KIDNAPPED BY THE USA

Faizan Mustafa
The Statesman, 9 December

WE may find it morally repugnant that a nation even in 21st century may legally kidnap citizens of other countries for trial even for ordinary crimes. Yet this is the harsh reality in America which no longer attaches much significance to morality, ethics, sovereignty of other nations and above all the rights of the accused.

The United States of America, the so-called “most civilized country in the world” and the self-appointed champion of human rights throughout the globe has now openly admitted in a British court that it can “kidnap” citizens of any country in the world, including British citizens, if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has not held it illegal. This may shock the conscience of traditional criminal law lawyers. The American government’s view emerged during a hearing involving Stanley Tollman, a former director of Chelsea football club and a friend of Baroness Thatcher, and his wife Beatrice. The Tollmans, who control the Red Carnation hotel group and are residents of London, are wanted in America for bank fraud and tax evasion. They have been fighting extradition through the British courts.

The admission will alarm the entire business community in Britain after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, the bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers of British Airways and BAE Systems, are presently under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.

Prior to this explicit and candid admission, it was generally assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

It is now official that America viewed extradition as just one way of getting foreign suspects back to face trial. Rendition, or kidnapping, dates back to the 19th century bounty hunting. The United States continues to believe it is still legitimate and perfectly legal to kidnap an accused from any part in the world.

The American government believes that extradition requests, whether based on treaties or customary international law, are quite often cumbersome and ineffective. It feels that several countries are often either unable or unwilling to arrest and extradite indicted criminals. The existence of such non-cooperative states effectively creates safe havens for international fugitives.

The USA tries to justify such abductions on the basis of earlier cases. On May 11, 1960, Israeli agents abducted Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal notorious for his role in Hitler's 'final solution', from Argentina and flew him to Israel. In February 1963, Argoud, a leader of a military revolt against President De Gaulle was kidnapped from Munich. In 1964, Egyptian agents tried to kidnap Mordecai Luk, an alleged double agent for Egypt and Israel, by shipping him in a trunk to Egypt.

Kidnapping of fugitives is thus a long-standing practice which the United States follows in preference to extradition. On June 21, 1989, the Department of Justice ruled that the President has constitutional authority to direct the Federal Bureau of Investigation to abduct a fugitive from a foreign country even if those actions violate international law. In 1989, American military forces abducted General Manuel Noriega from Panama to face drug-dealing charges. The US DEA agents offered former Mexican police officers a $50,000 reward to abduct Dr Humberto Alvarez-Machain who was wanted by the United States law enforcement for helping drug lords torture a DEA agent. On April 3, 1990, the former Mexican police officers abducted Dr Machain and delivered him to the United States. On July 15, 1993, in Nigeria, FBI agents abducted Omar Mohammed Ali Rezaq, a Palestinian, who was wanted for killing an American and injuring another during the hijacking of an Egyptian airline.

This policy has raised a series of moral, judicial, and political issues, provoking investigations by the European Union investigations. A June 2006 report from the Council of Europe estimated that 100 people had been kidnapped by the CIA on EU territory and rendered to other countries, often after having transited through secret detention centers (“black sites”) used by the CIA in cooperation with other governments. According to the European Parliament report of February 2007, CIA has conducted 1,245 flights, many of them to destinations where suspects could face torture, in violation of Article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture. A large majority of the European Union Parliament endorsed the report’s conclusion that many member states tolerated illegal actions of the CIA and criticised several European governments and intelligence agencies for their unwillingness to cooperate with the investigation.

The the kidnapping or abduction of an individual by US agents within the jurisdiction of other sovereign states and without their consent violates the sovereignty and territorial integrity of such states. Moreover, a state-sponsored abduction is also contrary to the UN Charter, which prohibits one state from using force against another except in self-defence.

In the infamous case of Alvarez-Machain, on the basis of which the recent assertion on the right to kidnap was made in the British court, the unfortunate doctor (accused) was spotted in the kitchen of an isolated Mexican ranch, washing his hypodermic needles. In the living room, Enrique Camarena, an American drug enforcement agent, was being tortured to death by the traffickers from the Gaudalaraja Drug Cartel in 1985. The doctor’s needles, when examined, contained traces of pain-reliever. Put two and two together, said the American authorities: the doctor was plainly injecting the man tokeep him alive and prolong his agony.

On that hunch, was Dr Humberto Alvarez ~ Machain kidnapped from his surgery centre in Gaudalaraja five years later. The doctor was brought to Texas and the Drug Enforcement Administration paid $ 20,000 plus expenses to some of those involved in the kidnapping.

Two lower federal courts held that the abduction of the accused doctors violated international law, and that since the treaty is the supreme law of the land, its violation vitiated the jurisdiction of the court. However, the apex court upheld the jurisdiction of the US Court to try the accused even though his presence in the US was the result of abduction.

It is shocking that the USA is using legal rendition as a method of dealing with foreign defendants. Extraordinary rendition is a wholly extra-legal process that differs in its nature and usage as a tool in the America- led so called “war on terror”. This new method of rendition includes a form where suspects are taken into US custody but delivered to a third-party state, often without ever being on American soil, and without involving the rendering country's judiciary. The CIA was granted such a permission to use rendition in a presidential directive signed by Clinton in 1995, and the practice has been expanded considerably since 9/11.

The first well-known rendition case involved the Achille Lauro hijackers in 1985. While in international air space they were forced by the United States navy fighter planes to land at the Naval Air Station Sigonella, an Italian military base in Sicily used by NATO. This was an attempt to place them within the judicial reach of US government for transport to and trial in the United States.

Since the start of the “war on terror”, the United States has rendered hundreds of people suspected by it of being terrorists - or of aiding and abetting terrorist organisations ~ to third-party states such as Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Morocco, and Uzbekistan. Such “ghost detainees” are kept outside judicial oversight, often without ever entering United States’ territory, and may or may not ultimately be devolved to the custody of the United States.

There no doubt in the minds of civil libertians that such a procedure is nothing but “torture by proxy”. As a matter of fact, the CIA is rendering suspects to other countries in order to avoid US laws that still offer scope for due process and prohibit torture. This practice has rightly been termed as “torture flights”.

The United States, however, defends this abhorrent practice on the ground that culturally-informed and native-language interrogations are more successful in gaining information from suspects. In a number of cases, this procedure was used on innocent people. For instance, Khalid El-Masri and Maher Arar on whom the procedure was applied were later found to be innocent. The USA merely termed such instances as “erroneous rendition.”

Though one may appreciate America’s concerns in apprehending and punishing the guilty particularly those who are involved in the terrorist activities, yet the kidnapping of those accused of ordinary crimes has no moral, ethical or legal justification and clearly reflects the big brotherly attitude. This makes a mockery of the most fundamental principle of international law and the UN Charter ~ sovereign equality of all states. Even for such serious offences like war crimes, genocide or terrorist activities, it would be a better proposition if the UN Security Council considers creation of a permanent international police force as opposed to relying on private international bounty-hunters or kidnapping by one powerful state.

Donkey fuel in oil-rich West Asia

Donanld Macintyre

It’s not surprising that the buyers at Thursday’s weekly donkey market at Shajaia in Gaza were looking over their prospective purchases with care. They opened the jaws of the tolerant beasts to examine their teeth, and test-drove them, harnessed to a cart, out of the crowded yard to gauge their pulling power.

