Obama’s Cairo Speech: A Dialogue for Reconciliation

June 6, 2009 at 10:39 am (Comments)
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Deepak Tripathi

The upheaval in America’s relations with the Muslim world after 9/11, as well as its content and language, make the eagerly-awaited address by President Obama in Cairo on June 4 an event of great significance. Speculation in recent weeks had focused on how different Obama’s message would be from that of his predecessor, George W Bush. That it would be different was not in doubt. Obama had spoken of the unclenched fist meeting the extended hand soon after his inauguration as president. Recent speculation had centered on the vision and its detail. Those expecting were not disappointed. The reaction fills the spectrum of opinion.

A revolutionary speech has several essential qualities. It must address major problems of the day and generate widespread interest. It must inspire hope and be a pointer to long-term solutions. A revolutionary speech touches the lives of ordinary people, effortlessly overcomes ethnic, racial, religious divides. Its call is for fairness and justice. It must be without extreme language. The time and the place have to be right. 

Obama’s address in Cairo addressed two of the biggest problems of our time. One, the Israeli-Arab dispute, at the heart of which is Israel’s festering conflict with the Palestinians. The other, the estrangement of Muslims that has grown to frightening proportions in recent years, no less due to the ‘clash of civilizations’ theory that had found abode in the Bush White House. These two problems, one caused by a historic injustice, the other of George W Bush’s own making, have affected the lives and thinking of Muslims round the world. Progress is unthinkable without addressing them.

Obama has a gift of rhetoric full of inspiration and sympathy for the underdog, as well as evenhandedness, that his predecessor never had. The right sentiment conveyed in an appropriate language matters. Armed with knowledge of history, he paid tribute to the Egyptian civilization, particularly the place Al-Azhar University has in Islamic learning. And he was careful to put Islam at the same par as Christianity and Judaism, the other two great religions that have co-existed in the region for more than two thousand years. Indeed, he gave the speech in the most significant Arab country and, without going to Israel, travelled to Germany to visit the Nazi camp at Buchenwald, where more than fifty thousand Jews, gypsies, resistance fighters and other prisoners were murdered.

To speak the word ‘occupation’ for conditions in which Palestinians live in Gaza and the West Bank is a remarkable departure for an American president. Obama further described the situation of Palestinians as ‘intolerable’. He spoke of tensions fed by colonialism that ‘denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims’. And a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated ‘as proxies without regard to their own aspirations’. He referred to the reinforcement of American troops in Afghanistan. But he also said America did not want to keep its troops in that country. These words are powerful enough to resonate, not only in the Middle East, but also in distant lands.

Obama said he was in Cairo to seek ‘a new beginning between the United States and Muslims’ around the world, one based ‘on mutual interest and mutual respect’. While expressing Washington’s traditional support for Israel, calling the bond unbreakable, he said, “It is also undeniable that the Palestinian people, Christians and Muslims, have suffered in pursuit of a homeland.” Their daily humiliations are real. And then perhaps the most significant part of his address: “America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity and a state of their own.”

The power of the Israel lobby in Washington, especially its dominance in Congress, remains strong. But outside Capitol Hill, the political landscape across the United States has changed. Depending on the perspective from which it is viewed, Barack Hussein Obama both leads and follows the extraordinary momentum of today. Obama’s speech in Cairo has caused shockwaves in Israel’s ruling establishment. In a muted response, the Israeli government said that national security will always be paramount for it. We are heading for extraordinary diplomatic turbulence. And many are eager and waiting to find out what will be beyond this turbulence. 

The above comment appeared in the Palestine Chronicle on 5 June 2009.

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The Significance of India’s Election

May 25, 2009 at 9:33 am (Comments)
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Deepak Tripathi

The results of the month-long general election in India are noteworthy in several respects. The political shift they represent and their possible effects for the domestic and foreign policies of one of the leading emerging powers in the world will be analyzed over the coming days and months. Here, it is worth looking at some notable aspects to emerge and what they mean. For they will be indicators of the likely conduct of India and what to expect from the country in the next few years. 

The United Progressive Alliance, led by the Congress Party, has retained power. Its performance has defied many predictions. With over two-hundred seats won by Congress alone, the alliance finished up just short of an absolute majority in the 543 contested seats for the lower house of parliament. Such a performance is enough to attract support from smaller parties. The governing alliance should have a safe passage through the next five years.

The Congress leadership will be relieved for two other reasons. First, the governing coalition will not have to depend on the Marxists as had been the case in the last parliament. Second, the Marxists themselves have suffered heavy reverses this time and their strength is much diminished. To a considerable degree, this outcome is of their own making. They turned on themselves as the 2009 election approached. Their gamble to confront the governing alliance over India’s relations with the West and over economic policy failed. 

The revival of Congress in northern India, once the citadel that gave it control over power, after years of decay is another remarkable feature of this election. Muslims and groups at the bottom rung of India’s Hindu caste system that once formed its core support have returned to Congress in significant numbers. In state after state, including Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Delhi, Congress won more seats than the most optimistic forecasts before the vote. Even in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, strongholds of the Hindu nationalist BJP, the Congress-led alliance did far better than had been expected.

Only Bihar and Orissa, where regional leaders were in power, bucked the trend, depriving Congress of any chance of making significant inroads. 

The victory of the United Progressive Alliance, led by Sonia Gandhi and the Prime Minister, Man Mohan Singh, has come despite widespread anger and criticism of the government following the Mumbai massacre in November 2008. As evidence mounted that a Pakistan-based group was behind the attack, there were calls for military reprisal by India, similar to the American response after 9/11. The BJP accused the government and the prime minister in particular of weakness.

