Government is Silent in the Wake of Call for Nuclear Jihad by Religious Extremist

The PPP led Government remains paralyzed, and fails to take action on the incitement to murder and civil disobedience by religious extremists.

The government has taken no action to either arrest or halt the messages of hatred and intimidation. Mullahs are openly using the loud speaker systems of their Mosques to broadcast their messages of hatred which is, itself, against the law. However, once again the government has not made any attempt to prevent this.

Taking advantage of the government’s appeasement policy towards religious intolerance and the killing of people, the extremists have openly started preaching the use of nuclear weapons against a neighbouring country in the name of Jihad. Now in a recent and shocking incident in Lahore on February 6, 2011, Hafiz Saeed, the leader of the Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD), spoke in a public rally of 20,000 people calling for Jihad in the form of a nuclear war against India.

Saeed is wanted in connection with the bombings in Mumbai and the JuD itself is banned in Pakistan. However, once again the government has turned a blind eye and taken no action to either arrest this man or control the situation. This is, indeed a routine attitude of the government. In an effort to fend off responsibility for the bombings Saeed accused India of masterminding the attacks for political gain.

In his speech to the crowd Saeed said, “I want to give a message to (Prime Minister) Manmohan Singh–quit Kashmir or get ready to face a war…….The jihad should continue as long as Kashmir remains under Indian occupation”. He went on to say that there would be “no problem if the fighting leads to nuclear war between Pakistan and India”.

It is already bad enough that the government takes no action against religious extremists calling for the death of anyone they feel might be against their version of Islam but here we have a situation where a person wanted in connection with terrorism is openly calling for Jihad, a holy war against a sovereign nation and a nuclear war at that!

It is incomprehensible that any sovereign government, elected by the people, and with the mandate and obligation to protect the people, would allow such a public announcement to be made. The government of Asif Ali Zadari must seriously examine its policy of appeasement towards religious extremists. When a government takes no action against the call for Jihad that might result in a nuclear war it must realise that other governments, especially neighbouring governments will be watching the situation closely. In an attempt to avoid further trouble at home, Zadari might just be calling down more trouble on the innocents of a country that is now being intimidated by religious extremists.

By tolerating such threats of the use of nuclear weapons it seems that the government does not fully appreciate the horror of a nuclear attack. They only need examine the pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to experience the devastation and misery caused, a misery that lingers even today 66 years after the bombs were dropped. Nuclear radiation has no respect for borders and the Jihadists may be calling down death and destruction on the people of the entire continent, not only their ‘enemies’. What is the point of turning the prize they seek, Kashmir, into a nuclear waste dump?

The most dangerous interpretation of such announcements would be that the nuclear assets of the country are not in safe hands and Muslim extremists have or can have access to these weapons. By failing to reign in the extremists and stop their messages of hate the government is, in fact, colluding with them.

War mongering in the name of religion or any other cause is a crime against humanity and this is especially so when it may result in a nuclear war. The government must immediately take uncompromising action against those militants who are openly calling for the use of nuclear weapons against a neighbouring country. Humanity cannot and will not sit idle and watch two nations destroy, not only themselves, but threaten the entire world with destruction. The government of Pakistan must not only ensure that the country’s nuclear weapons are safe from extremists but also assure the rest of the world that this is so.

Pakistan Has Done Little to Shut Down Lashkare Toiba

Among all the sensational details emerging from the terrorism charges against David Coleman Headley, the American national charged with involvement in 2008′s terrorist attack in Mumbai, it’s easy to miss this one: Headley is alleged to have been working for the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkare Taiba (LeT).

For intelligence experts in Washington, however, the LeT connection may be the most sensational allegation of them all — if the charges against Headley hold up, it will mean that the “Army of the Righteous,” originally dedicated to neighborhood jihad, is now ready to take on the world.

In charges unsealed on Dec 7, 2009, U.S. prosecutors claim that Headley, who changed his name from Daood Gilani, traveled to Bombay several times between 2006 and 2008, photographing and videotaping some of the targets that were hit last November in a three-day rampage by 10 LeT gunmen that left 166 people dead. Headley is also accused of carrying out surveillance for a plot to attack the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which sparked outrage across the Muslim world in 2005 by publishing cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad.

Upon Headley’s arrest at Chicago’s O’Hare airport in October, investigators said his luggage contained surveillance videos of the newspaper’s office building. (A second Chicago resident, Tawahar Rana, a Canadian national of Pakistani origin, was also arrested in connection with the Danish plot.)

The intelligence experts are alarmed by the Danish plot, believing that it indicates that LeT is no longer confining its targets to India. There are strong indications that [LeT] is looking to expand its reach beyond its traditional areas of interest.

Unlike al-Qaeda, which was created as a global movement, LeT started out focused on localized nationalist goals. It was formed in the late 1980s as one of several Pakistan-based groups formed to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Many of these groups received training and funding from the ISI, with the tacit approval of the U.S.

After the Soviets left Afghanistan, LeT in the early 1990s switched its focus to Kashmir, where it served as a convenient proxy for the Pakistani military and intelligence services to wage war on India.

LeT fighters initially crossed the Line of Control dividing Kashmir to attack Indian military and civilian targets. By 2000, they were venturing much farther into India, launching terrorist attacks in New Delhi.

Even then, LeT got little attention from Western intelligence agencies. The 9/11 attacks forced U.S. agencies to focus on extremist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and after a Dec. 13, 2001, LeT strike on the Indian Parliament, the Bush Administration pressured Pakistan to ban the group. But Pakistani officials did little to stop the group from simply adopting a new name and continuing as before.

In the intervening years, LeT struck in New Delhi, Bombay and other cities, and Western intelligence agencies began to note the appearance of LeT operatives in Chechnya, Iraq and even Sudan. The group’s fundraising activities in North America drew attention in 2006, when two Georgia men (one of Pakistani origin, the other of Bangladeshi origin) were arrested in Toronto for providing material support to terrorist groups, including LeT. The two men are alleged to have been casing potential targets in Washington, including the Capitol and the World Bank. It was clear by then that LeT was no longer just India’s problem.

