India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch
Compilation (February 28, 2007)
Year Seven, No 168
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/179

produced by South Asia Citizens Web and South Asians Against Nukes

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Table of Contents:
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1   Eminent Jurists Begin Probe into Counter-Terrorism Laws in South Asia
2   India: So-called Anti-Terrorist Laws are Tools of State Terrorism
3   Pakistan: Militarisation of politics
4   War in Afghanistan and Pakistan
5   Pakistan: Sources of illegal weapons are all too well known to
need investigation
6   India: Guns for pleasure, anyone?
7   Pakistan: New policy on military lands
8   Pakistan and India's mad fantasy of keeping nuclear weapons free from risk:
    - Nuclear accord designed to promote 'stable' environment
9  India and Pakistan's tit for tat missile race:
   - Pakistan military tests missile - Hatf VI missile test
   - Pakistan test fires long-range ballistic missile
   - India tests Brahmos Missile in February 2007
   - India Plans 2nd ABM Test in June [2007]
10 India - Pakistan - Defence Spending:
    - Big rise in Indian defence budget
    - India hikes defence budget to Rs 96000 cr
    - Hike in unproductive expenditure (Edit., Kashmir Times)
11 The "disappeared" in Pakistan and India:
- Pakistani "disappeared" a growing problem: group
- Democracy disappears with persons who 'disappear'
- Kashmir Solidarity Committee and APDP Hold protest Rally in Delhi
- Kashmir's big lie
- India: Investigate All 'Disappearances' in Kashmir
- India: Government Should Act to Stop Murders in Custody
- Rogues in Khaki - Justice cannot be delivered on pick and choose basis
- Indian anti-terrorism troops accused of executing civilians
- Criminals in combat fatigues
- FIRs expose Army's hand in civilian killings
- Another body exhumed in Kashmir
- Body of carpenter killed in "encounter" exhumed
12  Siachen Madness or Mountain Peace
13  Victims of War on Terror in India and Pakistan:
- Trial and terror
- Voices of The Internally Displaced: Jammu & Kashmir
- Too many dubious convictions in Pakistan, say activists
14 Manipur and the Struggle Against AFPSA
    - Manipur: The Irom Sharmila saga
15 Fire Bombing of Samjhauta Express :
   -  Peace and The Burning Train
   -  Samjhota Explosion
    - Put The Joint Mechanism To Work
16 Arms Sales To The Region - Plans and The Players:
- Pakistan gets eight attack helicopters
- Russia Works To Remain India's Top Supplier
- Aviation firms descend on India air show
- Reports: India plans aerospace military command to oversee space-based assets
- "Work on nuke deterrence for Navy underway"
- India sets sights on cruise missile market

FULL TEXT AT:
http://www.sacw.net/peace/IPARMW168.pdf

India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch
Compilation No 167
(December 30, 2006 - 15 January 2007) Year Seven
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/178

produced by <http://www.sacw.net>South Asia Citizens Web and
<http://perso.orange.fr/sacw/saan/>South Asians Against Nukes
(December 30, 2006 - 15 January 2007) Year Seven
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/

produced by <http://www.sacw.net>South Asia Citizens Web  and
<http://perso.orange.fr/sacw/saan/>South Asians Against Nukes

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents:
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1 Pakistan:
- The General in his Labyrinth (Tariq Ali)
- Military rule stifles democracy (Husain Haqqani)
- Soldiers of Fortune (Ayesha Siddiqa)
- Business in Jackboots (Gulmina Bilal)

2  Deep mutual distrust within the foreign policy officialdom:
- Diplomats miss golf as India, Pakistan bicker (Bharat Bhushan)

3 Killing Fields of India and Pakistan: Land Mines at work
	 - Mine-blown lives (Fatima Chowdhury)
	 - Stop mining the border (HRCP)

4 Disappeared In India and Pakistan:
- Kashmir's Half-Widows Struggle for Fuller Life (Haroon Mirani)
- Kin and Rights Groups Search for Pakistan's Missing (Salman Masood)
- Pakistan: Growing anger at continuing enforced disappearances
(Amnesty International)
- Pakistan protester Where are they? (BBC)
- Spotlight on Pakistan's "disappeared" (Nirupama Subramanian)
- 'War on Terror' an Excuse for Disappearances (Zofeen Ebrahim)
- HRCP slates torturing of Pindi protesters

5 Nuclear Matters:
  	 - Living with the Bomb (Commentary, Himal South Asian)
  	 - Nuclear disarmament gets critical (Praful Bidwai)

6 Missile Testing:
(i) Pakistan tests ballistic missile
   (ii) Agni III to be launched in 2007

7   Inequality and conflict (Shahid Javed Burki)

8 On Arms Sales From India and Pakistan:
- Sri Lanka to purchase $100 million arms from Pakistan
- Pakistan eyes arms sales to Egypt
- India: Military Aid to Burma Fuels Abuses (Human Rights Watch)

9 Arms and the middlemen: the fine example from Britain / Saudi
Arabia (David Leigh)

10 Siachen dispute:
Revenge of the 'Wild Roses' (Arshad H Abbasi)
India's Defence Minister rules out withdrawal of troops from Siachen

11 Kashmir:
- 'In J&K, misplaced concerns delay RTI' (Neelesh Misra)
- SOG continues to be terror for civilians (Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal &
Arun Kumar Gupta)
- Deprived of land (Edit., Kashmir Times)
- VDCs have contributed to ethnic, communal divide in Jammu region
(Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal & Arun Kumar Gupta)
- 'Demilitarisation' may end up converting J&K into 'Police state'
(Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal & Arun Gupta)
-  Army helipad on LoC cost them their land (Shabir Dar)
- 'Next war in Jammu and Kashmir will be fought in air' (Iftikhar Gilani)
- State police or police state? (Iftikhar Gilani)

12 Crisis Within In The Armed Forces : Stress and Suicides
- Indian soldier Killing spree
- Why Indian soldiers are taking their lives and killing each other
- Army plans to hire 400 shrinks to cut stress

13 Book Review
- A Region in Turmoil: South Asian Conflicts Since 1947
by Rob Johnson

14. Manipur and the Struggle Against AFPSA:
- Scrap AFSPA in Northeast (Editorial, Economic Times)
- Advantage army (Anirban Das Mahapatra)
- Repeal it : AFSPA has to be scrapped totally (Editorial, Deccan Herald)
- Repeal only in name (Colin Gonsalves)
- India: Amnesty International renews its call for an unconditional
repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958
- Repeal the hated Act (Editorial, The Hindu)
- Farewell to lawless laws (Editorial, Kashmir Times)
- Go further, scrap the Armed Forces Act (Editorial, The Tribune)

15 Arms Sales To The Region - Plans and The Players:
- 2 Indian firms first beneficiaries of revamped defence policy
- Pakistan to get high-tech air defence system
- The Swiss government has authorised the export of war material to
Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan.
- Row over BrahMos (Vladimir Radyuhin)
- Russia offers to set up weapons service centres in India
- India: Private Sector Guns For Defence (Shashwat Gupta Ray)
- Late import of de-mining vehicles flayed
- India seeks Israeli help for surveillance system
- Submarine construction to resume at Mazagon Docks
- Defence Ministry set to sign offset agreements (Sandeep Dikshit)
- India largest buyer of Israeli arms
- Pakistan to get advanced F16s from US
- Out of Rs 833-cr deal, Israel's Elta to invest 250 cr in India
- India's voracious appetite for arms (Siddharth Srivastava)
- Army plans for T-90s in jeopardy
- India sets up intelligence task force
- IB: Need to raise special forces
- India's defence imports to touch $35 bn by 2026: Antony

16 Militarisation and Civil Society:
- Pakistan's Silenced Press (Bob Dietz)
- Pakistan: Reporting the Truth Can be Fatal
- Pakistan's intelligence monster (Khalid Hasan)
- India: Playing Cops and Reporters (Nivedita Menon)
- India: Why Army wants to be exempted from RTI (Shiv Aroor)
- War of Memory - dead or alive (Simmi Waraich)
- India: Army In Shame (Editorial , The Telegraph)
- When army men run riot (Editorial , The Hindu)
-  'Terrorist spotters' deployed in Kumbh (Sharat Pradhan )

17. India - Pakistan Communal Riots and Sectarian Violence - 2006:
- Dangerous phase of sectarianism (Editorial, Daily Times)
- Re-investigate Malegaon Bomb Blasts (Subhash Gatade)

_______

URL for full text PDF is: http://www.sacw.net/peace/IPARMW167.pdf

India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch
Compilation No 166
(November 30, 2006) Year Seven
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/177