Despite the rhetoric that mirrored the nation’s anger, the decision to refrain from acting impulsively against a nuclear-armed rival was judicious. A war with Pakistan was avoided. Polling went off peacefully throughout India over an extended period. The governing alliance benefited as Muslims and other minorities drew towards Congress. Those leaning towards extreme and caste-based politics have paid the price.

These are comforting developments for much of the international community, especially the United States and Europe. They know who they will be dealing with over the next five years. Man Mohan Singh remains India’s prime minister, with Sonia Gandhi the power holding it all together. The emergence of a new tier of young, educated leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, promises a generation ready to take over the Congress leadership when the time comes. This, too, will be viewed in western capitals with satisfaction. A clear political course generates confidence in the country’s future.

Such a young generation of leaders is necessary as India takes on an increasingly higher profile globally. There is a new administration in the United States and a different government is likely in Britain after polls due within a year. In the present global economic meltdown, emerging powers like India and China must readjust with the new realities. The challenges require continuity, as well as correction.

People like the former Under-Secretary general of the United Nations, Shashi Tharoor, just elected to parliament, and Rahul Gandhi are the new faces of India on the international stage. In a turbulent region at a time of multiple crises confronting the world, India has emerged after the 2009 election prepared to face both challenges and opportunities awaiting the country.

The above commentary was published by ZNet on 23 May 2009.

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Moral Crisis

May 13, 2009 at 9:35 pm (Comments)
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Deepak Tripathi

“The roots of violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principles.”

– Mahatma Gandhi

Rather like the state of the world today. We see violence in many forms, of which the latest is the scandal revealed of the ‘expenses bonanza’ of British MPs using public money to maintain their own lifestyle. This at a time when millions of their fellow citizens struggle to cope with the economic meltdown.

Ordinary people lose jobs, their homes, their possessions; children go to bed hungry, their education suffers. After a long period of posturing by the rulers and their clamor to punish ‘benefit cheats’, the day of reckoning has arrived. Britain’s political parties are on the defensive not seen in living memory.

Recent disclosures in the Daily Telegraph newspaper make clear that the ‘benefit regime’ for British MPs, under the rules which they themselves made, had been evolving for almost thirty years. Under the regime, large amounts of state money were claimed for gardening and for food; private homes were frequently bought and sold, in one case three times in a single year, pocketing the money gained and avoiding the capital gains tax; lavish furniture, clothes, pet food, bought at taxpayers’ expense.

In one of the most outspoken attacks, former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, condemns ‘the culture of abuse’ and warns that respect for parliament in Britain has reached a new low.

Of course, the crisis is more serious and widespread. ‘The culture of abuse’ in governance is both self-serving and self-perpetuating. It shows malignant disregard for people outside the political bubble.

The attention of those outside the political bubble is often kept engaged with endless talk of external threats like terrorism, evil dictators and illegal immigrants trying to flood into ‘our country’. Rulers may assume the right to launch ‘pre-emptive attacks’ that cause floods of refugees in other parts of the world. But the refugees may not have the right to asylum in the countries that cause the crises.

Today, warfare has become a business and an instrument to make enormous amounts of money. For private firms like Blackwater in the United States, combat in the battlefield, military training, consulting and personal security for high-ranking officials – the list of what they would do for inflated prices is long. In recent years, it has been official practice to award contracts to firms of choice, without any real competition. Vested interests prosper as a result.

Poverty is a form of violence. When an abusive culture has set in and people in power have become comfortable in their own self-serving environment, their interests fly against the needs of the wider society. The consequence is more acute poverty, disruption and chaos. The cause is rich feeding off poor. The effect a state of failure, as we see today.

The above comment appeared in ZNet and CounterPunch on May 13, 2009.

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Pakistan in Crisis

May 6, 2009 at 6:08 pm (Articles)
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Deepak Tripathi

President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan is this week on his first visit to the United States since coming to office. It comes at a critical time for Pakistan and for America’s relations with that nuclear-armed, but failing, country in South Asia. President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Pakistan’s failed neighbor, is also in Washington for trilateral meetings with President Obama and other leading figures in the administration.

Recent escalation of violence in Pakistan has brought grim warnings from senior American officials in Washington about the viability of the Pakistani state. A month ago, General David Petraeus, the top military commander in the region, testified in the Senate Armed Services Committee that ‘militant extremists could literally take down the Pakistani state’ if left unchallenged. On the same day, a senior Pentagon official, Michele Flournoy, warned of higher US casualties in Afghanistan in the coming year. And Admiral Eric Olson, chief of America’s special operations commandos, described the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan as ‘increasingly dire’. According to one report, General Petraeus has privately told the White House that the administration has as little time as two weeks to determine its future course of action in Pakistan as the civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari struggles against an insurgency that is growing alarmingly.

For eight years under the Bush-Cheney presidency, the United States and its European allies were consumed in the fortification of the Western world following September 11, 2001. A vital part of this overwhelmingly militaristic approach was to remake West Asia, resulting in war and occupation in the region during the rest of the decade.

