Prunes and Prisms
It has been quite a year for blood, betrayal, lies and crime. Sometimes, when the cascading bad news turns into an avalanche, we, the educated but ordinary, the informed but powerless, may look for solace. We can suckle comfort out of love if we have it, or from literature, unfazed by the passage of time, even making up a wad satisfying enough to chew the cud with. We can mine it, going deeper to the mother lode of dead languages, from whence it came.
Of course, there’s always the high road and the low road. And sometimes the low road doesn’t do half badly. Notwithstanding the high-brow British Admiralty Officer, gold braid gleaming across the Naval Whites, Britannia did rule the restless waves, for a full century after Trafalgar. And this, without losing even a single battle! Britannia did so, using formulaic quantities of the fabled “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash”.
But as Annus Horribilis 2008 grinds towards a close, we may need to remind ourselves of certain fundamentals that seem to have eluded the mighty. This even as the world’s ordinary people huddle, like beasts sheltering from a storm, cringing under the whip arm of inimical fortune, hoping for betterment in 2009.
Many, here and around the globe, are facing calibrations of financial pressure, losing homes, jobs, contracts, feeling suicidal, and even slipping off the mortal coil altogether.
Alongside this financial purgatory, this crushing destruction of self-worth, we have had to endure terrorist threat, insecurity, fear for loved ones vulnerable to senseless attack, contemplate the spectre of sudden death.
But even as we cast about for rescue, flailing for stability, hoping; we are met with unrelenting, inexhaustible, political chicanery, chaotic governance, insensitivity and animalistic opportunism. It must be admitted, however that “there is narcissism about insecurity,” as Lauren Laverne, a BBC presenter put it. We the members of the Indian public, protected by the scantiest ratio (1.45:1000) of police personnel per thousand, less than half the global average, are yet, no doubt, narcissistic about our personal safety. But how much more intensely must the self-love run amongst our amply protected politicians?
Yes, it has been quite a year for blood, betrayal, lies and crime. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of White Collar Criminals have made off with hard-earned investments, placed in their fiduciary trust, Bernie Madoff fashion.
Bernard Madoff was a trusted money-man for forty years, investing billions from European and Swiss Banks, from American Charities and Celebrities. He is 70 now, and facing twenty years of prison time. He has fraudulently lost 50 billion dollars in a grand Ponzi Scheme. But this man was considered one of the very best. Till recently, he was Chairman of NASDAQ and adviser to the Government of America on, ironically, how to deal with financial scams.
But we are no longer surprised. Madoff is just the latest in a long line of appalling developments. We are bracing for more. Newsweek has put it at four trillion American Dollars, or 7 per cent of the world’s GDP, needed to make the global season of bailouts effective. And all this money needs to be found, pledged, and spent now and within two years.
But this is already about the cure, and we haven’t quite finished discussing the disease. There is a drought of integrity in high places. It has become hard to believe anybody. How is it that Integrity came to be side-lined so comprehensively? Did the Movers and Shakers really imagine they could render it obsolete? Is this what the Age of Click and Mouse has come to?
Yes it’s truly been a landmark year for grand larceny and reckless brigandage; a year of pirates and desperadoes, of system failures and chaos. And there is no clear answer to that age old posit: “who will protect us from the protectors”. You can vary the question: ergo, “who will watch the watchers/who will guard the guards/ Quis custodiet ipsos custodies”; but don’t expect an actual answer. If there was a viable, incorruptible answer, we wouldn’t still be asking. So what if Roman poet/satirist Juvenal put it down in the first century A.D.
As for comfort, it might be appropriate to take heart from a great writer whose soul was humiliated and lacerated by early want, but not so much that he failed to extract wry humour and touching emotion from adversity, penury, bleakness and blight. All this in the smoggy twilight of a full-blown Victorian Industrial Revolution.
Charles Dickens was only 12 when his father, mother and siblings were whisked off to Debtor’s Prison. It was 1824, and they went to the infamous Marshalsea. Charles himself was assigned to work off some of the debt at Warren’s Blacking Factory. Charles’ father John, a clerk at The Naval Pay Office, and his family, were released when his finances improved a little. And Charles was able to go back to school. But this experience marked and informed all that Dickens wrote over a long and illustrious career.
Some of it, was not about the inequity, or tragic circumstance. It was about helplessness and perhaps, the whimsy of amusing oneself as best as one could under the circumstances. In Little Dorrit, set in a Debtor’s Prison, Dickens writes: “Papa. Potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips: especially prunes and prism.” It makes you purse and stretch your lips over the words as you read them and benefit from a simple amusement for paupers.
But Dickens wrote about money quite directly too. To wit, putting this in Mr. Micawber’s mouth: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness”. It sounds idyllic in this season of savage de-leveraging and erstwhile bumper profits using borrowed money, but it must be remembered Mr. Micawber, from David Copperfield, was, in fact, sent to prison for his debts.
Or, this little primer for today’s Wall Street: “A person who can't pay gets another person who can't pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don't make either of them able to do a walking-match”.