produced by South Asia Citizens Web and South Asians Against Nukes
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Table of Contents:
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1  Missile Race:
    - First test of Sagarika cruise missile next year
    - Pakistan tests 'nuclear' missile
    - Pakistan Tests Nuclear-Capable Missile
    - Fresh Nuke Threats Follow India-Pakistan "Peace Talks"
    - India tests medium range missile
    - India develops new anti-missile system
    - Pakistan test-fires Hatf - 4 missile
    - Seeking a ballistic Missile Shield
2  India - US Nuclear Energy pact and Pakistan
presses for a similar arrangement
    - Business Lobbies Push Indo-US Nuke Deal (Praful Bidwai)
    - Pak ready to set up nuclear parks
    - Pakistan presses U.S. for civil nuclear energy pact
    - 'Indo-US nucear deal to upset non-proliferation'
    - Impact Of The US-Indian Nuclear Deal On India's Fissile Production
3  Arrests of Fishermen by Pakistani and Indian authorities continue:
   - India arrests 21 Pakistani fishermen
   - Pakistan arrests 22 Indian fishermen
4  Pakistan India Parleys: Plus sa change, plus
c'est la meme chose -  Endless Talks:
      - India and Pakistan : Inimical co-existence (M B Naqvi)
      - Landmark agreements (Edit, Dawn)
5  Siachen Dispute:
     - Stand at ease (Edit, Times of India)
     - Siachen Solution Still Elusive (Bharat Bhushan)
     - Demilitarise Siachen Glacier (Tapan Kumar Bose)
     - No demilitarisation of Siachen: Antony
     - India's army digs in over Siachen (Siddharth Srivastava)
6  Pakistan Military and Democracy:
   - Why Blame the Military? (S Akbar Zaidi)
   - The dictator wears Armani (Omar Waraich)
   - Bonapartist Vs non-Bonapartist generals (Ayesha Siddiqa)
7  Military - Industrial Lobby in Pakistan - India:
    - Arms industry's privatisation urged (Shamim-ur-Rehman)
    - Pakistan's defence exports surge to $200 million: DEP chief
    - IDEAS 2006
    - Metro Voice: 'Arms for peace' irks citizens (Maheen A. Rashdi)
    - Unprecedented security for Karachi defence exhibition (Mujahid Ali)
    - Letter From London: Such bad IDEAS (Irfan Husain)
    - Pak army is nation's largest business conglomerate (Rahul Bedi)
    - White elephant named DRDO (Edit., Kashmir Times)
    - 6,000 cr wasted, 10-yr delay & they want
150,000 cr more (Shiv Aroor / Amitav Ranjan)
    - 23 yrs and first fighter aircraft hasn't
taken off (Amitav Ranjan / Siv Aroor)
    - Will anyone dare audit the DRDO? (Amitav Ranjan / Shiv Aroor)
8 Political Economy of Defence & Security:
    - 'Global Power', Client State - India's Place in the US Strategic Order
    - India to remain a major arms purchaser: defence planners
    - Arms guru session before shopping spree
    - Nice guns, but the butter? (Madhur Singh)
    - The Rs 100,000 Crore Rubicon (Ajai Shukla)
    - Blunting the cost of defence (Ajai Shukla)
    - Has India's Security Liberalisation Begun? (C Uday Bhaskar)
9 (i) Kashmir:
       -  Kashmir - A war-borne epidemic of mental illness
       -  Death at Kashmir's Doorstep (Peerzada Arshad Hamid)
   (ii)  On The Death Sentence To Mohammad Afzal:
          - Hour of The Hangman (Ashok Mitra)
10 Manipur and the Struggle Against Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act  - AFPSA
    - Report of the Committee, headed by Justice (Retd) B.P. Jeevan Reddy
    - Solidarity Fast Against AFSPA, Militarization and Impunity
    -  How many days musta woman fast before shes free... (Harsh Dobhal)
    - Ebadi will take Manipuri woman's case to UNHRC
    - A Very Special Act (Ashok Mitra)
11 Bombay and Malegaon Blasts in India: The social impact
     (i) Sale of security gizmos rises after blasts (Shailesh Menon)
     (ii) Malegaon Bomb Blast Trail In Search Of The Accused ! (Subhash Gatade)
    (iii) Malegaon Blasts - Partisan Approach And
Biased Police (Asghar Ali Engineer)
12  Military Tie-ups and Arms Sales to and from the Region:
-  Arms sales in India - Scandalous procurement (The Economist)
- India fails to kick out arms kickbacks (Sudha Ramachandran)
- The dilemma over defence agents (Rahul Bedi)
- Cover Story: Arms Deals (Saikat Datta)
-  India Buys 330 Russian Tanks
-  India seeks Israeli help for surveillance system
-  Indian navy chief says the country needs to
project power across the world's oceans
-  FBI looks to boost intelligence ties with India
-  US weapons majors upset over India's tilt to PSUs
-  India, Italy To Cement Defense Ties With Joint
Developments (Vivek Raghuvanshi)
-  India-Italy ink MOU to boost defence and technology sector
-  Contracts Awarded (Judith Mbuya)
-  US-Pakistan defence ties being boosted (Anwar Iqbal)
-  $160m defence system from US (Anwar Iqbal)
-  Pakistan, China sign aircraft deal
13 Militarisation, Securitisation and Society:
    -  PPP slams army men's induction into CBR
    -  A fishy story (Siddharth Varadarajan)
    - PM dodges IB demand for more teeth to fight
terror (Subodh Ghildiyal & Vishwa Mohan)
    - IB chief's call may spark political storm (Subodh Ghildiyal & Vishwa Mohan)
    - UP's kidnap country has 50,000 valid guns (Aman Sharma)
    - In Noida backyard, guns on streets, kidnapping an industry (Aman Sharma)
    - State of guards (Dheeraj Tiwari)
    -  Solutions come knocking (Sanjeev Sinha)
    -  In search of security (Aparna Harish)
    -  He's No Khalnayak (Times of India Editorial)
    -  ID proof needed to make ISD call from MP
    -  Now cyber cafés under scanner!
    - The impact of fundamentalist groups on policy (Bharat Bhushan)
    -  Lahore residents invest in security as crime spirals (Kamila Hyat)
    -  Government eyes help of Private Security Agencies for Intelligence (CAPSI)
    -  The purification hunt: The Salwa Judum, a
counterinsurgency drive in Chhattisgarh (Nandini
Sundar)
    -  A Force Stretched and Stressed (Gautam Navlakha)
    -  National Security Council: A Comparative
Study of Pakistan and Other Selected Countries
    -  India's National Security under the BJP/NDA:
"Strong at Home, Engaged Abroad" (Apurba Kundu)
14  Sri Lanka Plans War Budget (Amal Jayasinghe)

_______

1. PAKISTAN - INDIA MISSILE RACE:

The Hindu
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/008200611130311.htm

FIRST TEST OF SAGARIKA CRUISE MISSILE NEXT YEAR

New Delhi, Nov 13. (PTI): Sagarika, India's first
submarine-launched nuclear-capable cruise
missile, will be ready for flight trials by early
next year, Defence Research and Development
Organisation (DRDO) sources said.

The turbo-jet powered, vertically launched cruise
missile with a range of 700 nautical miles and
capable of delivering a 500-kg warhead, is being
developed by DRDO with Israeli assistance. India
is simultaneously seeking to rope in European
missile firms for the project that is being kept
under wraps.

The sources said the missile's first prototype,
incorporating a solid fuel booster, should be
ready for a test flight by early 2008.

At the same time, the DRDO is continuing the
development of the submarine-launched version of
the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile developed
jointly with Russia.

The development of these two missiles, which will
turn India into only the world's fifth power with
such a capability, appears to be the silver
lining in the country's missile programme that
has been plagued by long delays and huge cost
overruns.


o o o

BBC News
16 November 2006

PAKISTAN TESTS 'NUCLEAR' MISSILE
Hatf missile test-fired in March 2006
Officials said the test was conducted to 'check technical parameters'
Pakistan has successfully test-fired a
nuclear-capable missile with a range of 1,300km
(800 miles), the military says.
The test-firing of the Hatf V (Ghauri) missile
was conducted to "check technical parameters," a
military spokesman told AFP news agency.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz watched the launch, at an undisclosed location.
The test came a day after India and Pakistan
announced they would prepare a deal to limit the
risk of an inadvertent nuclear conflict.
"Pakistan can be justifiably proud of its defence
capability and the reliability of its nuclear
deterrence," Mr Aziz was quoted as saying by
Reuters news agency.
"Pakistan believes in peace that comes from a
position of strength and operational readiness."
Tension between Pakistan and India - also a
nuclear power - has decreased in recent months.
The two sides met in the Indian capital, Delhi,
this week for peace talks, the first between the
South Asian neighbours since July's train
bombings in Mumbai (Bombay).
The two countries have decided to sign a deal
limiting the risk of an inadvertent nuclear
conflict.
The two powers stepped back from the brink of war
after India blamed Pakistan for involvement in an
armed attack on the federal parliament in Delhi
in 2001.

o o o

Washington Post
16 Nov 2006
PAKISTAN TESTS NUCLEAR-CAPABLE MISSILE

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/16/AR2006111600136_\
pf.html

By Munir Ahmad
The Associated Press
Thursday, November 16, 2006; 12:39 PM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan said it
successfully test-fired a new version of its
nuclear-capable medium-range missile Thursday, a
show of power a day after peace talks with India
that were criticized by domestic hard-liners.

The North Korean-designed Ghauri missile, also
known as the Hatf 5, was launched to mark the end
of military exercises at an undisclosed location,
an army statement said. The missile with a range
of 800 miles could easily strike deep into
neighboring India, Pakistan's nuclear-armed foe.

The missile, based on the Soviet Scud, has been
in service since 1998 and test-fired many times,
most recently Oct. 12.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz had watched the
launch and congratulated scientists, engineers
and the army for developing the new version of
the missile, the statement said.

"Pakistan can be justifiably proud of its defense
capability and the reliability of its nuclear
deterrence," he said, according to the statement.

Pakistan believes in peace that "comes from a
position of strength and operational readiness,"
Aziz said. He said Pakistan's nuclear capability
had reached full operational capability in the
past seven years.

On Wednesday, longtime nuclear rivals Pakistan
and India concluded a crucial round of peace
talks in New Delhi aimed at resolving their
differences, including the thorny issue of their
territorial dispute over the Himalayan region of
Kashmir.

India did not comment on the test.

A former head of Pakistan's Inter-Service
Intelligence spy agency, Hamid Gul, said
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's government was
incapable of solving the Kashmir issue through
talks with India, and that Pakistan must continue
missile tests to safeguard its defense.

"So far, Musharraf has got nothing in return for
giving concessions to India," Gul said.

He said this week's Pakistan-India talks were an
"exercise in futility" and that India was not
interested in resolving the key issue of Kashmir.

"We should continue these missile tests to boost
our defense. We have given our blood for our
nuclear and missile programs," Gul said. "I don't
expect Musharraf or anyone can solve the
Pakistan-Indian dispute through talks."

In Islamabad, analyst Khaled Mahmood said the
test was likely meant as a message to domestic
hard-liners.

"It is obviously a show of power as the missile
test came a day after the two sides held talks,"
he said, adding that Pakistan was also sending a
signal to India that it would "not compromise on
its defense."

During two days of talks, India and Pakistan
agreed on measures to combat terrorism, and on a
deal outlining safeguards to prevent an
accidental nuclear conflict. Pakistani officials
said the talks set up a three-member commission
to exchange information on terror threats.

A joint statement said India and Pakistan agreed
to hasten the signing of the deal but no date or
further details were given. The statement also
said efforts were being made to improve trade
across the line that divides Kashmir.

India and Pakistan, the former largely Hindu and
the latter predominantly Muslim, have fought
three wars since the partition of the
subcontinent after independence from Britain in
1947. Two of the conflicts grew out of competing
claims to Kashmir.

India accuses Pakistan of funding and training
the Muslim separatists who cross over to the
Indian portion of Kashmir to stage attacks.
Pakistan denies the charges, saying it only
offers the rebels moral and diplomatic support.

On Thursday, Indian External Affairs Ministry
spokesman Navtej Sarna offered no comment on the
test. However, G. Parthasarthy, a former Indian
High Commissioner to Pakistan, said Islamabad was
welcome to test whatever missiles it wants.

"It won't affect India-Pakistan relations," he said.

Pakistan and India first conducted nuclear test
explosions in 1998, and often carry out
tit-for-tat tests of missiles capable of reaching
deep inside each other's territories.

o o o

FRESH NUKE THREATS FOLLOW INDIA-PAKISTAN "PEACE TALKS"
by J. Sri Raman
URL: groups.yahoo.com/group/SAAN_/message/967

o o o

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6162836.stm
BBC News
19 November 2006, 10:35 GMT

INDIA TESTS MEDIUM RANGE MISSILE
Prithvi missile
The Prithvi normally takes 300 seconds to reach its target
India has successfully tested a short-range
ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear
warheads, according to defence officials.

The Prithvi missile was launched from Chandipur
in the eastern state of Orissa into the Bay of
Bengal at 0955 local time (0425 GMT).