Amid all the media coverage of the threat to the West, what has often been missed is the eastward proliferation of terrorism, throughout Pakistan and to India and beyond. The Council for Foreign Relations, a New York-based research institution, while acknowledging the existence of ‘local terrorist groups’ in the Indian part of the disputed region of Kashmir, goes on to say that ‘most of the recent terrorism has been conducted by Islamist outsiders who seek to claim Kashmir for Pakistan’.[1] According to the organization, many militants involved in attacks across the border in India received training in the same madrasahs where Taliban and al-Qa‘ida fighters have studied since the 1980s. Some received training in Afghanistan when the Taliban ruled the country. Many more represent an indigenous phenomenon in Pakistani society. How did things reach such a point?

With the advent of the 1990s, the rationale for arming militant Islamists to fight the Soviet Union had ceased. The Cold War had ended. The Soviet state had disintegrated and the Najibullah regime in Kabul had collapsed by 1992. The culture of violence had become embedded in Afghan and Pakistani societies. By the mid-1990s, the phenomenon of terrorism had mutated into something far more serious with the emergence of the Taliban, helped by Pakistan. After years of active intervention, the West had moved on to other priorities, leaving the Afghan chaos to its regional allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

It is true that there was not another 9/11-type attack on mainland America during the administration of George W Bush. But this ‘success’ must be seen in perspective, not in isolation. Historically, attacks by external forces on the United States are rare. Furthermore, the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 and activities of anti-state private militias point to a domestic phenomenon in parts of America. Beyond the US shores, the terrorist bombings in Madrid in 2004 and Bali and London a year later meant that the West continued to be targeted elsewhere. And thousands of US and allied soldiers continued to die or be wounded in America’s foreign wars.

Meanwhile in Pakistan, the conversion of local supporters of the Taliban to an indigenous group under the umbrella of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan has been the most significant development responsible for the proliferation of violence.[2] It began between 2002 and 2004 when Pakistan’s armed forces were busy capturing ‘foreigners’ to hand over to the Americans for money and carrying out military operations in areas linked to al-Qa‘ida. Many of these operations were against groups in Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province, not allied to al-Qa‘ida or the Taliban but against those demanding more autonomy and a greater share of income from local resources, principally Baluchistan’s gold, copper and coal mines and vast reserves of natural gas. Washington compensated the military regime of General Pervez Musharraf for prosecuting ‘anti-terrorism’ operations inside Pakistan.

In such turbulent conditions, many local militant groups started to join ranks in Pakistan’s frontier areas instead of merging into the Afghan Taliban. They developed their own distinct identity, sometimes launching attacks, at other times cutting deals with the authorities. According to the Council for Foreign Relations, the Taliban of Pakistan had become an effective fighting force of between 30000 and 35000 strong by 2008.[3] They would network between themselves, as well as with the Afghan Taliban and al-Qa‘ida when it suited them. Their aim – to oppose Pakistan’s military and civilian government and to confront the US-led forces in the region. Today, the Pakistani Taliban have close affiliations with Jamiat ulema-i-Islam, a religious party which insists on the strict enforcement of Islamic law.

The leadership of Pakistan-based Kashmiri militants had connections with al-Qa‘ida since before the advent of the Pakistani Taliban following the US invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. The leader of the Harakat-ul-Mujahideen group, Farooq Kashmiri Khalil, was a signatory to the 1998 declaration of war by al-Qa‘ida. Quoting American and Indian officials, the Council for Foreign Relations says that Maulana Masood Azhar, leader of the Jaish-e-Muhammad group founded in 2000, is suspected of receiving money from al-Qa‘ida. Another group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, has been active in the region since 1993.

Barely three months after 9/11, the Indian Parliament was attacked in December 2001. The Indian authorities accused Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad for the attack, in which more than a dozen people were killed, including all five attackers. A series of attacks followed. The most audacious was the three-day carnage in Mumbai, the main commercial city of India, in November 2008. Some 170 people of many nationalities died and over 300 were wounded in a coordinated orgy of violence. All but one of the ten gunmen were killed. There is plenty of evidence provided by experts and media reports in the United States, India, even Pakistan, that the attackers came from Pakistan. The group is said to have belonged to Lashkar-e-Taiba.

After vehement denials of Pakistani involvement in the Mumbai attack, Islamabad, against mounting evidence, admitted that the lone survivor among the gunmen, twenty-one-year-old Ajmal Kasab, was a Pakistani citizen.[4] As early as December 1, 2008, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported that he had been trained in marine warfare at a camp in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-held Kashmir, part of a group of about 40 militants who had received commando training. The November 2008 carnage in Mumbai was the most high profile in a long sequence of attacks across India going back to the early 1990s.

The monster of terrorism in Pakistan is a consequence of policies followed over decades. At the heart of these policies has been a tendency to pursue high risk strategies, together with a state of denial. When the Pakistani state was established in 1947, the idea of a separate nation for the peoples of the Muslim faith of British India was not universally supported. Pashtuns under the leadership of Abdul Ghaffar Khan opposed partition. For years after the establishment of Pakistan, the Pashtuns and other minorities continued to challenge the domination of the most populous province, Punjab, in the country.

The response of Pakistan’s ruling military-political elite has been suppression of the country’s minorities. It happened in two ways: by coercive military methods and by playing the ‘Islamic card’ in national politics. When minorities made demands for greater autonomy, they have been portrayed as working against Islam and encountered military force.

The fear of internal collapse is one of the main forces that determines the conduct of the military-political elite of Pakistan. The other is the perceived fear of India. Internal suppression at the expense of the rule of law and a national accord fuels resistance. And violence is diverted towards ‘external threats’ – India on one side, Afghanistan on the other. For decades, this has been the essence of the high risk strategy of Pakistan’s military-political establishment, especially its military intelligence organ, Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.