LeT’s desire to strike at the West was clear in the Mumbai attack, whose targets — two five-star hotels and a Jewish center — were places in which it would be sure to kill many Westerners. Six Americans were among the victims. Mumbai showed that the LeT has adoptedthe targets of the global Islamic jihad: ‘Crusaders and Zionists.

Stopping them won’t be easy. LeT continues to enjoy close association with the ISI wing of the Pakistani military. An attack on LeT unilaterally would certainly exacerbate tensions with Islamabad further, given that LeT is the most loyal of the jihadi groups to the Pakistani state.

And attacks on the group by remote-controlled drones or special forces are harder to pull off because LeT’s bases and training camps are in Punjab and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, a long way from the current theater of U.S. covert operations along the Afghan border.

The only realistic weapon the U.S. has against LeT is whatever is left of Washington’s leverage over Islamabad. Pakistani authorities, under intense U.S. pressure, arrested several LeT members after the Mumbai attacks and briefly placed movement founder Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. Although a Pakistani court last month indicted seven men in connection with the Mumbai attack, Indian and American officials say Islamabad has done little to shut down LeT.

CIA Ignored ISI Support for Lashkare Taiba

 In a new book about his years fighting terrorism, former French investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere casts fresh light on those early years after 9/11. At the time, he says, the Bush administration was so keen to get Pakistan’s help in defeating al Qaeda that it was willing to turn a blind eye to Pakistani support for militant groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, nurtured by the ISI agency to fight India in Kashmir. 

Basing his information on testimony given by jailed Frenchman Willy Brigitte, who spent 2-1/2 months in a Lashkar training camp in 2001/2002, he writes that the Pakistan Army once ran those camps, with the apparent knowledge of the CIA.  

The instructors in the camp in Pakistan’s Punjab province were soldiers on detachment, he says, and the army dropped supplies by helicopter. Brigitte’s handler, he says, appeared to have been a senior army officer who was treated deferentially by other soldiers. 

CIA officers even inspected the camp four times, he writes, to make sure that Pakistan was keeping to a promise that only Pakistani fighters would be trained there. Foreigners like Brigitte were tipped off in advance and told to hide up in the hills to avoid being caught.

Prof Hafiz Mohammed Saeed

Heading Jamaat-ud Daawa now, he’s one man India would love to get its hands on—and a prime example of jehadis flourishing under state patronage. Hafeez is the amir of the pro-Kashmiri Jamaat-ud-Daawa, which is believed to be a front for the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the terror outfit he founded. Thirty-six members of his extended family died while migrating to Pakistan from India during Partition. In founding the LeT, he, a resident of Punjab, broke the tradition of Pashtuns leading the jehad against India. The Lashkar has few Pashtuns and even fewer Kashmiris. Wanted in India for 26/11, he’s accused of masterminding several terror operations in Kashmir and the 2002 suicide assault on the Red Fort in New Delhi. Never found to have been involved in a terror incident in Pakistan, Saeed was placed under house arrest post-Mumbai, but was soon released following court orders. Experts feel the Lashkar’s focus has shifted beyond India to assume the role of “Islam’s saviour”. Pakistani authorities say they will move against Saeed only if they get hard evidence against him.

Is Pakistan Acting under Foreign Pressure?

On Jan 15, 2009, Pakistan’s Interior Minister in a press conference announced an additional clamp on certain mujahideen groups, particularly those accused by India for involvement in the Mumbai carnage.

Better late than never! But the question is that why did the Government take so long to take this step: almost 50 days. It should not have taken more than a day to find out if the ten terrorists whose names were disclosed by India were Pakistanis or not by simply checking the NADRA record. This could have been followed up by visits to their native places.

Why has it become a compulsion with Pakistani rulers that they only act when pressed upon by British or American dignitaries. Apparently, the Pakistanis decided to act after the recent visit of the British Foreign Secretary. This is a sad reflection on the state of affairs in Pakistan, as apparently the country continues to hoodwink the issue, and failing to recognize that terrorism is as much its own problem as that of India or Afghanistan.

Presence of training camps in Pakistan is as much a danger to it as to the neighboring countries.

When will the Pakistanis learn?

9 is not 11

We’ve forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching “India’s 9/11″. And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we’re expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it’s all been said and done before.

As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn’t act fast to arrest the ‘Bad Guys’ he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on ‘terrorist camps’ in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India’s 9/11.

But November isn’t September, 2008 isn’t 2001, Pakistan isn’t Afghanistan and India isn’t America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.

It’s odd how in the last week of November thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India’s richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara—one of Kashmir’s most ravaged districts.

The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all Indian nationals, it obviously means something’s going very badly wrong in this country.

If you were watching television you may not have heard that ordinary people too died in Mumbai. and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish centre. We’re told one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That’s absolutely true. It’s an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically, one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company I think) said ‘Hungry, kya?’ (Hungry eh?). It then, with the best of intentions I’m sure, informed its readers that on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia. But of course this isn’t that war. That one’s still being fought in the Dalit bastis of our villages, on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Lalgarh in West Bengal; in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa; and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities. That war isn’t on TV. Yet. So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one that is.

There is a fierce, unforgiving fault line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let’s call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially ‘Islamist’ terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.

 

Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm’s way. Which is a crime in itself.

The sayings of Hafiz Saeed, who founded the Lashkare Toiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hardline Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolster the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shias and Democracy, and believes that jehad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the world.

Among the things he has said are:

“There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy.”

And, “India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate n the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir.”

But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera):

“We didn’t spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire…we hacked, burned, set on fire…we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don’t want to be cremated, they’re afraid of it…. I have just one last wish…let me be sentenced to death…. I don’t care if I’m hanged…just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs of these people stay…. I will finish them off…let a few more of them die…at least twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand should die.”

And where, in Side A’s scheme of things, would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or Our Nationhood Defined by M.S. Golwalkar ‘Guruji’, who became head of the RSS in 1944. It says:

“Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening.”

Or:

“To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races—the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here…a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.”