It was part of an air defence exercise, and more
trials are expected in the coming weeks, the
defence sources said.

The test comes three days after a missile was tested by Pakistan.

The two countries recently announced they would
prepare a deal to limit the risk of an
inadvertent nuclear conflict.

The two sides met in the Indian capital, Delhi,
last week for peace talks, the first between the
South Asian neighbours since July's train
bombings in Mumbai (Bombay).

Tension eased

Map of Orissa
The 8.5m (28-ft) surface-to-surface Prithvi
missile covers 150 km (90 miles) in 300 seconds
and has a range of up to 250 km.

More than 2,700 people were evacuated from the area of the test.

Pakistan said it had tested its Hatf V (Ghauri)
missile successfully on Thursday.

India and Pakistan routinely carry out missile
tests, and normally inform each other of them in
advance.

Tension between Pakistan and India - also a
nuclear power - has decreased in recent months.

The two powers stepped back from the brink of war
in 2001. India had blamed Pakistan for
involvement in an armed attack on the federal
parliament in Delhi in 2001.

o o o

The Hindu - 27 November 2006
INDIA DEVELOPS NEW ANTI-MISSILE SYSTEM

New Delhi, Nov. 27 (PTI): India today unveiled an
indigenous supersonic anti-missile system with
defence scientists saying it had the capability
to intercept incoming ballistic missiles
thousands of miles away.

Labelled only as AXO (Atmospheric Intercept
System), the supersonic missile underwent its
baptism when it successfully intercepted a
surface-to-surface Prithvi target missile at an
altitude of 40 to 50 km over the seas off the
interim test range site in Chandipur in Orissa.

"It is a new missile and not part of country's
Integrated Guided Missile programme," top DRDO
officials said on the condition of anonymity.

"We have been working on this anti-missile system
for years," scientists said and claimed that
missile had its own mobile launcher, secure data
link for interception, independent tracking and
homing capability and its own radar.

"The missile has response time of 30 seconds and
once it detects a target it can be launched in 50
seconds," the scientists said.

While, affirming that India would still be
observing the US Patriot-III anti missile shield,
which Washington is developing, the scientists
said that the Indian missiles was "in the class
of its own".

DRDO did not reveal the contours of the new
system developed, hinting that more interception
trials could be on the cards.

o o o

The Hindu
PAKISTAN TEST-FIRES HATF - 4 MISSILE

Islamabad, Nov. 29 (PTI): Pakistan today tested
its nuclear capable medium-range ballistic
missile Hatf-4, close on the heels of India's
successful coordinated launch of two
surface-to-surface Prithvi-2 missiles.

In the second missile test by Pakistan this
month, Hatf-4 or Shaheen-I was test-fired as part
of the culmination of military exercises being
conducted by the country's Army Strategic Force
Command (ASFC).
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/001200611291340.htm

o o o

SEEKING A BALLISTIC MISSILE SHIELD
URL: groups.yahoo.com/group/SAAN_/message/966

India's ICBM - On a "Glide Path" to Trouble?
A Policy Research Paper
by Dr. Richard Speier (February 7, 2006)
www.npec-web.org/Essays/060207SpeierICBM.pdf

_____


2. INDO US NUCLEAR DEAL ; PAKISTAN SEEKS A SIMILAR ARRANGEMENT

Inter Press Service - 20 November 2006

BUSINESS LOBBIES PUSH INDO-US NUKE DEAL
Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, Nov 20 (IPS) - The United States and
India have begun new manoeuvres to push through
their controversial nuclear cooperation deal
after the U.S. Senate, in a special "lame duck"
session last week, passed an important bill
facilitating it.

The legislation was approved 85-12, indicating
support for it from many Democrats as well as
Republicans, who lost control of both chambers of
Congress in recent mid-term elections.

Earlier, in July, the House of Representatives
had passed another bill in the deal's favour. The
new Congress convenes early next year.

The most important first step the two governments
will negotiate during the tenure of the current
Congress is reconciliation or harmonisation of
the text of the two bills so it is diluted enough
to conform to the original terms of the
agreements signed between President George W Bush
and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in July last
year and this past March.

The Indian government has accorded a cautious
welcome to the Senate resolution. It has
misgivings about the Congressional bills in their
present form because they impose terms that go
beyond the original agreements. Backed by U.S.
business lobbies, it is pressing hard to have the
conditions diluted, especially in the Senate bill.

New Delhi is also making preparations for the
future approval of the agreement by the 45-nation
Nuclear Suppliers' Group and the International
Atomic Energy Agency, which is necessary before
the India-U.S. bilateral agreement takes effect.

India has opened a new gambit with China by
offering to discuss nuclear civilian cooperation
with it just as President Hu Jintao begins a
four-day visit to the country Monday.

"The fact that the bill went through in the
Senate despite the Democrats' emphatic victory in
the elections shows that the ethnic
Indian-American and U.S. business lobbies
prevailed," says M. V. Ramana, a physicist and
nuclear affairs analyst attached to the Centre
for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and
Development in Bangalore.

Earlier, it was not clear if the lame duck
session of the existing Congress would take up
the bill and pass it without amendments. But it
did, and all the five amendments moved were
defeated.

Ramana attributes the bill's passage to the fact
that its promoters succeeded in presenting it as
a measure of India-U.S. cooperation, not as a
nuclear issue. "It was offered as a litmus test
for America's growing relations with an 'emerging
superpower', which few American politicians want
to be seen to be opposing," he said.

The Kolkata-based 'Telegraph' newspaper reported
that the "Coalition for Partnership with India"
and the U.S.-India Business Council lobbied
individual senators hard to defeat the "killer"
amendments.

Council president Ron Somers said the bill "lays
the foundation for major trade and investment
opportunities in India for U.S. companies. As
many as 27,000 high-quality jobs each year each
year for the next 10 years will be created in the
U.S. nuclear industry alone."

The Bill's passage through the Senate has already
spurred moves towards huge Indo-U.S. defence
deals, including the purchase of a squadron of
C-130 airlift aircraft, and possibly as many as
126 combat planes such as the F-16 Falcon or the
F-18 Hornet, besides collaboration in ballistic
missile defence development.

Yet, the Congressional bills contain
"restrictive" clauses that the Indian government
will find it hard to sell to the domestic
opposition, indeed to its own Left-wing allies.
These were introduced by US lawmakers in keeping
with their domestic preoccupations, and with
Washington's nuclear non-proliferation agenda.

The deal makes a unique exception for India,
which declared itself a nuclear weapons-state
(NWS) in 1998 although it is not a signatory to
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Under the
agreement, the U.S. would "normalise" India as a
de facto NWS and resume civilian nuclear commerce
with it, suspended since 1974.

Among the Bills' restrictive clauses are: a
condition limiting the scope of India-U.S.
civilian nuclear transactions to exclude
spent-fuel reprocessing, uranium enrichment, and
heavy water production; a clause that requires
"end-use" monitoring of U.S. exports or
re-exports of nuclear materials, equipment and
technology; and annual certification by the U.S.
president that India is in compliance with its
non-proliferation commitments.

Another clause of the Senate Bill also limits
future U.S. supplies of nuclear fuel to an
imported reactor's actual operating needs, making
Indian stockpiling of fuel near-impossible.

India insists that Washington must stick to its
original promise of full-scale civilian nuclear
commerce, without conditions.

There are, besides, sequencing issues: under the
original agreement, India would have the deal
endorsed by the IAEA and the NSG after the U.S.
enacts all the necessary legislation in its
favour. Howerver, the Bills reverse that order.

The Bills mandate the deal's cancellation if
India conducts a nuclear weapons test by
abrogating its "voluntary" unilateral moratorium
on testing. This is seen by many domestic critics
as coercing India to abide by a Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty "by the backdoor".

"India can live with most of these conditions,"
says Lalit Mansingh, India's former Foreign
Secretary and ambassador the U.S. "But the optics
of the whole business are determined by the
commitments made by Prime Minister Singh in
Parliament this past August."

Singh's categorical statements that he will not
accept any departure from the original agreement
leave India with very little room for manoeuvre
or flexibility. There are also some hard-Right
elements in the Indian nuclear establishment
which want India to conduct another test,
especially of a hydrogen bomb. (The May 1998 test
of such a device is known to have been a "dud".)

Both the Bush administration and the Singh
government hope to dilute or remove these
conditions in the Senate-House conference
committee under the guise of "reconciling" the
Congress Bills and getting them passed by the two
chambers in December.

However, even if they fully succeed in doing
this, the deal will still have to go through one
more legislative process called the "123
agreement", to amend the relevant section of the
U.S. nuclear non-proliferation Act. It will also
have to clear the IAEA and the NSG.

Some members of the IAEA board of governors are
reportedly averse to making an India-specific
exception to its safeguards agreement for the 14
civilian power reactors (of a total of 22), which
New Delhi has offered to put under the agency's
inspections.

Some NSG members too may block the deal's
approval, including the Nordic countries,
Ireland, New Zealand, and possibly, China.

India may now try to soften up China by offering
it the carrot of purchase of nuclear material,
including reactors of the kind Beijing is
planning to sell to Pakistan.

China may not be averse to nuclear "cooperation"
with India. In the past, China had supplied
enriched uranium fuel to India's U.S.-built
reactors at Tarapur near Mumbai. It also
clandestinely sold a consignment of heavy water
to India.

"It would be most unfortunate if India co-opts a
number of states including China in its parochial
pursuit of an enhanced nuclear weapons
capability," argues Achin Vanaik, professor at
Delhi University's political science department.
"After all, the India-U.S. nuclear deal is only
partly civilian. At its core, it's about
legitimising India's nuclear weapons and
acquiring more material, including nuclear fuel,
to expand its nuclear arsenal.'' (END/2006)

o o o

ndtv.com
November 11, 2006

PAK READY TO SET UP NUCLEAR PARKS
Saturday, November 11, 2006 (Islamabad):

Pakistan has said it was ready to establish
nuclear parks in the country from where foreign
companies could operate independently.

The statement comes even as it was trying to
secure a deal on the lines of the Indo-US nuclear
agreement from the United States.

On the Indo-US nuclear deal "our position has
been to ask the US and the International
Community for a similar deal with Pakistan,"
Foreign Minister Khursheed M Kasuri said in an
interview to PTV on Friday.

"Pakistan was a fast growing economy whose needs
for energy were growing by the day. We foresee
our own reserves to be insufficient to meet our
energy demands in future if we were to maintain
our current economic growth which was one of the
highest in the world.

"Hence it was of utmost importance to Pakistan to
have access to nuclear energy. Pakistan was
prepared to establish nuclear parks in the
country where the foreign companies could operate
independently," Kasuri said.

On the question of future of Iran-Pakistan-India
(IPI) gas pipeline, Kasuri said Pakistan had not
abandoned the project and was currently
discussing the price structure with Tehran.

Pakistan was also looking at the import of gas
from Turkmenistan and other countries in this
regard.