“You need to make sure that it doesn’t kick people with its back legs, that it’s strong and that the colour of the coat is all right,” Mr Saber Dabour (25) said. He had just bought a donkey for 410 Jordanian dinars, or just under £ 290. For, while working donkeys have been bought and sold in Gaza since before Samson pulled down the Philistines’ temple, it is a long time since they have been as valuable as they are now. Prices have risen, traders said, by up to 60 per cent since Israel closed off the enclave after Hamas’ enforced takeover of Gaza Strip almost six months ago.

Donkey feed has gone up from five to 15 shekels (£1.95) a day since June. Mr Dabour has decided it makes sense to sell his car and buy the creature instead. The unemployed Mr Dabour has sold his car and now intends to use a donkey and cart to sell cucumbers, onions and other vegetables door to door. “There are no jobs here, so I am going to create my own work,” he said.

Pointing out that vehicle spare parts have dried up since the closure, Mr Dabour added: “A donkey doesn't need tyres, it doesn't need spare parts, and it doesn't need gasoline.”

The reduction in fuel supplies from Israel into Gaza, declared a “hostile entity” by the Israeli Cabinet in September in response to continued Qassam rocket fire, has quickened demand for donkeys as well as hitting water and sewerage provisions.

And the crisis this week, which led to the closure of petrol stations for several days, had led to a lower-than-usual 300 or so donkeys on sale in Shajaia on Thursday, according to a cart-maker, Mr Ashraf Kishko. Potential sellers were waiting to see how quickly fuel would return to the pumps.

Mr Kishko (40) said that with the added demand and the increased price of wood because of the closures, the carts he has been working overtime to turn out have also doubled in price, to about 120 dinars. “Without gasoline, people think it best to buy a donkey,” he said. “We are going back to the period of the Turks.”

Mr Kishko’s reference to the last occupation of Gaza but three, which ended in 1917, is not an idle one. In Shajaia, a suburb east of Gaza City, only a few kilometres from an Israeli border on the other side of which new Toyotas and Daihatsus cruise on smooth first-world roads, the market displays the early signs of what some economists call “de-development”.

While no doubt accelerated by Israel’s June closure of the Karni cargo crossing, it is a process that started well before it. Like many Gazans over 30, Mr Fathi abu Amra (34) used to have a construction job in Israel before the second intifada began in 2000. Now he was intending to buy one of the donkeys in Shajaia, the best of which he claims can fetch up to 600 dinars, for probable resale at another weekly donkey market in Khan Yunis. Donkey carts there are used to transport fresh water, among much else.

“You will always find someone to buy,” he said. “Everyone is using them for buying and selling things like vegetables,” many of which are at rock-bottom price because of the block on exports to and through Israel. A few metres away, Mr Abed Shehadah (62), who also used to work in Israel, was hoping to sell a white juvenile donkey, which he had bred, for about 250 dinars to help provide for his extended family.

The fuel crisis which came to a head this week followed a dramatic cut in supplies to Gaza from Israel to what the Gaza Petrol Station Owners' Association claimed was little more than 20 per cent of its normal daily needs of petrol and diesel fuel. Many Gaza streets were emptied of cars and taxis. Then the association’s 30 members with private petrol stations refused to accept the reduced supplies in protest at the cuts.

The new cut followed the failure by the emergency West Bank Palestinian government in Ramallah, set up in June by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, to pay fuel bills to the Israeli supplier Doron. By Thursday, the payment issue was resolved and the owners had called off their sales “strike”.

A spokesman for the Israeli military's civil administration said on Thursday that fuel supplies being moved represented only a five per cent reduction in “heavy diesel” and 12 per cent in petrol. But those figures are heavily challenged by aid agencies who say that, despite an Israeli Cabinet decision in October to reduce fuel by only 15 per cent, the diesel levels have since dropped from the usual 300-320,000 litres a day to 190,000, petrol from 80-100,000 to 47,000, and industrial fuel, including for the solitary Gaza power station, from 280,000 to 250,000.
Agencies say the fuel cuts have affected solid-waste treatment and left 220,000 Gaza residents without running water for more than one hour a day. This is both because of the depth of the cuts and the failure of the de facto Hamas government adequately to prioritise allocation of the reduced supplies.

A Gaza petrol station owner and Fatah supporter, Mr Nabil Nasser, criticised Hamas on Thursday for not meeting Mr Abbas’ demand that it renounces its June takeover as a condition for a reconciliation with its rivals. But he added: “Israel is not hurting Hamas with these cuts. They are not affected. It is we the people who are suffering.”

The Independent

Taiwan’s aspirations toyed with

The Statesman, 9 November

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon has overstepped his brief by rejecting Taiwan’s application for UN membership without putting it up before the Security Council, writes SV Manesh

Recently UN secretary-general Mr Ban Ki-Moon returned Taiwan's application for UN membership without forwarding it to the Security Council. Taiwanese President Mr Chen Shui-bian had submitted the application in July, seeking to initiate membership procedures.

The UN office of legal affairs refused to forward the application to the Security Council as is the established practice for new membership applications but strangely, the office of legal affairs dismissed the application.

Mr Ban said the matter “was carefully considered by the secretariat” and that “it was not legally possible to receive” the application based on UN Resolution 2758.

“By Resolution 2758 of 1971, the General Assembly decided to recognise the representatives of the People’s Republic of China as the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations. This has been the official position of the United Nations and has not changed since 1971,” Mr Ban said.

This has raised questions about the tenor and the role of UN Security Council. According to Rule 58 (Chapter X) of the Rules of Procedure Security Council, and State, which desires to become a UN member, shall submit an application to the secretary-general. The rule insists that the application shall contain a declaration made in a formal instrument that it accepts the obligations contained in the Charter.

As per Rule 59, the secretary-general shall immediately place the application for membership before the representatives on the Security Council. Then it is for the latter to recommend the applicant for membership and forward to the General Assembly if it forms an opinion that the applicant-state is peace-loving, able and willing to carry out the obligations contained in the Charter as mandated by Rule 60.

Rule 60 says: “The Security Council shall decide whether in its judgment the applicant is a peace-loving state, able and willing to carry out the obligations contained in the charter and, accordingly, whether to recommend the applicant- state for membership.”

But what had occurred in dealing with the application of Taiwan is difficult to comprehend.

It came as a surprise for international lawyers. The secretary-general disposed of the application. Such a practice is beyond his mandate under the Charter. It is illegal and runs counter to the ideals, principles and norms of the UN. The reason for the secretary-general's action is due to China’s political pressure.The international community should decide whether such outside pressures could be allowed to usurp the various UN agencies of their lawful functions and duties under the charter.

It is true that political pragmatism should be a relevant factor in the UN scheme. But it should not be at the cost of established practices, for that would wreck the UN’s foundation. The UN is humanity's last straw for peace. The organisation, which makes listening an obligation, should survive for posterity.

Here, the secretary-general's unlawful action has brought disrepute to the organisation. It mocks at the grandiloquent declarations that the UN made and makes on human rights, freedoms and so forth.

In fact, he encroached upon the province of the Security Council. It is the Security Council's Charter-mandated function to recommend or reject an applicant-state for membership to the General Assembly.

In this case, the duly filed application of Taiwan is being withheld from the Security Council’s attention.

The secretary-general's action has a telling effect upon the UN system, which is founded in constitutional terms upon a relatively clear theoretical distinction between the functions of the principal organs of the organisation. The Security Council’s credibility is at stake. It ought to function as an effective international political executive.

