really deliver the future of peace and prosperity that they hope for.

The only evidence they have of Zelensky’s industry, honesty and wisdom is the television series he writes and stars in, Servant of the People. It’s a heart-warming story of a humble high school history teacher, whose rant about the dreadful state of the country is secretly recorded by his students and goes viral when they upload it to You Tube. So he is elected President of Ukraine.

Zelensky is not a high school teacher; he is a show business millionaire with his own production company. He may be just as warm and sincere in person as Vasyl Petrovych Holoborodko, the former teacher and accidental President, whom he plays in Servant of the People. (It’s one of Ukraine’s most popular series and is now nearing 50 episodes). Or he may not be.

Journalists are now working their way through all the box sets of Servant of the People, trying to glean some clues about what the new President has in mind. But that’s a thankless task  because a lot of the show is sheer fantasy (like the sequence where the frustrated Holoborodko machine-guns the entire Parliament).

Ukrainian voters are not fools. They know they are buying a pig in an poke. But they calculate that things might change if Zelensky becomes President, whereas they certainly wouldn’t change if any of the usual suspects won the presidency. And things are certainly not good now.

Ukraine has become the poorest country in Europe — far poorer than Russia. Millions of Ukrainians have left the country seeking work in Poland or Russia and the low-intensity war against the Russian-backed separatists in the east drags on endlessly. No post-Soviet leader of Ukraine has made even a dent in the corrupt rule of the oligarchs. Indeed, most of them have been oligarchs themselves. So why not vote for Zelensky? Most Ukrainians feel that they have nothing left to lose.

(The writer’s new book is Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy and Work)

Writer: Gwynne Dyer

Courtesy: The Pioneer

A Kerala institution’s decision to prohibit women from wearing niqab is about right interpretation of texts

The decision by the Kerala-based Muslim Educational Society (MES), prohibiting female students from wearing veils in its institutions across the country, is not only about keeping to its reformist legacy but more about challenging the theological discourse set by powerful revisionist groups, who control mosques and madrasas. It is a brave attempt to uphold the true spirit of the holy texts and the Prophet amid a sea of interpretations by variant scholars, some of which have set the rigid template of Islam in our perception. It is about reinstating the position of women in Islam as it was intended and not circumscribing them by patriarchal interventions and culture constructs of the later years. At a time when Islamophobia has overpowered a true understanding of the religion, such voices are needed to dispel mistruths and begin where it is needed most, in education. The group runs 35 colleges, 72 schools and has around one lakh students, the future generation which MES president PA Fazal Ghafoor believes should be mainstreamed rather than feared, feel respected rather than reviled. In its circular, the MES even quoted a Kerala High Court order from December 2018, which dismissed a plea filed by two female students of Christ Nagar Senior Secondary School in Thiruvananthapuram, seeking to wear headscarves. The rationale being that the disadvantages of being marked out narrow down the advantages of maintaining parity. Although it would appear that the IS-operated blasts in Sri Lanka and the resultant swoop in South India may have set a precautionary context, Ghafoor has been consistent in his stand against veiling for far longer, saying it was un-Islamic and a cultural import. He had also said that wearing the niqab continuously can cause Vitamin D deficiency in Muslim women. Most importantly, such a move would actually uphold the identity of women as the misuse of the veil as a subterfuge has cost the community, the latest suicide bombers turning what should be a matter of choice to a matter of concern. Many purist scholars, too, maintain that the Quran does not specifically mention the burqa or tell women to wear confining clothes and cover their faces. Instead, it instructs men and women to dress and behave modestly in society and lower their gaze when interacting with each other. Much of the legitimacy of the burqa is drawn from the Hadith or traditions of life in the days of Prophet Muhammad and are, therefore, attributed to him. These have been conflated to embody the very idea of religiosity. However, he himself had always professed followers to go by the Quran. Besides, women in his times were progressive, were allowed to work unveiled and even today, they are not allowed to cover their faces during Haj, the idea being there should be no barrier between the devotee and her experience of divinity.

