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

It’s time to identify the right sources as attacks on faith shrines are increasing in South Asia, with the Sri Lanka episode being the largest in the history of South Asia. The terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka are a reminder of how militant groups are now sparking up new hotspots where they had no influence before. And they are doing them on a visually soul less  scale, like attacking faith shrines, to attract global shock and awe besides working up least expected touch points in the Philippines, Indonesia, New Zealand, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. That also explains why the Islamic State (IS) chose the relatively calmer Sri Lanka to imprint its signature despite having an operative base in neighbouring Maldives. Besides, most of South and Southeast Asia are multi-cultural and eclectic societies, which may not host the idea of a monolithic socio-religious identity but where divisions can be fomented by playing on latent communal fears and insecurities. The mosque attacks in Christchurch or the church blasts in Sri Lanka are the manifestations of a global trend of an increasing pattern of hitting at faith shrines in South Asia, a sort of theatre for the new-age crusades, according to the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database. The study shows that the region alone accounts for about 24 per cent of all terror strikes on places of worship worldwide between 2000 and 2017. Of the total 1,909 terror attacks on religious institutions globally, 458 incidents have been recorded in the South Asian region, which comprises Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. After Pakistan and Afghanistan, India is reportedly the third-most affected country in the region with 63 terror attacks on religious shrines.

Clearly the IS, which is increasingly under fire in its old strongholds and almost floundering in both Iraq and Syria, has some funding and the digital infrastructural network to rebuild its relevance. So it is spreading to virgin areas, setting off new counter-polarities easily and keeping its need for a global jihad alive. As usual, operatives are using online propaganda to radicalise disaffected youth in Europe, recruiting from waning organisations like the Taliban in Afghanistan and Boko Haram in Nigeria and looking for places that have a security vacuum. Sri Lanka fits the bill perfectly on this count because post the decimation of the Tamil militants, the island nation has by and large been peaceful, developed itself as a booming tourist economy  and risen on the world map of top beach hotspots. The casualties would be high in such a porous set-up. The surprise element was such that till two days after the blasts happened, nobody had talked about simmering tensions between Sinhala Buddhists and Muslims, which were inherent but never explosive enough. You could say they were contained flash points that militant organisations are now linking to stage a new global conflict. If we look at Southeast Asia, then Thailand and the Philippines have had long-standing conflicts along territorial and religious lines. In Indonesia, the Aceh province and Papua island have been in conflict with Jakarta while Bali continues to hold off fundamentalism. Myanmar is riven by issues of ethnicity, territory and religion as the purging of Rohingya Muslims, which sparked an unprecedented humanitarian crisis and further deepened divisions, has shown. Sadly, these attacks have also set up polarised contexts that have further fuelled hate speech and increasingly led to an assertion of identity through new faith shrines. As hate speeches encourage the intolerance of otherness, becoming the new normal, and the attendant fake news factory rapidly unleashes a communication war, the terrorists get a swell of divided sentiments to play upon. As for the States, they are left with little option but to crack down, somewhat at the cost of existing religious freedoms. But curbing terror is just one facet, there is a new face of terror emerging in 2019, one that is not confined to the Middle East but to the former Soviet republics. In 2017, at least 8,500 fighters from former Soviet republics had flocked to Syria and Iraq to join the IS and are now being deployed, given their ease with some European languages, to newer areas. In short, the only way to kill rapidly mutating terror is to be prepared for the unexpected. Till governments form an alliance to think two steps ahead, terror will continue to be the worst scourge of human history.

Writer & Courtesy: The Pioneer

The refusal by India to be part of BRI will not derail bilateral relations. China needs India’s market. In China’s Foreign Ministry offices in Beijing’s Chaoyang District, there are many departments, including a few that deal with Chinese history, looking at historical treaties that predecessor states of the People’s Republic of China signed, whether it was the Qing dynasty or in Tibet. From historical border treaties and surrendering of land to demands for restitution from nations like Japan that colonised it, everything China does today has some sort of historical context. Few other foreign affairs ministries in any other nation have similarly dedicated units. And after China successfully enforced the treaty that the Qing dynasty had with the British over Hong Kong, they have become even more aggressive on this front under President Xi Jinping. The modern People’s Republic of China wants to return being the Middle Kingdom, a land between heaven and earth which has dominion over the rest of the planet. And while the ancient Middle Kingdom was built by conquest, the new one will be built on replicating history and by spending money. Thus the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a massive series of infrastructure projects, including building ports, high-speed railways and airports across the world, is funded by China and built by the Chinese. Huge, expensive projects such as Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka and the Lahore Metro have led to massive public debts in both nations. The BRI may not state this explicitly, but the subtext is one of Chinese economic conquest of nations and their resources aided by corrupt politicians.