The Security Council should not remain a disinterested and mute spectator whose inaction has the effect of an unjustified abdication of its powers.

Whether Taiwan’s application is meritorious or not is another question, which can only be judged based upon the rules of international law governing the matter. Taiwan is truly self-governing. It also satisfactorily meets the Montevideo criteria which stipulates that state as an international juristic person should possess (a) a permanent population, (b) a defined territory, (c) a stable government and (d)capacity to enter into relations with other states.

Also, it meets the ancillary criteria such as democracy and state responsibility. Scholars and international law practitioners made no serious dispute to this except by some China-sponsored ones. It is undeniable that Taiwan is more qualified to join the UN than China.

A nation that persistently violates its peoples cherished values and freedoms, whose rule is authoritarian and established without consent of its people is no doubt less qualified, less credentialed than democratic Taiwan which shows respect for all human rights and fundamental freedoms declared by the UN.

Though prevented from acceding to international treaties and agreements, Taiwan has striven to implement them. It safeguards the rights and freedoms enshrined in the two human rights covenants more effectively than do many covenant signatories.

Taiwan respects and upholds virtually all the important international treaties. Taiwan acts on the premise that it is the duty of all players in the international arena to conform to global standards necessary for the evolution of an international society founded on the rule of law.

Resolution 2758 of 1971 declared nothing, however, concerning the status of Taiwan in relation to China’s sovereignty claims. It never endows China any right to represent the people of Taiwan.

The UN General Assembly has to ensure that this resolution should not be wrongly used as an excuse to exclude Taiwan from the UN system.

The 23 million people of Taiwan should not be allowed to continue as politically isolated and remain international nomads without due acknowledgement.

Taiwan has no sort of representation in the UN since then. It has become necessary for the Security Council; the august body whose edicts enjoy the “highest legislative dignity in contemporary human history” maintain its majesty.

The Security Council or its president should immediately require the Secretary-General to transfer to it the Taiwanese President's application for UN membership, which was delivered to Mr Ban on 19 July in accordance with Rule 59 of the Rules of Procedure of the Security Council.

The Security Council, which is intended to operate as an efficient executive organ of limited membership, should recuperate its plenary powers endowed by the Charter. That would also play a major part in regaining the lost credibility of the organisation.

(The author is a legal researcher.)

What cooks in Maoists’ kitchen?

The Statesman, 8 December

It is mentioned in the Interim Constitution that Nepal’s government will hold elections to the Constituent Assembly before 15 December. If the parties in the government and the Maoists fail to amend the constitution with a two-thirds majority within the next nine days, the country will be trapped in a constitutional crisis.

Though constitutional experts have been claiming that the terms of the constitution have been violated numerous times by the government and the Maoists, failure to amend the election date will openly declare the failure of the constitution.
That might also herald the failure of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed between Nepal’s government and the erstwhile rebels, the Maoists.

In such a situation, the Nepali Congress, the largest political party of the country, could join hands with other democratic forces to oust the Maoists from government with the help of the Nepal Army. Fearing this, the Maoists have thrown the nationalist card. The nationalist card has always been effective in Nepalese politics, especially among royalists and the elite.

The Maoists have taken refuge in nationalist slogans as they were left with no option but to prove their popular support through the elections. And they know that they will lose miserably if the polls take place soon.

But it is unfortunate that Nepal’s national army seems to have fallen into a trap set by the Maoists, monarchists and the regressive elite.

Recently, Maoist leader Prachanda claimed that he had had discussions with the generals about the country’s situation.

The Nepal Army that was so prompt to oppose Prachanda when he said the Nepal Army was a bunch of rapists and murderers has kept quiet on the issue. The conspicuous silence provides space to believe that something is cooking between the Maoists and the Nepal Army.

The question here is this: Is Nepal on the brink of losing its national identity? If we were convinced by the Maoists and other radical nationalists, we would not be raising this question. Rather, we would be going all out in any capacity to defend our nation. But that is not the situation. We believe that the nationalist card thrown now is only a ploy to defeat democracy, as Pervez Musharraf did in Pakistan and as the generals are doing in Bangladesh.

It is a conspiracy hatched by both the monarchists and the Maoists who are destined to get sidelined if the elections were to take place and the people get a chance to speak their minds freely.

The Nepal Army should understand that the Maoists are trying to infiltrate it. Maoists know that except for the people’s vote and the Nepal Army’s firepower, nothing can stop them from taking over. Let us all be realistic and help the Maoists get rid of their unattainable and unsustainable aspiration of establishing a one-party Communist republic.

The Kathmandu Post/ANN

SUCCESSION STORY - The Left should put an end to the anachronism of dynastic rule

Ashok Mitra
The Telegraph, 7 December

If it were not so repulsive a spectacle, it could be hugely comic. Last month, the Congress had organized a gala coronation at New Delhi’s Talkatora Gardens. The ceremony was intended to anoint a young man as the party’s new general-secretary. This was the first step, it was implicitly understood in party circles, towards the youngster succeeding his mother as the party’s supreme leader, in turn ensuring his enthronement as the nation’s prime minister. The proceedings were comprehensively grotesque. But the young gentleman took them in his stride, and pontificated at length to the assembled docile crowd on the grand theme of leadership in administration. Meritocracy, he declaimed in his somewhat shrill voice, was the crux of the matter, those who led the party and the nation must be chosen on the basis of merit and merit alone.

Therein lay the source of hilarity. The youngster has been enshrined as the party’s general-secretary — and is being tipped to be the nation’s next or next-but-one prime minister — not because of any outstanding merit or quality suddenly unearthed in him. His only credential is his pedigree. His father was prime minister, his grandmother was prime minister, and his great-grandfather, the first prime minister of independent India, absentmindedly or otherwise, set up the dynasty. True, Indira Gandhi’s faux pas of the Emergency gave a jolt to the dynasty, but the ineptitude of the Opposition helped it overcome that crisis. It has been since then a cosy feudal arrangement in the party. The family is the overlord, the rest are vassals. For most of the time in the post-independent decades, the Congress has been the ruling party, the prime ministerial post has therefore remained the prerogative of the family. In 2004, when the Congress had to forge a coalition to enable it to form the government, the young gentleman’s mother, then and now czarina of the party, was about to assume the prime minister’s mantle but was deterred by the controversy over her not being a citizen by birth. That accident apart, it has been smooth sailing for the family.

Rule by dynasty, and this is why problems rear their head. According to the nation’s Constitution, India is a republic, on top of that, a socialist republic. A republic presided over by a dynasty — which is as good as monarchy — is a contradiction in terms. The country at one end is aspiring to march confidently into the information-technology-guided amphitheatre of the 21st century; at the other end though, its regime happens to be a feudal curiosum eerily reminiscent of the Middle Ages.

The Constitution of India, of course, allows it citizens freedom of thought and expression. If a party is keen to preach the virtues of a monarchical system, it has every right to do so. Difficulty arises only when the party wants the entire nation to accommodate, within the corpus of democracy, the principle of dynastic rule. The Congress secured a little more than one-fifth of the total votes cast in the last national election. Those belonging to the party may dearly wish a scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family to be the nation’s prime minister forever. The majority of the nation need not, however, go along with their view. And since the Constitution also says that India is a democratic republic, the will of the majority has to prevail. The Congress could well have made up its mind to install the young gentleman from the dynasty as prime minister following the next Lok Sabha elections, whether these are held as scheduled in 2009 or earlier; it is, however, most unlikely to have a majority in the house and would, therefore, face hurdles in fulfilling its goal.