On Democrats capturing power in US, he said the
polls would not have any impact on Pak-US
relations as Islamabad enjoys "bipartisan"
support and has "special relationship" with
Washington. (PTI)

The Hindu
Oct 26, 2006

PAKISTAN PRESSES U.S. FOR CIVIL NUCLEAR ENERGY PACT

Nirupama Subramanian

# Demand on the lines of India-U.S. agreement
# Official in U.S. to present the case

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has sent a top official to
the U.S. to explain its nuclear programme in the
wake of the North Korean nuclear tests and the
resulting spotlight on the A.Q. Khan
proliferation network, and to present Islamabad's
case for a civil nuclear energy pact with
Washington, along the lines of the Indo-U.S.
agreement.
[. . .]
http://www.hindu.com/2006/10/26/stories/2006102603381400.htm

o o o

Hindustan Times
'INDO-US NUCEAR DEAL TO UPSET NON-PROLIFERATION'

HT Correspondent

New Delhi, November 10, 2006

The Indo-US nuclear deal will upset the
non-proliferation disarmament order and usher in
a potentially catastrophic situation in South
Asia, while confirming the global dominance of
the United States.

This was the consensus view emerging at a
workshop entitled "Imperialism, Militarisation
and Nuclearisation - South Asia and the World".

Jointly organised by the Coalition for Nuclear
Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) and the Pakistan
Peace Coalition (PPC) during the ongoing Indian
Social Forum (ISF) conclave, the panellists at
the workshop included Dr Karamat Ali from
Pakistan, Dr Fahim Hussain from Italy besides
Shukla Sen and Achin Vanaik from India.

The nationality concept needs to be pulled down
and the idea of a "shared sovereignty" should be
aggressively pursued by South Asian nations, said
Dr Karamat Ali - who also put in a strong case
for a signing of a "no war pact" between
countries in the region.

A confederation on the patterns of the European
Union can be actualised and the first step
towards this goal should be an agreement on the
reduction of military budgets, Ali said. He
referred to the Siachen issue as a "ridiculous
dispute" between India and Pakistan.

Achin Vanaik focussed on the negative fallout of
the "quasi-legal" status that India would acquire
following the signing of the nuclear deal with
the United States.

In its aftermath, India's nuclear capabilities
will grow phenomenally other South Asian nations
might get inspired to take to the nuclear
trajectory, he said.

Others who spoke included Dr Fahim Hussain and Shukla Sen.

o o o

South Asians Against Nukes List
16 November 2006
IMPACT OF THE US-INDIAN NUCLEAR DEAL ON INDIA'S FISSILE PRODUCTION ...
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SAAN_/message/953

_____

3. THE TIT-FOR-TAT ARREST OF FISHERMEN BY
PAKISTANI AND INDIAN  AUTHORITIES CONTINUE:

Reuters
Nov 28, 2006

INDIA ARRESTS 21 PAKISTANI FISHERMEN

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) - Indian coastguards
have arrested 21 Pakistani fishermen for crossing
illegally into Indian waters in the Arabian Sea,
an official said Tuesday.

"Despite warnings the Pakistani fishermen enter
the Indian waters for a better catch," deputy
inspector, Indian coast guard G P Raj told
Reuters. "They are being interrogated and their
boats have been impounded."

The South Asian rivals frequently arrest each
other's fisherman for intruding despite a thaw in
relations since they launched a peace process in
early 2004.

Many of those arrested are held for years, often
without trial, before they are released.

With the arrests, the total number of Pakistani
fishermen in Indian custody has gone up to 113
while 35 boats have been impounded, officials
said.

Earlier this month Pakistani maritime security
forces arrested 27 Indian fishermen and impounded
five boats for illegally entering Pakistan's
territorial waters

In September last year, Pakistan and India
exchanged 687 civilian prisoners, most of them
fishermen.


o o o

Daily Times
November 20, 2006

PAKISTAN ARRESTS 22 INDIAN FISHERMEN

KARACHI: The Maritime Security Agency arrested 22
Indian fishermen for crossing illegally into
Pakistani waters in the Arabian Sea, an official
said on Sunday.

Officials arrested the Indian nationals for
fishing in Pakistani waters about 135 kilometres
southeast of Karachi, confirmed a spokesman for
the agency, Lt Cmdr Attiqur Rehman.

The fishermen were handed over to police and were
expected to be produced before a court on Monday,
Rehman added. Since January, Pakistan has
arrested 580 Indian fishermen, while India has
about 40 Pakistani fishermen still in its jails,
he noted. AP


_____


4 THE ENDLESS INDIA - PAKISTAN TALKS:

Deccan Herald
24 November 2006

INDIA AND PAKISTAN : INIMICAL CO-EXISTENCE
by M B Naqvi

The prize for becoming friends is progressive
enrichment of common people in both the countries.

Optimists' hopes will soar: foreign secretaries
of India and Pakistan have met in a 'good
atmosphere'; another round of Composite Dialogue
will go forward. No breakthrough has been made in
finding a solution to any of the problems thrown
into the foreign secretaries' basket of course.
But the promise of a joint mechanism to fight
terrorism is going to be built. There is a
promise of some more Confidence Building Measures
(CBM) to be agreed upon. That is about all.

For realists, there was no basis for hoping that
the two nuclear powers are going to bury the past
and at least cease being each other's designated
enemy. Indeed, that is not even being discussed.
There is no thought of reconciling with each
other and building a progressive friendship
between them. What the two foreign secretaries
are engaged in is writing ground rules for two
inimical powers to co-exist peacefully.

The two will remain unfriendly powers vis-à-vis
each other; only, they will not hopefully remain
on hair-trigger alert where nukes are concerned.
Will the CBMs ensure a certain amount of maturity
of not firing off the nuclear-tipped missile(s)
on the first rumour of the enemy's launch? The
plain answer is no. There will be no time to
think or verify or talk to one's counterpart on
phones. The enemy missile will take four to five
minutes to hit its target. No government or
Command Control System can be mature enough to
sift a rumour, a malfunctioning radar or even a
big bird in the given time.

Pakistan wanted the resolution of the disputes
between the two countries as the master CBM.
Common sense accepts the proposition. But common
sense is not welcome when national security
experts are in discussion. Existence of disputes
over territory or water generally define stable
non-friendly relationships between neighbouring
states; without disputes the animosities cannot
endure for long.

Political and economic dynamics of the inimical
relations between India and Pakistan has given
birth to pressure groups that over time have
become vested interests. Modern armed forces
require a lot of high-tech equipment that is
extremely expensive. Exporters of such hardware
are prepared to offer attractive kickbacks, going
in some cases to 12-14 per cent of total cost.
Kickbacks are the main for ultimate
decision-makers.

But modern procedures - committees that examine
general characteristics of what or which
equipment to import, technical committees and
bureaucrats who assess various proposals etc -
means a crowd of civil and military officers and
politicians who have to be kept in good humour
through kickbacks or other benefits.

Hardware producers spend a lot of money on PR
through their local representatives. Parties
thrown by indenters of military equipment are the
most riotous. Hundreds of millions of dollars are
thus spent for each major contract. Recipients
are also many, among whom may be some writers or
journalists.

This gentry is important and claims to be more
patriotic than most others. Their incomes,
importance and influence depend on the constant
growth, in numbers and equipment upgradation, of
the military establishment.

Their politics is based on their economic and
social interests. They habitually take a hardline
and advocate ever greater militarisation for
their country. As it happens even greater
militarisation requires a credible enemy.
Pakistan and India are the most credible enemies
to each other. Hence, a non-stop arms race in all
departments of military preparedness has gone on
that provides income and satisfaction to local
versions of industrial-military complexes.

An example is ready at hand. A week ago Pakistan
FM Kasuri said that the two countries are quite
close to resolving the Siachin dispute. Indian
security wallahs mobilised their heaviest guns
and have in effect told Premier Manmohan Singh
not to resolve this dispute in a manner that is
against India's national interests. Serving
generals have pitched in to virtually oppose a
solution except on maximalist terms.

What is surprising is that serving generals are
advising in public their Prime Minister not to do
this or that which normally is no business of
theirs. How come they even visualise their PM
doing something against national interests? No
other case of the kind seems to have happened in
India before. Could it be that the disease that
Pakistan Army contracted is beginning to afflict
Indian military too?

Relations between India and Pakistan cannot long
remain like those of two distant powers; they
have far too much in common: languages,
religions, races, cultures, history and sources
of water. There is a choice before the leadership
of the two countries: they can either remain
enemies - with frequent wars as a likelihood that
will tend to become nuclear - or to overcome the
resistance of ultra patriots and consciously seek
to become friends from the present ambivalent
condition.

The prize for becoming friends that cooperate is
progressive enrichment of common people in both
the countries, while the cost of continued
hostility will be poverty and the vulnerability
of being nuked. Let a clear-headed choice be made.

o o o

Dawn
November 17, 2006

Editorial
LANDMARK AGREEMENTS

EVEN though a breakthrough on Siachen was not
achieved, the two-day talks between Pakistan and
Indian foreign secretaries in New Delhi have
achieved a major success by clinching what have
been described as two landmark agreements. One
concerns the establishment of a joint
anti-terrorism mechanism, while the other is
designed to ensure nuclear risk reduction. The
contours of the latter agreement have not been
revealed, but details about the joint
counter-terrorism measures have been spelled out.
The agreement establishes a six-man panel,
consisting of three members from each side, to
ensure coordination in fighting terrorism by
sharing intelligence information. On the Mumbai
blasts, no specific information was given by the
Indian side to Pakistan, though it did hand over
some information about Pakistanis' alleged
involvement in acts of terrorism in India. The
two sides also agreed on a number of other
issues, including a joint survey of Sir Creek,
the decision to continue talks on their maritime
boundary, and the early operationalisation of a
truck service across the Line of Control in
Kashmir, besides such humanitarian issues as the
release of fishermen and others detained on minor
charges. Regrettably, they have not yet agreed on
a date for reopening consulates in Karachi and
Mumbai.

A significant aftermath of the talks was the
conciliatory tone of the two foreign secretaries,
who agreed to "build on convergences and
narrowing down divergences". They also agreed to
refrain from exchanging allegations in public. As
the history of the accident-prone relations
between Pakistan and India shows, going public
with complaints has often vitiated the
atmosphere. This was visible in the aftermath of
the Mumbai blasts. By any standards, the
composite dialogue to which the two sides are
pledged seems to be making progress. On Siachen,
it seems it is the military on the Indian side
that appears reluctant on demilitarisation. But
the issue needs to be settled to avoid
unnecessary waste of men and material on the icy
heights. A breakthrough on Siachen will have a
positive impact on the Kashmir situation and
strengthen the two sides' resolve to seek an
early solution to the thorny 59-year-old dispute.


_____


5.