But China has always had one painful neighbour, one from whom it has been separated by a massive Himalayan barrier. A neighbour with whom it has had cultural exchanges — after all Buddhism and martial arts were gifts from it — but geography has always meant that population exchanges and war, other than in modern times, have been limited. This has meant that there has always been an underlying distrust of each other in Beijing and New Delhi. But is the Indian government’s disapproval of the BRI just one of a jealous neighbour? That’s untrue. India knows that it has lost out to China economically over the past decade and it sees China’s BRI for what it is, an unbridled attempt at colonisation by economic means. Yet, India realises it has to live with China considering its investments here are extensive and we have become a major market for Chinese products. Our eastern neighbour’s interests are best served by a economically rising India in the medium-term because it will be forced to buy more Chinese products. Hence all talk of another Wuhan and sharing bilateral concerns. Yet, India’s next government should continue to be wary of China, which like a dragon has a forked tongue. It wants to keep India militarily weak and will continue to fund global terrorism through Pakistan. While the new Indian government should engage with China from a new perspective, it should remember that the latter considers everybody below it, including people beyond the mountains.

Writer: Pioneer

Courtesy: The Pioneer

The recent fire outbreak at the Notre Dame broke millions of hearts around the world, but assurances of it being rebuilt are having a calming effect

Paris is the most visited city in France, the most popular destination for tourists across the world. So while the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe are the most popular icons of this city, there is also the Notre Dame Cathedral on a small island on the Seine river, which is an example of the Gothic architecture of the medieval ages and a sign of how the Frankish people started to assert their identity as French. It is visited by millions annually, the famous stained glass and gargoyles on the structure becoming iconic in their own right. It has been at the centre of French life for centuries, having played a role during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. The great general was coronated there. Few Western capitals with the exception of London are so closely identified with their religious centres.

Even though religion and religious adherence are on the downside across France let alone its wild Capital, home to shows like Moulin Rouge which are hardly something the Catholic Church would approve of, the sight of the church’s spire collapsing in an inferno must have been deeply disheartening. It is a miracle that the main stone structure of the Cathedral itself managed to be saved. And President Macron, who held an extraordinary national address dressed in black, assured that the Cathedral would be rebuilt. The religious allegory was not lost on many with the fire occurring days before Good Friday, the day the Christians believe that Christ was crucified. And with several French billionaires and entrepreneurs putting their hands up and opening their wallets, donating millions to the rebuilding of the structure, it is heartening to see that the French are willing to rebuild what was lost. And many of the millions of global citizens who have visited Paris over the years are also contributing small sums towards the rebuild. Several crowd-funding initiatives have been started.

This fire should also come as a warning sign in a country like India where several monuments of archaeological note are in an awful state of disrepair and may not survive a fire like the one Notre Dame suffered. A fire at the Meenakshi Temple last year was almost fatal for the heritage site. India’s cultural heritage is also part of the world’s cultural heritage and this fire should be a wake-up sign. The French firefighters followed a proper procedure in saving the Cathedral. One wonders if such procedures exist at the Taj or other monuments, many of which are surrounded by small illegal shops and narrow streets where fire engines cannot pass. We should make contingency plans straightaway lest our heritage burn away.

Writer: Pioneer

Courtesy: The Pioneer

Numerous global and national leaders today appear to be victims of self-pride and gratification, when they are expected to be humble and modest personalities

Many knowledge organisations and institutions in this country prefer to work entirely on their own and seldom join hands across problem areas or sectors, which might provide far more integrated assessments and solutions for the growing challenges we face. While the interlinked nature of human activities — and their globalisation — is becoming increasingly more complex, it appears that efforts to work along narrow subjects and along established silos seem more deeply entrenched on the Indian scene. This is a major deviation from collaborative trends in several parts of the world, particularly in the developed countries, even though there are disturbing trends to the contrary in those nations as well.

A significant example of partnerships and outcomes thus produced lies in an interesting series of publication entitled, The Conversation. The subtitle for this series describes it as “Academic rigour, journalistic flair.” Indeed, while the analysis presented reflects substantial academic rigour, the style in which it is written is purely that of a conversation, which makes it possible for journalists and the average public to grasp the depth of what is conveyed. When Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister of India, this writer sent him a detailed note on the need to bring together a group of knowledge organisations, which were working on strategic issues. Rajiv Gandhi’s response was swift and positive and the Cabinet Secretary was instructed to convene a meeting of half a dozen knowledge organisations, including The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) and others. The Government agreed in principle to provide regular support for cooperative and interactive work between these organisations. Unfortunately, like several other initiatives, this one also suffered from the plunging decline in political standing of the Government and its inability to undertake fresh initiatives.