Where there is a will, there could still be a way. As in 2004, the Congress could enter into a coalition with desperate groups and parties and form the government, with outside support from the Left. It might at that point announce formally its intent to name the young man as prime minister. If the other constituents of the coalition as well as the Left were to demur, it could be argued on behalf of the Congress that it was no business of the coalition partners — or of the Left — to claim to have a veto over the choice of prime minister; nominating the prime minister was the prerogative of the leading constituent of the coalition.

Would the Left cave in and let go of the opportunity to bring an end to the dynastic nonsense? Such a possibility indeed exists. For, when, in 2004, it looked imminent that the young man’s mother was to be sworn in as prime minister despite her not being a citizen by birth, the Left had declared categorically that the Constitution did not debar her and, further, it was an internal matter of the Congress whom it chose as its leader. Were a similar situation to develop following the next Lok Sabha polls, the Left could reiterate the stance it adopted four years ago.

Would not such a decision amount to an escape from rationality though? The Left believes in secularism; it is dead-set against sectarians and religious fundamentalists; it is under commitment to fight the forces of bigotry with the last drop of its blood. But, to be consistent, should it not be equally vocal against feudalism and the shameful anachronism of dynastic rule? The Left will not touch a communal party with a bargepole. Must it not apply the same criterion while passing judgment on a party that believes in the monarchic principle? Does it not offend the Left’s democratic sensibilities that members of a particular dynasty are routinely enthroned as the nation’s prime minister for years and decades on end, so much so that they tend to flaunt themselves as royalty? Surely, an issue of principle is involved here. Those who belong to the Left are supposed to be socialists by conviction. Reconciling socialist belief with the edict of monarchism is an impossible exercise. To argue that members of the dynasty are democratically elected to the leadership of the Congress is fatuity. The dynasty is a sort of an imperium; it draws its power and authority from a mysterious source, and it takes it upon itself to nominate the functionaries of the party at different levels; every party nominee for a seat in Parliament or a state legislature is decided by it. Expression of dissidence with any decision taken by the family is considered as worse than sedition; the offender is immediately chucked out of the party.

Other issues apart, the Congress has, by succumbing to the principle of dynastic succession, set a grisly example for other parties too. Those who shy away from censuring the Congress for its blind subservience to the Nehru-Gandhis have zero ground for criticizing the Dravida Munnethra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu, the Janata Dal (Secular) in Karnataka, the Shiromoni Akali Dal in Punjab, the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra or, for the matter, Lalu Prasad in Bihar. If no protests are registered and things proceed in the manner they have proceeded in the past, India could soon be transmuted into a weird kind of organism: a republic incorporating a dozen or more monarchies, big and small.

The onus is not on the Congress; it is in too timid a state to reform itself on its own. It is for those who shore up the Congress — particularly the Left — to step in and guide it away from idolatrous obeisance to a dynasty. Were the leftists to fail in the task, India, supposedly the world’s largest democracy, is bound to increasingly resemble a hereditary monarchy, like tiny nextdoor Bhutan — or tinier Tonga in the distant Pacific.

Surrender or fight?

Subroto Roy
The Statesman, 4 December

War is not a cricket match or Bollywood movie. Can India fight China if it must?

Armies of the subcontinent, all deriving from rather antiquated British military traditions, have only once since 1947 fought an external army ~ when China’s Communists, using Lin Biao’s military doctrines, attacked India in 1962 and India lost territory, soldiers and self-respect, gaining ignominy for half a century instead. India and Pakistan have fought wars against each other, India’s army has fought Kashmiri, Naga and other rebels, Pakistan’s army has brutalised Bangladeshi and Baluchi civilians and fought Pashtuns in Waziristan, Bangladeshi soldiers have brutalised tribal minorities and shot at Indian border guards, Sri Lanka’s military has fought Tamil rebels, Nepal has fought communist rebels, etc. Other than the 1962 Chinese attack, all warfare in the subcontinent has been domestic and internecine.

Official 1962 history

The official Government of India history of the 1962 war frankly says: “The Indian Army trained and fought like the British Army, unimaginative, elephantine, rule-bound and road-bound. Armies of Germany, Japan, USSR or China were vastly better war machines, and patterned very differently.” During the 1962 war, the US Ambassador JK Galbraith wrote to President Kennedy: “The great question is what the Chinese intend…. The Indians have consistently underestimated Chinese intentions…. the Indian Army in its command, organisation, tactics and equipment is extremely old-fashioned. The individual soldiers carry personal arms that are sixty years old and this can hardly give them the feeling of equality with opponents carrying modern light automatic weapons. The tactics are stuffy and rigid… Some of the commanders are very good. More still are the amiable frauds that rise to the top in any peacetime Army… ”

When diplomacy is exhausted and international conflict arises, there is always an option of surrendering or yielding sovereignty instead of standing up to fight, e.g. Vichy France yielding before Nazi Germany. There is always a choice between submission and fighting. Pakistan’s military has geared itself over decades only to fight India, and chosen to serve the West and China as desired towards that end. Whatever America wants in Pakistan, America gets, e.g., if American missiles need to enter Pakistani airspace to hit Afghan targets, the US Government does not seek Pakistani permission but merely informs them not to think offensive missiles have been sent from India, and they say okay.

India’s Army may be under some suspicion of being similarly geared to fight only Pakistan ~ and when India and Pakistan are armed and obsessed only with fighting one another, they can hardly think of taking on other adversaries. “India’s soldiers now stand sentinel along India’s frontiers; but they perform guard-duties and are not spear-heads for her advancing armies”, Peter Lyon in FS Northedge (ed), Foreign Policies of the Powers, 1973.

Certainly India’s military has not seemed keen to have anything but a highly defensive posture against Communist China. On 23 March 1991, Rajiv Gandhi at his residence released a fat book by a retired Army Chief on Indian military defence titled Prepare or Perish. The book’s author and the present author had been working together for Rajiv, and the former was asked why in the hundreds of pages of the book there was barely a mention of Indian military preparation against China. He replied that our strategy against China would have to be a defensive holding action which relied on the international community’s intervention before matters escalated ~ revealing a rather wild optimism about the efficacy of international relations. Another Army Chief years before him, General Thimayya himself, is reported to have said “as a soldier he could not think of a total war with China and would leave the dispute to be settled by the diplomats” (BN Mullick, The Chinese Betrayal, p. 318).

Thimayya realised India was weak after World War II facing Mao’s Communists who had two and a half million armed men, had acquired large stocks of American and Japanese weapons after defeating Chiang Kaishek, and were aggressive and experienced after decades of fighting culminating in the Korean war. (Three divisions were trained in India by the Americans and sent for Chiang in 1942-45 with supplies along the Stilwell Road or flown across the “hump”.) Indian soldiers had fought mostly under British or American commanders; in 1947, they disintegrated in chaos into the new armies of India and Pakistan who went to war with one another immediately over J&K.