Of course, Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu Right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently in Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two-and-a-half months of violence which left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from their homes, half of whom now live in refugee camps.

All these years, Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which many believe is a front organisation for the Lashkar-e-Toiba. He continued to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jehad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11, the UN imposed sanctions on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure, putting Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and continues to live the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide, he left the VHP to join the Shiv Sena. Narendra Modi, Bajrangi’s former mentor, is still the chief minister of Gujarat. So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was re-elected twice, and is deeply respected by India’s biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata. Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, has recently said, “Modi is God.” The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted. The RSS has 45,000 branches, its own range of charities and seven million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but also former prime minister A.B. Vajpayee, current Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats and police and intelligence officers.

And if that’s not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organisations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry.

So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I’d pick Side B. We need context. Always.

In this nuclear subcontinent, that context is Partition. The Radcliffe Line which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain’s final, parting kick to us. Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million people—Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India—left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Each of those people carries and passes down a story of unimaginable pain, hate, horror, but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can’t seem to emerge, a nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives. Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic republic, and then, very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other faiths. India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi’s predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India’s bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born. By 1990, they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992, Hindu mobs exhorted by L.K. Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it. By 1998, the BJP was in power at the Centre. The US War on Terror put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy. This happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international finance, and it was in the interests of international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu Nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed. This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism in the subcontinent, and of the Mumbai attacks.

It shouldn’t surprise us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Toiba is from Shimla (India) and L.K. Advani of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan).

In much the same way as it did after the 2001 Parliament attack, the 2002 burning of the Sabarmati Express and the 2006 bombing of the Samjhauta Express, the Government of India announced that it has ‘incontrovertible’ evidence that the Lashkar-e-Toiba backed by Pakistan’s ISI was behind the Mumbai strikes. The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies, the Lashkar operates in India through an organisation called the ‘Indian Mujahideen’. Two Indian nationals—Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working for the Jammu and Kashmir Police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Calcutta in West Bengal—have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks. So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy. Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot-soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and undercover intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives, working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously. In today’s world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation-state is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It’s almost impossible.

In circumstances like these, air strikes to ‘take out’ terrorist camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not ‘take out’ the terrorists. And neither will war. (Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let’s try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighbouring Sri Lanka, one of the world’s most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the Indian army.)

Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America’s ally, first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening towards civil war. As recruiting agents for America’s jehad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistan army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organisations. Having wired up these Frankenstein’s monsters and released them into the world, the US expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to. Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in the heart of the Homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently re-made. Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan’s borders. Nobody, least of all the Pakistan government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world is mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistan government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more, than it does on India. If at this point India decides to go to war, perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India’s shores, endangering us as never before. If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of ‘non-state actors’ with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbours. It’s hard to understand why those who steer India’s ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan’s mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents.

On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it’s the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front.

The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at ‘ground zero’ kept up an endless stream of excited commentary. Over three days and three nights, we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men armed with guns and gadgets exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation. While they did this, they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion or nationality.

 

Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields are used. (The US and Israeli armies don’t hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.) But this was different. And it was on TV.

The boy-terrorists’ nonchalant willingness to kill—and be killed—mesmerised their international audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news. Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that’s worth.

Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may never know.) Throughout the stand-off, the terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people and inflict as much damage as they could before they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered. When we say ‘Nothing can justify terrorism’, what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it’s precious. So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they’ve died, they’ve journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.

 

One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself ‘Imran Babar’. I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the ‘terror e-mails’ that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don’t want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir. “You’re surrounded,” the anchor told him. “You are definitely going to die. Why don’t you surrender?” “We die every day,” he replied in a strange, mechanical way. “It’s better to live one day as a lion and then die this way.” He didn’t seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.

If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, why didn’t it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for? Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don’t figure in its calculations except as collateral damage. It has always been a part of—and often even the aim of—terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden fault lines. The blood of ‘martyrs’ irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project. A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theatre, spectacle and symbolism, and today, the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV. Even as the Mumbai terrorists were being condemned by TV anchors, the effectiveness of their action was magnified a thousand-fold by TV broadcasts.

 

Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Instead, we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed (is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?). We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation. We had the death of former prime minister V.P. Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes and villain of upper-caste Hindus, pass without a mention. We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir, give us his version of George Bush’s famous ‘Why They Hate Us’ speech. His analysis of why “religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim”, hate Mumbai: “Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness.” His prescription: “The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever.” Didn’t George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can’t seem to get away from.

Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and left-wing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army, and virtually asking for a police state. It isn’t surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of ‘pickings’ is long gone. We’re now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.

Dangerous, stupid television flash cards like the Police are Good, Politicians are Bad/ Chief Executives are Good, Chief Ministers are Bad/ Army is Good, Government is Bad/ India is Good, Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria.

Tragically, this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see that the business of terrorism is a hall of mirrors in which victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles. It’s an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we’re still learning. (If Kashmir won’t willingly integrate into India, it’s beginning to look as though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)

It was after the 2001 Parliament attack that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation. Eventually the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including S.A.R. Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Shaukat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offence.

 

The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgement, the court acknowledged that there was no proof that Mohammad Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, “The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender. ” Even today we don’t really know who the terrorists that attacked Indian Parliament were and who they worked for.

More recently, on September 19 this year, we had the controversial ‘encounter’ at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008. An Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the Parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of India’s many ‘encounter specialists’, known and rewarded for having summarily executed several ‘terrorists’. There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists, all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident. In response, the BJP and L.K. Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a ‘Braveheart’ and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying it was ‘suicidal’ and calling them ‘anti-national’. Of course, there has been no inquiry.

Only days after the Batla House event, another story about ‘terrorists’ surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to the court, the CBI said that a team from Delhi’s Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted 2 kg of RDX and two pistols on them, and then arrested them as ‘terrorists’ who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and Qamar, who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false charges.

This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts, arrested a Hindu preacher, Sadhvi Pragya; a self-styled godman, Swami Dayanand Pande; and Lt Col Prasad Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian army. All the arrested belong to Hindu Nationalist organisations, including a Hindu supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat. The Shiv Sena, the BJP and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that “Hindus could not be terrorists”. L.K. Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble-rousing speeches to huge gatherings, in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.