The Conversation has a number of sponsors and partners, including the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) of Australia, the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University and several others. The CSIRO was patterned along the lines of India’s own Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), but it has gone far beyond the capabilities of the latter with a strong market orientation and ability to generate financial resources and fostering innovation in various fields.

In general, if we were to analyse the lack of effort on the part of leaders in India to reach out and collaborate on issues of contemporary importance, we may be able to identify a certain level of hubris and extreme ego on the part of those responsible for such organisations.

Interestingly, a recent issue of The Conversation discussed hubris and described it as: “Hubris is a dangerous cocktail of over-confidence, over-ambition, arrogance and pride fuelled by power and success. When found alongside contempt for the advice and criticism of others, it causes leaders to significantly overreach themselves, taking risky and reckless decisions with harmful, sometimes catastrophic consequences for themselves, their organisations, institutions and even for society.”

The view seems to be that a number of leaders, both at the global and the national levels, today appear to be victims of hubris. An example can be provided of former US President George W Bush, who overreached himself in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Similarly, the former and final CEO of Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld, who, in his overreach, was responsible for the financial crisis bringing down the Lehman Brothers with him.  Former British Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum on EU membership such that he may be able to stop his party’s Eurosceptics on that issue is another example of hubris. Supposedly, Cameron made a decision against the advice of more reasonable colleagues such as George Osborne.

Another issue of The Conversation discussed the area of bipartisanship wherein even a proud Democrat like Lyndon Johnson worked closely with General Eisenhower when the latter was President of the US. Similarly, Democrats also worked with President Ronald Reagan in a similar spirit, which showed the absence of hubris so prevalent among leaders of today. A leader who is down to earth is supposed to identify himself with the interests of the people he leads. Eisenhower even went to the extent of defying the demands of his own party. It is reported that he refused to cut taxes on those upper income groups that had traditionally supported and heavily influenced his own party. Instead, he worked to cut spending and balance the budget — a goal he achieved three times during his two terms. He supported additions to social security and went to the extent of a federally funded national highway system, which was supported by the Democrats as part of a publicly-funded infrastructure programme.

The question is whether these leaders are seen by their followers as larger than life and measuring up to the dimensions of a superman, to be idealised and admired by them. It is hoped that distinguished leaders in the future would show a certain level of humility and shed the hubris that they appear to have acquired in recent years.

It is relevant to recall that the brightest scientist in history Albert Einstein is reported to have said. “I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.”

Could it, therefore, be that those leaders with hubris lack an intellectual understanding of their own being and most certainly that of nature, which takes the form of remoteness from reality and basic humility? We urgently need leaders in this mould before those with hubris can impose untold harm on society and distort the finest attributes of human nature. But in recent times, leaders with hubris have strutted the stage in the US, the UK, the Philippines, Indonesia and many other countries. Will they be succeeded by more humble and modest personalities?

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

Writer: RK Pachauri

Courtesy: The Pioneer

With Indonesians gearing up to vote for the country’s next President and Vice President, the world looks up to them to elect a capable and strong leadership

As India, the largest democracy of the world,  is poised to elect its new government, one of its oldest allies in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, will elect its new President this month. The world’s largest archipelagic country is the third largest democracy after India and the US. Indonesia is heading towards a stronger democratic set-up after 15 years of stable Government — the first led by former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, popularly known as SBY, and then Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi.

This writer has just come back after a week-long trip to Java island where a majority of the population concentrates. During the previous trip in October last year, there wasn’t much to talk about the presidential elections but now, after five months, one can notice a paradigm shift in the way Indonesians are thinking about the elections. A country that reeled under 31 years of dictatorship of Soeharto, the second President of Indonesia, is now fast becoming more decisive in choosing its eighth President.

In 1998, the country transited from 31 years of long dictatorship of Soeharto when he was ousted from office. The 15-year rule of SBY and the current Government helped the country become a stable economic power amid rampant corruption  among Government officials. It also witnessed a few incidents like terrorist attacks in three Churches in Surabaya in May 2018 and the imprisonment of a dynamic and pro-development leader belonging to the minority community, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, in 2016 in the name of blasphemy and inciting violence alleged by Muslim hardliners during Jokowi’s tenure.

As Indonesia grappled with an economic crisis, coupled with ethnic and sectarian clashes in 1998, the country saw three consecutive short-term Presidents — BJ Habibie, Abdurrhaman Wahid and Megawati Soekarnoputri, who was defeated by SBY in 2004. SBY ruled for two consecutive terms till 2014 when an ordinary man, Joko Widodo, who had no elite political or military background, was elected as President.