Not only was India militarily weak until 1962, our political and diplomatic policies since 1949 had been consistently ones of flattery and appeasement, betraying our interests as well as our relationships with Chiang’s Nationalist Chinese and, most cruelly of all, with the Tibetans who shared India’s culture. Our first Ambassador to Beijing was a communist sympathiser, his son-in-law a leading Indian communist. India was the first country outside the Soviet bloc to recognise Communist China, the first to help Mao diplomatically in the Korean war, the pioneer of many UN resolutions to have Communist China admitted as a veto-holding Security Council member in place of Chiang’s Nationalists. We bent over backwards to accommodate and appease them over Tibet. All this got us less than nothing ~ Communist China soon enough joined hands with Pakistan’s greedy generals against us.

Zhou Enlai was said to be “one of those men who never tell the truth and never tell a lie. For them there is no distinction between the two. The speaker says what is appropriate to the circumstances. Zhou Enlai was a perfect gentleman; he was also a perfect Communist” (Father Laszlo Ladany, The Communist Party of China and Marxism, 1921-1985, Stanford 1988). Zhou enforced India’s political and diplomatic surrender, and then we failed to fight adequately on the military front. Communist China thus established its dominance over India. After Nixon and Kissinger made their devious opening to Mao and Zhou using Pakistan, American policy changed too, almost betraying Taiwan and certainly stamping American approval on the idea that between Communist China and India, China shall be seen as dominant.

For recent Chinese Ambassadors to New Delhi to brazenly use today the same language as Zhou did half a century ago is not a good sign but an indication of Communist China’s wish not to have a relationship with modern India on the basis of sovereign equality. For them to say Tawang must be theirs because the monastery there was where the sixth Dalai Lama was born and the Dalai Lama is Chinese and not Indian, is to reveal an aggressive subconscious against us. We may next hear it said Buddha himself was Chinese since he was probably born in Nepal, as an excuse for further Communist encroachment.

Diplomatic relations

The last time China’s Communists attacked India the world was distracted by the Cuban missile crisis just as it is distracted today with Iran and Iraq. The Tawang monastery issue today is symbolic of India’s entire relationship with China since 1949. There is no economic reason why bilateral trade in goods and services cannot continue but it may be high time India gathers some remaining self-respect and downgrades and then considers ending diplomatic relations with this aggressive dictatorship, awaiting instead the development of democracy and a free society for all of China’s great people, perhaps on the Taiwan-model. The Dalai Lama was greeted with great warmth in Taiwan and there is no doubt a free democratic China will seek a healthy new relationship with Tibet as befits great cultures.

Militarily, India must indeed prepare for the next Communist aggression or perish, which requires real modernisation and efficiency in the armed forces and an end to corruption, indiscipline and incompetence.

(The author is Contributing Editor, The Statesman)

Uncle Sam and the merchant of Arabia

ND Batra
The Statesman, 5 December

With the rise of crude oil to $90-100 a barrel, the camel is overloaded with the greenback. And there is no better place for the Arab merchant to unload his petrodollars than to lend it Americans who juggle their daily lives between credit cards and debit cards, home equity loans and foreclosures. But it is not only the Joe Six-pack who is in trouble. His lenders too are sleepless.

Like other American financial institutions, Citigroup, the global financial giant, has been reeling under billions of dollars mortgage-and-subprime related losses. The Citigroup board, instead of responding to merger overtures from other financial institutions, went in search of Arab petrodollars and obtained $7.5 billion cash flow from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the government’s sovereign wealth fund, for a 4.9 per cent equity stake plus 11 per cent annual interest rate, making it one of the biggest investors in the bank.

In this age of globalisation, you might say, so what? Not everyone seems to be happy about the Citigroup deal with the Arab merchant. In an editorial titled “Citi of Arabia”, The Wall Street Journal wrote: “We hate to spoil the party, but it strikes us as unfortunate, if not a tragedy, that America’s largest bank had to go hat in hand to the Arab sheikhs because of bad management and blundering US monetary policy.” Many transnational corporations and international businesses try to develop an early awareness system, which picks up weak signals that might become a raging storm later. An early awareness system helps prepare a company to nip the evil in the bud. But American financial institutions did not foresee any sign of trouble.

Nobody understood what havoc subprime lending might create.
Nor does anybody fully understand how the global wealth is shifting to other regions. Irwin Stelzer, director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute wrote in Times Online: “The world has changed. Wealth has moved into new hands. Morgan Stanley estimates that the world’s sovereign wealth funds hold some $2.5 trillion in assets, more than the global hedge-fund industry.

And they are adding about $500 billion to their assets every year. One Goldman Sachs banker told me that until recently he had never been to West Asia; now he makes several trips each month.” The widespread hostility against globalisation is unfortunately prevalent in the USA. In the Internet age, there is a tremendous mobility of factors from foreign direct investment to job outsourcing to state-controlled sovereign wealth funds equity investment. In this sense the world, instead of becoming flat as The New York Times columnist Tom Friedman believes, is rather developing peaks and valleys, dungeons and dragons. The fear of “MacDonaldisation” is being replaced by the fear of secretive Arab and Chinese sovereign wealth funds and state-controlled companies nibbling at American assets, which are becoming cheaper to acquire, thanks to the fall of the dollar.

The Arabs own 10 per cent of Citigroup and their voice will eventually be heard in the boardroom. Recently, Dubai and Abu Dhabi made significant investments in Advanced Micro Devices, a leading semiconductor company that handles many defence contracts. Globalisation is a dynamic process of creating interdependencies in economics, international trade and culture, and is likely to create instabilities. It is much more than bilateralism because a country has to be opened to the flow of influences from all around.

Transnational corporations stride the world like a colossus. Their business depends upon their reputation, which makes them extremely vulnerable not only to the government of the host country but also to the news over which the government has no control, especially in a democratic society.

In authoritarian countries, where the news media is controlled by the government, transnational corporations have a much easier time doing business. That is one of the most important reasons transnational corporations find it easy to do business in China.

They have to deal with one authority, that of the central government. They don’t have to deal with environmental degradation, oil spills and uprooting of people without compensation to build new buildings. The news media plays no part and international NGOs have no say. And for the same reason, when a state-controlled Chinese company or an Arab sovereign wealth fund buys American assets, Americans become paranoid because of the lack of transparency.

The government’s impact upon economic activities is limited because in the global village there are so many actors, and the government cannot control all of them. Government has limited control over the mobility of capital. Key instruments of monetary and fiscal policy, exchange rates and import barriers are not totally under government control.
Globalisation creates comparative choices and highlights inefficiencies both in the government and corporations. But just as governments are constrained by forces beyond their control, so are transnational corporations.

Microsoft had to face anti-trust regulations both in the USA and the European Union. Similar controls might have to be applied to secretive sovereign wealth funds if they seek to buy assets in the USA and other open societies. A case in point is the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), which explains why Americans are worried about the merchant of Arabia. In 1991, BCCI was found by regulators in the USA and the UK to have been involved in arms dealing, money laundering, bribery, support of terrorism, tax evasion, smuggling, illegal immigration and the sale of nuclear technologies. The Emir of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the father of the present ruler, controlled the bank, which was closed after the investigation.
In this environment, corporate diplomacy is imperative. International corporations and sovereign wealth funds must become culturally attractive to host country publics. Unless sovereign wealth funds from West Asia and state-controlled global companies from the Middle Kingdom become transparent and publicly accountable, they must be watched and scrutinised.

