Razakars must now pay for their sins

The International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh has sentenced to death one person for his role in the genocide of Bengalis preceding the 1971 war

More than 41 years after he and his team of razakars went on the rampage — looting, abducting, torturing, raping and killing members largely of the Hindu minority community of what was then East Pakistan, Abdul Kalam Azad's murderous past has finally caught up with him. This past Monday the 66-year-old former leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami was sentenced to death by the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh, which convicted him of committing crimes against humanity.

Set up almost three years ago, the Tribunal has been trying those responsible for the genocide of Bengalis that preceded the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971, and the verdict against Abdul Kalam Azad is the first that it has delivered, marking a defining moment in the history of Bangladesh. The verdict is a huge victory for the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League Government which initiated the legal proceedings. Even though critics of the Tribunal say that it does not meet all the international standards of jurisprudence, the panel still has tremendous popular support in Bangladesh. Also, the verdict against Azad puts the Bangladesh National Party-led Opposition in a spot, given its long time alliance with the Jamaatis.

Azad, better known as Bacchu Razakar, was a junior leader of the student wing of the Jamaat in 1971 and a member of the Razakar Bahini — the auxiliary para-militia that was raised by the Pakistani Army and its Islamist allies to eliminate the Bengali nationalist resistance movement. For the past four decades, the people of Bangladesh have sought justice for the unspeakable atrocities perpetrated by the razakars and their Pakistani patrons in uniforms in the nine long months between March and December of 1971 when they killed more than three million Bengalis even as millions more fled to their homes to seek refuge primarily in the Indian State of West Bengal. In some ways then, this landmark verdict against Bacchu Razakar helps an entire nation take a step towards closure.

It might still be a while, though, before this razakar is actually, if ever, hanged by the neck, as ordered by the Tribunal, for the former Jamaati-turned-television evangelist is absconding. He went underground hours before the Tribunal issued an arrest warrant against him in April 2012, and it is widely believed that he is hiding in the port city of Karachi in Pakistan. Nonetheless, there is ample reason to hope that this first verdict will lay the ground for more such landmark judgements as several others continue to stand trial for the heinous crimes they committed in 1971.

Primary among these would be the firebrand Delwar Hossein Saeedi. The first person to be indicted by the Tribunal back in 2011, Saeedi has been charged on 19 counts including rape and murder, and has also been accused of ethnic cleansing. While working with the notorious Al Badr group, Saeedi is believed to have forcibly converted several Hindus to Islam, apart from having raised a small cohort that specialised in looting the wealth and capturing the property left behind by displaced Hindus. Worse still, during those tortuous nine months of 1971, Saeedi routinely led Pakistani soldiers to secret meetings of freedom-fighters and Hindu family hideouts where the men were shot at sight and women picked up and taken away to be ravaged in Army camps.

Today, Saeedi, like many of the other razakars, fancies himself to be a leading Islamic intellectual, but that does nothing to wash away the blood on his hands. And, this applies in equal measure to the likes of Ghulam Azam, the 90-year-old who led the Jamaat-e-Islami until 2000, to Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid who is currently the secretary-general of that party, and to Motiur Rahman Nizami who in 1971 was the president of that party's Islami Chattra Sangha (students wing) and has been accused of, among other things, setting up Al Badr.

It is important to mention here that almost every one of these men has either held or continues to hold important positions within Bangladesh's political class. And, as the Tribunal noted in its judgement on Monday, it is exactly because these “perpetrators of the crimes could not be brought to book” and “the impunity they enjoyed held back political stability”, that Bangladesh “saw the ascend of militancy and the developments “destroyed the nation's Constitution.” Thankfully, the time has now come to reverse that process.

(This article was published in the Op-ed section of The Pioneer on January 23, 2013.)

Cricket as desperate diplomacy

Pakistan continues to stonewall New Delhi’s repeated requests to make the masterminds of 26/11 terror attacks accountable. It still has to grant India the MFN status despite promising to do so. In return, India resumes cricketing ties with that country. It’s a pathetic situation

Sure, this is the season for fresh starts and best wishes, but taking it to a whole new level of mush and gooey-gooey goodness is the ongoing cricket series between India and Pakistan that marks the resumption of sporting love between the two countries. India had rightfully called off all ties with Pakistan after terrorists operating from the latter’s soil launched a heinous attack on Mumbai in November of 2008. But in an inexplicable surge of magnanimity, New Delhi chose to reverse its decision last July. And so it was on this past Christmas Day, that India’s men in blue faced on home ground their arch rivals in green after more than four years of a break.