Jokowi, a member of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), was the Mayor of Surakarta — a small city in central Java —  from 2005-2012. He became very popular among the mass due to his hard work and fast-track problem-solving skills, which made him the best choice to become the Governor of Jakarta in late 2012. He remained in the limelight due to his policies, mostly driven by infrastructure development and focussed on the marginalised section of the society. The PDI-P, led by Sukarnoputri Megawati, backed his candidature for the President in 2014, which he won but not comfortably with just over 53 per cent of the votes against former military general Prabowo Subianto. This time again, Jokowi is running for re-election scheduled on April 17 with a handful of success stories. His counterpart, Prabowo Subianto, is a very strong candidate who has been successful in garnering support from a few conservative Muslim groups by accusing Jokowi of being pro-Chinese, who opened the red-carpet for Chinese investors in the country.

Focussing on infrastructural development, speeding up the most-awaited project of metro train in Jakarta, Jokowi sped up the work on inter-city connectivity in the country, having more than 17,000 islands. Located on the ring of fire, the country faced numerous natural disasters during his tenure. However, he made sure that maximum transparency be maintained in the rehabilitation programmes.

Jokowi placed his first priority on protecting Indonesia’s sovereignty by taking many steps to strengthen maritime boundaries by stopping and  sinking foreign vessels engaged in illegal fishing and harvesting sea-weed despite high criticism from neighbouring countries. He struck hard on drug mafia and traffickers by approving capital punishment despite intense pressure from his ally countries like Australia, France and human rights groups across the world.

His counterpart and the present Opposition leader, Prabowo, is running again with a changed strategy and has projected himself as being accommodative of Islam’s cause and is sceptical towards ethnic Chinese by touching a soft chord of the majority of conservative and poor Muslims, who think their economic development is directly impeded by the ethnic Chinese in the country. Subianto, with his running mate Sandiaga Uno, a renowned entrepreneur running for Vice President, has been critical of Jokowi’s pro-Chinese policy that places the duo in a bit stronger position.

During my interaction with some local people in different regions in Java, I found that a majority of them view Prabowo as belonging to the clan of Soeharto, whose 31 years of rule witnessed rampant corruption which became a culture popularly known as “envelop culture.” Corruption still plagues Indonesia. The country languishes in the 89th place of 180 countries in the global rankings of corruption, according to Transparency International. Subianto launched the Great Indonesia Movement Party in 2009 and has a mixed background of being a retired army general and a businessman. He rose to a very high position in the Indonesian Army as a Lieutenant General and was in the news for his swift rise in military positions,  being a son-in-law of former President Soeharto.

Comparing both the presidential candidates, Setia Budi, a moderate Muslim middle-aged cab driver, said, “Prabowo is from a military background and he may turn to be a dictator like his father-in-law, Soeharto. He is full of attitude and is very rich. On the other hand, Jokowi, belonging to the lower middle class like us, leads a very simple life. He is very polite and keeps fast for the whole month during Ramadan but never shows it off. He does what he talks. Therefore, Budi is going to vote for Jokowi.”

Prabowo became infamous internationally for his covert operations in East Timor in 1996 in order to suppress the rebellions, which led to human right abuses in the country. In 1998, he was promoted as the head of the 27,000-strong Army Strategic Reserve Command (Kostrad), which is a key Jakarta garrison meant to supervise operational readiness among all the commands and carries out defence and security operations as per the policies of the Indonesian Army commander. Having served in the Army at a very high position, Prabowo, a successful businessman now, has emerged as a shrewd politician and has brought smaller political parties to his side. This time, posing as a pious Muslim, he has assured the safety of ulemas, restored respect and fight to free them from criminal threats against Jokowi’s decision to dismiss an ultra-radical group, Hizbut Tahrir, which aimed to establish an Islamic caliphate in Indonesia.  Apart from giving moral support to the religious leaders, he has also promised to help improve the conditions of religious schools in the country.

The country’s political system is based on constitutional democracy. The legislature is made up of two bodies and has a total of 692 MPs. There are the 560-member House of Representatives (DPR) and the 132-member Regional Representatives’ Assembly (DPD) with four representatives from each of the 33 provinces of Indonesia. The Indonesian system of selection of legislators is complex unlike the Indian parliamentary system. In Indonesia, someone can be a member of DPR even though he/she has got less votes than his/her opponent. For the DPR, each Province has been divided into 1-10 constituencies or electoral districts, which finally has 3-10 seats, depending on its size and population. To make his candidature stronger, Jokowi has chosen a popular Muslim scholar Ma’ruf Amin as his running mate for the Vice President in order to connect with the larger section of the conservative Muslims.