What else? Perhaps, just this one from his A Christmas Carol. ... “A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!"
(1,055 words)
December 19th, 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
Published in The Pioneer on 30th December 2008 as "Good riddance to 2008" and online at www.dailypioneer.com and also archived there under Columnists.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
Jannat & Jahannum
Jannat and Jahannum
Pondering the Cosmos is weighty stuff at any time. But sometimes it is complicated further by the same words conveying different meanings to different people. The Pakistani jihadi connotation of the Urdu for Heaven and Hell, namely Jannat and Jahannum are such words.
But understanding the Pakistani jihadi take on Heaven and Hell could hold the key to their fantabulous thinking. It can explain the ghastly and savage use of 13 year-old suicide bombers in Afghanistan, for example. And it may also shed light on the missing purity of intent behind another much abused Urdu word: Shaheed.
These are special, revered, mystic words. They are understood differently by those who follow the inclusive Sufi tradition, as do the vast majority of Muslims in India, and those, across the border, who get their vengeful perspective from Saudi-financed Wahhabi Madrasas and hard-line theological Ulooms.
Almost every Islamic terrorist grouping, including the Taliban and the Al Qaeda are spawned, trained or supported by persons with this mindset. It is this blood-thirsty, “Infidel” murdering version of Jannat and Jahannum that is universally understood and subscribed to in the Pakistani Armed Forces and the ISI.
So fine as the words are, they need to be understood just as men on Lahore streets do. But words, as we know, often mutate in transmission, let alone translation. They wing across languages and races, cross oceans and continents, picking up sights, smells, angers, hurts, defining memories, and inevitably, the winds of change. They can also be deliberately twisted to suit political or ideological purposes.
Thus it is, that an indoctrination and radicalisation process has been maturing and marinating for over two decades already. Because, it was about then that Pakistan began recruiting its rank and file from the Madrasas--ever since the late President Zia Ul Haq’s drive towards a more focussed and calculable Islamism with the tacit backing of Saudi Arabia.
The Islamisation was instituted, ostensibly, as backlash, after Pakistan’s earlier experiments with democracy; even if it did profess Socialist, Nationalist and anti-Indian sentiments. But this democratic interlude ended because it dared to lean less than expected on the Armed Forces, and even less on support from the Maulvis and Ulemas.
When Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was eventually overthrown, not only did the Army take over once again, but his rule was characterised as deviant and louche. He was called corrupt, apostate (ridda), and was thought to be altogether deserving of meeting his end on the gallows.
The jihadi notion of Jannat, that is attracting so many young followers, is more than Heaven, that spacious “Mansions in the sky” home of a Christian heavenly father. Jannat here means a hedonistic Paradise, where all austerities and sacrifices on Earth are eternally compensated. It has great physical beauty and tangible perfection. It is green and well watered. It contains an inexhaustible chorus line of nubile and well-endowed nymphets, wiggling with welcome and promise.
This Jannat then surely has the greater power to lure the credulous than the flat Biblical vision of Heaven with its lyre-playing angels in curls and hoary retainers with white eyebrows. Besides, the afterlife in Christianity is daunting, with the very real prospect of Judgement Day looming large.
As for Hell, the Anglo-Saxon Latinate conception of Hell was also formidable once, backed by an Inquisition and torture-laden Witch-Hunts. It terrified the ignorant and unlettered. But today, its intolerance and barbarism is gone. But gone also is its retributive artillery. It stands emasculated by Science, Logic, Mockery, Modernity, and most of all, by a general abandonment.
Hindu Hell? Hard to tell what and where it is, especially when you put it in context of a religion based on reincarnation. And Hindu Heaven? Perhaps it is closest to an Open Forum of Gods and Goddesses, major and minor, demi-gods, Devlok, Demons, Apsaras. It is, without doubt, the greatest do-it-yourself karmic opportunity in the Cosmos.
But if Hindu Heaven is an obscure and under-signposted Parlok , and its Hell is determined by your own thoughts and deeds, there is no such vagueness in the Pakistani lexicon.
The jihadi idiomatic meaning of Jahannum is not just Hell but hell-fire and Perdition. But, the key point is that you don’t go to Jahannum for murdering the Infidel. In fact Jahannum is specifically lying in wait for “disbelievers”. So you go to jihadi Hell, however virtuous you may seem, only if you are Apostate.
So, to the simple-minded and rough hewn, the jihadi Jannat and Jahannum shooting match may well appear to have far greater spark. Particularly if one is very poor and turning terrorist looks like a viable career option. After all, it offers guts and glory, respect, money, guns, women. It cossets flotsam and jetsam. It imbues the neglected with meaning and purpose. It paints gaudy visions of Martyrdom and Paradise.
But nobody in Pakistan’s jihadi circles, identified as the “epicentre of terrorism” seems to notice the deeply anachronistic and medieval nature of a religious war in the “free choice” ambience of the 21st century. If they did, they would be moving fast to prevent their inevitable descent into the very bottomless Jahannum they seem hell bent on prescribing for others.