The crisis for Pakistan has thus become the crisis for the entire region and beyond. Islamic fundamentalism encouraged by the military ruler, General Zia, to fight America’s war in Afghanistan in the 1980s was devastatingly effective in defeating the Soviet Union and its client regime in Kabul. But the phenomenon undermined the rule of law and inflamed religious and sectarian violence. It has had a corrosive effect on national institutions. Pakistan is a failing state.

The election in November 2008 of Barack Obama, the first black to become America’s president in its history, was a revolutionary event. A man of undoubted intellect, Obama’s victory came with enormous odds and a strong desire for change. A leader who emerges in such conditions faces opposing demands. Like the end of the Vietnam era in the mid-1970s and the Cold War in the 1990s, the world’s pre-eminent power looks for peace to recover and rebuild. It cannot make a hasty retreat. So, the preference under the Obama presidency – to work for the beginning of the end of war and to switch to tough diplomacy. The task is turning out to be a lot harder than Obama and his team had thought.

Notes

[1] See ‘Kashmir Militant Extremists’ (Council for Foreign Relations, NY, available on www.cfr.org/publication/9135/).

[2] See Hassan Abbas, ‘A Profile of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’ (Sentinel, Combating Terrorism Center, United States Military Academy, West Point, January 2008).

[3] Jayshree Bajoria, ‘Pakistan’s New Generation of Terrorists’ (Council for Foreign Relations, February 6, 2008).

[4] See Pakistan’s English daily, Dawn, for ‘Surviving gunman’s identity established as Pakistani’, January 9, 2009.

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The Pakistan Enigma

April 7, 2009 at 11:05 am (Articles)
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Deepak Tripathi

A little over two months after assuming the United States presidency, Barack Obama is making waves in all directions. He leads at a time of multiple crises. The collapse of the economic and financial system, with worldwide consequences and a growing human cost, take center stage in the public discourse in America and Europe. But the threat of terrorism is not far behind.

The West frets over the risk of another attack. A continent away in Afghanistan, Pakistan and, in recent days, in Iraq, violence takes increasing numbers of lives every day. As Pakistan becomes the latest country to suffer a breakdown in order, new fears arise in the region and beyond. It is going to be a severe test of President Obama’s evolving policy on the Afghan-Pakistan front.

The suicide bombing on a Shi’a mosque in Chakwal, in the north of Punjab province, on April 5, 2009 appears to confirm a pattern in the escalating cycle of violence in Pakistan. Some twenty people were blown up in the attack, including the suicide bomber, reported to be a boy dressed in black. Up to a hundred were wounded. For some years, conventional wisdom had been that militant havens existed only in tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghan frontier. And attacks were launched on both sides from bases in the autonomous tribal belt. It is not the case, not any longer even if it might have been before.

The assassination of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, in December 2007 was a political earthquake. It laid bare the rapid proliferation of insurgency to the heart of Pakistani society. In September 2008, the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad was targeted, killing over fifty victims and injuring many more. Violence by the Taliban and their affiliates has since spread to other parts of Punjab province. Then came the attack on Sri Lanka’s cricket team in early March 2009 to the south in Lahore. The attack did much damage to Pakistan’s image as a destination for foreign visitors and forced this year’s Indian Premier League, a money-spinning cricket competition that attracts the world’s top players, out to South Africa.

America under President Obama has abandoned the doctrine of overwhelming military force as the sole option to deal with the terrorist threat. His evolving policy is complex, more nuanced. It aims to enter into a dialogue with sections of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan and isolate Al-Qaeda. The new administration accepts that America cannot impose its will and its own political system anywhere it chooses. It is not possible to transform traditional societies into modern ones all of a sudden. And Washington must have the ‘exit strategy’, but must stabilize and rebuild before taking the desired exit route.

Therein lies the problem. To stabilize and to rebuild means to keep the military and civilian presence in Afghanistan. It necessitates use of military power to control the campaign of violence by militants. Increased American and allied presence, military and civilian, provides the enemy with a greater number of targets. The result could be higher casualties. A determination made to keep the occupation finite involves negotiating with the adversary. And a deadline to expand the domain of constitutional order and peace. However, forces that are there in the region to restore order also provoke resistance.

In Pakistan, America relies on attacks by unmanned aircraft against diehard militants and the capability and the willingness of Pakistan’s security forces. Close secretive ties between Islamist groups and the military since the CIA proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan go back to the 1980s. These ties have proved impossible to break, despite persistent efforts of the United States.

For now, a definite pattern appears to be taking shape. Every American missile which targets a suspected militant hideout reportedly kills some militants, but also civilians. Retaliation by the militants, a Taliban or allied group, follows. Can President Obama achieve what has been illusive for years? That is Obama’s enigma.

 The above article appeared by CounterPunch on April 6 and ZNet on April 7, 2009.

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On Bush, As He Leaves

January 9, 2009 at 11:22 am (Comments)
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Deepak Tripathi

George W. Bush was not going to leave the White House quietly. After eight days of relentless Israeli bombing of Gaza, he waved the green flag to Israel to invade the Gaza Strip. In his weekly radio address, Bush held Hamas responsible for the latest violence. And he proclaimed that “no peace deal would be acceptable without tougher action to prevent Hamas and other groups from receiving weapons”. Hours later on January 3, Israeli tanks were rolling into the Gaza Strip.

As the removals work in the White House, the conduct of George W. Bush in the last few days of his presidency shows that there is no change in him after eight years. He remains a hostage to his demons. His radio address is going to be remembered alongside television pictures of mutilated bodies of Palestinian children, beamed all over the world. The Bush presidency ends just as it began in 2001 – with war.