Of course, one must understand that in the backdrop of a growing Islamophobia, the veil has returned as an identity marker of the revivalist fervour of the times. This has resulted in the veil being politicised and tokenized as a tool for impact. Little wonder then that the extreme rightists at home raised the issue of banning the veil given its misuse by terrorists in Lanka. So long as it continues to be a power tool to perpetuate the politics of religion, the veil can only generate controversies and be used for point-scoring. Real victory is when women themselves are comfortable about choosing or shunning it.

Writer & Courtesy: The Pioneer

Putin wants to isolate Russia’s internet from the rest of the world, much like China. This is not a good thing

Vladimir Putin is the archetypal strongman; his “muscular” presence has allowed a Post-Soviet Russia to punch way above its weight in global geopolitics. Of course, it helps when you have tens of thousands of nuclear warheads at your disposal. Now, Putin wants to emulate the Chinese and create a purely Russian internet. According to a law signed by the President, November onwards, it will be possible for Russian authorities to cut off access to the wider world-wide web in certain situations and thus create a purely domestic internet. A simple reason for Putin to do so is to prevent the spread of information or misinformation on Western social media networks that can be used to destabilise a state. Twitter and Facebook, as well as other public social networks, have become ‘enemies of the state’ in several countries, particularly quasi-dictatorships. Russia has even acted against one of its homegrown networks ‘Telegram,’ an extremely secure instant messaging service favoured by terrorists across the world.

This action of Russia has sent shivers not just in other countries but also among activists. Can Putin’s actions give ideas to the next Indian government? However, Putin has realised and so should Indian politicians that services like Twitter and Facebook are extensions of the United States’ foreign policy. They can very easily manipulate information flows and how they serve up that information to transform electoral results. This is why defence analyst Abhijit Iyer-Mitra has filed a suit against these companies in the Delhi High Court, as their actions can manipulate (and are, according to some evidence) Indian elections. So should we also go down the same path and have a purely ‘Indian’ internet? No. The beauty of the internet is that it has democratised information flows as well as how people react and talk with each other. That has to stay. However, governments are right and must be concerned about how the internet has encouraged and enabled coercive activities. While the Supreme Court did enshrine the right to privacy, it does not allow anyone to work against the state. India should remain part of the world-wide web but protect its own interests. It should force foreign companies to not only store their data here but explain their actions when it comes to blocking users and their algorithms since these can be weaponised against Indians.

Writer: Pioneer

Courtesy: The Pioneer

Neither is the Ashraf Ghani regime in Kabul a Shia-centric dispensation, nor does India have a commonality of religious denomination. Yet both inspire more trust among Iranians

As a nation, Pakistan has had a historically unsettled and restive relationship with all three neighbouring countries that touch its land borders ie, India, Afghanistan and Iran. However, recently, Prime Minister Imran Khan took his national obsession with the “borders” of other countries to another level of imagination when he waxed eloquently to a befuddled audience in Iran, “Germany and Japan killed millions of their civilians until after the second World War when they both decided to have joint industries on their border regions!” Imran Khan’s political nemesis Bilawal Bhutto soon tweeted a stinging, “Our Prime Minister thinks that Germany and Japan share a border. How embarrassing, this is what happens when you @UniofOxford let people in just because they can play cricket”. Beyond the obvious embarrassment emanating from such “deliveries”, the former cricketer-turned-politician returned back to Islamabad from a lukewarm trip to Iran, which refused to offer any strategic succour or sound-bite that could thaw the Pakistan-Iran coldness, beyond diplomatic courtesies and officialese.