But then, theirs is an unhinged fanaticism, as bizarre as Hitler’s manic vision, and it too has world domination as its goal. And here again, would be martyrs to this “grand cause” are standing in line. They are eager for battle because they are convinced that a world dominated by Western values has become effete and too decadent to defend itself.
But the worrisome part is that this kind of thinking is not the wild and woolly fantasy of an illiterate frontier tribesman. On the contrary, it is the brain-washed and covertly defended assessment of senior state actors in the Government, Army and its instruments. This, despite all Pakistan’s red herring sophistry, designed only to mislead and bamboozle.
It is a mad gambit, but like other mad gambits, quite convinced in itself. Otherwise, Pakistan and its terrorist hordes would be aware of the looming threat of certain annihilation as the world hardens its stance. But the Jihadis, like all fanatics, will not be reasoned with. To them, it is a confrontation they expect to win against the odds. That they won’t, is mere Infidel talk, and at complete variance with what their religious conviction tells them.
(1,058 words)
15th December 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
Also published in The Pioneer as "The terrorist's faith" on Wednesday, 17th December 2008 and online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived at www.dailypioneer.com under Columnists.
Pondering the Cosmos is weighty stuff at any time. But sometimes it is complicated further by the same words conveying different meanings to different people. The Pakistani jihadi connotation of the Urdu for Heaven and Hell, namely Jannat and Jahannum are such words.
But understanding the Pakistani jihadi take on Heaven and Hell could hold the key to their fantabulous thinking. It can explain the ghastly and savage use of 13 year-old suicide bombers in Afghanistan, for example. And it may also shed light on the missing purity of intent behind another much abused Urdu word: Shaheed.
These are special, revered, mystic words. They are understood differently by those who follow the inclusive Sufi tradition, as do the vast majority of Muslims in India, and those, across the border, who get their vengeful perspective from Saudi-financed Wahhabi Madrasas and hard-line theological Ulooms.
Almost every Islamic terrorist grouping, including the Taliban and the Al Qaeda are spawned, trained or supported by persons with this mindset. It is this blood-thirsty, “Infidel” murdering version of Jannat and Jahannum that is universally understood and subscribed to in the Pakistani Armed Forces and the ISI.
So fine as the words are, they need to be understood just as men on Lahore streets do. But words, as we know, often mutate in transmission, let alone translation. They wing across languages and races, cross oceans and continents, picking up sights, smells, angers, hurts, defining memories, and inevitably, the winds of change. They can also be deliberately twisted to suit political or ideological purposes.
Thus it is, that an indoctrination and radicalisation process has been maturing and marinating for over two decades already. Because, it was about then that Pakistan began recruiting its rank and file from the Madrasas--ever since the late President Zia Ul Haq’s drive towards a more focussed and calculable Islamism with the tacit backing of Saudi Arabia.
The Islamisation was instituted, ostensibly, as backlash, after Pakistan’s earlier experiments with democracy; even if it did profess Socialist, Nationalist and anti-Indian sentiments. But this democratic interlude ended because it dared to lean less than expected on the Armed Forces, and even less on support from the Maulvis and Ulemas.
When Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was eventually overthrown, not only did the Army take over once again, but his rule was characterised as deviant and louche. He was called corrupt, apostate (ridda), and was thought to be altogether deserving of meeting his end on the gallows.
The jihadi notion of Jannat, that is attracting so many young followers, is more than Heaven, that spacious “Mansions in the sky” home of a Christian heavenly father. Jannat here means a hedonistic Paradise, where all austerities and sacrifices on Earth are eternally compensated. It has great physical beauty and tangible perfection. It is green and well watered. It contains an inexhaustible chorus line of nubile and well-endowed nymphets, wiggling with welcome and promise.
This Jannat then surely has the greater power to lure the credulous than the flat Biblical vision of Heaven with its lyre-playing angels in curls and hoary retainers with white eyebrows. Besides, the afterlife in Christianity is daunting, with the very real prospect of Judgement Day looming large.
As for Hell, the Anglo-Saxon Latinate conception of Hell was also formidable once, backed by an Inquisition and torture-laden Witch-Hunts. It terrified the ignorant and unlettered. But today, its intolerance and barbarism is gone. But gone also is its retributive artillery. It stands emasculated by Science, Logic, Mockery, Modernity, and most of all, by a general abandonment.
Hindu Hell? Hard to tell what and where it is, especially when you put it in context of a religion based on reincarnation. And Hindu Heaven? Perhaps it is closest to an Open Forum of Gods and Goddesses, major and minor, demi-gods, Devlok, Demons, Apsaras. It is, without doubt, the greatest do-it-yourself karmic opportunity in the Cosmos.
But if Hindu Heaven is an obscure and under-signposted Parlok , and its Hell is determined by your own thoughts and deeds, there is no such vagueness in the Pakistani lexicon.
