CLIMB DOWN BY INDIA

The other day India made retreat from its earlier position. Since the attack on the Taj hotel last November, in which hundreds lost their lives, India has been saying that until Pakistan takes concrete action against the perpetrators India would not talk to it. None dared to disagree with India. Even the Americans did not make any overt adverse comment.
However, Mr. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India, who was recently hailed as being strong when he told Pakistan President Zardari, that his mandate only allowed him to tell Pakistan that it take action against the terrorists operating from its soil against India, held a bilateral talk with Pakistan Prime Minister Gilani and issued a joint statement on 16/07/2009, in Egypt. Not only that, besides agreeing to share ‘credible and actionable information’, they decided to create ‘an atmosphere of mutual trust and confidence”. As if India did not already have actionable information. As if India had not already given Pakistan ‘actionable information. No one in the world has questioned the information India handed over to Pakistan immediately after the attacks on the Taj hotel in Mumbai. Does Mr. Singh feel any lack of confidence? Or is he trying to show the world that he is a great statesman by extending the olive branch to a country that has become the breeding ground of terrorism in the world?
The worst part of it is Singh’s agreement to de-link talks with Pakistan and concrete action on its part against the terrorists operating from its soil. Where and when did he get the mandate to do so? In spite of the mass of evidence or ‘actionable information’ to use the new phrase, Pakistan has not taken any concrete action to convince any one in the world that it is doing everything to bring the culprits to book.
When Singh was accused of “capitulation” in the Parliament by the BJP which staged a walk out, Singh did a u-turn and said he had not done anything of the sort. He said that “meaningful dialogue” with Pakistan was conditional. He said Pakistan must fulfill its pledge against terrorism “in letter and spirit”. He claimed to have said, in a written statement in the Lok Sabha, “I also conveyed to Gilani that sustained, effective and credible action has to be taken against the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks, and the operations of terrorist groups shut down to prevent future attakcks”. If that was the case why did he talk about de-linking the dialogue? Was he playing for the gallery?
Another grave blunder was the mentioning of Baluchistan in the joint statement. Baluchistan has been a serious head ache for Pakistan for some time. And it has been holding India responsible for the unrest in Bluchistan without any evidence to indicate Indian hands in them. Neither America nor Britain or any other country in the world has ever expressed any doubt about India. And India has consistently denied any role in the unrest in Baluchistan.
The Prime Minister should have told his Pakistani counterpart to take concrete action to catch the terrorists who attacked the Taj and stop all the terrorist activities emanating from Pakistan especially against India and show that Pakistan means business. Unless Pakistan does so there is no point in taking to it.

UNREST IN IRAN

Friday witnessed mass demonstrations and protest marches in Iran. Many observers had said that the opposition to the reelection of Ahamdinejad had died down. Even the American voice against the election, which Mousavi claimed to have been rigged by Ahmadinejad , had begun to fade.. Some had, from the beginning itself, dismissed the allegations of rigging as a ploy by the defeated leaders. They claimed that only the supporters of the defeated candidates, Mehdi Kharoubbi and Mir Housein Mousavi were convinced of the rigging. However, belying all such predictions supporters of the main opposition leader Mousavi held demonstrations on Friday defying government orders. The police had a tough time dispersing the angry protestors. They dispersed the demonstrators, who were chanting “Down with the dictator” with tear gas.
Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who spoke to the people, gathered for the Friday prayers at the Tehran University, said that “Iran was in a state of crisis”. He urged the government to release all those who were arrested for demonstrating against the authorities after the Council of Elders declared that though there were some irregularities during the election it did not affect the outcome.
When Ahmadinejad was declared elected the opposition leaders such as Mir Mousein Mousavi and Mehdi Kharoubbi and their supporters refused to accept the results and they alleged that there were large scale rigging by Ahmadinejad and demanded repelling. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme spiritual leader who wields immense power in the affairs of the country declared that there was no rigging in the elections. When the protestors refused to back down he asked the Council of Elders to look into the allegations, and offered to recount the votes. Mousavi stuck to his guns and demanded re-polling. After looking into the allegations the Guardian Council opined that, “In the recent presidential election we witnessed no major fraud or breech. Therefore, there is no possibility of an annulment taking place”.
The opposition leaders were not the only ones who questioned the results. Two of the prominent former Presidents of Iran also expressed their dissatisfaction over the results. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former President and the present Chairman of the Assembly of Experts, was very much disturbed at the election results. Rafsanjani spoke against, in a speech delivered on 17 July 2009, the restriction of media, and the police actions against the protestors. He said “We should open the doors to debates. We should not keep so many people in prison”. His daughter participated in the protest march and got arrested. Of course every one knows that there is no love lost between Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad had, during the election campaign, charged Rafsanjani with corruption. Rafsanjani never used harsh words against his opponents. He did not hide his dislike of Ahmadinejad though.
Rafsanjani is known as ‘pragmatic conservative’. During his presidency (1989-1997), Rafsanjani pursued a conciliatory approach to the US. He tried to avoid open confrontation with the US. He lost to Ahmadinejad in 2005.Aanother former President, Mohammad Khatami has also questioned the election results.
Shirin Ebadi, lawyer and human right activists and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace said on 18 July 2009, in an interview given to the GW-TV that “Iran is moving away from democracy”. She said that the lawyers in Iran dared not to question the prevailing conditions in the country. To the question what would happen if Israel attacked Tehran, she replied that then the people of Iran would forget the differences and join hands to fight Israel. She said that Germany should become more active and address the human right issues in Iran.
Although there have been many protests against the authorities in Iran and many in the West have expressed concern over the prevailing situation the authorities seem not to bother much.