A lot has happened in the intervening years. But the overpowering impression he leaves behind is that of a president who put political opportunism to most destructive use, wherever and however he could, to satisfy his own capriciousness and prejudices. With few exceptions, those in Congress in Washington and in other Western capitals simply caved in, because they did not want to be on the ‘wrong’ side. The cost of this failure has been horrendous. As Bush prepares for quieter pastures in Texas, he leaves much of the Middle East and South Asia burning.

Bush and his vice-president, Dick Cheney, have used every significant player that came in their path. From Tony Blair of Britain and General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan through the Arab and East European countries where abducted detainees were taken to be tortured to Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, and Israel’s leading politicians — the list is long. As the end came near, the Bush-Cheney administration seized the opportunity offered by circumstances in and around Gaza.

A bitter dispute loomed in advance of January 8, when Abbas would complete his normal four-year term as Palestinian Authority president, having been elected in 2005. Hamas, the majority party in the Legislative Council, insisted that Abbas submit his resignation to the speaker and the process begin to hold a new presidential election. But Abbas was determined to hold on to power. His Fatah group argued that a law subsequently passed allowed him to remain in the post until the next council elections in 2010.

As February elections approached in Israel, the Defense Minister and Labor Party leader, Ehud Barak, and the Foreign Minister and leader of the Kadima Party, Tzipi Livni, were in competition within the cabinet. The hard-line Likud leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, goaded them from without. The leaders of Egypt and Jordan felt threatened by the emergence of Hamas and growing Iranian influence in the region. All this provided the ideal ground for Bush and Cheney to create a crisis and unleash the proxies on Gaza to reshape the territory. After Afghanistan and Iraq, it was the turn of Gaza to be subjected to ’shock and awe’. The command center for the operation is the White House. The proxies are in the region. The more insecure the proxies feel, the easier it is to play on their fears. 

The events in Gaza bear echoes of the Sabra and Chatila massacres in Lebanon in September 1982. Then, Israel let loose its proxies, the Christian Phalange militiamen, on the two refugee camps. Hundreds of Palestinians, men, women and children, were killed and thousands injured. Today, Israeli bullets and bombs also kill women and children in Gaza. And the responsibility lies not in Tel Aviv, but in the White House. Despite all the talk of Hamas intransigence and its refusal to cease rocket attacks in Israel’s border areas, truth does emerge from time to time.

Writing in the Huffington Post (Understanding the Gaza Catastrophe, January 3, 2009), the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, gives a detailed account of how the Hamas leadership ‘offered to extend the truce, even proposing a ten-year period’. He writes, “Israel ignored these diplomatic initiatives and failed to carry out its side of the ceasefire agreement that involved some easing of the blockade that had been restricting the entry to Gaza of food, medicine and fuel to a trickle.”

The cynical manipulation of fears and insecurities of others to punish peoples not liked in thw White House has been the trademark of the Bush administration. His latest act is calculated to overthrow, or greatly weaken, Hamas in Gaza and, at the same time, to try to lock the path of the incoming administration of Barak Obama for the foreseeable future. Israel may finish its ‘military job’ in Gaza in the next few weeks or months. Many more will die of bullets, lack of treatment, hunger and malnutrition. The rest will have to endure conditions worse than before. The sense of humiliation and betrayal will sink in deeper among Palestinians. The prospects of any diplomatic engagement with Hamas will have been set back, possibly for years. And America’s image abroad takes another battering.

All of which would not matter to George W. Bush, for his green light to the Israelis to invade Gaza shows he has no remorse. An instinctive demolisher, he inspected the vast wreckage around him at the end of his presidency and decided to go with a bang — this time in Gaza. As the tragedy unfolds, Barack Obama’s silence may seem odd. But he cannot be a happy man. Silence is the best signal to convey disengagement — if, indeed, it is that.

 The above commentary was published by AlterNet on January 9 and the History News Network, George Mason University, Virginia, on January 15, 2009.

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Prayers for Gaza

January 8, 2009 at 5:02 pm (Literary)
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No more tears left

My eyes are dry

As I watch the news unfold

The heartache is unbearable

 

It’s slaughter in Gaza

Fire, death everywhere

 

UN is meeting

Around the table they all sit

With food, water, light

The room is warm

 

But no water, food, light or heat

For the people of Gaza

Nothing for Gaza

The UN is meeting.

 

How many days, months, years

Have they lived

Without basic human dignity

But the UN is still talking

 

How many men, women and children will die

Before the UN does something

So many deaths, so much destruction

Crying, screaming, sobbing

 

UN does not hear you Gaza

UN is in meeting

But you’re in my prayers Gaza

May God be with you.

 

By Archana Tripathi, (UK)

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Gaza in Perspective

January 2, 2009 at 11:02 am (Comments)
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Deepak Tripathi

The bombing of the Gaza Strip has predictably been justified by Israel and the United States as self-defense by a country under attack from a ‘terrorist’ organization. Claims of ’surgical air attacks’ against ‘carefully selected targets’, to minimize civilian casualties, are repeated by Israeli politicians and government spokesmen in their daily encounters with the world media. In Jerusalem, as in Washington, the blame for the plight of Palestinians is placed entirely on Hamas, which rules the territory.

A little perspective is needed to understand what is really happening in Gaza. Roughly 400 Palestinians were killed and as many as 2000 injured in the first five days of Israeli bombing until December 31, 2008. These casualties include children and young students, civilian officials and local policemen. The Gaza Strip is a small territory, about 140 square miles in area and a population of 1.5 million, making it one of the most densely populated places in the world. Israel, on the other hand, is a country of seven million people.