The jihadi idiomatic meaning of Jahannum is not just Hell but hell-fire and Perdition. But, the key point is that you don’t go to Jahannum for murdering the Infidel. In fact Jahannum is specifically lying in wait for “disbelievers”. So you go to jihadi Hell, however virtuous you may seem, only if you are Apostate.
So, to the simple-minded and rough hewn, the jihadi Jannat and Jahannum shooting match may well appear to have far greater spark. Particularly if one is very poor and turning terrorist looks like a viable career option. After all, it offers guts and glory, respect, money, guns, women. It cossets flotsam and jetsam. It imbues the neglected with meaning and purpose. It paints gaudy visions of Martyrdom and Paradise.
But nobody in Pakistan’s jihadi circles, identified as the “epicentre of terrorism” seems to notice the deeply anachronistic and medieval nature of a religious war in the “free choice” ambience of the 21st century. If they did, they would be moving fast to prevent their inevitable descent into the very bottomless Jahannum they seem hell bent on prescribing for others.
But then, theirs is an unhinged fanaticism, as bizarre as Hitler’s manic vision, and it too has world domination as its goal. And here again, would be martyrs to this “grand cause” are standing in line. They are eager for battle because they are convinced that a world dominated by Western values has become effete and too decadent to defend itself.
But the worrisome part is that this kind of thinking is not the wild and woolly fantasy of an illiterate frontier tribesman. On the contrary, it is the brain-washed and covertly defended assessment of senior state actors in the Government, Army and its instruments. This, despite all Pakistan’s red herring sophistry, designed only to mislead and bamboozle.
It is a mad gambit, but like other mad gambits, quite convinced in itself. Otherwise, Pakistan and its terrorist hordes would be aware of the looming threat of certain annihilation as the world hardens its stance. But the Jihadis, like all fanatics, will not be reasoned with. To them, it is a confrontation they expect to win against the odds. That they won’t, is mere Infidel talk, and at complete variance with what their religious conviction tells them.
(1,058 words)
15th December 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
Also published in The Pioneer as "The terrorist's faith" on Wednesday, 17th December 2008 and online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived at www.dailypioneer.com under Columnists.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Universal Exports
Universal Exports
The way Ian Fleming wrote it, “James Bond (007)”, the fictional British MI-6 spy with a “licence to kill”, pretended, on occasion, to be a dapper travelling salesman from “Universal Exports”, selling, one knows not what.
Now if JB, fast forwarding from the Cold War to present times, was called Hafiz Mohamed Sayeed instead, and was working for the ISI/LeT/Jamaat/Pak Army/Civilian leadership/Al Quaeda, and used a similar Universal Exports card, because it did sort of describe his outgoing nature and was broadly descriptive of what he did; he wouldn’t be able to say what his company really sold either.
Of course, Fleming’s laconic “Export” subterfuge was never enthusiastically defended, and was always something of a see-through fig-leaf, for all, except the likes of comical East European Customs officials who have no English, and were expected to be satisfied with the moniker, provided “James” didn’t start leaping over the conveyor belts firing his Walther PPK.
But enjoyable as the Bond series still is, standing in for comfortable thrills and spills in an uncertain world, one doesn’t really want to endure the “B Movie” version playing out in real life.
This one comes with moustachioed and bearded villains, uniformed oil-can Harrys, shifty-eyed heavies in suits, swearing and oath-taking militia with rotted middle teeth and yellowed fangs, pathan-suit and woolly hat clad sarkari journos with aquiline noses, other commentators in banker’s pin-stripes, all reasonably intoning orchestrated lies in Oxonian accents, nicely laced with menace.
Pakistan loves calling “Hindustan” names. Some are rather inventive, like the hybrid “Saffron Zionists”, updated after the latest Mumbai attacks. They comment derisively on our incompetence and suggest we are trying to shift the blame for home-grown troubles across their green and pure borders.
A substantial section of the Pakistani media is put out with Indian “belligerence”. It is amazed that we dare summon their ISI Chief or that we demand the extradition of Indian criminals and terrorist warlords nestled in their midst. In short, the Pakistani intelligentsia can’t understand why they are being accused at all, and quite a few analysts are convinced we have staged the Mumbai terrorist attack ourselves in order to malign Pakistan.
But then, such fantasy-mongering seems to be an uniquely Islamic phenomenon. It is often so outrageous that it would give Joseph Goebbels, the club-footed sex maniac who was Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, an inferiority complex.
When Iraq was being demolished during the Second Gulf War, their Minister of Information, Muhammad Al Sahhaf, dubbed “Comical Ali” by the World Press, regaled satellite TV with unsinkable but hilarious hyperbole on the supposedly grand successes of the Iraqi Armed Forces. And President Ahmenidajad of Iran, never threatens in twenty-first century terms. No, for him it’s always about dismemberments and beheadings.
Some of us will recall listening to Gamal Abdel Nasser’s feverish ranting in 1967, claiming the invasion of Israel during the Six Day War. In reality, the Egyptian Army abandoned 400 brand new tanks on the Golan Heights along with the Heights themselves, and ran away. They did the same with Gaza, abandoned it, but you wouldn’t know it if you listened to dear old Nasser’s broadcasts.