Indonesia, a country rich in human and natural resource, has been faced with unemployment problems, too. The costly education system prevents many aspirants to go for higher education, leaving many young students — aged between 14 and 17 years — to seek low-paid jobs, mostly in the booming hotel and service industries. Indonesia has become the world’s seventh largest economy due to its purchasing power capacity. According to the World Bank, the country needs massive investment to develop its massive infrastructural projects, create employment opportunities and streamline its economy.

Islamic fundamentalist groups are trying hard to pronounce their presence in a rather syncretic social system that has been influenced by its long history of the presence of Hinduism and Buddhist empires by opening up more madrasas, making it compulsory for Muslim women to wear headscarves in the rural and semi-urban areas. However, already exposed to Western culture during a long rule of Suharto, the majority of the populace doesn’t seem to be tamed easily by the call of conservative Muslim groups. As the world looks up to Indonesia to throw a viable and strong leadership and have a say in the international issue like the ever-brewing South China Sea dispute, its mature electorate is gearing up to show the power of democracy.

(The writer is a Southeast Asian analyst at the Jawaharlal Nehru University)

Writer: Gautam jha

Courtesy: The Pioneer

General Khalifa Haftar, an old foe of Gaddafi, is gearing up to make his bid for power in the country, as Libyans have to choose between the 76-year-old dictator and continuing chaos, poverty and intermittent violence

With Khalifa Haftar’s forces stalled outside the capital, Tripoli, the eight-year omnishambles in Libya is approaching a climax. It’s not clear yet which side is going to win but at least the dozens of rival militias in the country are now lined up in two recognisable sides. Haftar does have the gift of bringing clarity to a situation.

Alas, he achieves this mainly by making so many Libyans hate him. To them, he is Gaddafi 2.0, a would-be military dictator, who aspires to be a Libyan counterpart to Egypt’s General al-Sisi (and is generously backed by the Egyptian dictator). That’s not what they fought the 2011 revolution for.

Of course, the militia didn’t really do the heavy lifting in that revolution. They were colourful extras fighting little local battles, but the real execution was done by French, British and Canadian aircraft operating under NATO command that bombed Gaddafi’s troops almost to extinction in a six-month campaign in 2011.

The militias’ main role was to put a Libyan face on the whole operation but when NATO walked away after Gaddafi was killed, they were left in charge. They split repeatedly as their quarrels over local extortion rights became acute but they are united in resisting the re-establishment of Central control by a national Government. It is not in their interest.

There is, however, a basic division between eastern Libya (Cyrenaica) and western Libya (Tripolitania) that underlies the manifold rivalries of tribes and clans in both parts of the country. It’s a division that goes all the way back to Roman times, when the east spoke Greek (the language of the eastern part of the empire) and the west spoke Latin.

It persists today, even though everybody now speaks Arabic. The two parts of Libya live largely separate lives, divided by the central strip of coast where the desert reaches the sea — and the west has two-thirds of the country’s six million people.

Haftar controls Cyrenaica and the vast and largely unpopulated desert south of Libya (where most of the oil is) but the west has the advantage of numbers and a profound dislike of being ruled by the east. That’s why the western militias are coming together now, and why his offensive against Tripoli is at least temporarily stalled.

As for the rights and wrongs of the situation, there’s plenty of blame on both sides. Haftar ostensibly represents the Parliament elected in 2014, which fled to the east later that year when Islamist militias seized control of Tripoli. It now sits in Tobruk in the east and is entirely under Haftar’s thumb.

This is Haftar’s only plausible claim to legitimacy. Once a colleague of Gaddafi’s, he fled the country, ended up in exile in the United States for 15 years and is an American citizen but returned to Libya in 2014 and gradually united the militias of the east under his command as the ‘Libyan National Army’ (LNA).

He cleared the Islamist extremists out of Benghazi, the big city in Cyrenaica, in a bloody two-year war and then set out to take the rest of the country. His troops reached the outskirts of Tripoli early this month.

The ‘internationally recognised’, United Nations-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) inside the city is equally unconvincing as a national saviour. It was not elected, but cobbled together by UN mediators in 2015. Its leader, ‘Prime Minister’ Fayez al-Sarraj, didn’t even arrive in Tripoli from abroad until 2016 and he has struggled to establish his authority over the city, let alone over the militias or the entire country.

So now Haftar is making his big bid for power and Serraj is practically irrelevant. The various militias of Tripolitania that are coming together to resist him undoubtedly outnumber him but they have no joint command structure and Serraj cannot provide one.

The ‘smart money’, says Haftar, is bound to lose but that remains to be seen. He has both Egyptian and Russian support (although it’s unlikely that either of them authorised this adventure). And ordinary Libyans face a choice between a new 75-year-old dictator and continuing chaos, poverty and intermittent low-level violence as the militias squabble over the spoils. Not that they will actually be asked about the choice, of course.