But even as Dhoni’s boys face their Pakistani counterparts in Kolkata on Thursday, after being routed by them first in Bangalore and later in Chennai, one is forced to ask: What exactly is the occasion for this new-found love? Have all the perpetrators of 26/11 terror attack been brought to justice? Or, has the Pakistani establishment taken even a single step towards accelerating that process of justice, therefore, giving India the opportunity to close old wounds and have a sporting fiesta to celebrate the supposed ‘normalisation’ of relations?

Far from it. Pakistan continues to rub salt in our wounds, when not inflicting new ones. The disastrous visit by that country’s motormouth Interior Minister early last December is still fresh in public memory. During the course of his visit, Mr Rehman Malik not only reiterated his Government’s strategy of stonewalling the investigation into 26/11 — he dismissed Ajmal Kasab’s testimony to Indian agencies and fudged facts about the arrests of Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of that terror attack — but also had the gall to suggest that the Mumbai carnage was orchestrated by a member of an elite Indian intelligence unit.

So again, what does India stand to gain by resuming cricketing ties with Pakistan? Nothing significant, actually, apart from the Board of Control for Cricket in India getting another opportunity to make  another pile of money while the ruling political class gets to pretend that it has engineered some kind of a progress in bilateral relations. Interestingly, though, the scenario is not half as bleak on the other side of the border.

For one, the series is god-sent for the Pakistan Cricket Board and its empty coffers. Ever since the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan back in 2009, few countries have been willing to tour that country. In such a situation, an India-Pakistan series is exactly what the PCB needed to set its cash registers ringing. No wonder then that it has been “very persistent”, as BCCI spokesperson Rajiv Shukla put it, in resuming cricketing ties with India.

But there is more to the cricket story than mere commerce. A series such as this, particularly when framed within the narrative of friendship and goodwill, plays a huge part in deflecting popular and even political attention from the key issues that plague bilateral ties — for instance, the alleged involvement of Pakistani state actors in the planning and the execution of the 26/11 terror attacks and the Pakistani establishment’s refusal to investigate or even acknowledge them. Islamabad wants the people to forget that it had any role to play in the Mumbai attack that not only led to the loss of 166 innocent lives but also held this entire country hostage for three whole days. And from all available evidence, it seems to be working quite well, with both the domestic and the international Press gushing over the supposed thaw in bilateral relations.

In fact, it seems to have become a matter of state policy for Islamabad to actively seek such avenues of ‘cooperation’, for want of a better term. And, it is against this backdrop that the recent push for a significant increase in trade between India and Pakistan must be viewed.

In a recent article detailing key developments in the last year across the world that could affect global politics in this new year, the reputed Foreign Policy magazine puts “India and Pakistan trade away” right at the top of its list. According to the magazine, “The perennially feuding neighbours finally notched several key positive developments that had nothing to do with borders, nukes or terrorism. In short, both sides may be realising that political tension is bad for business.”

A quick reality check is in order here. Let us start with India and the Attari-Wagah check-point. As it had promised, New Delhi has already opened a huge customs depot and warehouse that can, according to the Associated Press, handle more than 600 trucks a day from Pakistan. Additionally, it has also liberalised the visa regime for Pakistan and even though the changes are not drastic, they are a definite political concession.

Moving on to Pakistan: First, the negative list that it was supposed to cancel in India’s favour. The deadline for that was December 15, 2012, but Islamabad has not moved an inch regarding that list. Second, the most favoured nation status. This is an old story, but still the deadline for Pakistan according India MFN status was December 31, 2012. That date has also come and gone, and nobody has cared to ask why India still has no MFN status from Pakistan.

Now, compare this to the fact that India accorded Pakistan MFN status back in 1996, and then add to the equation Pakistan’s obligation as a World Trade Organisation member to reciprocate the status on to India. Finally, also take into account the fact that Pakistan stands to gain far more from trade with India than the other way around. The writing is on the wall for our policy-makers here, but it seems that a certain segment of India has to be repeatedly poked in the eye before it can read it. 

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on January 3, 2013)

He came, he scorned, he left

Rehman Malik enjoys the reputation of being a loudmouth who speaks without thought and thinks without substance. Yet, because he is Pakistan’s Interior Minister, he has to be considered with some amount of seriousness. It’s time we stopped treating him with kid gloves

It has been some days since  Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik ended his disastrous three-day trip to India, but the bitter aftertaste from his visit continues to linger. A delegation led by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs was expected to travel to Islamabad on December 19 — a tentative date agreed upon by both Indian and Pakistani officials — to finalise the details of a Pakistani Judicial Commission’s second visit to India to cross-examine key witnesses in the 26/11 terror case. But December 19 has come and gone without so much as an acknowledgment from the Pakistani side — even though it was Mr Malik who had insisted, while he was in India, that the commission be allowed to visit at the earliest. In fact, he had even said that the immediacy of the commission’s visit was directly related to how quickly the 26/11 trial could be concluded in Rawalpindi. Yet, once back in his country, Mr Malik seems to have all but forgotten about the promises made.