Tagore biographer par excellence

Martin Kampchen
The Statesman, 5 December

On 26 November, Professor Prasanta Kumar Paul, Rabindranath Tagore’s biographer, died in a Kolkata hospital. In the late 1980s, when I prepared my German biography of Tagore, I first met Paul, whom I have always called Prasantada. He then lived in the annexe to the Ratan Kutir at Santiniketan, shuttling between his college duties in Kolkata and his research at Rabindra Bhavan. He was unassuming, almost rustic looking, without airs. We had many evening meetings in his small room after he returned from the library. He supplied me every detail from Rabindranath’s life I asked for, mostly from memory.

At that time he was sufficiently happy in Santiniketan to want to shift to Visva-Bharati full-time. After becoming professor at Rabindra Bhavan, he first stayed in the university quarters near the Ratan Palli Market and later built a house in the same area. Paul became the person in Santiniketan I admired most. I realised that he rendered help to other Tagore scholars, for example to Andrew Robinson and Krishna Datta, with the same generosity. His dedication and mental application to Tagore and his life's work, the Bengali biography of Rabindranath Tagore, were without equal.

I have seen so many anti-models, namely intellectuals simultaneously engaged in six or more activities, scattering their energies. It rarely leads to a consistent and remarkable oeuvre. Prasantada mildly warned me not to spread myself too much. He alluded to my activities in two Santhal villages at some distance from Santiniketan. He visited me in my modest accommodation at noon one day, and saw me interacting with a few Santhal youths who had arrived from their villages with different suggestions and requests.

He then realised that I was not wasting my time, and he never chided me again. I still remember how he, sitting in a cane chair among these village people, had such a good time exchanging banter with them. He was able to switch from his concerns about Tagore to village concerns without a problem.

I maintain a strict rule of not entertaining visitors before noon. The time before that is reserved for writing. The first time Prasantada visited me, he arrived too early. Courteously, I made him sit on the verandah and returned to my computer until time was up. Rather than being annoyed, he later cited the incident as an example of devotion to duty. Years earlier, another professor who was also made to wait a while, reported me to the police. Here we see the difference between humility and abhimaan (pride). Our relationship intensified when Prasantada and I, as joint editors, brought out the book My Dear Master which contains the correspondence between Tagore and his German translator (from English and Bengali) Helene Meyer-Franck. It is Prasantada's only book in English. He also wrote a long and personal foreword to my Bengali study on Tagore's relationship with Germany, Jarmanite Rabindra-Biksha.

During these years, I was involved in translating Tagore's poems into German. I took the help of friends to read them out to me, to explain the allusions. During that time, I made dozens of visits to Prasantada's house in Ratan Palli where he lived with his family.

He explained lines of poetry to me with their different layers of meaning and offering his explanation in short, considered words. I then realised the hollowness of the critique that Prasanta K Paul's scholarship is confined to being a collector of facts.

He did not merely collect the facts of Tagore’s life and coordinate them chronologically. He sifted and weighed them, put them into perspective and applied a preliminary comment or interpretation. His nine volumes of Rabijibani will be the groundwork for future generations. He knew the importance of his life's work, and that knowledge, I believe, kept him going. He was not well accepted by the Santiniketan establishment. True, Prasantada had his rough edges and could be blunt which may have hurt egos. But why, I ask, could one not accommodate the idiosyncrasies of a scholar of such unique merit? Who in our generation has done as much for making Tagore known to his own people as he has? When he suffered a stroke and it became gradually apparent that he would be unable to complete the 10th volume, it would have been such a gracious gesture to bestow the Desikottama of Visva-Bharati on him. Even the Rabindra Puraskar of the West Bengal government came late in his life, and I remember his childlike joy when he announced it to me. His illness was a burden on him. He sat and sat in his small room, surrounded by shelves of books, computers and a television and other electronic devices. "Are you making any progress," I invariably asked. And he invariably shook his head. "Just a few lines." He felt depressed, and he became more and more lonely. In the last few years, he had hardly any visitors and almost no encouragement from outside his family.

I like to remember Prasantada as he sits on his three-wheeler which was a motorbike with two wheels fitted in the rear. He suffered from gout and was stout, which restricted his mobility. This way, he could climb on his vehicle and start off. I enjoy remembering him as a techno-savvy man who was clever with computers and electronics. This contrasted ingeniously with his old-world charm. I want to remember him as a man who had found his life's work and pursued it writing one volume of Tagore's life after another. I consider him blessed for having discovered what he was born for early in life. On every Bengali New Year and on my birthdays, I used to visit Prasantada in the morning and offer my pranam to him. Alas, how shall I make special my next birthday?

Kernels of multiculturism - Makings of Londonistan

ManMohan Luthra
The Statesman, 5 December

A decade after the American Civil Rights Act, the British legislated against discrimination in 1976 and established the CRE. The equalities legislation has evolved over a period to include measures against religious discrimination and incitement, to the dismay of many intellectuals who feared backdoor censorship in what they see as play-banning and book- burning tendencies of the new post-war brown Britons. The CRE’s last gasp report takes a shot at the systemic failure of the government departments to set an example to complying with its inclusion schemes and argues that for Britsh- born Black and Minority Ethnic Groups life chances are still hampered by more subtle discrimination that replaced the explicit racism of the 1960s.

It also alerts people to the possibility of increasing segregation and the emergence of parallel lives between ethnic groups. The systemic discrimination focus, however, fails to note that over the last decade both social mobility and inequality in the UK has been on the decrease and the public has anxieties about the rapidly changing profile of metropolitan Britain.

It also fails to take into account the cultural and historical baggage of certain communities that can also be damaging in terms of overcoming discrimination and grasping opportunities, besides the impact of such tendencies on indigenous attitudes. In one sense, in India, the Sachar Committees approach to analysis as to why the Muslim community lags behind in India is far more sophisticated.

Over 40 years, since the mid-60s, immigration from the Indian subcontinent there has never been a major civil strife, though there have been battles of the young people with the British police.

Even during the post- London bombing period, the British people conducted themselves with dignity and there was no major backlash against Muslims. Minorities feel reasonably secure in the UK as a relatively free, liberal entrepreneurial society with a reasonable social and health security network and with a booming economy. There is no shortening of queues to come to Britain or enter it without papers via Europe nor are there any major signs of exodus by the settled migrants.
There is reasonable integration of minorities at the political level, the media, the city and local government and the private sector unlike France, a neighbour with a much larger ethnic population. Different communities have been successful at different rates in terms of establishing a middle class, achieving an entrepreneurial contingent and exploiting educational opportunities with the Indian community and the Chinese community which is doing particularly well
Some French intellectuals have interpreted the London bombings as an indication of the British failed multiculturalism and lately it has become fashionable to knock the concept. Even the CRE Chair argued that some regressive values and human rights breaches within the ethnic communities have gone unchallenged. Liberalism has been shown while debating on wife-beating or cliterectomy of women and dowry abuse.
More recently, the likes of Martin Amis, celebrated British author, has attached the concept and Yasmin Alibhai, a journalist, has argued that multiculturism is backward looking and divisive. There is some truth in it but the scale of such abuse is small and the critique could have been done without throwing the baby with the bath water and confusing the British population that has accepted multiculturism, albeit not without pain. The notion that pluralism should be welcomed and tolerated is something that necessitates the birth of the idea of multiculturalism. Pluralism is a child of true- grit liberalism.