Ignominy and defeat never seems to stop Islamic fantasists. In Pakistan, true to form, the counter propaganda is in full flow. Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed, Head of the banned LeT, responsible for the attack on Indian Parliament, on the Red Fort, on the Mumbai local trains, and now, the hotels, station, hospital, streets, and Chabad House; is protesting his innocence.
Mr. Sayeed is flooding the airwaves with denial. He says he cannot understand why his good name is being besmirched. The Jamaat ud Daawa, where he sits these days, is engaged only in social work, and all of Pakistan knows it.
President Zardari is doing his bit too. He says he doubts that the terrorists are Pakistani at all and muses they may be “stateless people”. He says he might have to abandon the fight against the Taliban and the Al Quaeda and concentrate his troops on the inexplicably angry Indians instead. He says this to the visiting Condoleeza Rice, to put her off her stroke. And Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani chimes in with an offer of the “fullest cooperation and assistance to bring the perpetrators to justice”. It doesn’t hurt to make promises, and Gilani knows it.
Everyone in the Pakistani Government has an insatiable appetite for “evidence” and “proof” though. You’d think they were sticklers for the law if you didn’t know better. Still, it doesn’t stop them scoffing at any and all evidence and proof submitted. They always find fault with its probity, efficacy, veracity, accuracy and anything else they can think of to trash it. This, from what the US Congressional Committee on the Prevention of Terrorism calls the “intersection of terrorism and nuclear threat” is not as funny as it may seem.
And Pakistan’s idea of democracy is a number of mutually secretive power centres. The civilian government’s influence, now threatened by military coup already, is limited to sections of Islamabad. Most of the rest of the country is parcelled out between bands of marauding terrorists and the Armed Forces/ ISI. There are also tribal areas and other bits and pieces which are only Pakistan on paper.
But perhaps this time America will not be looking for a certificate of veracity from Pakistan. They may be working towards a relentless end game even as the Pakistani establishment are falling about wheezing over their latest caper.
If they stop to think, they might realise they won’t get away with it this time. Perhaps it will occur to them that the outgoing US administration, with barely 50 days to go in office, is not going to be the one to deliver the comeuppance. But the new President could well have other plans.
One Mr. Robert Kagan from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, might be reading the Crystal Ball for Pakistan. In a recent Op-Ed piece in The New York Times he says, “perhaps they need a further incentive-like the prospect of seeing parts of their country placed in an international receivership”.
Ah but what parts would that be? The bits with the nuclear facilities in it one hopes. Because, if it’s Al Quaeda, Taliban and other assorted terrorists America is after, they might just have to occupy the whole country!
(1,056 words)
December 5th, 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
The way Ian Fleming wrote it, “James Bond (007)”, the fictional British MI-6 spy with a “licence to kill”, pretended, on occasion, to be a dapper travelling salesman from “Universal Exports”, selling, one knows not what.
Now if JB, fast forwarding from the Cold War to present times, was called Hafiz Mohamed Sayeed instead, and was working for the ISI/LeT/Jamaat/Pak Army/Civilian leadership/Al Quaeda, and used a similar Universal Exports card, because it did sort of describe his outgoing nature and was broadly descriptive of what he did; he wouldn’t be able to say what his company really sold either.
Of course, Fleming’s laconic “Export” subterfuge was never enthusiastically defended, and was always something of a see-through fig-leaf, for all, except the likes of comical East European Customs officials who have no English, and were expected to be satisfied with the moniker, provided “James” didn’t start leaping over the conveyor belts firing his Walther PPK.
But enjoyable as the Bond series still is, standing in for comfortable thrills and spills in an uncertain world, one doesn’t really want to endure the “B Movie” version playing out in real life.
This one comes with moustachioed and bearded villains, uniformed oil-can Harrys, shifty-eyed heavies in suits, swearing and oath-taking militia with rotted middle teeth and yellowed fangs, pathan-suit and woolly hat clad sarkari journos with aquiline noses, other commentators in banker’s pin-stripes, all reasonably intoning orchestrated lies in Oxonian accents, nicely laced with menace.
Pakistan loves calling “Hindustan” names. Some are rather inventive, like the hybrid “Saffron Zionists”, updated after the latest Mumbai attacks. They comment derisively on our incompetence and suggest we are trying to shift the blame for home-grown troubles across their green and pure borders.
A substantial section of the Pakistani media is put out with Indian “belligerence”. It is amazed that we dare summon their ISI Chief or that we demand the extradition of Indian criminals and terrorist warlords nestled in their midst. In short, the Pakistani intelligentsia can’t understand why they are being accused at all, and quite a few analysts are convinced we have staged the Mumbai terrorist attack ourselves in order to malign Pakistan.
But then, such fantasy-mongering seems to be an uniquely Islamic phenomenon. It is often so outrageous that it would give Joseph Goebbels, the club-footed sex maniac who was Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, an inferiority complex.