But then again, as India’s political establishment has recently learnt, the Pakistani Minister may be a man of many words but scarcely is he a man who keeps his word. Ask Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde who very graciously hosted his Pakistani counterpart only to find out that the latter had taken him for a jolly good ride. And so, it would be that a day after Mr Malik left this country, Mr Shinde found himself complaining to Parliament that the documents he received from the Pakistani Minister pertaining to the multiple arrests of 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed were essentially a smokescreen. The documents were presented to New Delhi to buttress Pakistan’s argument that it had all the intentions in the world to punish that extremist but could not do so given the crying lack of evidence. Consequently, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa’ah chief had to be let off by Pakistani authorities even after he had been arrested. But on closer scrutiny, it has now become clear that the three Hafiz Saeed arrests that Mr Malik had been gloating about had absolutely no connection with the 26/11 charges. That the Pakistanis believed that they could pull such a trick on New Delhi and still get away with it does speak volumes. Indeed, it is against this background that Mr Malik’s slew of blood-curdling remarks, made during the course of his visit, that offended Indian sensibilities across the board, must be viewed.

The Pakistani Minister fired his opening salvo pretty much the moment he landed on Indian soil, when he dismissed India’s forensic evidence that clearly points to the role of members of the Pakistani establishment, particularly the ISI, in the 26/11 attacks. Then, he had the gall to claim that Kargil hero Captain Saurabh Kalia died due to bad weather in the Himalayas. But even before one could swallow this affront, Mr Malik callously dropped the B-bomb, comparing the demolition of the Babri Masjid to the 26/11 carnage. Eventually, of course, he tried to muddy the waters by claiming that he had said nothing of the sort and it was the big bad media that tried to twist his statement. But still, coming from the representative of a country where minorities are routinely targeted, abducted, raped and killed; where their places of worship are destroyed with gay abandon without the state lifting so much as a finger to stop the atrocities, the Babri Masjid snub was a bit rich — not to mention that, shameful as it may have been, the episode was and remains an internal matter for India in which Pakistan has no business to poke its nose.

But the Minister had saved the best for the last. And so it was on the ultimate day of his visit that Mr Malik claimed that Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal, the alleged handler of the 26/11 terrorists who was earlier this year deported from Saudi Arabia, was in fact an agent of an elite Indian intelligence agency. Yet again, the statement was so absurd that it would have been almost farcical had it not been so downright appalling.

One way of responding to this situation is to simply dismiss Mr Malik’s statements as the nonsensical ranting of a loudmouth. He is, after all, a habitual offender and has been mocked often even in his own country for putting his foot in his mouth. For instance, when the Sri Lankan team came under attack in Pakistan, Mr Malik promptly placed the blame on Colombo’s doorstep. Similarly, last year he even thanked the Taliban for not killing Shias during Muharram celebrations — which ironically is not that much different from his Indian counterpart addressing Hafiz Saeed with the honorific ‘Mr’ and ‘Shri’ or for that matter the Congress’s spokesman Digvijaya Singh referring to the world’s most wanted terrorist as ‘Osamaji’.

However, the point here is not just that India too has its own fair share of motormouths and court jesters but that Mr Malik’s statements, no matter how stupid, should not be discarded as such. For, let us not forget that even if they were supposedly off-the-cuff remarks, the utterances were entirely in keeping with the official Pakistani strategy of stonewalling all efforts to bring the perpetrators of 26/11 to justice. It is in this context then that India’s own insipid response to Mr Malik’s volley of untruths and false statements must be questioned.

First, why was he even allowed to make these statements? Second, why was there no strong official rebuttal to his remarks from the Indian establishment? Third, why did the mainstream media not do a better job of holding Mr Malik accountable for his statements?

For instance, when Mr Malik kept repeating ad nauseam that Ajmal Kasab’s statements were not enough to nail Hafiz Saeed, there was no counter-mention of the reams of evidence that had emerged from the trials of terrorist head hunters David Headley and Tahawwur Rana in the US which also pointed to the role of Hafiz Saeed and that of ISI officials in the 26/11 terror attack.

A pliant media (with some exceptions) and India’s meek officialdom, too busy bending over backwards to appease a visiting dignitary, could not be bothered to ask if the Pakistani Government had any plans to act on the sworn affidavits of Headley and Rana in the Chicago Court, even if it trashed Ajmal Kasab’s testimony in India.

Similarly, when Mr Malik claimed that India had not taken up with Pakistan the Captain Saurabh Kalia case until now, his false narrative went unchallenged. In fact, India has on at least three occasions mentioned the case at bilateral meetings. Moreover, when the matter was first discussed during the Kargil conflict, the Pakistani Government had at that time refused to take any responsibility, claiming instead that it was the ‘mujahideens’ and not the Pakistani Army that had taken Kargil Heights.