ZARDARI'S REVELATIONS

Asif Ali Zardari, the President of Pakistan has been making, I don’t know how to put it, ‘admissions’, or ‘confessions’, or ‘revelations’ from time to time for quite some time. And the media everywhere, especially in India has been greeting him as somebody honest and sincere desirous of finding solutions for the innumerable problems his country face. However, the admissions are invariably followed by ‘clarifications’ by Gilani the Prime Minister of Pakistan or some other Pak Official.
Zardari made an admission on 7/07/2009 while interacting with former senior civil servants. He said, “Let us be truthful to ourselves and make candid admission of the realities”. He went on to say that Pakistan “deliberately created and nurtured” terrorists groups as a state policy to realize its short term objectives. Of course there is nothing new in that as everyone who has been watching the developments in Pakistan already knew it all. However, let us welcome his statement, ‘the candid admission’ as many media put it and hope that he will do what he can to stop such activities. He has said that he will fight the menace of terrorism in his own country and help bring peace to the region and the world as well. He said, “We are fighting the war against extremism and terrorism”.
As I am used to such admissions from Zardari, I expected a clarification on what he had said. It arrived soon. Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said on 9/07/2009 that Zardari’s admission was to be viewed in the context of the situation in Afghanistan after the departure of the Soviets! But Zardari had said, “The terrorists of today were the heroes of yesterday until 9/11 occurred and they began to haunt us as well”.
No one in Pakistan (perhaps except Zardari himself, Gilani, the Prime Minister and the Army) or in any other part of the world knows for sure how much authority does Zardari enjoy though he had, a couple of months ago said that the army had authority in its hemisphere and he had the authority over the whole of the country and the army is under civilian control. We cannot trust the words of the Pakistani authorities as they keep denying what was stated earlier. Immediately after the attack on Taj in Mumbay on 26 November 2008, Pakistan denied its hands in the incident.
However, the The New York Times had reported on 28 November 2008 that “The mounting evidence indicate that Pakistani militant group based in Kashmir, most likely Lashkar-e-Toiba or possibly another terror group I Kashmir , Jaish-e-Mohammed, was responsible for the dastardly attack”. The paper was quoting the American intelligence and official not Indian. India prepared a list of the terrorists it believed to be in Pakistan and handed over the list to the Pakistani authorities requesting them to extradite them to India for trial. Pakistan refused to comply with the request saying that there was no concrete evidence to the involvement of the Pakistani terrorists in the incident.
There are evidences, say Indian and American investigators, which point to the involvement of Pakistan in the attack. Kasab the lone survivor captured after the attack has said as much. Yet nothing concrete has happened.
Unless something concrete happens we need not to take the ‘admissions’ or ‘confessions’ or ‘revelations’ seriously.