When Iraq was being demolished during the Second Gulf War, their Minister of Information, Muhammad Al Sahhaf, dubbed “Comical Ali” by the World Press, regaled satellite TV with unsinkable but hilarious hyperbole on the supposedly grand successes of the Iraqi Armed Forces. And President Ahmenidajad of Iran, never threatens in twenty-first century terms. No, for him it’s always about dismemberments and beheadings.
Some of us will recall listening to Gamal Abdel Nasser’s feverish ranting in 1967, claiming the invasion of Israel during the Six Day War. In reality, the Egyptian Army abandoned 400 brand new tanks on the Golan Heights along with the Heights themselves, and ran away. They did the same with Gaza, abandoned it, but you wouldn’t know it if you listened to dear old Nasser’s broadcasts.
Ignominy and defeat never seems to stop Islamic fantasists. In Pakistan, true to form, the counter propaganda is in full flow. Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed, Head of the banned LeT, responsible for the attack on Indian Parliament, on the Red Fort, on the Mumbai local trains, and now, the hotels, station, hospital, streets, and Chabad House; is protesting his innocence.
Mr. Sayeed is flooding the airwaves with denial. He says he cannot understand why his good name is being besmirched. The Jamaat ud Daawa, where he sits these days, is engaged only in social work, and all of Pakistan knows it.
President Zardari is doing his bit too. He says he doubts that the terrorists are Pakistani at all and muses they may be “stateless people”. He says he might have to abandon the fight against the Taliban and the Al Quaeda and concentrate his troops on the inexplicably angry Indians instead. He says this to the visiting Condoleeza Rice, to put her off her stroke. And Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani chimes in with an offer of the “fullest cooperation and assistance to bring the perpetrators to justice”. It doesn’t hurt to make promises, and Gilani knows it.
Everyone in the Pakistani Government has an insatiable appetite for “evidence” and “proof” though. You’d think they were sticklers for the law if you didn’t know better. Still, it doesn’t stop them scoffing at any and all evidence and proof submitted. They always find fault with its probity, efficacy, veracity, accuracy and anything else they can think of to trash it. This, from what the US Congressional Committee on the Prevention of Terrorism calls the “intersection of terrorism and nuclear threat” is not as funny as it may seem.
And Pakistan’s idea of democracy is a number of mutually secretive power centres. The civilian government’s influence, now threatened by military coup already, is limited to sections of Islamabad. Most of the rest of the country is parcelled out between bands of marauding terrorists and the Armed Forces/ ISI. There are also tribal areas and other bits and pieces which are only Pakistan on paper.
But perhaps this time America will not be looking for a certificate of veracity from Pakistan. They may be working towards a relentless end game even as the Pakistani establishment are falling about wheezing over their latest caper.
If they stop to think, they might realise they won’t get away with it this time. Perhaps it will occur to them that the outgoing US administration, with barely 50 days to go in office, is not going to be the one to deliver the comeuppance. But the new President could well have other plans.
One Mr. Robert Kagan from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, might be reading the Crystal Ball for Pakistan. In a recent Op-Ed piece in The New York Times he says, “perhaps they need a further incentive-like the prospect of seeing parts of their country placed in an international receivership”.
Ah but what parts would that be? The bits with the nuclear facilities in it one hopes. Because, if it’s Al Quaeda, Taliban and other assorted terrorists America is after, they might just have to occupy the whole country!
(1,056 words)
December 5th, 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Accountability...
Accountability…
We are being told now that actionable and reasonably precise intelligence on the recent Mumbai terror attacks came from various sources, for up to a month before the outrage. This suggests not only that the Indian state is soft but also that it is compromised, perhaps deliberately so, and suffers from lack of accountability. But the shortcomings of the Indians are like a Teddy Bear’s Picnic compared to the rogue accomplishments of Pakistan and the global threat it poses.
Yes, India was tipped off about the impending attacks by the US government, the state government of Gujarat, the Gujarat and Mumbai based Fishermen’s Associations, and home-grown intelligence agencies RAW and IB. And the information from the US specified some of the targets, the identity and origin of the attackers, their sea-borne method of entry, coordinates of their ship, and even the date of the expected attack.
Everyone knew in advance--the Government of India, the Maharashtra Government, the attacked hotels, the Indian Navy and Coast Guard, the State Police and its Anti-terror Squad.
But not only did they nobody act, but several precautionary security measures set up in response to the warnings were withdrawn a day or two before the attacks actually came. Inferential conjectures point towards a local and highly efficient fifth column, with reach in high places. It has the signature style of the Mumbai underworld, long rumoured to be hand in glove with certain influential Mumbai politicians. It is this same shadowy force that appears to have organised the detailed and professional reconnaissance. They also obtained route maps, detailed floor plans of the hotels, helped to cache the arms, ammunition, grenades, rocket launchers, RDX, obtain fake identification, real cash and credit cards.