The backdrop to the recent visit by the Pakistani Prime Minister to its Western neighbour, Iran, came at a most unpropitious phase of acute mutual suspicions, with both nations having recently accused each other of having allowed “terrorists” to operate and attack the other country. Few weeks back, Pakistan had pointedly blamed Iranian-based “terror outfits” for a deadly bus jacking incident on the coastal highway, wherein the “terrorists” entered a bus and identified passengers on the basis of their IDs and then killed 10 of them who served with the Pakistani Navy, Air Force and the Coast Guard.

Earlier, Iran had unequivocally blamed Pakistan for harbouring Sunni jihadist group Jaish ul-Adl (Army of Justice), who had killed 27 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the Sistan-Baluchistan region of Iran. The undeniable undercurrents of sectarian rift have beset the Iran-Pakistan narrative, with Islamabad increasingly relying on the Saudi bloc, much to the chagrin of the Shia-centric sensibilities of the Iranian identity. The umbilical cord of Pakistan with the Saudis has got strengthened with the life-sustaining financial bailout afforded by the Saudis and the Emiratis — besides the appointment of former Pakistani Chief of Army Staff, General Raheel Sharif, as the head of 41-nation (Sunni ruled), Riyadh-based, Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition, that is at the forefront of battling Iran-supported Houthi rebels in Yemen. Pakistan’s own fractious societal divide that pits its vulnerable “minority” of Shia Muslims at the hands of the supremacist and extremist groups — for example, the recent terror attack on the Hazara Shias that killed over 20 — is a matter of perennial and irreconcilable distrust between Pakistan and Iran.

Recognising the sectarian angularity, Imran Khan went with a retinue of Shia Ministers, like the Minister for Human Rights, Dr Shireen Mazari and Minister for Maritime Affairs, Syed Ali Haider Zaidi. The Pakistani delegation’s port of disembarkation was not the capital Tehran but a symbolic first stopover at the historical town of Mashad, where Imran Khan paid obeisance at the holy shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth Shia Imam, before proceeding to Tehran. Post the symbolism, Imran Khan began his maiden visit with a laborious endeavour to explain the ostensible Pakistani commitment towards fighting “terrorism”, besides common pain-points of smuggling narcotics, human trafficking, hostage taking, money laundering and abduction.

However, both sides had extended agenda and pet peeves with Iran euphemistically alluding to the US as the “enemy” blocking regional peace; whereas Pakistan unwarrantedly dragged Jammu & Kashmir into the bilateral discussions in a desperate attempt to elicit some expression of interest or text, only to draw a studied silence. Iran, which has its own strategic convergence and understanding with Delhi on many fronts, including that on the Chabahar port, Afghanistan, oil exploration and supplies among others, did not take the Pakistani bait. Under pressure from the more experienced Iranians, Imran Khan made yet another amateurish move by confessing the obvious, “We have come to the conclusion, we will not allow any militant group to operate from Pakistan.” Expectedly, Imran Khan was roasted at home, with the Opposition parties referring to the same as an unpardonable admission of complicity and guilt, especially when the International Monetary Fund was linking the much-needed bailout package to the findings of Pakistani guilt via the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

It will take the Pakistani leadership more than charm offensives and half-meant confessions to overcome its deep-rooted perceptions in Delhi, Kabul or even Tehran. Rote and banal attempts by Islamabad to invoke the line of “brother Muslim country” have so far failed the Ashraf Ghani regime in Afghanistan and Iranians, who keep a hawk eye on the growing Saudi-Wahhabi influence and control of the Pakistani establishment. The delicately placed chessboard of institutional fiefdoms within the Pakistani state, entailing the trinity of military, politicos and clergy, cannot allow any major course-correction from the historical Pakistani intransigence as that would amount to deligitimising, any one or more, of these three institutions.

Beyond a point, Imran Khan is beholden domestically to the GHQ in Rawalpindi and to the elements of sectarian religiosity within the Pakistan narrative, as well as to the survival-linked beneficence of the Saudi-bloc that by default militates against the aspired behavioural changes sought by Iran. The proximity of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) elements to the Iranian-Pakistani border as also the common ground of Tehran and Beijing on the US do offer the opportunity for China to play a more substantial and strategic role in Iran to the benefit of Pakistan. However, as of now, such geopolitical evolutions are only in the realm of strategic possibilities; whereas the more tangible, visible and secure footprint of the Indian state abounds and resonates in Iran, currently.