But now that Islamabad has changed its stance and both former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and former President Pervez Musharraf agree that the Army was indeed involved, the question is: Will Mr Malik now ask members of the Northern Light Infantry, which were deployed in Kargil, for the facts — and stop distorting the truth?

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on December 20, 2012.)

Another vicious bout of violence

Irrespective of whether Israel and Hamas sign a ceasefire agreement any time soon, the recent flare up in Gaza which may still escalate into a full-blown war, is a reminder of how uneasy is the peace that prevails in the region

It is the seventh day of Operation Pillar of Defence, the military operation launched by Israel in response to incessant rocket fire from the Gaza Strip that has led to an unprecedented escalation of violence in that region. Already, more than a 100 people have died  and as this article goes to print, representatives from Israel and Hamas (the terror organisation that governs Gaza) are meeting in Cairo to hammer out a cease-fire agreement. The talks are being mediated by the Egyptians and are in a crucial stage.

But irrespective of how the talks progress, it will surely be a litmus test for Egypt’s recently elected President Mohamad Morsi. A member of the Muslim Brotherhood of which Hamas is an off-shoot, Mr Morsi has a tightrope to walk. On the one hand, Hamas expect their fellow ‘brother’ to behave in manner that is more favourable to them as compared to his predecessor Hosni Mubarak, a secular dictator and a Western ally. But on the other hand, Mr Morsi cannot afford to come out too strongly against Israel and cross her American friends either. He remains hugely dependent on Washington, DC for crucial aid money that is needed to rebuild the Egyptian economy currently lying in shambles.

For Mr Morsi, this is a head-versus-heart kind of situation; and for now, he seems to be going with his head having refused to condemn Israel as strongly as Hamas would have liked him to. Of course, this does not mean that Hamas is politically isolated — it continues to enjoy the support of Qatar and Turkey, for instance. That the Egyptian President has still expressed hopes for a ceasefire agreement is possibly the result of the tremendous international pressure that is there on all parties to prevent an escalation of violence.

But even as world leaders scramble to prevent another full-scale war, the fact remains that on the ground there is no respite. On Tuesday alone 60 rockets were fired into Southern Israel, at least two of which exploded as far as Jerusalem, almost 80kms away from Gaza. The distance and the religious significance of the Holy City, to both Jews and Muslims, make the attack a particularly audacious one. Now, combine that with the fact that even Tel Aviv — located in central Israel — has come under fire in this past week. It becomes amply clear that Hamas now has significantly improved weaponry that includes long range missiles such as the Iranian-made Fajr-5 missiles, for this is the first in recent time that Israel’s two largest cities have come under such fire.

On its part, Israel has of course retaliated with full force, and rightly so, starting with the killing of Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari on November 14. Since then, it has launched more than a thousand air strikes targeting Hamas leaders, weapons caches and rocket launching pads in Gaza. Additionally, there have also been more ‘symbolic’ attacks against Government offices.But that is not all.

As Hamas continues to rain rockets on Israel, the latter has already prepared herself for a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza. Israel has already positioned 40,000 reservists on its border and if talks fail, there is a possibility that Israeli troops will once again go into the Gaza Strip — a territory they held until 2005, when Israel unilaterally backed out of the area, handing over control to the Palestinian Authority which then lost power to Hamas.

But while there is a 50-50 chance of ground invasion, it is still the last resort option. A full-scale war, similar to the 2008 Operation Cast Lead, will not only cost Israel much of the international support it currently enjoys but will also lead to huge casualties particularly on the Palestinian side. Unfortunately, a disproportionately large number of Palestinian deaths has always characterised such clashes.

This is primarily because Hamas uses women and children as human shields and deliberately launches attacks from inside crowded civilian spaces such schools, hospitals and mosques. Furthermore, it has not cared to put in place the kind of defense mechanism that Israeli citizens today enjoy — from the Iron Dome, which intercepts and destroys rockets and shells, to bomb shelters and more.

No, instead, Hamas has chosen to waste its resources on shelling Israeli targets even if that means preventing aid from reaching Gaza. On Tuesday, for instance, only 24 of the 120 Israeli aid tracks that waited at the Gaza crossing could actually go through before the border was closed. And yet ironically it is Israel that supposedly has Gaza under siege!

On a concluding note, it is important to mention that of the three Israelis who have died in this bout of violence, one was Mira Sharf — the wife of the rabbi who heads the Chabad House in New Delhi. When they came under fire, they were in the town of Kiryat Malachy which is relatively new to this kind of an attack as it closer to central Israel. Ironically, the couple was in Israel to commemorate the attack on Chabad House in Mumbai four years ago during the 26/11 carnage.