On November 25, newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high-profile VHP chief Praveen Togadia’s possible role in the Malegaon blasts. The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai attacks. The chances are that the new chief, whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation.

While the Sangh parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television channel, has stepped up to the plate. He has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to the camera; “Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan,” he said, “I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting.” For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today amounts to incitement as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job.

So according to a man aspiring to be India’s next prime minister, and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police. This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake ‘encounters’. This in a country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the world and yet refuses to ratify the International Covenant on Torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they’ve escaped being ‘encountered’ by our encounter specialists. A country where the line between the Underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.

How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them? There are those who point out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse. If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colours, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The US army is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unravelling of the American economy and, who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire. (Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?) Hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of American soldiers, have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on US allies/agents (including India) and US interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11. George Bush, the man who led the US response to 9/11, is a despised figure not just internationally but also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that the United States is winning the war on terror?

Homeland security has cost the US government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has been. It’s not that kind of homeland. We have a hostile nuclear weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbour, we have a military occupation in Kashmir, and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than a hundred and fifty million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalise, end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world. If 10 men can hold off the NSG commandos and the police for three days, and if it takes half-a-million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir Valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India?

Nor for that matter will any other quick fix.Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they’re for people that governments don’t like. That’s why they have a conviction rate of less than two per cent. They’re just a means of putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually letting them go. Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It’s what they want.

What we’re experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet’s squelching under our feet.

The only way to contain (it would be naive to say end) terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We’re standing at a fork in the road. One sign says ‘Justice’, the other ‘Civil War’. There’s no third sign and there’s no going back. Choose.

 

Ajmal Amir Kasab Points to Pakistan Connection

There’s a crucial difference between investigations into all previous terrorist strikes in India and the one on the attacks on Mumbai. This time, a wealth of information has become quickly available to the security set-up and the police investigators. And key to this is a young man, now identified as Ajmal Amir Kasab, the one terrorist caught alive by the Mumbai police on the night of the attack. What emerges from his interrogation, collated with other strands of investigation and mobile intercepts, has thrown considerable light into who targeted Mumbai. And all fingers point to the Pakistan-based Lashkare Toiba (LeT).

 

Kasab’s revelations to a joint team that includes officers of the Mumbai police’s crime branch, the IB and RAW have helped investigators piece together several key elements of the plot.

Investigators now know that Kasab was part of a 24-member team of terrorists who underwent two years of commando training. While most of it was of a general nature, involving basic training in firearms, explosives and physical toughening, it became focused and more mission-oriented six months ago. According to Kasab, they had been through not just daura aam (general training) but also daura khaas (special training). While Kasab has been unable to identify some of his trainers, he has confirmed that much of it was designed and conducted by Zakir-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a 51-year-old man whose pictures and travel documents have been made available to investigators by US intelligence.

 

He is instrumental in identifying young men, indoctrinating them in jehad and then training them for specific missions. The attack on Mumbai has been the most daring among the missions Lakhvi has trained his wards for. But the man credited with planning the entire Mumbai strike has been identified by Indian intelligence as Yusuf Muzamil (known as ‘Yusuf’ or as ‘Abu Gure’), a Muzaffarabad-based LeT operative, believed to be its chief of operations. Ironically, quite a bit of the plans drawn up across the border was known to Indian intelligence. However, it was not acted upon. A sampler:

 

• A September 24 intercept with RAW’s signal intelligence indicated that an operation was being planned by the LeT. A few days earlier, the CIA station chief in Delhi had warned his RAW counterpart that a terrorist group was planning a strike in Mumbai that would come from the sea. RAW’s international listening posts also picked up intercepts that the Taj Hotel would be one of the targets. Prabhakar Alok, joint director, IB, had also alerted the Maharashtra government in a report dated November 19 (DIB uo No. 21/JTF7-Nodal/ 2008(23)-4405).
•  
• Muzamil was heard talking to a LeT/HuJI operative identified as ‘Yahya’ in Bangladesh asking him to arrange for “foreign SIM cards” for an operation. The SIM cards recovered from the nine terrorists killed in the operation confirms this intelligence input. The cards were procured from various countries, including Austria (Vienna) and the US (New Jersey). Three were procured from Calcutta. The last three SIM cards were purchased in the name of Hossain-ur-Rehman and a fake voter identity card was supplied as proof of a house in Bahirhaat, Calcutta. The cards were brought from South Park Street in Calcutta, 24 Parganas (South) and Maheshtola and then handed over to HuJI operatives in Bangladesh across the international border in Murshidabad. A man identified as ‘Feroz’ carried thee cards to Muzamil in Muzaffarabad.
•  
• Kasab has identified Muzamil’s voice from the intercepts the interrogation team played for him.
•  
• Even an empty diesel can bearing a Pakistan manufacturing stamp. The Garmin GPS recovered from the boat had a route planned from Karachi to Diu and then Mumbai and also a return route map fed in for November 28 night with exact points used for navigation. Investigators concluded that the terrorists had every intention to return after the operation, a fact confirmed by Kasab.
•  
• The 14 blankets and eight winter jackets recovered from the MV Kuber had caused some confusion about the number of terrorists. Kasab has told investigators that the four additional blankets were for the Gujarati fishermen they later beheaded. He even told the interrogation team that he fought with the other terrorists over these ‘spare’ blankets since it was very cold. They spent nearly 72 hours out at sea on the Kuber after being dropped from the Pakistani vessel Al Hussaini before moving towards Mumbai. The location of the Al Hussaini was 24°16′ North, 67°62′ East.
•  
• The ‘Thuraya’ satellite phone found on the Kuber shows several calls to Jalalabad in Afghanistan and to Lahore and Karachi. Interestingly, the phone is from a Dubai-based company and the FBI, part of the investigation, is getting details of its batch number. Investigators say the phone was purchased from a Karachi-based dealer. Apparently, the terrorists were in constant touch with Lakhvi for instructions. The satellite phone was abandoned as soon as they hit Mumbai and cellphones were switched on to stay in touch with handlers in Pakistan. The cellphone data is being analysed to see who the terrorists were speaking to. The numbers called will form a crucial part of the evidence.
•  
• The terrorists worked in five teams of two men each. They hailed taxis after disembarking near Badhwar Park in Cuffe Parade and the Gateway of India. Each team had a separate GPS with detailed maps of the targets.