SIACHEN DISPUTE


The Times of India
14 November 2006

Editorial

STAND AT EASE

It's entirely inappropriate for an army commander
in Siachen to advise journalists that a
withdrawal from the glacier will render Indian
defences weak.

Such decisions are up to the civilian command to
make, and only the political leadership can
determine where Siachen stands in the context of
India's overall strategic and diplomatic interest.

The peace process has been restarted with
Pakistan's foreign secretary in New Delhi to hold
talks with his Indian counterpart; among other
things, a date for discussing Siachen will be set.

Siachen is the world's coldest battlefield, and
the contest in this inhospitable region
illustrates well the pitfalls of thinking
territorially.

The problem springs from this being an
undemarcated region in the mutually agreed
ceasefire line in Kashmir. Indian troops moving
to control Siachen's heights in 1984 was
essentially a pre-emptive move it was to deny
Pakistani forces from getting there first.

To some extent it's like the farcical retreat
ceremony at Wagah, where the BSF and Pakistani
Rangers attempted to stare each other down with
ferocious gestures.

   The difference is that Siachen means supplying
forces that may be stationed at 22,000 feet and
experiencing cold of up to -50 celsius.

Siachen operations cost the exchequer Rs 3 crore
to Rs 5 crore a day, as well as the lives of
about 600 soldiers over two decades, most of whom
succumbed to adverse weather conditions.

BSF has recently toned down its march at Wagah,
tactics that could well be replicated in Siachen.
New Delhi and Islamabad could jointly demarcate a
zone of peace along the Siachen glacier where,
after a certain date, the presence of both Indian
and Pakistani troops will be considered
illegitimate.

This would be irrespective of who held what
position before that date, and irrespective of
how Kashmir is finally settled. The fear on the
Indian side would be, what happens in case
Islamabad reneges on its commitments and occupies
the area militarily after Indian forces leave.

However, the strategic cost of this to New Delhi
would be small it's not as if Ladakh will fall if
Siachen goes while the diplomatic cost to
Islamabad would be high. New Delhi can make it
clear that it sees this as a test case of whether
Islamabad can be trusted.

It's unlikely that Islamabad would jeopardise the
whole peace process for the sake of small gains
in Siachen.

o o o

The Telegraph
November 20, 2006

SIACHEN SOLUTION STILL ELUSIVE

by Bharat Bhushan

Waiting for the ice to melt

When the foreign secretaries of India and
Pakistan met last week, there was an expectation
that there might be some positive movement
forward on the eminently resolvable issue of
Siachen. When the foreign secretary of Pakistan,
Riaz Mohammad Khan, said that his country was not
averse to authentication of troop positions in
the Siachen dispute, there was a flicker of hope
that the conflict might finally be heading
towards resolution.

That flicker died quickly. Pakistan's position in
essence was that if India wanted to record the
troop positions in Siachen on a particular date,
it was fine with Islamabad provided such a
recording of positions would not be used to make
territorial or other claims in the future; and
that it was part of a comprehensive package to
resolve the dispute. The package, Pakistan
proposed, should include the delineation of the
border in the area. This was perhaps seen by
India as a new twist.

The Indian foreign secretary had proposed a
three-step plan for resolving Siachen:
authentication of ground positions by recording
them; agreeing on positions to which the troops
of the two sides would withdraw and thereby
defining a demilitarized zone; and lastly,
agreeing on a verification regime to ensure that
neither side moves to capture the area again.

The Indian proposal was to move one step at a
time. Pakistan, suspicious of New Delhi's
commitment to move forward after the first step,
wanted the acceptance of a comprehensive package
including the delineation of the undefined border.

The Siachen dispute has its origins in the
cease-fire line of 1949, which marked troop
positions after the Karachi agreement. The
cease-fire line went northwards till a map
position referred to as NJ9842 on the southern
end of the Soltoro ridge. This was the last point
where troops had been deployed when fighting
ended in 1948.The boundary beyond NJ9842 was
described in the Karachi agreement as "thence
north to the glaciers". This phrase has been a
major source of confusion since then.

This cease-fire line was renamed the line of
control after the Shimla agreement, but its
endpoints remained the same. India's position is
that the boundary north to the glaciers means
that it goes through the nearest watershed, the
Soltoro ridge. Pakistan draws a line from NJ9842
going northeast to the Karakoram pass.

The Indian interpretation gives it the control of
the Siachen glacier. The Pakistani interpretation
claims the entire area up to the Karakoram pass.
This includes 4,500 square kilometres of the
Shaksgam Valley of Jammu and Kashmir, which
Pakistan ceded to China in 1963. The Aksai Chin
Highway passes through this area, which India
claims was not Islamabad's to give away. It is
another matter that India was blissfully unaware
of the construction of the highway till a decade
after it became operational.

The history of the Indian and Pakistani military
misadventures in Siachen is long and tortuous -
beginning with cartographic aggression by
Pakistan in 1978 to show the border going up to
the Karakoram pass to the Indian army pre-empting
Pakistan in April 1984 by airlifting troops to
two of the key passes on the Soltoro ridge -
Bilafond La and Sia La. Today, all passes on the
ridge, except one, are with Indian troops. The
Soltoro ridge is to the west of the Siachen
glacier which is fully under Indian control.

The Indian army sees little reason to give up its
dominant position on the Soltoro ridge. The
military operations have been smoothened and
routinized. The presence of troops on the Soltoro
ridge allows monitoring of activities not only of
the Pakistanis but also in "sub-sector North"
abutting the eastern Karakorams and contiguous to
the Shaksgam valley so that India will never be
surprised again as happened with the Aksai Chin
highway. The army is opposed to withdrawal that
leads to asymmetrical deployment of troops -
there is no glacier to traverse on the Pakistani
side and were they to attempt to reoccupy the
passes even from Skardu it would take only ten
days. If the Indian troops were to withdraw to
Turtuk or Leh, it would take them a couple of
months to do that.

India and Pakistan came close to resolving the
Siachen dispute twice - in 1989 and 1992. In its
1989 proposals, Pakistan wanted troop withdrawal
to pre-Shimla positions - that would entail India
vacating the Soltoro ridge while Pakistan would
retain its present positions claiming that they
were pre-1971. To maintain the myth that its
troops were on Siachen, Pakistan refused to
authenticate maps and exchange them because they
would show that they were nowhere near the
glacier. India wanted a delimitation of the
border beyond NJ9842 towards China based on
ground realities while Pakistan wanted withdrawal
to pre-Shimla positions first and delimitation
later. India was not willing to accept
demilitarization if it meant only an Indian
pullout with the Pakistan troops staying put.

There could possibly have been a settlement in
1992 around creating a "zone of disengagement" on
either side of the Soltoro ridge, even though
Pakistan was still unwilling to record positions
on a map, the idea did not find acceptance with
the P.V. Narasimha Rao government. Today, once
again, a solution to the Siachen dispute seems to
be in the offing. But the two sides are caught in
an argument of sequential versus simultaneity of
approach. Yet, both sides are agreed that troops
should be withdrawn from Siachen; both are agreed
on creating a demilitarized zone in the area;
they also agree that the troops of both sides
have to withdraw to mutually agreed positions,
and that, finally, there should be a verification
mechanism to prevent either side from reoccupying
the area. It is also clear that there would have
to be delineation of area beyond NJ9842 because
it is the undefined nature of the border which
has led to the conflict.

Delineation of the border is not going to be easy
considering the claims of the two sides. However,
both sides have proposed delineation of the
border at different times. India did so in 1989
and Pakistan is proposing delineation now. The
principles the two sides propose for delineation
may differ. But that should be no reason to
continue the unnecessary military engagement at
16,000 feet and above.

The creation of a demilitarized zone with as
symmetric a withdrawal on the two sides as
possible and cooperative verification mechanisms
to prevent violations are not contradictory to
delineation of the border beyond NJ9842. All
these issues can be discussed simultaneously. As
confidence builds up on both sides, it would
become apparent that progress on each front is
not going to be the same. However, that should
not prevent them from starting the process of
military disengagement.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is believed to be
personally keen on resolving this unnecessary and
wasteful conflict, but not so the Indian security
estab- lishment which does not want to give up
its position of 'advantage' over Pakistan.

If the bureaucracies of the external affairs
ministry and the defence ministry on both sides
continue to be obdurate rather than coming up
with peaceful solutions, then they would have to
be overruled by the political leadership. This
has already happened in the case of Kashmir which
is being discussed through political emissaries.