Honesty of purpose has triumphed both religious and sectarian pandering in Iran as neither is the Ashraf Ghani regime in Kabul a Shia-centric dispensation, nor does India have a commonality of religious denomination. Yet both these nations inspire more trust with the Iranians as opposed to Pakistan or even the so-called ‘Naya Pakistan’.

(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry)

Writer: Bhopinder Singh

Courtesy: The Pioneer

As we gear up for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in 2020, young people must lead from the front to take on climate change challenges

Earth Day is celebrated on April 22 each year. But few people understand the conditions under which this major initiative was introduced in 1970 by a visionary leader, US Senator Gaylord Nelson. The Earth Day Network’s (EDN) website explains the conditions under which the first Earth Day was organised in 1970. It mentions the height of counter-culture in the United States (US), the resistance to the war in Vietnam, the very basic morality of that war and the role of the US in waging violent aggression on one of the poorest countries in the world, so remote from the aggressor nation. Concurrently, the state of the environment in the US was badly degraded with powerful automobiles using large quantities of leaded gas, several industries emitting large quantities of smoke and sludge and no legal remedies as a recourse or reporting by the media on these terrible and negative impacts. Air pollution was generally accepted as the other side of prosperity.

Yet, it was in 1962 that Rachel Carson published a powerful account of the state of the environment in that nation, the widespread use of pesticides and chemicals, which were harming not only the human society but all living species and in general, exposing the link between pollution and public health. On the very first Earth Day, 20 million Americans took to the streets and gathered in parks and auditoria to demonstrate against the shocking conditions under which the so-called progress was being achieved with massive damage and degradation to the environment and its effects on human life.

Significantly, there was bipartisan support for this massive show of concern and determination for action by the people of the US. According to EDN, people — both rich and poor — urban dwellers and farmers, industrial tycoons and labour leaders joined hands to express their concerns.  What was particularly important is that Senator Nelson asked a young person called Denis Hayes to organise this nationwide effort involving 20 million people taking part in a set of events, with which all Americans made common cause.

Today, the state of our planet and its fragile ecosystems are under progressive assault and since 1970, the ecological footprint of human activities has grown in gigantic proportions. One reason for this is the universal desire of people across the world to own, produce and consume goods and services, for which a benchmark and style has been set by the countries of North America. The unsustainability of this escalating uniformity of desires and aspirations hardly needs any explanation because the earth’s population today is moving towards eight billion people. The population in 1970 was around 3.7 billion and, therefore, demands on ecosystem services and the value that nature provides to life across all species has not only increased on account of this substantial increase in population but also led to a boost in income and wealth. The GDP of the world is at an unprecedented level of 87.37 trillion dollars. Despite this exponential increase, disparities in income and wealth have grown to an unhealthy degree. As per the Oxfam International report published in January 2019, the combined fortunes of the world’s 26 richest individuals reached $1.4 trillion last year, which represents the same amount as the total wealth of 3.8 billion poorest people.

Even more serious is the growing problem of climate change, which, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has shown, is the result of the cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. As Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen stated, this combination of effects on planet earth represents a period of the anthropocene; we are clearly within an era when human beings have become responsible for geological changes defined by earlier epochs.  Today, thoughtful voices of despair and determination are being heard all around by which human society will hopefully move us forward in limiting the risks from the impacts of climate change. This, therefore, becomes a relevant mission for celebrating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in 2020.

The current challenge facing human society is to bring about a disruptive shift in paradigm from the totally unsustainable path, which we have embarked on since industrialisation. A massive change with a sense of urgency is what would be required to reduce the risks of climate change, for which the youth of the world must take the lead.

