What is happening in the country? We remember trainjacking in Wild West movies. The latest it was attempted was in the movie Sholay—and even that was thwarted by a brave police officer (Sanjiv Kumar) and a couple of convicts (Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra).
And, on top of that, the person in charge of Railways, Mamata Banerjee, is accused of being in alliance with the miscreants who took hostage the Bhubaneswar-New Delhi Rajdhani Express at Banstala Halt Station near Jhargram in West Bengal. In this context, the questions raised by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) about the trainjacking of Rajdhani Express cannot be dismissed as political sparring. CPM politburo member Sitaram Yechury has asked, “How did the train stop despite running at a speed of 110-120 kmph? How did the train slow down so early?”
Against the backdrop of Mamata’s not-very-secret ties with the Maoists, these are relevant questions. It has also been reported that she offered to negotiate the release of Maoist leader Chhatradhar Mahto. Further, for taking hostage the Rajdhani the Maoists used the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCPA). It is a well-known fact that the PCPA was Mamata’s major ally in her campaign against land eviction in West Bengal.
In order to distance herself from the Maoists, she demanded military deployment in Maoist-affected areas of West Bengal. Her Cabinet colleague, Defence Minister AK Antony promptly rejected the demand, saying, “Whether in West Bengal or any other area, our view is that employing armed forces for internal security should be the last, the very last resort, only when the other agencies have failed. Police and paramilitary have to deal with Naxalism.” Mamata’s insistence on the use of armed forces smacks of disingenuousness as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ruled this out a few days ago.
Meanwhile, conspiracy theories are floating. CPM central committee member Nilotpal Basu has alluded to Trinamool leader and Union Minister of State for Rural Development Shishir Adhikary’s in the trainjack. Wheels within wheels, plots and schemes, accusations and counter-accusations—this is what the Mamata brand of politics is all about. She is increasingly veering towards the ends-justify-means approach. So far, this approach has yielded rich dividends for her. Marginalised in the 2004 elections and routed in the state Assembly polls in 2006, she bounced back on a shrill anti-business, anti-development agenda. Success in the general elections this year has whetted her appetite and zeal for the post of chief minister of West Bengal. The Maoists have been a great assistance in her comeback; and she apparently believes that they can be used as tools to capture power. These guys have an ideology, (more radical than that of her archrival CPM), they have the cadre, they are not averse to violence (in fact, Maoism is all about violence, about power emanating from the barrel of the gun).
What she has overlooked, though, is the fact that the Maoists also have the nasty habit of eliminating everybody else. They do not believe in peaceful coexistence; in fact, they do not believe in the existence of anybody other than themselves. It happened in China, where the Great Helmsman liquidated all opposition. His followers tried to do the same in Nepal recently, but were checked by other forces.
For the Maoists, an alliance with Mamata is tactical and opportunistic. They will snap it at a time of their convenience. They will try to maximize their gains by their alliance with Mamata. They may end up planting their moles and sympathizers in important offices in West Bengal—the veritable Trojan Horses and sleeper cells that would wreck the system from within. The covenant with evil is not without consequences.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Time to act for India
Chickens are coming home to roost. The reign of terror unleashed by the Pakistan-sponsored jihadis in India and other places has gone out of control of the Taliban handlers. Suicide blasts in Islamabad, synchronized attacks in Lahore, bloodshed in other parts of the country—the Pakistanis are paying for their support to bloodthirsty jihadis. In the unruly northwestern region and the neighboring Afghanistan, the Taliban and al-Qaeda have control and influence over the lives of millions of people.
The frightening situation in our western neighbor also makes a fact starker: that the war on terror, began by former US president George Bush eight years ago, has made little dent in the authority of the Islamist militants. The recently published account of New York Times reporter, David Rohde—who was kidnapped and kept in captivity by the Taliban for seven months—gives the impression that the eight-year-old war waged by the world’s mightiest nation against primitive fanatics is far from being successful. Rohde wrote, “We arrived at a new house [in Waziristan], and I was again surprised by the good conditions. It had regular electricity. We received pomegranates and other fresh food and Nestle Pure Life water bottled in Pakistan.” Electricity, fresh food, bottled water—such things cannot exist in a countryside which has no links with the outside world. The US and its ostensible ally Pakistan have failed to cut the supplies to the regions under the control of Taliban. There is no duress in these regions; this can be possible only with the presence of Taliban sympathizers in Islamabad.