How much does this matter to other Arab countries? Not a lot. How much does it matter to the rest of the world? Not at all. As Janis Joplin once remarked in a radically different context, freedom’s just another word for “nothing left to lose.”

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

Writer: Gwynne Dyer

Courtesy: The Pioneer

While much is being said about Imran Khan’s ‘Naya Pakistan’, protecting minorities requires a robust constitutional cover that does not diminish, indignify or decry any faith

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was too clever by half in suggesting that his supposedly ‘Naya Pakistan’ could teach India “how to treat its minorities.” The genealogical basis for Pakistan (literally “land of the pure”) was conceptualised in the 1933 pamphlet presented by Choudhary Rahmat Ali,  who sowed his “two-nation theory” by institutionalising the spirit of “others” or minorities by observing: “These differences are not confined to broad, basic principles. Far from it, they extend to the minutest details of our lives. We do not inter-dine; we do not intermarry. Our national customs and calendars, even our diet and dress are different.” Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s speech on August 11, 1947 to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, however, had sent a contradictory sense with,  “You are free. You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan.” But our neighbour has knowingly, steadily and violently walked towards its puritanical moorings. No amount of sophistry in ‘Naya Pakistan’ can cover the same. The drift towards religious extremism was a project-in-making that was temporarily contained during the direct military years of the Ayub-Yahya era and revived in full earnest with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s advent in Pakistani leadership. Thereafter, all leaders of Pakistan, be it military or civilian, have pandered dangerously to the clergy and the accompanying religious sentiments, thereby spiralling the narrative of religious importance to metamorphose into the “terror nursery” of the world.

Today, the concept of minority or the “other” in Pakistan is not just its shrinking minorities of Hindus, Christians, Zoroastrians and even Jews, but also includes the severely persecuted Ahmadiyas, who are condemned from preaching or professing their belief, besides being declared as “non-Muslims”, following Ordinance XX that was passed by the ultra-religious General Zia-ul-Haq in 1984. For all practical purposes, the simmering sectarian tensions of the Sunni-Shia divide have regressed into unprecedented levels of polarisation and violence with supremacist militia targetting the “minority” Shias and their offshoot adherents with either utter impunity or even indirect state-support. A far cry from the days when General Muhammad Musa Khan, a Hazara Shia, was the Pakistani Army Chief during 1958-1966. Contrast this with the uproar of the ostensible Ahmadiya/Qadiani link that surrounded the appointment of the current Pakistani Army Chief Qamar Bajwa, which expectedly had to be rebutted and squashed.

Recently, the ongoing and bloody saga of societal irreconcilability within Pakistan’s imploding mainstream claimed at least 20 innocent lives in a terror attack that was seen to be targetting the “minority” Hazara Shia community in restive Quetta. These veritable “minority” groups of nearly a million in Pakistan and three million in Afghanistan were also systematically targetted by the Pakistan-supported Taliban regime in the 1990s. Their distinct Central Asian features make them easily recognisable and easy targets of militant groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, who have reduced the Hazaras to a ghettoised existence in Pakistan. Last year, the Hazara community had to go on a public hunger strike and seek assurances of protection from the real seat of power in Pakistan, ie, its Army Chief Gen Bajwa, after the spate of Hazara killings had become chillingly commonplace.

Pakistanis are paying the price for patronising extremist elements and the parallel marginalisation of their moderate, secular and democratic forces. With a virtual immunity afforded to the likes of Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, and Jaish-e-Muhammad among others, it is hardly surprising that Pakistan is recognised as a confessional state, despite the feeble attempts of nomenclaturising itself as ‘Naya Pakistan’. It is under Imran Khan’s watch that the Princeton University economist, Atif Mian, was dropped from his Economic Advisory Council (EAC) on account of his belonging to the “minority” Ahmadiya faith. Imran Khan then failed to change the narrative with his feeble handling of the Asia Bibi (of Christian faith) blasphemy case, where he succumbed to the fanatical group Tehreek-i-Labaak. Imran Khan’s own federal Government is also guilty of funding Darul Uloom Haqqania (infamous as the “University of Jihad”) that has the most notorious terrorists, like Mullah Omar and Jalaluddin Haqqani among others, as its alumni. This instinctive tilt towards extremist thought has led Ministers of ‘Naya Pakistan’ to share public platforms with terrorists like Hafeez Saeed, who have been proscribed by the United Nations. Little wonder that global-watch agencies like the Financial Action Task Force have kept relentless pressure on Islamabad to mend its sovereign behaviour that nurtures terror, both externally and internally, as indeed leading to more insecurity for its vulnerable minorities. Herein routine news like the forcible conversions of minorities no longer make headlines.