On Earth Day 2016 in Mexico City, the POP (Protect Our Planet) Movement, a major programme of action focussing on the youth of the world, was launched.  Essentially, every young person has to work towards minimising his/her carbon footprint. This would involve the development of educational institutions, which meet the goals of sustainable development, mitigate the emissions of greenhouse gases and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Just imagine, if every educational institution across the globe becomes a centre for action to deal with climate change, this would not only transform the lives of those who pass through the portals of such institutions, but also influence the communities around them, including adults who come directly in contact with the students. In reality, the youth of the world have to make major shifts in their lifestyles and behaviour so that they are at the vanguard of change.

The 50th anniversary of Earth Day in 2020 needs a massive effort on the part of young people and others to celebrate Youth CAN (Youth for Climate Action Now). While we have less than a year left for this major set of activities, young people need to make plans, form partnerships and build up their efforts towards a global movement that would truly bring about a paradigm shift in the very concept of growth and development pursued by human society since the beginning of industrialisation. This would hopefully embarrass adults as well in changing their own lifestyles.

(The writer is former chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2002-15)

Writer: RK Pachauri

Courtesy: The Pioneer

Japan’s Emperor Akihito is abdicating his throne, the first one to do so in two centuries, in a major culture shift  

The Japanese monarchy is the oldest continuing hereditary royal line in the world. Some legends date it back to 600 BC and as the sun rose over Japan today, the 126th Emperor of the Chrysanthemum throne, Naruhito took over from his father Akihito. The 85-year-old emperor  decided to abdicate from his throne because after surgery for prostate cancer and a heart bypass, he felt he could not continue in his ceremonial role and made a rare heartfelt address to his nation in 2016 on this issue. The public sympathised with him as did the Japanese government, which passed a law, allowing him to abdicate. Naruhito will be just the third emperor of Japan after the end of World War II, where the Americans sensibly allowed the imperial family to continue so as to display a sense of continuity to the defeated Japanese. Although stripped of their “divinity” — some always said that following the Allied victory, it was American General Douglas MacArthur who was God in Japan — Emperor Hirohito continued in power. It was the stability that the royal family symbolised in Japan that played a role in that nation’s tremendous economic turnaround from the ashes of war. And while the imperial family in Japan is like most other monarchies in democratic nations, a notional one, it is deeply important and holds cultural significance. The Japanese people and media are respectful of their monarch and their families quite unlike in Great Britain.

But there are challenges ahead for the Japanese monarchy as well, not only the fact that people are living longer — Emperor Akihito is eight years younger than Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain, the world’s longest serving and oldest monarch by quite some distance — but it does not allow a female succession.  The royals have a male hereditary line, meaning that Naruhito’s daughter Princess Aiko cannot inherit the throne. It will eventually be her cousin Hisahito who will be eligible for the next generation through his father Fumihito. Japan might be a deeply patriarchal society but even there many realise that this is something that needs to change in the modern era. Holding on to traditions is one thing and may be vital for countries to be moored culturally. But those should also adapt gradually to the changed gender dynamics of the time. Considering that Akihito himself redefined the role, renouncing divinities, breaking norms and interacting with the common people, Japan’s lawmakers must consider the possibilities of an empress, going forward.

Writer: Pioneer

Courtesy: The Pioneer

With Pakistan being the sole loyalist of Belt and Road in  the sub-continent, President Xi Jinping engages in hyperbole