o o o

Kashmir Times
21 November 2006

DEMILITARISE SIACHEN GLACIER
SAVE THE LIVES OF HUNDREDS OF SOLDIERS
by Tapan Kumar Bose

Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, Indian Foreign Minister in
a recent interview has said that the dispute over
Siachen Glacier could be solved, "within hours".
Asked about Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid
Mehmood Kasuri's statement that the Siachen
dialogue had reached a stage where the issue
could be resolved in a few days, Mr. Mukherjee
told the Hindustan Times: "If we all agree, then
anything can be resolved in a few hours. Why do
we need a few days?" Mr Mukherjee also expressed
satisfaction that the Foreign Secretary level
talks had gone along "expected lines."
This is the most encouraging news for thousands
of Indian and Pakistani soldiers and their
families. The settlement of the dispute over
Siachen glacier will not only reduce one of the
roadblocks in the path of peace between India and
Pakistan, it will stop a terrible waste of the
Indian and Pakistani soldiers who have been
posted on the world's highest battle field. For
nearly two decades these soldiers were posted in
a region where the temperature goes down to minus
60 degrees and oxygen is very thin. More soldiers
have died because of cold and pulmonary oedema
than because of fighting. Hundreds of soldiers
have lost their fingers and limbs to frostbite.
According to information, on an average, the
harsh weather of Siachen claims the life of one
Pakistani soldier every fourth day, while one
Indian soldier is killed every other day. Over
1,300 Pakistani soldiers have died on Siachen
between 1984 and 1999. It is estimated that while
about 2000 Indian soldiers have lost their lives
and limbs in Siachen, this operation has cost
India over Rs. 5000 crores. Almost all of the
casualties on both sides have been due to extreme
weather conditions.
The Siachen glacier is an icy wasteland of
doubtful strategic value. Since 1984, the
"snow-warriors" of India and Pakistan have been
locked in a battle for the control of Siachen
glacier. The world's highest battlefield, for
over a decade India and Pakistan have fought at
altitudes of over 22,000 feet in minus 60§C
temperatures. Siachen is the world's largest
non-polar glacier, and thus is sometimes referred
to as the third pole. It is 78 km long and
situated at an altitude of 5,400 meters above sea
level. The Siachen glacier is the great Himalayan
watershed that demarcates central Asia from the
Indian sub-continent, and that separates Pakistan
from China in this region.
Siachen lie on the non-demarcated western side of
the Line of Control (LoC) beyond the map
coordination point known as NJ9842. The 78 km
long Siachen glacier is situated between the
Saltoro ridge to the west and the main Karakoram
Range to the east. The Saltoro ridge originates
from the Sia Kangri in the Karakoram Range. Its
height ranges from 18,000 to 24,000 ft. The major
passes on this ridge are Sia La at 20,000 ft and
Bila Fond La at 19,000 ft.
Before 1984 neither India nor Pakistan had any
permanent presence in the area. In the 1970s and
early 1980s Pakistan permitted several
mountaineering expeditions to climb high peaks on
this glacier. This was to reinforce their claim
on the area as these expeditions arrived on the
glacier with a permit obtained from the
Government of Pakistan.
This triggered a reaction for the Indian side.
Operation Meghdoot, named after the divine cloud
messenger in a Kalidas's famous play, was
launched on 13 April 1984 when the Indian Army
and the Indian Air Force went into the Glacier.
Pakistan quickly responded with troop deployments.
As the Indian Army controls these heights, it has
the tactical advantage of high ground. The
Pakistanis cannot get up to the glacier, while
the Indians cannot come down. Presently India
holds two-thirds of glacier and commands two of
the three passes. Pakistan controls Gyong La pass
that overlooks the Shyok and Nubra river Valley
and India's access to Leh district. The battle
zone comprised an inverted triangle resting on NJ
9842 with Indira Col and the Karakoram Pass as
the other two extremities.
It is not clear as to how many troops are
deployed on the glacier. The estimates of
soldiers vary between 3500 and 10,000. It is said
that while Pakistan maintains three battalions on
the glacier, India has amassed about seven
battalions on Siachen. The Pakistanis are able to
supply most of their posts by road and pack mule.
However, with the forward positions, located at
the height of 21,000 feet, the Indians have to
use helicopters to supply their troops.
It seems that the Indian army is not yet ready to
demilitarize Siachen. On November 11, 2006, at a
press briefing held at the Kumar Forward Logistic
Base, Near Siachen Glacier senior Indian army
officer told the press that the Ladakh region
could be threatened if the glacier and its
surrounding heights are vacated. According to a
news report published in The Hindu on November
12, 2006, the army officer of the 102 Infantry
Brigade claimed that, "The power which controls
the Siachen region would have military advantage
since it looks over the Shyok and Nubra valleys
of Ladakh". The Army reportedly said that
maintaining a full-scale presence in the Siachen
Glacier - wedged between Shaksgam Valley (China)
and Baltistan (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir) - could
govern future boundary talks with China on the
Shaksgam Valley. "It projects our military
strength and capability in operating in such a
difficult terrain. It also shows our national
resolve to protect national sovereignty and
territorial integrity," the army said.
The briefing just two days before the beginning
of the Foreign Secretary level talks in New Delhi
was obviously aimed at influencing the discussion
of demilitarization of Siachen. While I do not
want to go into the military and strategic merits
or demerits of Indian presence on the Saltoro
ridge, I am worried by the mind set of the Indian
army which does not seem to appreciate the value
of confidence building measures like the proposed
agreement on Siachen as a step towards peace
between India and Pakistan. According to the
terms of the agreement under discussion, both
sides will pull; back their troops after making
their current positions on the map. Both sides
will also agree to not occupy these positions
again. The only sticking point it seems is
Pakistan's reservation that India might use the
markings to legitimize their claim on those
positions.
In 1949 Karachi agreement and in 1972 Simla
Agreement, Siachen glacier was left
un-demarcated. While Pakistan had allowed a few
mountaineering expeditions in the late seventies
to the glacier, in 1984, India mounted a military
operation to occupy the heights. In the Simla
Agreement both sides had agreed not to mount
military operation on the LoC. Both sides had
agreed to respect each others stated positions.
Operation Meghdoot might not have violated the
Simla Agreement in technical terms as the area
was not demarcated. But it certainly was an
action against the spirit of the Simla Agreement
which bound both sides to resolve all disputes
through non-military means. We hope the political
leaders of Pakistan and India have discarded the
mind set which endorsed Operation Meghdoot and
Kargil War. By placing our soldiers on these
heights, we have incurred the loss of more than
3000 lives to the harsh weather of Siachen. Such
a cost should be unacceptable to any nation,
particularly in these days when technology can do
the job of monitoring and watching equally well.
I hope our present day political leaders will do
the humanitarian deed- bring our boys back home.
Let not one more India or a Pakistani life be
lost in the old desert of Siachen glacier.

o o o

NO DEMILITARISATION OF SIACHEN: ANTONY
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/No_demilitarisation_of_Siachen_Antony/article\
show/457570.cms


o o o

Asia Times
Nov 16, 2006

INDIA'S ARMY DIGS IN OVER SIACHEN
by Siddharth Srivastava

NEW DELHI - India does not have a tradition of
the armed forces questioning the democratically
elected civilian executive authority. The forces
have quietly gone about their business, despite
often shoddy treatment, within the defined policy
framework, despite murmurs of discontent within.

However, in a rare case of the armed forces
having a say in matters related to India-Pakistan
diplomacy, they have made their position clear on
the Siachen Glacier: they are not happy about
talk of troop withdrawal.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HK16Df01.html

_____


6.  PAKISTAN MILITARY AND DEMOCRACY

Economic and Political Weekly
November 11, 2006

WHY BLAME THE MILITARY?
There is no need or reason for Pakistanis to want
democracy. The military has seldom had to face
opposition in coming to power.
Letter from South Asia

S Akbar Zaidi

Whenever the chattering classes sit down to talk
about Pakistan's politics and many of its current
problems, after various rounds of criticism
targeted against general Musharraf and
hisgovernment, all discussions end with a
resignation of, "there is no alternative".
Ex-cept for the 'jiyala's' of Benazir Bhutto's
Pakistan People's Party and the supporters of
Nawaz Sharif, it is improbable that most people
would want either to return to power, if that was
at all possible. Even though general Musharraf's
government has lost consider-able popularity and
while there are signs of discontent amongst
certain sections of Pakistan's society, there do
not seem to be any public demonstration which
would put pressure on his government to amend its
ways. The lack of an active opposition outside
the handful of aspirants who would gain directly,
is one of the more bewildering aspects of public
and political life in Pakistan. It would not be
too much of an exaggeration to say that although
general Musharraf has become unpopular, there is
no effective opposition to take him on. Is
Pakistan a country without an opposition?  While
clearly not a dictatorship by any stretch of the
definition, or even a harshly authoritarian
regime, Musharraf's govern-ment has reaped the
benefits of an authori-tarian regime without
necessarily having to become one. It is barely a
dictatorship, one largely by default. If by
authoritarian we mean a regime which gets its way
without consent, often on the basis of the whims
and fancies of a single leader, then Pakistan is
an authoritarian state. Such a state need not be
brutal and can get its way simply through force.
While the power of many barrels of many guns has
always made Pakistan's military the dominant
actor in the country's politics, and now
increasingly of its economy and of society, one
can argue that this situ-ation has come about on
account of civil and political society letting it
happen. There are at least two possible
explanations why this has been the case. The
first is that to most Pakistanis it matters
little who is in power as long as things continue
to their liking -
'bus kaam chalta rahay' - and life continues at a
tolerable level, preferably showing signs of
improvement over time. The second explanation is
based on the principle that compromise and
accommodation are better than confrontation, and
'jore-tore' (or its more appropriate Punjabi
equivalent 'mukk-mukka') is a far superior choice
compared to an alternative of outright
confrontation and conflict.
I have argued for some years now, that there is
no need or reason for Pakistanis to want or crave
democracy. It is not an innate social need that
Pakistanis are born with, nor a taste that they
have acquired. The assump-tion, which most Indian
friends and social scientists make, that
Pakistanis must natu-rally want democracy is
untenable and based on their own (Indian)
experience. In fact, the question should be posed
the other way round: why should Pakistanis (or
any other people) want democracy if they do not
know what it is? If, in fact, kaam chalta rahay,
why change things? If India had taken some time
to establish itself as a democracy, the ques-tion
of Pakistan not being one, would have been less
troubling. (The reasons for India becoming a
democracy are complex, and range from some
intrinsic and inherent characteristic of Indians
(and not "Pakistanis" in this broad
pre-independence definition of Indian) being
"argumentative" or, as Sunil Khilnani has shown,
by accident. Moreover, in any formulation of the
reasons to explain democracy's foothold in India,
one cannot ignore the towering presence of
Jawaharlal Nehru. Authoritarianism, by another
name?) Once India experienced its democracy under
the forceful personality of Nehru, who continued
to lead India from the time of its independence
struggle through its formative phase, the project
of democracy began to take root and large vested
interests were created who were willing to
protect it. In Pakistan, for numerous and varied
reasons, this did nothappen and hence, no
constituency for democracy emerged. In fact, it
was India which bucked the trend, and perhaps
Pakistan's predicament was much the norm for
newly emerging countries struggling to survive,
given their socio-economic and political
structures, with wrangling politi-cians and
warlords, trying to acquire power in ill-formed
states. The military only filled a large
"vacuum"; it walked in, without firing a shot,
not once, but on three occasions.  If no
constituency for democracy existed in Pakistan,
it is not surprising that there was no one to
defend democracy. It was only the social
contradictions which emerged through Ayub Khan's
state-led capitalist develop-ment model, where
new rising and aspiring middle classes emerged,
that began to ask for the right to be represented
and to parti-cipate in the economic and political
life of their country. Perhaps the late 1960s was
the only period in Pakistan's history when a real
democratic movement emerged and hence, resulted
in the freest and fairest of elections ever held.
Rather than the imposition of an individual
"creating" democracy inPakistan, it was social
and economic contradictions that did so.
General Zia ul Haq was welcomed into power by
political parties opposed to Zulfikar Bhutto, by
parties and individuals who were political,
supposedly democratic, entities. It was their
dislike of Bhutto and of his authori-tarian style
of government more than any "problem" they may
have had with having the military being in power,
which resulted in Pakistan's opposition political
parties invi-ting general Zia ul Haq to power.
General Musharraf too, 22 years later and now
seven years ago, was welcomed by many political
parties opposed to Nawaz Sharif and he had little
difficulty in either imposing his own mark on the
government or in finding eager partners, both
civil and political, who jumped on to his ship.
No military government has had any problems in
finding civilian and political partners to
legitimise its own parti-cular brand of
authoritarianism and dictator-ship. The earlier
oppositions become the new partners. (With
rumours that Benazir Bhutto is considering a
"deal" with general Musharraf allowing her to
return to Pakistan for next year's elections in
order to further legitimise his brand of
"praetorian democracy", we are witness to yet
another eventual turn to this old tale.)
The military has seldom had to face opposition in
coming into power. In fact, it has been invited
in by political parties and sections of the
public at large. Coups have been walk-overs.
However, once in power, they have caused severe
damage to society, to the economy and to the
country as a whole, largely on account of their
own greed getting the better of them, and hence
have been forced to leave. Democracy only returns
to Pakistan once military governments run out of
steam, rather than when political actors and
members of civil society start a move-ment for
democracy. With compromise ratherthan
confrontation defining Pakistan's political
culture and tradition, and with willing partners
to be found by different dispensa-tions of
ideology packaged by military generals, it is not
surprising that the military has ruled Pakistan
for 32 of its 59 years.  Perhaps it is not the
military which is to blame for Pakistan's
repeated military govern-ments, but those of us
who invite it in and let it come and stay in
power.

o o o

The Guardian
November 21, 2006

THE DICTATOR WEARS ARMANI

While Pervez Musharraf may appear to be an
'enlightened moderate', his government stands
accused of violating human rights.

by Omar Waraich

As was once said of Prussia, Pakistan is not so
much a country with an army as it is an army with
a country. Since its creation, nearly six decades
ago, elected politicians have run the country for
a mere 15 years. None ever completed a full-term
in office. The military, on the other hand, has
exercised control for 32 years - and continues to
do so.