Multiculturalism fosters the notion of celebration of cultures. The totality of cultures cannot be damned because of some of its strands. Each culture has some value ~ so one has to think before making a stereotypical judgment about the people who belong to such cultures. Each culture also emphasises that no individual culture should carry the burden of all the communities’ misdemeanours. This has been helpful in challenging the backlash in the past when there was Khalistani terrorism and now Islamist terrorism. The case for multiculturism was over-stated in its historical context to challenge the naked eurocentricism and ethnocentrism of the 1960s and 1970s. In multiethnic societies, multiculturalism is not a choice but a standard and etiquette ~ a mindset for co-existence if not integration. Combined with the notion of racial equality, it becomes an effective tool for challenging the systemic ethnocentric view of society and discrimination.

Imported from the USA and aided by corporate sectors, the concept of diversity usurped it (widened it to include other excluded groups, for instance, disabled and women ) and stripped it of its politics. In a corporate context, it emphasises the notion of valuing difference and harnessing it for competiveness and customer connectivity ~ a classic examples would be the disabled character in Lagan whose disability is used effectively.

India’s corporate sector could learn a great deal from the UK and the USA as it remains dominated by the well-heeled urban elite.

Culture and religion, a folk version of religion as opposed to a literal interpretation, are difficult to disentangle. The well-educated clergy of Britain, after reformation, have been good at debating religion openly, throwing up an intellectual leadership. On the whole, Britain in 60 years has historically kept religion out of politics and succeeded. The intellectual view has been that unlike the USA, we don’t do God here and with education, a part of British population may cling to vague ideas of spiritualism but on the whole, the Church has been struggling to get the punters in. Aversion to jingoism also has been part of the culture leading to muted nationalism. This influenced the early identity formations with communities from the sub-continent using the term British Asian as a broadbased secular term to define themselves.

Muslim intellectuals in the 1980s advocated dissolving the alliance with the rest of the Asian communities well before 9/11, by arguing that their religion was the overriding identity. The state endorsed this view by creating religious categories in census, despite unease among the British population.

Later, because of this, the work of Islamists among the young, new hypen-nated identities like British Muslims have emerged as some of the Indians, including Indians Muslims, distanced themselves from Pakistani Muslims.

The strident demand for halal meat in schools, building big and large number of mosques and temples and creation of separate schools is recreating a Christian identity that did not exist before.

Multifaith education was encouraged in the 1980s, leaving it to schools to set up advisory committees to shape the curriculum and worship practices. Some laidback polices of the local planning authorities means that we have more than 500 mosques, temples and gurdwaras not always built in spacious grounds or in the right places and not always co-existing happily, cheek by jowl with their white neighbours who tend to move out of these areas, leaving ethnic concentrations behind.

Feudal cultural strands have been brought in by immigrants in the form of honour killings of women, forced marriages and forced veiling of children. Cliterectomies, Press claims about weeping Hindu god statutes and protestations to save TB-infected bulls, as well as the demand for open burials ~ all these contribute to the feudalised and extremist image of the Asian communities and adds to the nascent and residual pool of UK’s racism.

The British over-estimate the number of settled migrants many times the actual figure of seven per cent, the same percentage of British support the Bangladesh Nationalist Party which restricts its membership to "indigenous Caucasians" and advocates the repatriation of ethnic minorities to their ancestors' countries of origin.

About 41 per cent of the British think there are too many people of other ethnic communities living in the UK (Cabinet Office, 2001). In the case of people of Indian origin perceived to be a relatively successful community, all these observations combine with burning brides, dowry crimes, corruption, displays of wealth (weddings) and almost crippling poverty in India to undermine the glamorous projection of Incredible India.

Yet, as with India, the adaptive nature of British culture is evident from the adoption of curry almost as a national dish, yoga as a norm in the gym and the co-option of the Bhangra beat in mainstream music and a fascination for Bollywood ~ all appear to thrive at the same time.

When asked about the willingness to marry across into a culture, the British are three times more willing to do so than people of Indian origin ~ the ethnocentric bigotry of the Indians does not bode well either. It is not that the British population is immune to fads of religion. Recently, eminent biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Delusion of God and in a series of documentaries has attacked the growth of the culture of superstition and ignorance amongst the British. Yet, paradoxically, in a country overwhelmingly agnostic, Buddhism and Islam are the fastest growing religions. Islamists needle the European leaders ideologically with the desire to establish an Ulmah and scholars like Roger Scruton (The West and Rest ) have argued it is the text and ideology of Islam rather then its interpretation which is responsible for extremism, though the same could be said of the Old Testament. The Islamist group, albeit small in number, fuel the British population’s fear that there are many sympathisers.

All is not lost. In the case of the Muslim community, value transmission has taken place, British Muslims, as compared to Muslims of other countries, have better views of us than their cousins and diasporic connections; 49 per cent of British Muslims (but 22 per cent of Pakistanis) think Westerners are respectful of women, 56 (versus 24) think us generous, 48 (against 13) tolerant.

Yet there is fear that enlightenment values are under threat as it is not only the violent extremists, (Post-Rushdie book burning, Sikh case on the play Izzat, the killing of a documentary maker in Holland and the support among the British Gujarati community for the likes of Mr Narendra Modi) others, too, are using political clout and undermining hard-won local freedoms.

The new migrants from eastern Europe are hardworking and have kept inflation down, created a café culture, kept the hospitality and construction sector afloat and British bathrooms well-repaired. They have also brought in human trafficking and gang killings with the rich ones from Russia buying parts of London, pushing up prices to sky-high levels. There is, however, in practice less acceptance of the abstract argument put forward by British intellectuals that immigration is good for the economy.

Melanie Phillips, a journalist, in her book attacked the laidback British policies on immigration in the name of multiculturalism as responsible for turning London into Londonistan ~ an observation often repeated by Indian friends who visit London.

The argument about diversity and immigration as key drivers of economic development has been won by policymakers, a point highlighted with Britain retaining a competitive edge in winning the Olympics-hosting opportunity. At the same time, rapid immigration from eastern Europe has put pressure on the instant access to a welfare state. The ease of movement has been abused by terrorists and a balmy army of desi commercial clergy being driven in their BMWs preaching feudal values and dated interpretations of religions.

This instills the fear among the British that religion is being connected with militant politics ~ a notion exposed by former extremists in their publications. The British have an aversion to this connection rooted in their psyche since the Enlightenment period and the experience of Northern Ireland. The British working classes have been fed the notion of fairness that spawns not irrational nativism about contributing before claiming welfare benefits ~ even the established immigrant communities grumble about the pressure on local services by outsiders.

Add to this the paranoias of foreigners buying local football clubs, streets of London and the perception that many jobs are going to India. Big religious festivities on high street blocking traffic, loud speaking on the tube, absence of an observing body, space rules, queueing ~ all the habits including public spitting in addition to rapid import of tuberculosis incense the local residents. Yet many turn up in hundreds to support the Indian Mela and the Notting Hill Festival to celebrate diversity.

Repeated British attitude surveys suggest continuing support for counter-racism measures amongst a significant part of the population, particularly the young.

Though the spatial ethnic segregation is decreasing, albeit slowly, as the Whites move where the Black and Brown people settle, there is increasing social contact at work between ethnic groups, off-work integration is not increasing even among the young.

Market-driven housing segregation is partly a function of free market and affordability and partly the need to be near kith and kin. This leads to segregation in schooling.