(This article was published in the Op-ed section of The Pioneer on November 21.)

Welcome to the House of Saud

By deporting to India three terror suspects in the past four months, Saudi Arabia has taken the initial steps towards cooperation in counter-terrorism activities with this country, even though these may have come at the cost of upsetting long time ally Pakistan

It’s official now. When it comes to nabbing terror suspects, long-time Pakistani ally Saudi Arabia is India’s new best friend. Analysts have been talking about this ever since Riyadh handed over to New Delhi the biggest catch in the 26/11 terror case — Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal — back in June. But, at that time many had rightly wondered if the deportation was a one-time gesture ostensibly taken under mounting pressure from the US. However, with the recent deportation of Fasih Mahmood, who is suspected to be a high-level operative of the banned Indian Mujahideen terror group, there is now ample evidence to dismiss at least some of those initial apprehensions.

In these past four months, Saudi Arabia has in fact deported three terror suspects to India, including Mahmood. An accused in the April 2010 bomb blasts in Bangalore’s M Chinnaswamy Stadium, he was also allegedly involved in the Jama Masjid terror attack in September 2010 in Delhi. The 28-year-old mechanical engineer from Bihar was deported, and arrested by Delhi Police on October 22. This was less than two weeks after A Rayees was picked up by Kerala Police from Mumbai airport after he too was sent packing by the Saudis. A suspected operative of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, Rayees is wanted in the 2009 explosives haul case. And that is not all: On Tuesday, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs said it was hoping to extradite four more terror suspects from Saudi Arabia.

Clearly, there is a new-found fervour in Riyadh to fight terror jointly with New Delhi in particular and deepen bilateral ties with India in general, even if it comes at the cost of upsetting Islamabad  just a little bit. In fact, there seems to be an overall agreement in the power corridors of not just New Delhi and Riyadh but also around those of Islamabad that increasing militancy in Pakistan is making even it staunchest allies uneasy. Serious questions are being raised about the Pakistani establishment’s ability to control these groups that it has for so long nurtured and nourished, but that now run amok in that country. Saudi Arabia genuinely fears — and rightly so — that more sooner than later things will get out of hand in Pakistan.

Take, for example, the manner in which Riyadh’s response to the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba has evolved in recent years. As South Asia scholar Stephen Tankel points out, Saudi Arabia was a “reluctant contributor to the international effort against Al Qaeda” after 9/11 but this changed after “the Kingdom suffered directly from Al Qaeda attacks beginning in 2003. However, it remained relatively tolerant of Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (which at the time had distanced itself from Al Qaeda). This owed to Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Pakistan, but also resulted from Lashkar’s position vis-à-vis the Kingdom.” Mr Tankel goes on to explain that not only do some Lashkar leaders have long-standing ties with the kingdom; many of them consider it to be the “best Islamic state, even if not an ideal one”. Equally importantly, “Lashkar leaders’ strong commitment to spreading Ahl-e-Hadith (or Salafi) Islam via non-violent activism and their decision to eschew revolutionary terrorism in favour of pan-Islamist jihad made the group more palatable” to the Saudi state, believes Mr Tankel.

However, that view of the Lashkar as a relatively ‘peaceful’ Islamist organisation was literally blown to smithereens after the Mumbai carnage of 2008 that it planned and executed. In effect, it was the 26/11 attacks that sealed the LeT’s reputation as a global terror organisation and Riyadh, under pressure from New Delhi and Washington, DC, has since been compelled to view the group as a threat to its own internal security as well. Against this backdrop, Pakistan’s inability to rein in Lashkar militants and others of their ilk has not gone down well in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, it is now clearly scoping out new friends in this region even as Pakistan tries to come to terms with the fact that it may no longer have a monopoly over the ‘Saudi relationship’.

The first signs of change in this regard were seen back in 2006 when Saudi king Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz al-Saud visited India as part of a four-country tour that, interestingly, also included a stop-over in China. Still, it was the first time since 1955 that a Saudi king was visiting this country and the ‘Delhi Declaration’ that was signed at the end of his trip would eventually prove to be a game-changer in bilateral relations.  More specifically, it was the Memorandum of Understanding on Combating Terrorism, also produced in the course of that visit, which would lay the foundation stone for cooperation in the areas of transnational crime and of course terrorism.

To be sure, all the right noises were made during King Saud’s visit. But it would be a while before they found reflection in concrete action. Nonethe-less, by the time Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Saudi Arabia in 2010, bilateral ties had deepened significantly. The time was right to put in place an extradition treaty, apart from signing the Riyadh Declaration of course, that would be key in facilitating on the ground, counter-terrorism operations.