It's a fact that manages to have escaped the
prime minister's notice. Visiting Pakistan over
the weekend, Tony Blair lauded the country's
unelected and unaccountable ruler in barely
restrained terms. "I would like to pay tribute to
his courage and leadership," said Blair. And not
just for the role General Musharraf has played in
combating terror, but also for "symbolising the
future for Muslim countries the world over."

The sentiment is shared by George Bush, who
issued an endorsement of the general's
"democratic vision" on a visit to Pakistan
earlier in the year. Those famous, full-throated
calls for the establishment of democracy in the
Arab and Muslim world only apply, it seems, where
regimes are at cross purposes with London and
Washington. In the case of Pakistan - as with
Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and
other oleaginous Gulf states - a dictatorship
continues to be fortified by British and American
support.

Back in 1999, when the ambitious general vaulted
to power by means of a coup, Musharraf was
regarded sourly by broad sections of the
international community. But just as a war in
Afghanistan served to bolster the grim
dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq, the armed
intervention there in late 2001 signalled a fresh
lease of life for Pervez Musharraf.

These days, the fact that he continues to deprive
the Pakistani people of a right to democratically
determine their own future has been obscured to
near-vanishing point. The same media outlets that
cheerfully tax Hugo Chávez with creeping
authoritarianism simply do not demand to know
when self-appointed President Musharraf will
bother to announce free elections and seek a
democratic mandate from his people. Even the
normally piercing Jon Stewart and the famed
inquisitors of CBS's 60 minutes care only to
treat to him with excessive deference.

He is an "enlightened moderate" keen on
"modernisation", it is said. An urbane and
liberal statesman, if ever there was one. Such
illusions are no doubt eased into people's minds
by the fact that he has shed his khaki uniform.
In Pakistan, the dictator wears Armani.

Freedom of the press is imagined to be regnant,
although Reporters without Borders ranks it as
the 157th lowest in the world. And women's rights
are either ignored or presumed secure, despite -
as Kira Cochrane has noted - Musharraf's
tasteless attacks on victims of rape. "A lot of
people say if you want to go abroad and get a
visa for Canada or citizenship and be a
millionaire, get yourself raped," he observed
after Mukhtaran Mai, a victim of gang rape,
sought to publicise her case.

The purpose of Blair's jaunt to Pakistan was to
firm up London's anti-terror alliance with
Islamabad. Doubts have persistently been cast on
the Musharraf government's commitment to
defeating al-Qaida and other noxious forces that
appear to be operating freely in areas that skirt
Afghanistan. The measures deployed by the
Pakistani authorities in the pursuit of terrorist
suspects, however, have attracted markedly less
scrutiny.

One of Musharraf's most lancing critics has been
Amnesty International. According to a pitilessly
detailed report, issued just weeks ago, the
Pakistani government stands accused of violating
"a wide array of human rights". These include
torture, unlawful detention, enforced
disappearances, extrajudicial executions,
unlawful transfer of persons to the United States
and other countries, and arbitrary arrests.

Equally worrying are the occasions where
civilians have been killed in operations that
were intended to target terrorists. On the eve of
Prince Charles' recent visit, 80 were slain in an
airstrike. Around the time of President Bush's
trip, 70 tribesmen lost their lives in similar
circumstances. And several more have perished as
a result of bombing raids over Waziristan.

There is a joke about Pakistan that has been
doing the rounds in some of Lahore's high-end
cafes. "The country is split down the middle," it
goes. "Fifty per cent are anti-American. And the
other half is pro-al-Qaida."

Mercifully, it's a gross exaggeration. But unless
efforts are made to develop strong democratic
institutions, and to tackle terror in a manner
that does not alienate the population or create a
more hospitable climate for Islamist terrorists,
it may cease to be so.

o o o

Daily Times
November 06, 2006

BONAPARTIST VS NON-BONAPARTIST GENERALS
by Dr Ayesha Siddiqa
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006%5C11%5C06%5Cstory_6-11-2006_p\
g3_5

_____


7   Pakistan and India - THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL LOBBY:

Dawn, November 21, 2006
ARMS INDUSTRY'S PRIVATISATION URGED
by Shamim-ur-Rehman
http://www.dawn.com/2006/11/21/local2.htm

Daily Times, November 16, 2006
PAKISTAN'S DEFENCE EXPORTS SURGE TO $200 MILLION: DEP CHIEF
KARACHI: Pakistan has achieved substantial growth
over the years in terms of defence related
exports, which have presently surged to $200
million from $20 million in the year 2000.
This was stated by Maj General Syed Absar
Hussain. Director General Defence Export
Promotion (DEP) while briefing the
representatives of the print and electronic media
in connection with the preparations for the
forthcoming mega defence show "Ideas 2006",
titled 'arms for peace', which is scheduled to
start on November 21 to 24 at the Expo Centre,
Karachi.
The mega event is managed by the Defence Export
Promotion Organisation and it is organised by
Pegasus Consultancy (Pvt) Ltd.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006%5C11%5C16%5Cstory_16-11-2006_\
pg5_6


IDEAS 2006
http://www.ideaspakistan.com/index1.htm


Dawn, November 22, 2006
METRO VOICE: 'ARMS FOR PEACE' IRKS CITIZENS
by Maheen A. Rashdi
As the five-day sale for international buyers in
the fourth arms exhibition of Pakistan gains
momentum, city issues, education and citizens'
rights become unimportant for lesser beings in
Karachi. Not that these are ever top priority
when compared to security of visiting VVIPs in
the city, but particularly since Monday, when the
International Defence Exhibition commenced, the
citizens have all but been told to stay home.

Directives were issued to offices around the Expo
Centre - venue of the 'IDEAS 2006' exhibition -
to end the day's work early, so that the security
arrangements for the delegates are not
compromised and the cavalcades of the President
attending the function may be facilitated. The
offices of the City District Government Karachi
which deal with civic issues and whose primary
function is to address daily complaints of
miserable citizens were given half the day off.
The biggest ignominy was the closure of
educational institutes to facilitate arms sale!
The reasons given were 'security concerns for the
delegates.' And those who were unlucky enough to
commute along the 'no-go' areas were stranded for
hours because of closed routes and jammed
intersections.

Ironically, as chief guests inaugurating various
high level institutes our president, prime
minister, governor and even the mayor have waxed
eloquent on the importance of education,
elucidating their vision for a more literate
Pakistan. But unashamedly, the schools were given
a holiday by the city nazim, mainly to keep
traffic flow in the city to a minimum, studies be
damned! The students have already lost out on
school days due to the rains, when the road
network collapsed.

Judging by the priorities which govern the
country leaders' decisions concerning its
citizens, it boggles the mind how a nation can
set such a precedence in which children's future
is compromised even if it's for day.

While the exhibition slogan proudly states, 'arms
for peace', one wonders, whose brainchild created
such an incongruous theory. The President's
message on the occasion elaborated how, 'elated'
he was that, 'each successive event (of IDEAS)
has helped the country gain a more favourable
international reputeŠand fortify Pakistan's
strategic disposition with regards to world peace
initiativesŠ' It is obvious that on the premise
of 'a balanced arms equation reducing the chances
of war,' Pakistan feels the need to flex its
superficial muscles under the international
glare. But while we have submissively accepted
that the chunk of our taxes is being used to feed
our armed forces, are we also going to submit
meekly to the message being sent to our youth
that the power of weapons is much stronger than
that of education?


Gulf News, 21 November 2006
UNPRECEDENTED SECURITY FOR KARACHI DEFENCE EXHIBITION
by Mujahid Ali, Correspondent

Karachi: Unprecedented security arrangements have
been made for the international defence
exhibition, which was opened in Karachi last
evening by President Pervez Musharraf.

Delegates from more than 50 countries, including
United States, France, Britain and China, are
participating in the fourth four-day
International Defence Exhibition Ideas 2006; Arms
For Peace organisers said. More than 225
companies, including several Pakistani companies,
are displaying their products.

However, India Pakistan's nuclear rival has not
been invited like the previous years, they said.

A senior police officer, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity, said that more than
18,000 police and paramilitary rangers have been
deployed not just around the exhibition centre,
but also on the entire route on which delegates
will travel from their respective hotels.

Dozens of police vehicles were doing flag march
in the city blaring sirens, while paramilitary
rangers armed with assault rifles were positioned
on every bridge, strategic building, and square
of the city.

"Snap checking of vehicles are also been done on
key places," the police official said.

Many key roads are being closed for traffic for
hours at a stretch to provide security to the
delegates, annoying local resident. The
government has also announced the closure of
schools. Police sources said several members of
the banned militant groups have been arrested,
but most of them were released after initial
questioning.

"We are taking no chance. We want this
international event to go on smoothly," the
police official said.

Banned militant groups have a history of carrying
out attacks, including suicide bombings, on
western concerns, top government officials and
religious minorities in Karachi. Extremists, many
having links with Al Qaida and the Afghan
Taliban, are opposed to their country's
cooperation in the US-led war on terrorism.

Major General Syed Absar Hussain, Director
General of Defence Export Promotion Organisation
had told reporters that a new Pakistan-made
armoured personnel carrier (APC) named Saad will
be unveiled for the first time at exhibition.

The APC is equipped with Battle Field Management
Systems, including computerised command, control,
communication, intelligence and information
systems.

Pakistan will also put on display the improved
versions of Al Khalid battle tank and Super
Mushak single-piston engine aircraft, besides
various other upgrades, he said.

o o o

Excerpt from:
LETTER FROM LONDON: Such bad IDEAS
by Irfan Husain (Daily Times, November 27, 2006)

[. . .]
Mercifully, the IDEAS jamboree is over. Ever
since it was first launched four years ago, this
arms bazaar has been an extremely bad idea.
Causing interminable traffic jams, overbooked
hotels and a nightmare to people living in the
area, the International Defence Exhibition And
Seminar (to give the beast its full name) has not
justified the enormous amounts spent on it.
Indeed, I wish our ministry of defence production
would give us a balance sheet stating the cost of
these extravaganzas and the arms orders secured
there. But in a country where the bloated defence
budget is presented before Parliament as a
single-line item, to expect transparency is like
wishing for free caviar.