Fact is, both in Pakistan and India, there is a societal churn and regression towards majoritarianism and hardening of religious opinions. Ironically, in both countries, religious sentiments are pandered and harnessed for their electoral currency. However, in Pakistan, there is an additional angularity of state sanctification afforded by way of its perceived utility in cross-border leverage that is sought by sheltering certain religion-inspired terrorist groups that routinely hit targets across India, Afghanistan and Iran. These extremist forces can often turn their attention towards Pakistan’s hapless minorities and exert violent intolerance and sectarianism against them. Unfortunately, Pakistan’s own track record on willingly controlling these extremist forces was in full display with its initial and natural reluctance to ban Hafiz Saeed’s Jamaat-ud-Dawa’ah and Falah-e-Insaniat.

Beyond the posturing of ‘Naya Pakistan’, the issue of protecting minorities needs Constitutional cover that does not diminish, decry or indignify the credentials of any faith. Basic amendments to laws concerning blasphemy are realistically a “no-go” for Imran Khan’s Government, given its track record of either supporting or capitulating to the regressive forces. The societal divide and tensions for “minorities” are a reality and not a matter of political one-upmanship or point-scoring between Pakistan and India. Pakistan (‘Naya’ or otherwise) has to redefine and legislate its corrective agenda within its Constitutional tenets, else horrific incidents like the latest Hazara massacre will continue unabated.

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

Writer: Bhopinder Singh

Courtesy: The Pioneer

Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder has finally been arrested for hacking although he has been in the US’s crosshairs for sometime for revealing US secrets for the world to see. In 2010, Wikileaks dumped a huge amount of United States (US) diplomatic cables, some dating back decades, onto its website. These documents were leaked to the site by a US soldier now called Chelsea Manning. Many of the leaked diplomatic cables were mundane, others revealed American duplicity and yet more, some pertaining to India, revealed how citizens were revealing their national secrets to the US. In short, they offered an intriguing insight into the world of diplomacy and espionage. Thereafter, the charismatic founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, who had crowd-funded his website, used the proceeds to try and find more secret documents that rich and powerful individuals and big governments did not want the public at large to find out. To many, he was a hero and in 2010 he claimed the global spotlight.

The leak obviously had a negative impact on American diplomacy and Assange was right to believe that the US would want ‘revenge.’ Meanwhile, Manning was court-martialed and imprisoned by the US and while the narrative has been made that he was a confused young man, who was taken advantage of by Assange, he did face some punishment. Assange, on the other hand, managed to avoid extradition to Sweden, not for the diplomatic cable dump but to face sexual assault charges. He claims he did so to avoid the Swedes potentially extraditing him to the US but his refusal to face those charges lost him much goodwill, as did the revelation that Wikileaks was in touch with Donald Trump’s campaign, specifically his son, during the US presidential election of 2016. This was possibly in the hope that Assange could win a pardon for Trump if he was elected, but that did not happen. While Sweden dropped the charges after the Wikileaks founder ran away and hid in the Ecuadorian embassy, one of the alleged victims has apparently asked for him to be charged again. The Americans are booking him with a fairly light charge of computer hacking to gain access to protected information that will possibly lead to a maximum five-year sentence. Assange might still be a hero to some but US law is clear about computer hacking and he might pay the price for his information warfare. More importantly, one hopes that his alleged victims in Sweden get a chance to prove or disprove their cases against him, because on that front Assange is nothing but a fugitive from the law.

Writer & Courtesy: The Pioneer

Beijing still does not trust local cadres in governance despite the propaganda that the Tibetans took ‘their destiny in their own hands’ in 1959. For the past several weeks, the Chinese propaganda machine has been running an information warfare’s exercise based on the events of March 1959, which ended in a bloodbath in Lhasa, but which is today being promoted as the “Emancipation of the Serfs” and the “Introduction of the Democratic Reforms”  by the communist regime in Beijing. One could ask: Where is democracy in China today?

Just take a look at the list of party secretaries in Tibet — since August 16, 2016, the Communist Party of China’s boss on the Roof of the World is Wu Jingjie. He is the 15th Han to hold the post since the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) entered Tibet in 1950. Can you imagine Tamil Nadu having non-Tamil Chief Ministers for more than 60 years or any other Indian State for the matter? The fact is that despite the propaganda that the Tibetans took “their destiny in their own hands” in 1959, Beijing still does not trust the local cadres.

The Serfs’ Emancipation is an even bigger lie. In fact, it was a massacre that saw thousands of ordinary Tibetans losing their lives in Lhasa. We have several genuine accounts of what happened at that time.