The following two years saw increasing cooperation between India and Saudia Arabia that culminated in the deportation of Zabiuddin Ansari earlier this year. Though an Indian citizen, Ansari was in the West Asian Kingdom on a Pakistani passport when he was first arrested by Saudi authorities. As expected, Islamabad tried hard to leverage that fact in its favour and make a case for Ansari’s deportation to Pakistan instead of India. At an earlier time, this would have been the case for sure. But New Delhi was able to provide strong evidence that included DNA samples to show that Ansari was indeed an Indian citizen; this coupled with some hard-nosed American diplomacy ensured that Riyadh eventually put Ansari on a flight to Delhi.

However, it is imperative to mention here that while viewing counter-terrorism cooperation between India and Saudi Arabia through the Pakistani prism surely provides interesting perspectives, it must also be placed against the backdrop of overall improvement in bilateral ties between the two countries for a more holistic picture. For instance, between 2006 and 2012, India’s oil imports from Saudi Arabia increased by leaps and bounds. Much of this of course has to do with the US-led Western pressure to stop importing from Iran — India’s traditional oil supplier — but nevertheless, it has emerged as yet another connecting point between the countries. That apart, there has also been a jump in bilateral trade; and there is talk of greater defence cooperation especially following Union Minister for Defence AK Antony’s visit earlier visit to Saudi Arabia earlier this year.

On a concluding note though, it must be mentioned that just because the Saudis are working with India does not by any means indicate that they are willing to severe ties with Pakistan. The two Sunni Muslims countries have way too much invested in each other to break away, at least as of now.

For instance, Saudi Arabia will always need nuclear-armed Pakistan on its side to contain the influence of Shia Iran in its own neighbourhood especially if the latter acquires nuclear capabilities, and similarly, cash-strapped Pakistan will always depend on oil-rich Saudi Arabia for funds, finances and more. India clearly has no place in all of this. So, instead, it is chalking out its own relationship dynamics with the Saudis.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on November 1, 2012.)

The birth of a new relationship

This past decade saw a deterioration in ties between India and Australia for various reasons, not necessarily political in nature. But the visit to India by Prime Minister Julia Gillard has changed all of that. New Delhi and Canberra are set on a fresh, cheerful course

As the deep drone of the didgeridoo permeated through the autumnal cool of the Purana Quila, it was impossible not to be swept away by the enchanting power of that moment. Somehow, the long trumpet-like musical instrument created by Australian Aborigines some 1,500 years ago had found its place within the high stone walls of one of India’s oldest fortresses, supposedly built even before the Mahabharat was written.

It was the opening night of the Oz Fest — a cultural festival aimed at promoting Australian traditions in India — and visiting Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard among other dignitaries was in attendance. The concert that brought together the musical bests of both India and Australia was expected to mark the beginning of a new era in bilateral ties between the two countries. Yet, it was really the manner in which the great civilisational histories of both countries came together on that Tuesday evening, against the gorgeous backdrop of the Sher Mandal Observatory brought to life with mesmerising 3D light projections, that the foundation of a new friendship was really cemented.

Indeed, even as the Australian Prime Minister’s landmark three-day visit comes to a close, there is a definite sense of positivity that the new momentum that now enervates the India-Australia relationship will ride both countries towards a shared vision of the future — that of an Asian Century. To what extent that the optimism will actually flesh itself out in the form of political, social, economic and diplomatic ties is of course yet to be seen.

This past decade had in fact seen a deterioration of ties between the two countries. Bilateral relations had actually taken a turn for the worse after a series of unsavoury incidents during which Indian students came under attack in Australia, Australian cricketers accused their Indian counterpart of racial abuse, the Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef was held on terror charges in Australia, and New Delhi and Canberra sparred over Commonwealth Games contracts. To be sure, the nasty aftertaste of that period which many commentators refer to as the ‘lost decade’ still linger right below the surface. This has perhaps been most evident in the manner in which sections of the Australian media have slammed Prime Minister Gillard’s decision to confer upon Sachin Tendulkar the Member of the Order of Australia award. Clearly, not many in that country have put behind them the infamous ‘monkeygate’ scandal that saw Tendulkar stand by his team mate Harbhajan Singh.

Still, it seems unlikely that the relationship will go back to those days. There is definitely no doubt that a solid new beginning has been made. Ms Gillard’s personal initiative to end Australia’s prejudice towards India with respect to uranium exports has inarguably brought her tremendous goodwill within the country. After years of refusing to sell the yellow cake to India because New Delhi is not a signatory to the Treaty to the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which New Delhi considers to be discriminatory in nature, Ms Gillard’s Government overhauled Australian policy in this matter and lifted that pointless ban last November. It was not an easy move given that neither Australian public opinion nor the political opposition in that country was really in favour of such a policy reversal.