 

Kasab told investigators they were asked to shoot at random, CST being a prime target to effect maximum casualties. Some RDX-laden bombs were deliberately left behind in cars to mislead the police and create chaos and confusion while they could assault the main targets. Kasab reveals there were plans to blow up the Taj. Incidentally, a bomb was located near CST on December 3, exactly a week after the November 26 strike.

 

Kasab has revealed that before they embarked on the mission from Pakistan the group received pep talks from other terrorists who had operated in India earlier. A key man during these sessions was known as Abu Hamza, the terrorist credited with the attack on the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, two years ago. “The fact that Hamza had managed to escape from India was a great morale-booster for these boys. Kasab also told us that Hamza encouraged them saying the Indian police was inefficient and also coordinated sessions with detailed briefings on where the police stations were and how teams could evade them and successfully carry out the attack,” an officer said.

 

As part of the indoctrination, several films that depicted “atrocities on Muslims in India” were screened at the camp.Kasab says he belongs to a poor family from Faridkot village in Deepalpura taluka of Okara zilla, Punjab, Pakistan. He studied only up to the fourth standard and then worked as labourer, briefly took to petty crime before being inspired to join the LeT on a trip to Rawalpindi He has revealed that the other terrorists on the team were from Dera Ismail Khan, Multan, Mindi Gumri and Burewala. Besides these sketchy details, he claims to know very little about the others. They were instructed to keep assuming different aliases every two months to develop several layers of identities to confuse anyone tracking their movements.

 

Finally, Kasab has revealed details of several LeT training camps in PoK and other locations—Danna, Abdul-Bin-Masud, Mangla Dam and Um-Al-Qura in Muzaffarabad and Badli in Kotli. The LeT, he told interrogators, has opened two new camps for handpicked cadre to train them for suicide missions at Akas in Muzaffarabad and another camp in an area known as “Point”. His team, he says, was trained in marine commando tactics for weeks in an isolated place off the coast of Karachi. The trainers, Kasab feels, were retired military commandos. A former US Pentagon official has also stated that former Pakistani military officials had trained the terrorists.

 

With the wealth of evidence available, investigators believe the Indian government now have a strong case. The Pakistan connection seems clearer than ever before. Interestingly, chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who was in Islamabad on December 3, is believed to have told Pakistani officials that Washington has enough evidence to establish a Pakistani hand. New Delhi is equally certain of an ISI role although, as of now, there is no hard evidence to back this claim.

 

 

Telephone trail key part of evidence shared with Pakistan

The evidentiary dossier given to Pakistan on Jan 5, 2009 marks the first systematic Indian presentation of what ongoing investigations into the Mumbai terrorist attacks have revealed so far. Though many of the facts about how the attacks were staged have been known for some time now, the 69-page document, provides crucial details about the telephone links between the attackers and Lashkare Taiba operatives and identifies for the first time the names of six “Pakistan-based handlers” who were constantly in touch with the gunmen even as they wreaked havoc in the city during the November 26-29, 2008 incidents.

 

According to the dossier, the handlers who provided real-time commando-style advice to the terrorists holed up at the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels and Nariman House were ‘Wassi,’ ‘Zarar,’ ‘Jundal,’ ‘Buzurg, ‘Major General’ and ‘Kafa.’ Though the dossier does not identify any of the six as a functionary or operative of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, Indian officials say the links and affiliations of some of the aliases used by the handlers in their intercepted phone conversations with the terrorists have left New Delhi in no doubt about the involvement of the ISI in the attacks.

 

The government has prepared two versions of the dossier, one for the 14 countries which lost citizens in the attacks and a slightly redacted edition for Pakistan and the rest of the world. Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon handed over the dossier to ambassadors from the 14 countries on Monday. And on Tuesday, senior officials from the Ministry of External Affairs briefed envoys from other countries with diplomatic representation in India, including European, Middle Eastern and Latin American nations.

 

The dossier consists of a 13-page presentation of the main facts of the case and an outline of the evidence generated by the investigation to date. This evidence is then laid out further in a set of annexures. The evidence includes eight partial transcripts of selected intercepted conversations between the terrorists and their handlers, data from the GPS equipment recovered from the fishing trawler, Kuber, photographs of ordnance used in the attack and items of daily use recovered from the Kuber, all with clearly identified Pakistani markings, and, most crucially, an account of the money trail linking Pakistan-based operatives to the purchase of the Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calling platform used by the handlers to try and mask their physical location.

 

See http://www.hindu.com/2009/01/07/stories/2009010761420100.htm for the whole Dossier.

 

 

 

Salman Rushdie: World is at Crossroad after 26/11

The Booker prize winner Salman Rushdie – a self-described “Bombay Boy” has spoken out for the first time since the Mumbai attacks. Rushdie, the author of the novel Shame, based on the political situation in Pakistan in the 80s, says the world is at a crossroads right now and the western world’s attitude towards Pakistan needs to be looked at critically.

NDTV: The last time we spoke, you described yourself as a “Bombay boy”. What was your reaction to the Mumbai attacks?

Salman Rushdie: My reaction was like everyone’s reaction. I was horrified, dumbstruck, grief stricken and filled with sorrow. Like everyone else, I watched the footage mesmerised, day after day, night after night. I feel like really this is a crossroad here. We have to choose how to go forward. The kinds of mistakes that were made in the Indian response need to be rectified clearly, but also the kind of mistakes made in the western world, in the rest of the world’s attitudes towards Pakistan, needs to be rectified.

NDTV: Please be more specific. What does the US government and especially the new Obama Administration need to do?