Before we go red with rage at China promising to be “iron friends” with Pakistan despite talks of building a separate bubble for India through more Wuhans, we must realise that China will always look out for itself. That it will always have a forked tongue. That we have a huge trade deficit and Chinese technology has a hold over our economy. So it comes as no surprise that when Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan met Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday for bilateral talks, the latter said Beijing considers Islamabad a priority in its diplomacy. Jinping even classified Pakistan as his “all-weather strategic cooperative partner,” one he was looking to deepen ties with. This came in the backdrop of a meeting of his pet Belt and Road Initiative, something that is stuttering across South and Southeast Asia because of the inherent debt traps built into the programme, in effect converting smaller states into China’s economic colonies. Pakistan is the only nation which has reported progress on that front with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and though it has issues with servicing the debt, these are minor creases, isolated as it is by the world for exporting terror. China, too, has no option but to stick to Pakistan, as it is diplomatically “friendless” for turning a blind eye to the terrorism the latter breeds, particularly after the Pulwama attacks and India winning the world’s support on it. Besides, it can no longer be sure of North Korea. So they can’t come unstuck so soon. All Jinping could do about sensitivities and anxieties in India was to ask both sub-continental neighbours to meet each other halfway without committing to any move on designating Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist. In its strategic quest, the Jinping era believes in direct, one-to-one dealings with each country and will not deal on a comparative scale and prize one over the other.

Back channellists, of course, continue to argue that privately, China did try to work out consultations with the US-led initiative on the language designating Azhar to a version more acceptable to itself. China was seemingly more willing this time around to work out a compromise within the UN 1267 sanctions committee. This despite its quid pro quo with Pakistan which means that it doesn’t look at Azhar to insure itself from IS spreading to its Muslim-majority provinces and attacks on the CPEC. However, when the US chose to pressure it with a new UN Security Council resolution on Azhar, it felt cornered. Besides, China’s own human rights record is under threat, given its severe crackdown on minorities in Uighur and Xinjiang provinces and confining them to detention centres. China has, of course, denied the accounts, saying it was running educational training centres as part of a fight against Islamic extremism. It is counting on Pakistan as the buffer against IS.   

Getting Chinese support to designate Azhar as a global terrorist at the UN, in any format, would be no mean achievement and particularly be a salve for an outraged India, which has been at the worst receiving end of the Jaish attacks. But how then can India and the US succeed on this count? Of course, there’s the Financial Action Task Force, which monitors terror funding and which put Pakistan on the grey list with China’s knowledge. This means there is an incisive scrutiny of its financial system. Pakistan has been given a list of 27 actions to be completed by October 2019, if it wants to avoid the blacklist. But it hasn’t even shown any intention of doing so and is risking a ban on grants from the World Bank and IMF.  By October, China will become the next president of the FATF as a result of a deal with India and the US, where China placed Pakistan in the grey list in return for endorsement by both US and India. Can these two countries now extract a return privilege? Perhaps that explains Jinping’s grand statements to please Pakistan momentarily. But China must realise that if it refrains from acting on Pakistan’s terror factory, India’s leadership would have a tough time justifying Wuhan to its people.

Writer & Courtesy: The Pioneer

Economic pressure must be exerted to stop the slaughter of seals in Canada, which is supported by the powers that be. As I write, what the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) describes as “the largest slaughter of marine mammals on the planet”, continues in Canada. It occurs in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and off the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador, and usually in spring, the breeding season for seals when pups are born and are nursed by their mothers.

The scale of the carnage can well be imagined from the fact that, as pointed out by the HSUS, “More than one million seals have been slaughtered in the past five years alone.” The actual number is likely to be higher as many of the seals, wounded after being shot from moving boats, are left to die slowly and painfully. This happens principally because the main seal-skin processing firm in Canada deducts $2 for every bullet hole found. Hence, seal-killers are reluctant to shoot more than once, leaving the wounded in agony.

The main victims are Harp seals though hooded seals are also targeted. The HSUS further points out that 97 per cent of the Harp seals are pups below three months of age. This is because their fur is softer and more in demand. As can be imagined, the mass murder is primarily for fur, which is used for coats and other fashion garments. Seal oil and body parts are also sold in Asia, the latter as aphrodisiac.