The scale of bloodshed in Gaza over five days is the same as if almost 2000 Israelis had been killed and 9000 wounded in the same period. Imagine the consequences for Israel in such an event. It begins to explain what the people of Gaza have already endured. And their horror is still not over. In contrast, the actual number of Israeli deaths by Hamas rockets fired randomly towards Israel recently is four.

Not only have Hamas security complexes and government buildings been hit. Mosques, schools, University buildings and civilian homes lie in ruins. Hospitals have been overwhelmed and shortages of medical supplies and food are making the situation increasingly desperate. Underground tunnels to Egypt, used to transport essential supplies as well as weapons and explosives, have been destroyed. Despite all this, the leader of Israel’s Kadima Party, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, says the country has ‘no alternative’ but to carry on. 

The Israeli offensive was launched soon after the end of a six-month ‘ceasefire’ with Hamas. In reality, no such ceasefire ever existed, because the continuing Israeli siege of Gaza amounts to an act of war. Richard Falk, the United Nations special rapporteur, has described the Israeli air attacks on the territory as ’severe and massive violations of international law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an occupying power and in the requirements of the laws of war’. According to Professor Falk, Israel is guilty of inflicting collective punishment on the entire population of Gaza, of targeting civilians and of using disproportionate force, killing civilians and destroying the administrative infrastructure in the territory.

Certainly the Hamas rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful, he says. But that illegality does not give rise to any Israeli right to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in response.

The above article was published in the Palestine Chronicle on January 1, 2009.

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Obama’s Afghan Surge

December 30, 2008 at 5:51 pm (Articles)
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Deepak Tripathi

Nearly thirty years after the Cold War exploded into full-scale conflict in Afghanistan, the incoming president, Barack Obama, is about to embark on yet another stage in America’s involvement in that country. In short hand, it is described as Obama’s ‘Afghan surge’. If a recent report in the New York Times is anything to go by, the ‘Afghan surge’ would be remarkably similar to the ’surge’ of 2007 in Iraq under President George W Bush.[1]

The ‘Iraqi surge’ was an attempt to subdue the rapidly escalating cycle of violence in the capital, Baghdad, and Anbar Province covering much of western Iraq. The buildup involved the deployment of thirty thousand extra US troops as part of ‘The New Way Forward’ announced by Bush in January 2007. Barely six weeks before, the Washington Post had disclosed a US intelligence report admitting that ‘the social and political situation has deteriorated to a point’ that American and Iraqi troops ‘are no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency’ in Anbar.[2] From village to provincial levels, nearly all government institutions had collapsed. Summarizing the assessment, one American military officer said, “We have been defeated politically – and that’s where wars are won and lost.”  

Today, the situation in much of Afghanistan and Pakistan is grim and reaches beyond the borders of Pakistan. Militants launch audacious attacks from their bases on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan frontier. Events in recent months have demonstrated that Kabul, Islamabad, Delhi or Mumbai – no major city in the region is safe. Violence in the countryside in Afghanistan and Pakistan goes on largely unnoticed, unless it involves foreign forces.

I referred to similarities between the ‘Iraqi surge’ and the ‘Afghan surge’ earlier. American and British media report that as many as thirty thousand extra troops are to be deployed on the Afghan front by summer 2009. According to the New York Times, preparations are underway ‘to arm local militias to help in the fight against a resurgent Taleban’ in Afghanistan. The government of Pakistan is unlikely to give its official consent to the arming of militias inside its territory. There are several reasons. Contrary to popular belief  in the West, the Taleban are not a homogeneous group, but a loose network bound by a certain interpretation of Islam. The Taleban of Pakistan are firmly embedded in Pakistani society, where the culture of weapons is all pervasive.  

Relations between Islamabad and Washington, and Islamabad and Delhi, have suffered a sharp deterioration. The perception is strong in the ruling establishment of Pakistan that America has switched its support to India. Three main factors are responsible for this change in US policy: Pakistan’s failure to contain the militant groups in its territory, the decision by the Bush administration after 9/11 to invest so heavily in General Pervez Musharraf, then military ruler of Pakistan, and America’s growing economic and military ties with India.

The shift in American policy towards India is likely to continue during the Obama presidency. It means a break in Washington’s strategic alliance with Islamabad going back to the 1950s as part of the policy of containment of the Soviet Union. One of America’s long-term aims now is to counter the growing power of China. But the military-political establishment of Pakistan will see it as encirclement of the country while the occupation forces remain in Afghanistan to the west and US ties grow with India to the east. There is also a perception in Pakistan that the country does rather better under military dictators as an ally of the United States than under a fledgling democracy.

What more does the ‘Afghan surge’ indicate beyond introducing as many as thirty thousand additional troops and recruiting militias to fight the Taleban? In the case of Iraq, most of the extra US soldiers were deployed in Baghdad with the stated aim of improving security in the capital. The tour of duty of several thousand troops already in Baghdad was extended. Many were deployed in Anbar Province, which had suffered some of the worst violence. A report by the Senlis Council think-tank in November 2007 estimated that more than half of Afghanistan had fallen back under Taleban control.

If anything, the situation worsened in 2008. Anti-government forces, enriched by the illicit profits from Afghanistan’s poppy harvest, set up de facto administration in large areas of the Pashtun belt in the south and the east. Insurgents penetrated the security ring around the capital, Kabul. Attacks on government and foreign targets were launched with increasing frequency – the most audacious of them on the Indian embassy in July 2008.