Salman Rushdie: I think they need to tell Pakistan to get its house in order. Two days ago, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that 75 per cent of all the leads that British intelligence has about terrorism start in Pakistan. Pakistan cannot go on pretending that there is no evidence. That is garbage. The world’s terrorist organisations are all based in Pakistan. The Taliban, Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), the Al-Qaida – they are all there and they are all there with the connivance or active support of the Pakistani intelligence, no doubt with the support of the military. And when the Pakistani President pretends that there is no evidence against them then he is also complicit in that. It is time to say to Pakistan that this has to stop. You cannot be a member of the free group of nations if you are being the world sponsor of terrorism, which is what they are now.

NDTV: What are the lessons India has to learn in terms of reacting to such an event?

Salman Rushdie: I hope that we will get better at defending ourselves. The fact that the Coast Guard was not equipped well enough to protect the coast was a shame. That there was no National Security Guards in Mumbai and that they had to come 12 hours later from Delhi, the fact that the fire brigade was unable to come to the rescue of the burning hotels for three hours are few causes of concern. The fact that the police were not properly equipped, they had rifles without telescopic sights and body armour that did not stop bullets – this is more than just trivial. It is a systemic failure and I think what is important is to rectify those practical matters rather than pass draconian anti-terror laws. Let us just increase our ability to react to prevent these things practically. Give the police, the coastguard, the hospitals and our firefighters the equipment they need. Let us be grown up about this. This is a country that is in one way flourishing and thriving and is extremely competent and efficient, but it is the incompetence of this that is distressing.

NDTV: You are one of the world’s most famous writers and you write about exile, home and Bombay, yet you say that you have been finding it very difficult to write about this. Why?

Salman Rushdie: I have found it difficult because for a long time it was so difficult to know what had happened. One minute we were told there were 20-25 terrorists then we were told there were 10. One day, we were told they came from Britain. The next day they did not come from Britain. The facts were changing so fast. I just have a horror of writing about what I do not know about. So I waited a long time. Tonight is the first time I have talked about it because now I feel that we do know and we now have to act upon what we know.

NDTV: Immediately after the attack in India there was a lot of criticism about filmmakers making films about this issue. As an artist what is your response to that?

Salman Rushdie: It depends on the film. If it is just bad taste, exploitative garbage then that would be regrettable but if serious artists want to respond to a horror that is their prerogative. In America now novelists, filmmakers, theatre people, musicians have all been trying to find a way of articulating a response to the 9-11 attacks, so it is natural in one way but indecent haste is some thing to avoid. The problem is comprehension. We are only beginning now to see clearly what happened. The emotional comprehension of what happened in Mumbai will certainly take a lot longer. I still find it hard to talk about it unemotionally. It was such a powerful event in our lives. Certainly, for me this is my hometown, the city that I love so it will take a long time to process it and I certainly would not rush it to print.

NDTV: And what you are seeing clearly is that Pakistan needs to crack down on terror?

Salman Rushdie: As America did after 9-11, India needs to improve its defenses. That is clearly one lesson that can be drawn from what happened here. We do not want to learn the lessons of the Bush administrations foreign policies but it is true that America did tighten its defenses after 9-11 and India needs to do that. On the other hand, the world needs to say to Pakistan that this will not do. This is a turning point. We have to fix it now or there will be much worse to come.

http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/mumbaiterrorstrike/Story.aspx?ID=NEWEN20080076952&type=News

Hotel Taj : Icon of whose India ?

http://openspace.org.in/node/808 Gnani Sankaran- Tamil writer, Chennai.

Watching at least four English news channels surfing from one another during the last 60 hours of terror strike made me feel a terror of another kind. The terror of assaulting one’s mind and sensitivity with cameras, sound bites and non-stop blabbers. All these channels have been trying to manufacture my consent for a big lie called – Hotel Taj the icon of India.

Whose India, Whose Icon ?

It is a matter of great shame that these channels simply did not bother about the other icon that faced the first attack from terrorists – the Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus (CST) railway station. CST is the true icon of Mumbai. It is through this railway station hundreds of Indians from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Tamilnadu have poured into Mumbai over the years, transforming themselves into Mumbaikars and built the Mumbai of today along with the Marathis and Kolis

But the channels would not recognise this. Nor would they recognise the thirty odd dead bodies strewn all over the platform of CST. No Barkha dutt went there to tell us who they were. But she was at Taj to show us the damaged furniture and reception lobby braving the guards. And the TV cameras did not go to the government run JJ hospital to find out who those 26 unidentified bodies were. Instead they were again invading the battered Taj to try in vain for a scoop shot of the dead bodies of the page 3 celebrities.

In all probability, the unidentified bodies could be those of workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh migrating to Mumbai, arriving by train at CST without cell phones and pan cards to identify them. Even after 60 hours after the CST massacre, no channel has bothered to cover in detail what transpired there.

The channels conveniently failed to acknowledge that the Aam Aadmis of India surviving in Mumbai were not affected by Taj, Oberoi and Trident closing down for a couple of weeks or months. What mattered to them was the stoppage of BEST buses and suburban trains even for one hour. But the channels were not covering that aspect of the terror attack. Such information at best merited a scroll line, while the cameras have to be dedicated for real time thriller unfolding at Taj or Nariman bhavan.

The so called justification for the hype the channels built around heritage site Taj falling down (CST is also a heritage site), is that Hotel Taj is where the rich and the powerful of India and the globe congregate. It is a symbol or icon of power of money and politics, not
India. It is the icon of the financiers and swindlers of India. The Mumbai and India were built by the Aam Aadmis who passed through CST and Taj was the oasis of peace and privacy for those who wielded power over these mass of labouring classes. Leopold club and Taj were the haunts of rich spoilt kids who would drive their vehicles over sleeping Aam Aadmis on the pavement, the Mafiosi of Mumbai forever financing the glitterati of Bollywood (and also the terrorists) , Political brokers and industrialists.

It is precisely because Taj is the icon of power and not people, that the terrorists chose to strike.

The terrorists have understood after several efforts that the Aam cAadmi will never break down even if you bomb her markets and trains. He/she was resilient because that is the only way he/she can even survive.