A more important supply line that the US has failed to cut or squeeze relates to financing. The Taliban make tons of money from opium trade. Their earnings from narcotic business are estimated in the range from $70 million to $400 million a year. What is more, they are not fighting a very expensive war. Training, equipping and paying a fighter does not cost much; a fighter earns between $200 and $500 a month.
But drug money is not the only one the Taliban relies on. Gen Stanley Mc-Chrystal, the top Nato commander in Afghanistan, said on August 30, “Eliminating insurgent access to narco-profits—even if possible, and while disruptive—would not destroy their ability to operate so long as other funding sources remained intact.” The CIA is said to have estimated that Taliban leaders and their associates got $106 million in the past year from donors outside Afghanistan. Donations from private citizens from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and some Persian Gulf nations have fattened the Taliban kitty. So far, there is no evidence that any Arab nation funded the Taliban in AfPak. The US and other Western nations have to broad-base the war on terror. The Taliban have to be isolated, cornered and starved in every possible manner—financially, materially and militarily. Otherwise, it will become an endless war.
India’s failure has been equally spectacular. Apart from ‘strongly condemning’ the jihadi violence, New Delhi has not been able to do anything substantive. There is no point in convincing Islamabad to act against terror outfits; the Islamist terrorists have countless supporters in the Pakistani power structure.
India can act aggressively without waging a war against Pakistan. It can try to transform Pakistan into a pariah state. Its involvement in aiding and abetting terror is well-known to the wide world. In recent times, a state which was openly and official racist was South Africa under apartheid. International pressure played a major role in bringing an end to the reprehensible policy in South Africa. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu, an anti-Apartheid crusader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, wrote in an article in 2002, “The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the last century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure.”
It is time the foreign policy bosses in New Delhi woke up and did something more substantial than making grand statements. They have to act and ensure that Pakistan is isolated, cornered, and financially starved.
The frightening situation in our western neighbor also makes a fact starker: that the war on terror, began by former US president George Bush eight years ago, has made little dent in the authority of the Islamist militants. The recently published account of New York Times reporter, David Rohde—who was kidnapped and kept in captivity by the Taliban for seven months—gives the impression that the eight-year-old war waged by the world’s mightiest nation against primitive fanatics is far from being successful. Rohde wrote, “We arrived at a new house [in Waziristan], and I was again surprised by the good conditions. It had regular electricity. We received pomegranates and other fresh food and Nestle Pure Life water bottled in Pakistan.” Electricity, fresh food, bottled water—such things cannot exist in a countryside which has no links with the outside world. The US and its ostensible ally Pakistan have failed to cut the supplies to the regions under the control of Taliban. There is no duress in these regions; this can be possible only with the presence of Taliban sympathizers in Islamabad.
A more important supply line that the US has failed to cut or squeeze relates to financing. The Taliban make tons of money from opium trade. Their earnings from narcotic business are estimated in the range from $70 million to $400 million a year. What is more, they are not fighting a very expensive war. Training, equipping and paying a fighter does not cost much; a fighter earns between $200 and $500 a month.
But drug money is not the only one the Taliban relies on. Gen Stanley Mc-Chrystal, the top Nato commander in Afghanistan, said on August 30, “Eliminating insurgent access to narco-profits—even if possible, and while disruptive—would not destroy their ability to operate so long as other funding sources remained intact.” The CIA is said to have estimated that Taliban leaders and their associates got $106 million in the past year from donors outside Afghanistan. Donations from private citizens from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and some Persian Gulf nations have fattened the Taliban kitty. So far, there is no evidence that any Arab nation funded the Taliban in AfPak. The US and other Western nations have to broad-base the war on terror. The Taliban have to be isolated, cornered and starved in every possible manner—financially, materially and militarily. Otherwise, it will become an endless war.
India’s failure has been equally spectacular. Apart from ‘strongly condemning’ the jihadi violence, New Delhi has not been able to do anything substantive. There is no point in convincing Islamabad to act against terror outfits; the Islamist terrorists have countless supporters in the Pakistani power structure.
India can act aggressively without waging a war against Pakistan. It can try to transform Pakistan into a pariah state. Its involvement in aiding and abetting terror is well-known to the wide world. In recent times, a state which was openly and official racist was South Africa under apartheid. International pressure played a major role in bringing an end to the reprehensible policy in South Africa. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu, an anti-Apartheid crusader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, wrote in an article in 2002, “The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the last century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure.”
It is time the foreign policy bosses in New Delhi woke up and did something more substantial than making grand statements. They have to act and ensure that Pakistan is isolated, cornered, and financially starved.
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