From the Chinese sources, it is worth mentioning a Kindle book, The 1959 Tibetan Uprising Documents: The Chinese Army Documents (China Secrets), published last year which provides documents from the PLA’s military intelligence on the bloody events of 1959. Another account of the events is given by Jianglin Li in her book, Tibet in Agony. The preface of the book of the Chinese scholar affirms, “The first clear historical account of the Chinese crackdown on Lhasa in 1959. Sifting facts from the distortions of propaganda and partisan politics, she reconstructs a chronology…”

China celebrates March 28 as the Serfs’ Emancipation Day, the day “reforms” could finally be implemented on the Roof of the World; the Tibetan Government had been declared “illegal” by Mao and the so-called Tibetan serfs had been liberated from feudalism and theocracy by PLA guns.

Then, there is the report of the Indian Consul-General in Lhasa (Maj SL Chibber) to the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi. Maj Chibber, an Indian Army officer from the Jat Regiment, had already spent nine years in Tibet. Chhiber, a reliable eye-witness (he even heard a few bullets passing overhead during the uprising), wrote: “In the history of movement for a free Tibet, the month of March 1959 will be most historic as during this month  Tibetans, high and low, in Lhasa, Capital of Tibet, openly challenged the Chinese rule in Tibet. They set up an organisation called the Tibetan Peoples’ Independent Organisation …staged demonstrations to give vent to their anti-Chinese feelings and demanded withdrawal of the Chinese from Tibet. But this challenge, before the might of the Chinese PLA — who on March 20, started an all-out offensive against the ill-organised, ill-equipped, untrained-Tibetans with artillery, mortars, machine guns and all types of automatic weapons — was short-lived.”

He further explained the Dalai Lama’s flight: “Smelling danger, he left Lhasa secretly on the night of March 17, 1959, …for Lhoka area (south of Lhasa), where at that time Khampas had full sway.” The Dalai Lama ultimately took refuge in India on March 31.

Matthew Akester studied the findings of Jianglin Li: “Satisfactory confirmation of detail for this period of Tibet’s history is notoriously difficult due to official secrecy and the virtual non-existence of reliable non-official documentation. The figures assessed, though incomplete, provide crucial indicators of the scale of the PLA’s engagement in Tibet at that time.”

After assessing a larger number of official Chinese documents, Li noted: “Although global estimates remain elusive, the study shows from official figures that something in the order of 10 per cent of the total Tibetan population was involved — killed, wounded and captured — in military operations during these years [1957-59].”

Using reliable Chinese sources, Li calculated that eight Infantry divisions (about 100,000 soldiers), three Air force divisions and two independent regiments were involved. To this should be added three Cavalry divisions and “special units”, ie, chemical warfare, motorcycle and demolition or signals. Also were involved some logistic units such as four truck transportation regiments, engineer corps, field hospitals, Army stations, supply stations and animal hospitals or gas stations. Li estimated that some 1,50,000 military personnel participated in the “emancipation” of a couple of million recalcitrant Tibetans.

Li wrote that besides PLA units, a large number of local militia supported the operation: “The numbers of militia I was able to find in Sichuan, Gansu, Yunnan and Qinghai add up to over 71,000 people.” Civilians were also drafted for various tasks such as transport, evacuation of wounded soldiers, handling pack animals; no less than 143,000 civilian laborers.

The number of casualties was estimated at 10,934 (4,748 dead and 5,223 wounded) on the PLA side, without taking into account Lhasa and Central Tibet (for which figures are unknown). The Tibetan casualties were 2,55,600 for Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan only for the years 1957-59.

In January 1957, while on a visit to India, Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Premier, had long discussions with the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on the introduction of the so-called reforms. Beijing had decided to postpone them by at least for six or seven years. In the course of the conversation, Zhou pointed a finger at non-existing foreigners in Lhasa: “Those bent on trouble are preparing for an incident in Lhasa. These people have some armed forces. Some three temples in Lhasa have also armed forces and they want to create an incident there. If it happened, then there would be bloodshed.”

Although there was no “foreigner” in Lhasa, except for the Indian staff of the Consulate General, but the bloodshed indeed took place in March 1959; it helped Mao to firmly consolidate the position of the Communist regime. In January 1959, Mao and the Central Committee realised that “the PLA had to be used to control the rebellion.” China was facing a revolt of the “serfs.” On January 22, 1959, Mao wrote: “It is good, since there is a possibility for us to solve the [Tibet] problem militarily.” The Chinese are fond of announcing “don’t hurt the Chinese sentiments.” One could ask, what about the Tibetan sentiments? Will the compassionate Dalai Lama ask for an apology for what the Chinese did in Tibet in the 1950s? He should.

(The writer is an expert on India-China relations)

Writer: Claude Arpi

Courtesy: The Pioneer