The mass slaughter is perpetrated in the cruellest manner possible. Besides guns, the weapons used are wooden clubs, hakapiks (large clubs looking like ice axes), and harpoons. In an article in the Observer dated April 18, 2017, Michael Sainato quotes Rebecca Aldworth, executive director of Humane Society International/Canada, as saying, “For 18 years, I’ve observed the Atlantic Canadian seal slaughter at close range and witnessed a level of suffering most adult people can’t bear to watch on video. Almost all of the seals killed are pups just a few weeks old, and they are treated brutally,” She adds, “Baby seals are routinely shot and wounded and left crawling through their own blood over the ice, crying out in agony. Many conscious, wounded baby seals are impaled on metal hooks and dragged onto the bloody decks of the boats where they are clubbed to death. Wounded seal pups also escape into water where they die slowly and painfully.”

It is not that the Canadian Government is unaware of the stomach-turning savagery involved in the mass killing. Organisations like the HSUS, Humane Society International, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, In Defense of Animals and many others devoted to animal protection, rights and care have been for years strongly protesting against the utterly savage exercise. Public opinion the world over is increasingly assertive against it. Jane Dalton wrote in The Independent of Britain dated March 27, 2019, that in 2009, the demand for seal fur plummeted after the European Union banned imports, following uproar over clubbing. According to Jani Actman in an article published in the National Geographic on April 5, 2017, campaigns against the killings have led to more than 35 countries, including Russia and the European Union, to ban seal imports while allowing imports of products from Canadian Inuit, the country’s original population, who have their separate hunt, different from the massacres for commerce.

All this and the protests have hurt the seal products industry. In his piece, Actman cites Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans as stating that sales had declined from $34 million in 2006 to only $1.6 million in 2016 (his articles, published in 2017, speaks of “last year”). Canada’s Government, however, continues to support the annual massacre, as does Norway’s, which provides significant financial support to a company which buys up close to 80 per cent of the seal skins produced, tans and re-exports them. Both Governments challenged the European Union’s ban but the WTO upheld it in 2013 on the ground that it was in keeping with canons of public morality.

Notwithstanding the uproar, the Canadian Government not only sanctions the massacre every year but subsidies it. The HSUS cites reports from the Canadian Institute for Business and the Environment, as stating that more than $20 million in subsidies were provided to the sealing industry between 1995 and 2001. These were for a variety of purposes, including the funding of salaries for seal processing plant workers, market research and development trips and capital acquisitions for processing plants. In 2004, the Canadian Government provided more than $400,000 to companies for the development of seal products. Not only that, as Jani Actman points out in his piece published in the National Geographic on April 5, 2017, that “Documents released under freedom of access laws in Canada revealed that the Canadian Government was spending five times the amount of money — $2.5 million — to monitor seal hunts than the income generated by the hunts themselves — $500,000.”

Two arguments are generally advanced to defend the massacres. The first is that the seals consume so much cod that there is a decline in their numbers, which is inimical to Canada’s fishing industry. This is patently untrue. Cods account only for  a very small part of seals’ diet. Harp seals, the HSUS points out, consume only three per cent of cod fished commercially. Not just that, Harp seals eat up many predators of cod like squids. If stocks of the cod have fallen, the cause is overfishing.

The other argument is that the slaughter represents a “cultural tradition” and generates economic activity. Both hold little water. As to the first, a cultural activity that involves massacres, it hardly deserves to be nursed. As to the second, as the HSUS points out, an average fisherman on Canada’s east coast, who hunts seals as an off-season activity, derives only one-twentieth of his income from it. The rest comes from commercial fishing. Even in Newfoundland, where most sealers live, income from the hunt accounts for less than one per cent of the province’s economy and less than two per cent of the landed value of the fishery.

The harsh fact is that the annual slaughter continues because those in power in Canada support it. It can only end if sufficient external pressure is applied. Animal lovers the world over must urge their Governments to join the process and hold all economic and cultural ties with Canada in abeyance till the horrible slaughter ends.

(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)

Writer: Hiranmay Karlekar
Courtesy: The Pioneer