Nevertheless, India’s own stellar non-proliferation record, its reputation as a peaceful and stable democracy, alongside a waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group allowing New Delhi to engage in global nuclear commerce, strengthened its case significantly. Interestingly, Australia, as a NSG member, had supported the group’s decision in favour of India back in 2008 but had still continued with its national ban. In this context, it is important to bring in Australia’s own need to tap new markets to sell uranium coupled with India’s growing energy demands to see how these new developments offer a win-win situation for both countries.

That uranium has been the buzzword defining Ms Gillard’s first trip to the country as Prime Minister is perfectly understandable, and so is the excitement surrounding her announcement of nuclear cooperation talks between the two countries. But having said that, it is also imperative to add a cautionary note in this regard and ensure that high-pitched rhetoric does not overshadow pragmatism and practicality. As Ms Gillard has said, it might be years before Australia actually starts selling uranium to India. A nuclear safeguards agreement — similar to the India-US nuclear deal — will have to be put in place first, and given the technical, legal and even diplomatic complexities that will be involved, make no mistake, a long road lies ahead.

This is of course not to say that unless the nuclear deal comes through, bilateral relations between the two countries will be stuck in a limbo. In fact, much to the contrary, both New Delhi and Canberra will do well to take advantage of this new momentum in bilateral ties to strengthen ties in other areas as well. Primary among these should be increasing cooperation in the India-Pacific region — the emergence of which as a ‘security construct’ is now more or less taken for granted by a majority of regional observers.

Generally speaking, the Indian and the Pacific Ocean regions have been considered to be separate geo-political entities that almost never overlap, especially within the Asian security discourse. However, East Asia’s high growth rate, particularly China’s feverish construction of maritime infrastructure in the region — think of the oil pipelines that are being built to connect the Indian Ocean to western China — has forced a re-think of that earlier paradigm.

Add to that India’s growing economic relations with East Asia with a definite naval aspect (best encapsulated in New Delhi’s refurbished ‘Look East’ policy) and the argument for a more integrated and composite view of the region automatically gains traction. Now, as the new regional powers add flavour to this geo-political stew, garnish it with just a little bit of the traditional Great Power garam masala — and bingo! You have  a perfect dish that even the culinary star-critics ofMasterchef will have to approve.

At an earlier time, America’s military supremacy in the region would have been one of the main ingredients, but with the relative decline of the US, that has now somewhat changed. Of course, there should be no doubt about the fact the US will remain a major political and military force in the Asia-Pacific region for a long time — the Obama Administration’s ‘pivot to Asia’ strategy ensures just that. But there will now be a change in the manner in which the US functions as the primary security provider there with an increased dependence on American allies — both old like Australia and Japan and new like India — to share some of that responsibility. A situation such as this fits perfectly into New Delhi’s own changing maritime policies and priorities.

The exact contours of the Indo-Pacific region are still being debated. But, generally speaking, it is accepted as “an emerging Asian strategic system that encompasses both the Indian and the Pacific oceans, defined in part by the geographically expanding interests and reach of China and India, and the continued strategic role and presence of the United States in both”.

Indeed, it is this last definition — put forth by Rory Medcalf and others in their research paper, “Crisis and Confidence: Major Powers and Maritime Security in Indo-Pacific Asia” — that goes beyond the geographic to include the political and the strategic which has the most relevance for policy-makers both in India and Australia as they come together to keep the sea lanes in the India-Pacific region safe and open for business.

(This article was published in the Op-ed section of The Pioneer on October 18, 2012.)

Muslim rage is not about Islam

The outrage and the violent protests organised by Islamists across the world have nothing to do with the supposed desecration of religion. Instead, these incidents are calibrated attempts by so-called religious leaders to firm up their politics, even at the cost of people’s lives

Even before the crowd from the previous protest had returned home, a new mob had gathered on the streets. It had been gaining strength throughout the day as hundreds arrived loaded in trucks and buses, and more people from the outside kept pouring in. Over the next couple of hours, the crowd swelled in numbers and a few local leaders gradually took their position at the helm — soon, they were whipping up outrage against some vaguely defined but provocatively conveyed threat to their religion, their Prophet or their holy book. Timing was the key, so one waited cautiously for the crowd to be sufficiently riled and then, just when the passions peaked, it was let loose like a pack of blood thirsty wolves. What followed was hours, even days, of looting, raiding, pillaging, plundering and killing. Until finally, the security forces showed up and brought the situation somewhat under control.

This is a fairly accurate description of the events as they unfolded in the little Upazila of Ramu, located in the coastal Cox’s Bazar district in Bangladesh’s southern division of Chittagong on September 29 and 30, when Islamists went on the rampage in the area and attacked Buddhist temples and homes, after they discovered a picture of a burnt Quran on Facebook that was alleged ‘tagged’ to a local Buddhist boy.