Resilience was another word that annoyed the pundits of news channels and their patrons this time. What resilience, enough is enough, said Pranoy Roy’s channel on the left side of the channel spectrum. Same sentiments were echoed by Arnab Goswami representing the right wing of the broadcast media whose time is now. Can Rajdeep be far behind in
this game of one upmanship over TRPs? They all attacked resilience this time. They wanted firm action from the government in tackling terror.

The same channels celebrated resilience when bombs went off in trains and markets killing and maiming the Aam Aadmis. The resilience of the ordinary worker suited the rich business class of Mumbai since work or manufacture or film shooting did not stop. When it came to them, the rich shamelessly exhibited their lack of nerves and refused to be resilient themselves. They cry for government intervention now to protect their private spas and swimming pools and bars and restaurants, similar to the way in which Citibank, General Motors and the ilk cry for government money when their coffers are emptied by their own ideologies.

The terrorists have learnt that the ordinary Indian is unperturbed by terror. For one whose daily existence itself is a terror of government sponsored inflation and market sponsored exclusion, pain is something he has learnt to live with. The rich of Mumbai and India Inc are
facing the pain for the first time and learning about it just as the middle classes of India learnt about violation of human rights only during emergency, a cool 28 years after independence.

And human rights were another favourite issue for the channels to whip at times of terrorism.

Arnab Goswami in an animated voice wondered where were those champions of human rights now, not to be seen applauding the brave and selfless police officers who gave up their life in fighting terorism. Well, the counter question would be where were you when such officers were violating the human rights of Aam Aadmis. Has there ever been any 24 hour non stop coverage of violence against dalits and adivasis of this country?

This definitely was not the time to manufacture consent for the extra legal and third degree methods of interrogation of police and army but Arnabs don’t miss a single opportunity to serve their class masters, this time the jingoistic patriotism came in handy to whitewash the
entire uniformed services.

The sacrifice of the commandos or the police officers who went down dying at the hands of ruthless terrorists is no doubt heart rending but in vain in a situation which needed not just bran but also brain. Israel has a point when it says the operations were misplanned resulting in the death of its nationals here.

Khakares and Salaskars would not be dead if they did not commit the mistake of traveling by the same vehicle. It is a basic lesson in management that the top brass should never travel together in crisis. The terrorists, if only they had watched the channels, would have laughed their hearts out when the Chief of the Marine commandos, an elite force, masking his face so unprofessionally in a see-through cloth, told the media that the commandos had no idea about the structure of the Hotel Taj which they were trying to liberate. But the terrorists knew the place thoroughly, he acknowledged.

Is it so difficult to obtain a ground plan of Hotel Taj and discuss operation strategy thoroughly for at least one hour before entering? This is something even an event manager would first ask for, if he had to fix 25 audio systems and 50 CCtvs for a cultural event in a hotel. Would not Ratan Tata have provided a plan of his ancestral hotel to the commandos within one hour considering the mighty apparatus at his and government’s disposal? Are satelite pictures only available for terrorists and not the government agencies ? In an operation known to
consume time, one more hour for preparation would have only improved the efficiency of execution.

Sacrifices become doubly tragic in unprofessional circumstances. But the Aam Aadmis always believe that terror-shooters do better planning than terrorists. And the gullible media in a jingoistic mood would not raise any question about any of these issues.

They after all have their favourite whipping boy – the politician the eternal entertainer for the non-voting rich classes of India.

Arnabs and Rajdeeps would wax eloquent on Nanmohan Singh and Advani visiting Mumbai separately and not together showing solidarity even at this hour of national crisis. What a farce? Why can’t these channels pool together all their camera crew and reporters at this time of national calamity and share the sound and visual bytes which could mean a wider and deeper coverage of events with such a huge human resource to command? Why should Arnab and Rajdeep and Barkha keep harping every five minutes that this piece of information was exclusive to their channel, at the time of such a national crisis? Is this the time to promote the channel? If that is valid, the politician promoting his own political constituency is equally valid. And the duty of the politican is to do politics, his politics. It is for the people to evaluate that politics.

And terrorism is not above politics. It is politics by other means.

To come to grips with it and to eventually eliminate it, the practice of politics by proper means needs constant fine tuning and improvement. Decrying all politics and politicians, only helps terrorists and dictators who are the two sides of the same coin. And the rich and powerful always prefer terrorists and dictators to do business with.

Those caught in this crossfire are always the Aam Aadmis whose deaths are not even mourned – the taxi driver who lost the entire family at CST firing, the numerous waiters and stewards who lost their lives working in Taj for a monthly salary that would be one time bill for
their masters.

Postscript: In a fit of anger and depression, I sent a message to all the channels, 30 hours through the coverage. After all they have been constantly asking the viewers to message them for anything and everything. My message read: I send this with lots of pain. All
channels, including yours, must apologise for not covering the victims of CST massacre, the real mumbaikars and aam aadmis of India. Your obsession with five star elite is disgusting. Learn from the print media please. No channel bothered. Only Srinivasan Jain replied: you
are right. We are trying to redress balance today. Well, nothing happened till the time of writing this 66 hours after the terror attack.

A Turning Point

By Asma Jahangir, Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan 

 

The recent carnage in Mumbai is terrifying. Indians are entitled to be angry, hurt and disgusted. The Government of India has alleged that initial evidence indicates that some of the terrorists came from a ‘neighbouring country’. Even though the Prime Minster of India has so far not accused the Government of Pakistan of being directly involved in the attacks, it is apparent who the ‘neighbour’ is. The Pakistani Foreign Minister and others have so far reacted responsibly. To his credit, he admonished journalists who tried to downplay the tragedy or who shirked away any need for alarm.