As part of the ‘Afghan surge’, many of the additional US troops are likely to be deployed around the capital, Kabul, as they were in Baghdad in 2007. The need to protect the American and allied embassies, diplomats, Afghan ministries and officials is paramount. Offices of many non-governmental organizations are located in Kabul. It is vital to project Kabul’s image as a secure and stable seat of government – image that has suffered as the situation has steadily worsened. The International (Green) Zone in Baghdad would serve as the model where occupation forces and Iraqi government are concentrated. Surrounded by blast-proof walls, barbed wire-fences and a few checkpoints to control entry, it is in effect a mini-city inside the Iraqi capital. In contrast, Kabul is a sprawling, chaotic town and fortification of a similar kind would be more difficult.

The other side of Obama’s ‘Afghan surge’ is to recruit local militias to fight the Taleban. As the New York Times says, this has raised fears that ‘the new armed groups could push the country into a deeper bloodletting’. Shi’a and other minorities are already concerned over the prospect of new Sunni militias roaming parts of Afghanistan, supposedly to fight the Taleban. Once again, the plan originates from Iraq. US officials say their decision to recruit a hundred thousand Sunni tribesmen, many of them ex-rebel fighters, under the umbrella of Awakening Councils was responsible for the ’steep reduction’ in violence. The logic is that what worked in one country would also work in the other.

In truth, it is too early to claim success in Iraq. American casualties have declined after the handover of security to the Iraqis. But acts of bombing, shooting, abduction and extortion continue almost every day. Under American pressure, the Shi’a-dominated government in Baghdad took over the responsibility of paying salaries to the Awakening Council militias. But the government remains opposed to assimilating more than a small proportion of them into the regular armed forces. The Shi’a majority of Iraq, together with Iran, will view the Sunni militias as a proxy of Saudi Arabia. The militiamen see an uncertain future for themselves as the occupation forces draw down and Obama turns his attention to Afghanistan. 

We have seen it all before. Following the 1978 Communist coup by a group of army officers in Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter ordered secret aid to the Mujahideen in that country. Encouraged by the American Central Intelligence Agency and its close ally, Pakistan, Mujahideen guerrillas increased pressure on the Communist regime. The Soviet leadership panicked. It invaded Afghanistan to maintain control of a country it regarded as within its sphere of influence. From 1980 on, President Ronald Reagan, Carter’s successor, armed and financed more than eighty thousand guerrillas to fight America’s proxy war against the Soviet Union.

For almost two decades, the ‘official version’ of history, promoted from Washington, had suggested that America’s military aid to the Mujahideen came after the Soviet invasion of a poor, helpless country. The truth was rather more complex. In 1996, the CIA’s former director, Robert Gates, revealed that the Carter administration had begun to look at ways of providing covert assistance to the anti-Communist forces soon after the 1978 coup in Afghanistan.[3] And in July 1979, nearly six months before the Soviets invaded, Carter issued a directive authorizing secret aid to the Mujahideen.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security adviser, spoke in public about the matter for the first time in 1998.[4] He confirmed that Carter did issue the order that started the secret aid program for the Mujahideen. Brzezinski also revealed that he told Carter the American action was ‘going to induce a Soviet military intervention’ in Afghanistan. Brzezinski described it as ‘an excellent idea’, because it had the effect of drawing the Soviet Union into ‘the Afghan trap’. On the day the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Brzezinski said, he wrote to the president that the United States now had ‘the opportunity to give the USSR its Vietnam War’.

In 1989, the Soviet occupation forces retreated from Afghanistan, just as the United States had done from Vietnam in 1975. The Soviet Union paid the ultimate price – its own demise – barely three years later. The Communist regime in Afghanistan collapsed a few months after the Soviet state had disintegrated, like the fall of America’s client regime in South Vietnam more than fifteen years before. The Mujahideen march into Kabul was greeted with delight in Washington. And the United States moved on to new priorities. They were to manage the disintegration of the Soviet state and its nuclear arsenal, to oversee the expansion of the free-market system abroad and to help its own economy.

Afghan factions had been supplied with weapons, money and copies of the Qur’an by President Reagan’s CIA chief, William Casey, in the 1980s.[5] In the ruins of war, they were left to fight it out in the 1990s. The civil war gave rise to the Taleban and Afghanistan became a sanctuary for Al-Qaeda. Now, after eight years of failed war in Afghanistan under the Bush presidency, comes the latest twist. President Obama’s ‘Afghan surge’ will not only involve extra American troops to defend Kabul and other strategic points; it will include the hiring and arming of pro-US local militias to fight the Taleban in the countryside. And, according to a recent report in the Washington Post, the CIA has begun to supply the sex-enhancing drug, Viagra, to Afghan chiefs to gain information about Taleban activities.[6]

In the Cold War, the CIA handed out money, weapons and copies of the Qur’an to Islamic groups to fight against Soviet communism. Twenty years on, the agency has added Viagra to its list of temptations to lure Afghans in the US war against fundamentalist Islam, which the Taleban and Al-Qaeda represent.

 The above article originally appeared in the Media Monitors Network on December 28, 2008.

[1] New York Times, December 23, 2008.

[2] Washington Post, November 28, 2006. 

[3] Robert Gates, a career CIA officer, served as the agency’s Director between 1991 and 1993. See his memoirs, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), pp 143-149. Gates became secretary of defense in the Bush administration in 2006. President Obama decided to keep him in the post.  