According to the latest reports available, at least 12 temples were desecrated and nearly 50 Buddhist homes systematically destroyed. But the moot point here lies not in the details of this heinous incident that has deeply scarred Bangladesh’s socio-religious fabric but in the fact that the description applies to almost any ‘Muslim protest’ that has erupted in recent times in response to a supposed act of religious outrage.

Indeed, instead of Ramu Upazila, the narrative can just as easily be placed in Masuri village in Uttar Pradesh here in India, where a similar crowd went berserk and brutally attacked the local police station after someone found pages torn out of the Quran by the railway tracks last month. The narrative also fits well in many other places — from Mumbai’s Azad Maidan where a crowd protesting atrocities against Muslims in Burma and elsewhere went on a rampage to the US Embassy compound in Benghazi where an armed mob protesting a shoddily-made, obscure anti-Islamic film killed the American Ambassador to Libya.

Look closely and a clear pattern of pre-meditated violence that emerges through each of these cases is unmistakable. The cause of the violence and the outrage here is inconsequential. It can be anything — a book that nobody has heard of, a movie that nobody has seen because it was never publicly released, a photograph that is quite possibly doctored, a quote that remains unattributed, a conspiracy theory or even a cartoon. It doesn’t matter.  What matters is how, and of course with what result, that singular instance of outrage (real or imagined) is perverted so as to make it look like it is a universal insult to Islam and its 1.7 billion followers around the world.

First, the Islamists go all out to introduce that supposed object of religious insult — almost always an obscure one — to their local audience. Then, they systemically manufacture outrage against that same object. The campaign is almost always framed within the narrative of a victim-community; a community that has been and continues to be wronged by the world. Ridiculous as it may sound, the idea of being at the receiving end of a global conspiracy is particularly tempting and as we know from past experience, hugely effective. Finally, what serves as an icing on the cake is the fact that Islamists, almost everywhere in the world, are an especially well-organised group. This automatically allows them mobilise large sections of the population and mount an effective campaign.

In other words, the bottomline here is that the protests may be hinged around an Islamic (or more specifically, anti-Islamic) subject, but in reality they have little to do with religion. Instead, the issue is of politics and power-play. Religion is merely an excuse used by the Islamists to whip up passion and mobilise social groups so that they can ultimately implement the latter’s agenda. Indeed, this is an argument that even Muslims political observers themselves have made. For instance, Mr Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former Ambassador to the US, in his recently published article on ‘Muslim rage’ minces no words when he says, “The phenomenon of outrage over insults to Islam and its final Prophet is a function of modern-era politics. It started during Western colonial rule, with Muslim politicians seeking issues to mobilize their constituents… and Islamists emerged to claim that Islam is not merely a religion but also a political ideology.”

Indeed, Mr Haqqani traces back an early prototype of this kind of mass mobilisation within the Muslim world to a book published in British India back in 1927. Titled Rangeela Rasool (Playboy Prophet), it was a “salacious version of Muhammad’s life”, says Mr Haqqani, but “hardly a bestseller”. In fact, much the like anti-Islamic film that today is all the rage, so to say, this book too went largely unnoticed until two years after its publication when some Muslim politicians raised a hue and cry over it. The British Government of the day even arrested and tried the publisher but he was acquitted — only to be later stabbed to death by one Ilmuddin, an illiterate carpenter known only by his first name, in Lahore. Ilmuddin soon became a local hero of sorts. Islamist groups nicknamed him Ghazi (warrior) and he was defended in court by a man no less than Mohamed Ali Jinnnah (although on purely technical grounds, as Mr Haqqani points out in his essay). The book continued to be a polarising point between the Hindus and Muslims of undivided India and exacted its price in blood during Partition as well.

It is interesting to note that it was after this case of Ilmuddin that the British amended the Indian Penal Code to include punishment for blasphemy and incitement of religious hatred. It is equally ironical that a little less than a century later, another young man would once again share Ilmuddin’s fate and how! In January 2011, Mumtaz Qadri would also be celebrated as a national hero for killing Salman Taseer, the powerful Pakistani Governor of Punjab would had dared to opposed his country’s draconian blasphemy laws.

The lessons to be learnt from the past and the present are clear. These protests, wherever they may erupt, are not just a product of politics disguised as religion, but that they must be exposed as such. 

The moment the state begins to legitimise such violence as being a genuine case of religious grievance; it loses the plot and half the battle. The Bangladeshi Government realises this, which is why the whole deal about the Facebook picture was underplayed. The Pakistani Government on the other hand doesn’t get it at all and so, it had the Ishq-e-Rasool day, during which several persons where killed. India must learn its lessons from all this and stop pampering hardliners.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on October 4, 2012.)