This will be difficult to prove, despite the best efforts of not only the Indians, but also the American FBI, the British Scotland Yard and Shin Bet from Israel, all working on the case now. But, much valuable intelligence is often a matter of inference, and Pakistan knows it won’t stand up in a court of law.
And so India, even after gathering high quality intelligence from the sole terrorist taken alive, is getting nowhere in its efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice. Pakistan has shrugged off reports of the POK-based Lashkar-i-Tayeba being responsible, despite its established links to Al Quaeda and the Taliban. They can’t see how this makes the State of Pakistan culpable in any way.
It has trotted out its time-tested alibi of plausible deniability, but this time with a Jeffrey Archerish twist in the tail. Pakistan has threatened to move 100,000 of its troops to the Eastern border with India if pressed too hard, moving them from the Islamic militant infested Afghanistan border!
But then, why should India be surprised? After all, Pakistan has had this device of plausible deniability in place since 1946. It was then that their provisional government put in Army regulars in tribal-style Pathan Suits to occupy half of Kashmir.
They did it again, during General Pervez Musharraf’s misadventure in Kargil. Once again, India found itself killing Pakistan Army regulars in battle, but wearing Mujahideen disguises. What these Mujahideen were doing this time with Pakistan Army identity papers on them, is just another matter of inconvenient detail.
Pakistan has already fought three unsuccessful conventional wars with India, the last being over Kargil, before switching track very sharply towards the war “of a thousand cuts”. This same surreptitious technique has also served Pakistan well in its efforts to pressurise the West, right from the days when it was inducted by America to train and support the Afghan Mujahideen that successfully sent the Soviets packing.
Over the last decade however, Pakistan has gone into wholesale business for itself and emerged as the world’s most successful terror factory, recently characterised as an “international migraine” by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Pakistan is now a past-master at using proxies, irregulars and disguised armed forces to effect governmental distance and plausible deniability. They are also very good at brazening it out under diplomatic pressure as demonstrated after 9/11, extracting more money and arms from America, even as it kept its terror network intact.
President Musharraf, a consummate ex-commando, adopted a raft of techniques that included consorting with offshore radical Islamic and criminal groups, aiding the radicalisation of Muslim youth globally and the creation of sleeper cells. He also successfully internationalised the demographics, so that Pakistani nationals are not the only ones who turn up in the terror-net worldwide.
Pakistan now hosts a veritable Jehadi International, that includes ethnic Pakistani-British, Talibanised Afghans, Chechens, Pakistan’s lawless NWFP denizens, Bangladeshis- both free-lancers and the official collaborators, malcontents from Kashmir, from India’s North East, turned Muslims from other parts of India, those from Sudan, Somalia, Indonesia, Malaysia, even Muslim insurgents from China. And let us not forget Pakistan continues to host Osama Bin Laden.
To strengthen the doctrine of plausible deniability further, the Pakistan Government also collaborates with the international “Bhai” network. This underworld connection has worked to fund terrorism and insurgency with proceeds from forgery, currency counterfeiting, money-laundering, extortion, intimidation, blackmail, drug-running, prostitution and smuggling.
Other proven State run techniques include proliferation of nuclear and missile technology. This self-help laundry list complements the shameless cap-in-hand forays to the oil rich Gulf and the over-the-barrel West. The latter are also persuaded to supply arms to “fight” the very terrorism that Pakistan has turned into its most effective international calling card.
But the global worry today is not how well Pakistan has been playing the Artful Dodger, or how effectively it runs circles around a weak Indian government, but the very real threat that the radical Islamists, once ready to do the Pakistan Army and ISI’s bidding, are poised to swallow up the State itself, and seize its nuclear arsenal. One might even see a concordat emerge between the radicals and the Pakistani establishment as hinted at by Pakistan Army Chief Kiyani.
That would end Pakistan’s era of plausible deniability, but the world would then be looking at a Talibanised nuclear power. This then, is the nightmare rogue state with the very real WMD threat. The window of opportunity to stop this inevitability has to begin with neutralising Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Otherwise, the very definition of international diplomacy and accountability may have to be rewritten.
(1,051 words)
December 3rd, 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
Published in The Pioneer on December 8th,2008 as "It's Pakistan silly!" and online at www.dailypioneer.com where it is also archived under Columnists.
We are being told now that actionable and reasonably precise intelligence on the recent Mumbai terror attacks came from various sources, for up to a month before the outrage. This suggests not only that the Indian state is soft but also that it is compromised, perhaps deliberately so, and suffers from lack of accountability. But the shortcomings of the Indians are like a Teddy Bear’s Picnic compared to the rogue accomplishments of Pakistan and the global threat it poses.
Yes, India was tipped off about the impending attacks by the US government, the state government of Gujarat, the Gujarat and Mumbai based Fishermen’s Associations, and home-grown intelligence agencies RAW and IB. And the information from the US specified some of the targets, the identity and origin of the attackers, their sea-borne method of entry, coordinates of their ship, and even the date of the expected attack.