UNREST IN CHINA

What touched off the riot in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjian in China, is not yet clear. The killing of two Uighrs by Han Chinese workers may have been the immediate provocation. However, that alone cannot explain the scale of violence in which more than 150 persons were killed and thousands injured.
The official Chinese reaction was that the riot was caused by the “terrorist, separatist and extremist forces”. The people and their leaders are accused of being terrorists by the Chinese government. However, the people have not indulged in any activities that are generally associated with terrorists, separatists and extremist forces. What the televisions has been showing is ordinary people with sticks and rods running along the streets beating others and settings things and buildings on fire.
No one of consequence in the region or outside has endorsed the violence. Rabiya Kadeer the exiled leader wrote in The Wall Street Journal “I unequivocally condemn the use of violence by Uighurs during the demonstrations as much as I do China’s use of excessive force against protestors”.
China has labeled, even the Dali Lama, who has won a Nobel Prize for peace, ‘a wolf in monk’s dress’ and a terrorist. Wang Lequan, head of the Xinjiang Communist party and a politburo member, said that “The terrorist, separatist and extremist forces cheated the people to participate in the so-called Jihad”. But the fact is that no one has described the rioting as ‘Jihad’. He is just trying to take advantage of what is known as the ‘Islamic terrorism’ in the West.
The People’s Daily, China’s official newspaper compared Rabiya Kabeer with the Dalai Lama and said “…she did as much or more than, as the Dalai Lama and his clique to sow resentment among the ethnic Uighur people”. The comparison with the Dalai Lama, who has been fighting the Chinese aggression of Tibet, for decades, speaks volumes. Tibetan’s are a group of people who have a distinct language, and culture of their own and deserve to be treated as a separate nation. Not only that they have been a separate nation historically. Yet the Chinese has annexed Tibet claiming it to be a part of China.
However, the paper’s comment may be said to reveal an ethnic issue. The issue of the ethnic Uighur people. The Uighur is a nomadic, pastoral people of Turkic origin.
Urumqui is the homeland of the Uighur’s. But the endless migration of the Hans into the region has reduced the natives Urighurs to a group of second class citizens. They have no voice in the government. No one takes care of their concerns. This negligence by the Chinese government made the Uighurs feel bitter about the Han settlements.
The attitude of the Chinese authorities towards the non Han people in China is well known to the world.
Annihilation of all the non Han peoples has been one of the major objectives of what is called the Cultural Revolution. One may recall the Chinese claim that Arunachl Pradesh of India is in fact Chinese territory. A couple of weeks back the Asian Development Bank (ADB) had excluded Arunachal Pradesh while reckoning the amount to give to India for developmental activities. The ADB excluded Arunachal Pradesh from the plan on the objections by China.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI IN FRESH TROUBLE

It is highly deplorable that Ban kimoon the Secretary General of the United Nations was not allowed on Sunday, to meet the Burmese dissident leader, committed to non-violence, and peaceful protests, Aung San Suu Kyi by the ruling Burmese military junta. Of course many had warned the secretary not to visit Myanmar at this stage, without any positive signals from the military.
It is obvious that the military is not going to release Suu kyi from her house arrest or allow her to contest the general election to be held in 2010. The military junta got a law approved in a hurry in a referendum even as the country was reeling from the devastation by the cyclone Nargis. As per the new provisions of the constitution Suu Kyi cannot contest the election as her husband was a foreign national. Whether her party the National League for Democracy would be allowed to contest the election is to be seen. Even if it is allowed to contest to satisfy the western media the junta would manipulate the election and declare that it has received the mandate to rule the country.
Ban Kimoon said as he left Myanmar that he was “deeply disappointed”. Though he tried his best to meet Suu Kyi, he was not allowed to meet her who is kept under ‘house arrest’. Kimoon opined that the military ruler Than Shwe missed a chance to show the world that he is committed to democratic reforms and to holding a free and fair election in 2010. Than Shwe, the military ruler expressing his unhappiness, said he “would like’ to have arranged a meeting between Kimoon and Su Kyi. However, he had to refuse a request from Kimoon as Su Kyi was under trail.
The 64 year old Aung San Suu Kyi , who has been under house arrest since July 1989, with brief spells of freedom, is at present charged with accommodating an intruder from America who is said to have swum across the lake near the house where she is kept. It is obvious that the military is trying to hold Suu Kyi under captivity indefinitely under some pretext. However, it is not explained how a person could swim across the lake which is under surveillance round the clock by the intelligence agencies. It is hard to believe that the person was not detected while he was swimming the lake which must have taken some time.
Than Shwe is shrewd enough to show the world that he is in fact very liberal. He allowed Suu Kyi to celebrate her 64th birthday at the detention house. She was allowed to pray in the Buddhist style and ‘celebrate’ her birthday with others. She was allowed to distribute Indiaan biriyani, a delicious food served in India, to, the security personnel who surround her in the house. None of her followers were allowed to meet her; they were allowed to send her birthday cakes though.
The Junta knows very well that Suu Kyi and her party, National League for democracy which won the general election are still popular in the country. It fears that if she is released from detention and allowed to take part in political activities, the people would gather round her and push the junta out of power.