[4] Brzezinski interview, ‘The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan’ (Paris: Le Nouvel Observateur, January 15-21, 1998, English version posted on October 15, 2001 by the Centre for Research on Globalization, Shanty Bay, Canada, on www.globalresearch.ca).    

[5] See, for example, Chalmers Johnson, ‘Are We to Blame for Afghanistan?’ (History News Network, George Mason University, Virginia, November 22, 2004).

[6] Joby Warrick, ‘Little Blue Pills Among the Ways CIA Wins Friends in Afghanistan’ (Washington Post, December 26, 2008, A01).

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India’s neoliberal elite

December 19, 2008 at 8:20 am (Comments)

Deepak Tripathi

Tragedy and trauma magnify a nation’s awareness or lack thereof. The events surrounding the Mumbai carnage have revealed certain aspects of India’s collective psyche that provide food for thought and perhaps a lesson to learn.

The country had already suffered a wave of mindless bombings and targeted attacks on Muslim and Christian minorities recently. That the killings in Mumbai by Muslim gunmen, whose victims included dozens of fellow Muslims, did not lead to further retribution was an achievement. So weary was the country of the possibility of another disastrous turn of events.   

On Indian television channels, though, there was plenty of heat and theater in debates. Voices of reason appeared to drown in high-pitched rhetoric from a handful of guests – socialites and self-styled commentators. They were in competition for space with politicians, academics and journalists of the more established ranks. Ex-model, now socialite and author, Shobha De, described as India’s answer to Jackie Collins, known for her erotic novels, lambasted politicians for ‘failures’ that led to the bloodbath. “Enough is enough,” she screamed. India’s leading English news channel, NDTV, responded by naming an entire episode ‘Enough is Enough’. Participants had a field day attacking the government and politicians in general. Those who begged that the fiery rhetoric be toned down had little chance of succeeding until the heat was exhausted.

There were loud calls to teach Pakistan a lesson. The Mumbai attack was described as ‘India’s 9/11′. Participants demanded that India launch military raids inside Pakistan to destroy militant bases – rather like America using pilotless aircraft that regularly kill many more innocent civilians than militants. Simi Garewal, a movie actress in the 1960s and 1970s, later to host her own talk show, was not going to be left behind. Look at how America retaliated after September 11, 2001, she argued, and no one has dared to harm it since. Even more grotesque was praise for Israel’s behavior from a guest.

A recent discussion program on ‘Hindu terror’ turned to the possibility of Hindu fundamentalism affecting some in the Indian armed forces. The issue was how the military can remain unaffected by a phenomenon that exists in the wider society. When a US-educated academic of Indian descent tried to speak, he was abruptly told by a participant that there would not be a word said against the army.

As I have said before, these comments came from a small group of India’s neoliberal elite – smart, well-spoken and aggressive. These neoliberals undoubtedly love their country. But their worldview is as misinformed as their remedies are perilous. They boast of India’s military might, but fail to understand that Pakistan, like India, also has nuclear weapons. Before both countries became nuclear powers, India’s bigger armed forces meant the balance of power was in its favor. However, with nuclear deterrence, Pakistan is now equal to India. A basic knowledge of the doctrine of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ would be enough to counter the foolish proposition of war on Pakistan.

Equally careless and dangerous were claims about the American retaliation against Afghanistan and the illegal invasion of Iraq, which, it was said, had prevented further attacks on the United States. Such claims are little more than regurgitated rhetoric of George W Bush to begin with. The facts tell a very different story. Terrorist attacks on US mainland are neither frequent, nor have they always originated from outside. Before September 11, 2001, the previous attack by external forces on American mainland was the car bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Two years later, a homegrown American bomber, Timothy McVeigh, devastated a large government building in Oklahoma City, killing about 170 people and wounding more than 850 others.

The 9/11 attacks came six years after the Oklahoma City bombing by McVeigh and one hopes nothing like it happens again. Meanwhile, five thousand American soldiers have died and tens of thousands have been injured and traumatized in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis have perished. Millions have been made homeless and displaced. Many have been abducted, tortured and thrown into notorious prisons like Guantanamo. The hatred for the Bush administration is widespread. From the Palestinian Territories through Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan, India and elsewhere – the overall balance sheet of George W Bush is deeply in the red, even without considering the world economic slump.

Heaping praise on Israel’s conduct from the television studios of Bombay and Delhi has no relation with realities in the Middle East. Despite its huge military superiority and brutal tactics, Israel has failed to tame the Palestinian rebellion. One-and-a-half million Palestinians in Gaza, two-thirds of them registered with the United Nations as refugees, live in desperate conditions, under an Israeli blockade. A growing number of Israelis are alarmed at their government’s tactics and the deteriorating situation all around their country.

Israel’s military superiority is maintained by more than three billion dollars of American money every year. The nuclear weapons which Israel first developed in the late 1960s may have deterred its Arab enemies in the 1973 war and afterwards. Today, Israel faces a different threat. It comes from the mass of alienated humanity encircling Israel that nuclear weapons cannot counter. A country of Israel’s size, in the midst of Arab neighbors, cannot use weapons of mass destruction without grave consequences for itself.

All of which tells us that members of the relatively small westernized, but ill-informed, neoliberal elite of India would benefit from the reserve of morality and wisdom the country has accumulated over its long history. The lesson to learn is that thoughtless talk, without consideration for the consequences, is dangerous.

The above commentary appeared in Online Journal on December 18 and on ZNet on December 20, 2008.

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