Everyone knew in advance--the Government of India, the Maharashtra Government, the attacked hotels, the Indian Navy and Coast Guard, the State Police and its Anti-terror Squad.
But not only did they nobody act, but several precautionary security measures set up in response to the warnings were withdrawn a day or two before the attacks actually came. Inferential conjectures point towards a local and highly efficient fifth column, with reach in high places. It has the signature style of the Mumbai underworld, long rumoured to be hand in glove with certain influential Mumbai politicians. It is this same shadowy force that appears to have organised the detailed and professional reconnaissance. They also obtained route maps, detailed floor plans of the hotels, helped to cache the arms, ammunition, grenades, rocket launchers, RDX, obtain fake identification, real cash and credit cards.
This will be difficult to prove, despite the best efforts of not only the Indians, but also the American FBI, the British Scotland Yard and Shin Bet from Israel, all working on the case now. But, much valuable intelligence is often a matter of inference, and Pakistan knows it won’t stand up in a court of law.
And so India, even after gathering high quality intelligence from the sole terrorist taken alive, is getting nowhere in its efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice. Pakistan has shrugged off reports of the POK-based Lashkar-i-Tayeba being responsible, despite its established links to Al Quaeda and the Taliban. They can’t see how this makes the State of Pakistan culpable in any way.
It has trotted out its time-tested alibi of plausible deniability, but this time with a Jeffrey Archerish twist in the tail. Pakistan has threatened to move 100,000 of its troops to the Eastern border with India if pressed too hard, moving them from the Islamic militant infested Afghanistan border!
But then, why should India be surprised? After all, Pakistan has had this device of plausible deniability in place since 1946. It was then that their provisional government put in Army regulars in tribal-style Pathan Suits to occupy half of Kashmir.
They did it again, during General Pervez Musharraf’s misadventure in Kargil. Once again, India found itself killing Pakistan Army regulars in battle, but wearing Mujahideen disguises. What these Mujahideen were doing this time with Pakistan Army identity papers on them, is just another matter of inconvenient detail.
Pakistan has already fought three unsuccessful conventional wars with India, the last being over Kargil, before switching track very sharply towards the war “of a thousand cuts”. This same surreptitious technique has also served Pakistan well in its efforts to pressurise the West, right from the days when it was inducted by America to train and support the Afghan Mujahideen that successfully sent the Soviets packing.
Over the last decade however, Pakistan has gone into wholesale business for itself and emerged as the world’s most successful terror factory, recently characterised as an “international migraine” by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Pakistan is now a past-master at using proxies, irregulars and disguised armed forces to effect governmental distance and plausible deniability. They are also very good at brazening it out under diplomatic pressure as demonstrated after 9/11, extracting more money and arms from America, even as it kept its terror network intact.
President Musharraf, a consummate ex-commando, adopted a raft of techniques that included consorting with offshore radical Islamic and criminal groups, aiding the radicalisation of Muslim youth globally and the creation of sleeper cells. He also successfully internationalised the demographics, so that Pakistani nationals are not the only ones who turn up in the terror-net worldwide.
Pakistan now hosts a veritable Jehadi International, that includes ethnic Pakistani-British, Talibanised Afghans, Chechens, Pakistan’s lawless NWFP denizens, Bangladeshis- both free-lancers and the official collaborators, malcontents from Kashmir, from India’s North East, turned Muslims from other parts of India, those from Sudan, Somalia, Indonesia, Malaysia, even Muslim insurgents from China. And let us not forget Pakistan continues to host Osama Bin Laden.
To strengthen the doctrine of plausible deniability further, the Pakistan Government also collaborates with the international “Bhai” network. This underworld connection has worked to fund terrorism and insurgency with proceeds from forgery, currency counterfeiting, money-laundering, extortion, intimidation, blackmail, drug-running, prostitution and smuggling.
Other proven State run techniques include proliferation of nuclear and missile technology. This self-help laundry list complements the shameless cap-in-hand forays to the oil rich Gulf and the over-the-barrel West. The latter are also persuaded to supply arms to “fight” the very terrorism that Pakistan has turned into its most effective international calling card.
But the global worry today is not how well Pakistan has been playing the Artful Dodger, or how effectively it runs circles around a weak Indian government, but the very real threat that the radical Islamists, once ready to do the Pakistan Army and ISI’s bidding, are poised to swallow up the State itself, and seize its nuclear arsenal. One might even see a concordat emerge between the radicals and the Pakistani establishment as hinted at by Pakistan Army Chief Kiyani.
That would end Pakistan’s era of plausible deniability, but the world would then be looking at a Talibanised nuclear power. This then, is the nightmare rogue state with the very real WMD threat. The window of opportunity to stop this inevitability has to begin with neutralising Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Otherwise, the very definition of international diplomacy and accountability may have to be rewritten.
(1,051 words)
December 3rd, 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
Published in The Pioneer on December 8th,2008 as "It's Pakistan silly!" and online at www.dailypioneer.com where it is also archived under Columnists.
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