 

Yet the media on both sides is full of jingoistic messages. Some Indians want revenge and even went so far as to urge their Government to bomb Pakistan. A few voices in India have cautioned against a call for revenge and have suggested looking deeper into the failure of the security system in India itself. They are pushing for effective diplomacy to be deployed so that Pakistan’s rulers are encouraged to take action against those who are using their country as a launching pad for terrorist activities. Those in India who want reprisals against Pakistan are falling into the very trap that the terrorists and their allies have set for them. It is no secret that both the terrorists and their patrons within the Pakistani intelligence want a disengagement of the military in the North of Pakistan. Despite all efforts made through peace deals with the militants, security forces have neither been able to convince them to de-escalate violence, nor have they been able to persuade the current United States’ administration to loosen the grip on the war on terror. As such, they are caught in a war they are most reluctant to fight. Therefore the military is understandably desperate to end the conflict in FATA and Swat. It also suits the militants to distract the military on all sides, so that they have a free hand to consolidate their power base within Pakistan. Indians must take note that the risk of a better organised force of militants will not only endanger the people of Pakistan but may also create havoc in India.

 

The reaction in Pakistan is mind boggling. Several militant organisations have issued public statements rejecting all claims that Pakistan’s territory in any way used to prepare the Mumbai attacks. Some, like the Tehrik-e-Taliban, claimed that the “terror attacks in Mumbai were parts of a conspiracy to defame Pakistan and the Mujahideen”. The organisation warned India against attacking Pakistan and assured that in such an eventuality the Mujahideen would “fight shoulder to shoulder with the armed forces and the people of Pakistan”. Through this statement, they appeared to have arrogated to themselves the authority to respond on behalf of Pakistan and to appear as the saviours of its people. Ironically the Tehrik-e-Taliban is fighting the Pakistan’s military in the North and is accused of having killed several Pakistanis in the most inhumane manner.

 

Senior security officials are widely quoted in the Press warning that the next 24 to 48 hours were crucial. One of them is quoted to have suggested that if India escalates tensions, then the war on terror will no longer be their priority and as such the Pakistani troops will have to be moved from the eastern to the western border of Pakistan. Naturally, while that would be the case, it would also be the responsibility of the security forces to keep equal pressure on all borders, so that civilians are protected. The statement however dismisses any responsibility of protecting people from the militant groups operating in the North of the country. This belies all claims by the present and the previous governments that the military actions against the militants were being carried out purely in the interests of Pakistan and to protect its citizens, rather than on the behest of the United States. It is deeply worrying to imagine that those who are supposed to protect civilians from the violence of militants seem to be reluctant to do so. Are they not convinced or aware of the urgency? Or are they simply not concerned? Do they have a gameplan unknown to the people of Pakistan and their political representatives?

 

A spokesperson of the PML(N) lambasted the Government for ‘bowing’ to India by agreeing to send the chief of the ISI or his representative to India. In the past, the PML(N) has itself been severely critical of the role of the ISI and supported calls for reforms within it. Regrettably, at this critical moment, the Opposition is dangerously exploiting the situation. In contrast to the statement by the PML(N), Mr. Advani, the leader of opposition in India and who is notoriously hawkish, has for now assured all support to the Indian Prime Minister. Perhaps we need to learn a few lessons of how the opposition can also be constructive in times of emergency. After all it is not the military but the representatives of the people who are entitled to take policy decisions. It must be the politicians rather than the intelligence agencies of both countries who make policies regarding foreign affairs. Surely the head of the ISI or its representatives do not carry a stature beyond that of those representing the people of Pakistan. The PML(N) would make a grave mistake by arrogating a grand status to the ISI, as this would undermine the powers of any civilian government. After all, joint dialogues, investigations and actions that resolve tensions should be encouraged rather than be taken as an affront to national dignity.

 

Most sections of the society within Pakistan seem to be in a state of denial regarding the allegations made by the Indian authorities. They are not willing to accept even a remote possibility of any connection between Pakistan and the terrorist attacks that took place in Mumbai last week. At the same time, any attack within Pakistan is treated differently. A large number of people have openly blamed militant groups operating within Pakistan and rogue elements within our intelligence agencies for acts of violence carried out in Pakistan. Yet, we are not willing to grant the same significance to any claims made by neighbours against the very same intelligence agencies, which admittedly are under insufficient control.

 

A discredited retired Pakistani General took on an aggressive tone on public television against any claims made by the Indians of the involvement of militants operating within Pakistan. Without waiting for any evidence, he emphatically concluded that the attacks in Mumbai were solely carried out by indigenous Indian militants. No doubt, an attack of this nature cannot be carried out without local complicity, but to rule out any link to militant groups operating within Pakistan is unrealistic. The General explained that militancy was rife in India because of an environment of ‘suffocation’. The same gentleman has on several occasions in the past pleaded for understanding for the growth of militants in Pakistan on the justification that the root causes of all this was poverty and neglect. In his view, Indian militancy stems from ‘suffocation’, while the Pakistani one is a result of being victims of economic deprivation.  

 

A balanced and transparent approach is urgently needed. It is clear that India too needs to look into the effectiveness of its own security forces. However, that does not absolve the Government of Pakistan from ensuring that its territory is not used as a breeding ground for militants, where they can plan, train and carry out terrorist activities. It is in no one’s interest to let a handful of organised militants keep the entire region hostage and polarise its populations.  

 

The recent Mumbai terror attacks should be the turning point. Governments of the region are challenged to support an open and transparent investigation in order to identify and prosecute the masterminds behind such carnage. They must have the moral courage to face the truth and have the determination to inform the public accordingly. The current and persistent state of insecurity should be a wake-up call for the region. Governments should reinforce their commitment to dismantle all forms of international terrorism growing within the region. India and Pakistan have both experienced terrorism. It is not new to them. Yet, the implications of recent international terrorism are far more complex and damaging to any society. The Jihadi groups that are suspected of having carried out the Mumbai attacks are a well-organised network with a perverse strategy that is mercilessly used to extend their political agenda in the name of religion. It was apparent that they saw an opportunity to attack now, when the world was involved in a financial crisis and the United States distracted because of a transition period. The carnage in Mumbai has several advantages for them; they received international attention, they were able to demoralize those who challenge them, they succeeded in creating a wedge between the improving relationship of India and Pakistan, they brought themselves into a better bargaining position before the Obama administration takes over and created a precarious situation for the fragile civilian Government of Pakistan.