The demand for approvals of faith schools has sparked a debate about the state utilising its funds to fund new-faith Hindu, Sikh and Muslim schools, a development lamented by people like Professor Gundara. He argues that state-sponsored segregation is not justified on the grounds of race or religion as separate is not equal.

Fostering cohesion for integration has become a dominant discourse in public policy over equality with often poorly thought-through suggestions by local authorities of abolishing mother-tongue teaching and bilingual translation and redeploying resources aimed at tackling discrimination.

In its 30-year of post-war multiculturalism and fair society experiment, Britain has become a tossed-salad society as opposed to a melting pot ~ rather similar to the USA. Nevertheless, it is a society with high-levels of security, reasonable political and economic integration for its minorities with varied affiliations to the country.

Major questions remain. Is integration achieveable or is peaceful co-existence a realistic goal? Looking at India and Canada, the latter is more likely, at least for a few generations. Some British ethnic communities such as Jews in the past century and more recently the Caribbean communities with strong cultural similarity with local cultures have biologically integrated. The census figures suggest that intermarriage is increasing more speedily among educated Asians.
What the more difficult question for the policymakers in the UK need to struggle with is should the ethnic minorities integrate within what the conservative party has called a broken society with a crises of values.
A related question is what British identity the ethnic communities should aspire to, given the ephemeral, situational and fluid as well as historically hyphenated nature of such an identity. There is some evidence that minority youth tend to define British identity in terms of values such as compassion, fairplay and rule of law and its tolerance as opposed to other physical or jingoistic manifestations. This may be the key to future development as these are universally desirable values.
Can policymakers manage the diversity economic advantage of the UK without increasing disharmony, welfare costs and without compromising its tryst with liberalism?

(The author, an international consultant on diversity management and cohesion, is the author of Britain's Black Populations.)

A nuclear Pakistan - USA Trying To Cope With A Recurrent Headache

Sankar Sen
The Statesman, 5 December

The turmoil in Pakistan is causing great concern in the USA, India and many other countries. The present government is not stable and the militant fundamentalists are in control of parts of the North West Frontier Province. If the situation deteriorates, the risk of the country’s nuclear assets falling into the hands of the terrorists is substantial.
Pakistan’s case is somewhat unique. It is the military that controls and takes decision on the nuclear weapons despite the constitutional provision on the inclusion of civilians in the decision-making process. Both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif are on record with the statement that they were excluded by the army whenever a decision was taken on nuclear weapons.

During the last 25 years Pakistan has developed an extensive nuclear complex. It has the capacity to produce plutonium and highly-enriched uranium or fissile materials for nuclear weapons. Its main uranium research facilities are at the AQ Khan Research Laboratories at Kahuta. It also has another uranium research facility near Wah, which is called Gadwal Uranium Enrichment Plant. Pakistan also operates smaller enrichment facilities. According to an assessment of the Institute for Sciences and International Security, Pakistan at the end of 1999, possessed 585-800 kilograms of weapon grade HU and nearly 1.7-13 kilograms of separated plutonium. These quantities are sufficient for 30/50 nuclear bombs or warheads.

Storage facilities

Pakistan reportedly has several nuclear storage facilities. Their exact locations are unknown but they are mainly in the military bases. Its nuclear weapons are not thought to be “one-point safe” and equipped with Permissive Action Links meant to prevent unauthorised use of such nuclear weapons. A code has to be entered before such a weapon can be armed and fired.

President Musharraf has said that Pakistan is aware of the responsibilities of its nuclear status and that its nuclear arsenals are secure. The operational security of nuclear arsenals is now the responsibility of General Khalid Kidwai. According to him, Pakistan possesses both enabling and authenticating codes to protect the nuclear weapons. This may mean the development of rudimentary capability for nuclear warheads. It could even mean a locking delivery system.

In 2001, when the USA came to know that Pakistani scientists shared secrets of nuclear technology with Al Qaida, the Bush administration responded by providing millions of dollars of equipment such as American detectors and systems to safeguard Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. But Pakistan remained suspicious of the USA’s aims and did not grant US experts access to those bunkers where components of its arsenals are stored.

However, Pakistan’s nuclear assets remain vulnerable for a number of reasons. One important feature of its nuclear infrastructure is that much of it has been deployed to the west of the country to extend the warning time in the event of possible Indian attacks against the infrastructure and to delay an overrun from the ground. as an unintended consequence of this position, much of Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure is located close to the volatile region to the west and north-west of Islamabad. The infrastructure thus remains vulnerable. There can be threats from terrorists groups though they have not made an organised effort to take possession of nuclear weapons or components or even to create a radiological hazard by engulfing nuclear components in a fire or an explosion. This may happen when their strength and influence increases.
Concern has been expressed over the stability of Pakistan’s army. There are fears that the army may not remain a loyal and cohesive force if violence escalates and the fundamentalists devise fresh strategies. Many young army officers of the post-Zia-ul-Haq era have been “Islamised”. The “beard count” within the armed forces has increased considerably.

Further, the military and intelligence services in Pakistan have for several decades had strong links with terrorist groups, particularly the Al Qaida and the Taliban. The radical Islamic sentiments of Pakistani soldiers is reflected in the Tanzimul-Ikhwana movement. Based in a madrasa 90 miles from Islamabad, the organisation comprises retired army personnel. The movement is led by Mohammad Akram Awan, who preaches radical Islamic reforms within Pakistan and enjoys the loyalty of many army officers and solders.

The army is not as professional and loyal as it was earlier thought to be. The Jamat-e-Islam has members of the defence personnel as well. Military and Intelligence officers were involved in assassination attempts on Musharraf. There have been cases of army officers acting in cahoots with the Al Qaida operatives. Indeed, leakage of nuclear technology from Pakistan, according to David Albright, president of the Institute for Sciences and International Security, is fairly confirmed.

Sections of the army are demoralised. Many soldiers have surrendered to the militants. There is a grouse at the level of certain sections that they are fighting against their own countrymen at the behest of the USA. The presence of American and NATO troops in Afghanistan strengthens that feeling.

Pakistan has so far witnessed four successful military coups. In the coup of 1969 one military leadership replaced the other. In the context of a deteriorating situation in Pakistan, a counter-coup could be staged by a group of army officers hostile to the west. There is also the possibility of a smaller group of anti-western officers mounting an attack on the nuclear weapon sites and taking possession of nuclear weapons or weapon components for political or ideological advantage.

Not disclosed

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has stated that her country has contingency plans to deal with Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into unauthorised hands. Obviously, the specifics of the plan have not been disclosed. There is speculation that the USA has plans to destroy or to take physical possession of the nuclear weapons. However, this seems highly improbable, if not dangerous. There is a US intelligence network operating within Pakistan’s armed forces. It has not disclosed to the USA all aspects of its nuclear weapons security planning. If Pakistan fears that an attack is imminent it will be able to disperse and hide some of its nuclear assets.

Removing nuclear weapons alone will not be enough. Only heavy bombing of the nuclear sites will fully neutralise them. Such attacks are bound to release a large quantity of radiation. Only appropriate and adequate measures can avoid such catastrophic situations. And the Army’s assistance is essential in this task.

According to John Brennan, a retired CIA official, Pakistan’s nuclear safeguards are “robust enough to withstand a fair amount of political commotion, but none can really predict what will happen if the country slides towards civil war.”

The author is former Director-General, National Human Rights Commission, former Director, National Police Academy, and Senior Fellow, Institute of Social Sciences