Speaking of costs, a friend peripherally involved
in organising one of the events connected with
the show tells me that to accommodate the 5,000
people expected at the inaugural session, a
marquee large enough could not be found in
Pakistan. So an air-conditioned shamiana was
rented from Malaysia at Rs1.4 million a day. But
since it had to be transported, set up, taken
down, and then returned, the total rental was for
ten days. If you do your numbers, that works out
to Rs14 million. But that's small change for a
country run for and by the defence forces.
[. . .].

Pak army is nation's largest business conglomerate (Rahul Bedi)
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20061013/main5.htm

o o o

Kashmir Times, 16 November 2006

Editorial

WHITE ELEPHANT NAMED DRDO
The country does not have funds to waste on idlers

The Defence Research and Development
Organisation, better known as DRDO, proudly
claims that its mission is to "Make India
prosperous by establishing world class science
and technology base...provide our defence
services a decisive edge by equipping them with
internationally competitive systems and
solutions...and lead to production of
state-of-the-art weapons systems." Today that
vision or claim sounds like a cruel joke on a
relatively poor country. The DRDO has 50 branches
around the country and employs over 33,000
people. Its annual budget goes into billions,
while for each prestigious project thousands of
crores are sanctioned; yet in most cases their
products are either too crude for armed forces to
accept or are too late in their delivery for any
use. The earliest of the mega projects was
sanctioned in May 1974 for developing a 'main
battle tank' to replace the Vijayanta and the
Russian-made tanks. It was to be ready by May
1984, but was available only eleven years later,
after costing the tax-payers over Rs. 305 crores.
Not only did they arrive too late, but a 58
tonnes was found too heavy and prone to get
over-heated. In 1983 two far more expensive
projects were undertaken to develop missiles and
light combat aeroplanes to be named Tejas. The
revised amount sanctioned for these are Rs.
1771.43 crores and Rs. 2188 crores respectively.
The performances of the missiles, till December
2005, was not very satisfying, while the radars
and weaponisation of the LCA were far from being
complete till the end of 2004. They are yet to be
inducted into the IAF. The Kaveri Jet Engine for
the LCA was sanctioned for production in May
1989. They were to cost the country Rs. 2839
crores and be ready for use by December 1995.
But, now they say that one has to wait for them
till, at least, December 2009. Equally too late
and unsatisfactory are most of the projects
entrusted to DRDO, whether one is related to the
Pinaksrtillery system, the Samyukta Communication
System, or the variety of missiles they take
pride in naming, like the Trishul, the Akash, the
Nag, the Prithvi, or the Agni. With varying
emphasis the army and the IAF have expressed
their displeasure with their performance.
Besides, in almost all cases these have become
test-ready long after the armed forces had been
compelled by circumstances to go on expensive
shopping abroad for arms. In fact, like any other
public sector enterprise, the DRDO too works.
In an obvious slip-shod manner, apparently more
concerned with hiding or explaining away their
lapses than with producing world class weapons on
time. So the country remains dependent on foreign
arms-makers. In fact, the DRDO has remained a
prisoner of their own, apparently self-serving,
slogan of 'self-reliance'. By emphasising the
need for and pride in self-reliance they have,
time and again, left the armed forces high and
dry in times of need and have inflicted on the
poor tax-payers unprecedented penalties, only to
produce unsatisfactory results. So, till date,
the armed forces are equipped with foreign-made
planes, guns and tanks and other sophisticated
gadgets. In the mid-90's the artillery
authorities wanted to secure Weapon Locating
Raadars, the DRDO prevented them from importing
those from the West by assuring them of locally
made ones within a couple of years. But, when
India went to war over Kargil it did not have a
single WLR, while Pakistan did have a few in that
sector. Now the DRDO wants Rs. 10,000 crores more
for 15 more years to show up. But, what are their
credentials? How far and how long can the country
afford to trust them? When countries like China,
are going abroad to purchase the best and the
latest there is nothing to be ashamed of
importing what we cannot produce. The poor
country does not have the funds to waste on
idlers. It is better to wind up this organisation
which has turned out to be a white elephant.


Indian Express, November 12, 2006
6,000 CR WASTED, 10-YR DELAY & THEY WANT 150,000 CR MORE
Shiv Aroor / Amitav Ranjan
DRDO has just asked the Govt for an assured Rs
10,000 crore per year for 15 years. In the first
of a series, The Sunday Express finds out why
this is a joke on the nation's security and the
taxpayer
http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/16477.html

Indian Express, November 15, 2006
23 YRS AND FIRST FIGHTER AIRCRAFT HASN'T TAKEN OFF
Amitav Ranjan / Siv Aroor
LCA: By its new deadline 2010 (thrice revised),
project would have cost Rs 4000 crore extra;
radar, engine still not in place, IAF says it's
not ready to certify LCA's technology until 2008
clearance
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/16658.html

WILL ANYONE DARE AUDIT THE DRDO?
Amitav Ranjan / Shiv Aroor
http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/16708.html


_____


8 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEFENCE:

Aspects of India's Economy, No. 41 (December 2005):
'GLOBAL POWER', CLIENT STATE - INDIA'S PLACE IN THE US STRATEGIC ORDER
http://www.rupe-india.org/41/contents.html

INDIA TO REMAIN A MAJOR ARMS PURCHASER: DEFENCE PLANNERS
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200611131417.htm

ARMS GURU SESSION BEFORE SHOPPING SPREE
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1061113/asp/nation/story_6994304.asp

Hindustan Times, November 15, 2006
NICE GUNS, BUT THE BUTTER?
by Madhur Singh
The good news last week was that the Iraq war
cost the Republicans the Congress. The bad news
was that it cost the Americans $2 trillion. That
is, roughly $300 for each one of the six
billion-plus citizens of the world. Compare that
with the $ 3 per head that the United States has
been giving as aid to the poorest of African
countries, and the scale of the anomaly becomes
clearer.

While we shake our heads at the US, let us pause
to take a look at some news reports closer home.
India, a US Congressional report showed last
week, has become the biggest military buyer in
the developing world, having bought equipment to
"modernise its defence forces" for $ 5.4 billion
(roughly Rs 24,000 crore) in 2005. Our 2006-07
budget allocated Rs 89,000 crore for defence. And
how much did we spend to modernise our ailing
health system? Rs 12,546 crore. That is about
one-seventh of our defence budget. Never mind
that diarrhoea claims more lives every year in
India than all the wars since Independence put
together.

What's going on here? How societies allocate
their resources is a reflection of their values
and priorities. What does it say about our
priorities that we stand in awe of security and
strategic analysts, and dismiss and ridicule
those espousing social issues as airy-fairy,
bleeding heart liberals? Idealism is all very
well on paper, we say, but let us not forget that
India is surrounded by unstable as well as
hostile neighbours - Pakistan, China, Bangladesh,
Sri Lanka and even Nepal. How can we live in such
a neighbourhood and not arm ourselves for any
eventuality?

So we spend six to seven times more on defence
than on health or education because, after all,
money is a scarce resource and there's only so
much of it to go around. And then, we're
perplexed at farmer suicides and water riots, and
angry at Naxalites and those squatters spreading
their filth outside our posh colonies.

This is not to say that defence spending alone is
responsible for all our social ills. To a
development practitioner, it would be absurd that
we are proud to blast off a sizeable chunk of our
GDP to send a man to the moon, but not spend
enough to send all our children to school. Just
as it is absurd that more money is spent globally
on research on cosmetics than on research on
health. The global aid spend is $ 50 billion,
while the global military spend is $950 billion
(2003 figures), despite the fact that more people
die of HIV/Aids and even malaria around the world
each year than they do in wars or armed conflicts.

To cite another example, the UNDP Human
Development Report 2006 points out that it would
take $10 billion annually to halve the number of
people without access to clean water and
sanitation - which is "less than five days' worth
of global military spending and less than half of
what rich countries spend each year on mineral
water".

But, of course, it is not the development
practitioner whose voice gets primacy in
decision-making and resource-allocation. In the
rigid hierarchies of knowledge that all societies
create, it is the economist and the security
expert whose knowledge we value most. This holds
true for almost all societies today. The result,
on the one hand, is an obsession with growth
figures, with little or no consideration for the
quality of growth. On the other hand,
astronomically large expenditures get justified
in the name of security. And it is assumed that
there is only one way of looking at security - as
'national' security.

However, for the purpose of solving any of the
problems that actually affect people - the
citizens in whose name policy is made and budgets
allocated - this definition is dangerously
constricted and rigid. No one is denying that
'national', military security is essential. But
what about other kinds of security? Security for
the individual means not only security from
aggression, but it also means security from
structural violence - the violence that pervades
the system and prevents an individual from
attaining his or her full potential. Security,
thus defined, means food security, job security,
security from bodily assault, etc. It also means
security from exploitation by greedy moneylenders
and corrupt officials, from caste oppression,
from want and deprivation. And it means freedom
to be oneself and to express oneself.

That the world would be a better place if
governments laid more emphasis on social rather
than military security is obvious. But to effect
this change of worldview is the challenge. The
insularity and apathy of the Indian
middle-classes is rather exceptional, although
India is gradually acquiring a more vocal and
activist civil society - as was evident at the
India Social Forum recently. But we will have to
get a lot more vocal and activist, and enlist
many more among our ranks, in order to make our
government understand that we want cleaner air
and water more than - and before - another Kiev
class aircraft carrier.


Business Standard, November 21, 2006
THE Rs 100,000 CRORE RUBICON
Ajai Shukla / New Delhi
Foreign Secretary-level talks with Pakistan; the
US-India nuclear legislation passed by the US
Senate; Chinese President Hu Jintao visiting
India. This fortnight makes a useful diplomatic
freeze frame, illustrating India's growing
stability in the neighbourhood, region and global
environment.

Now contrast this reality with New Delhi's threat
perception. It is difficult to measure a
country's apprehensions accurately, but one
fairly good indicator is the trend in its defence
spending. As President Hu lands in Delhi, South
Block is finalising estimates of the Rs 89,000
crore defence budget for 2006-07. Then they will
finalise next year's budget demand, likely to be
just shy of Rs 100,000 crore. With the military,
like all militaries, asking for more, and the
strategic community clamouring to spend 3 per
cent of GDP on defence (which would be Rs 120,000
crore) the Rs 100,000 crore Rubicon no longer
looks uncrossable.

In itself, that would merely be a statistical
landmark. When a country's security is under
threat, it spends whatever it takes to restore
well-being. And since there is no way to
accurately measure either security or well-being,
a comparison is useful to assess whether India's
current threats justify its spiralling defence
spending.

In 1999, India paid Rs 48,500 crore for defence,
including the cost of the Kargil conflict; today
we are looking at twice that amount. That's a
sizeable jump, considering that inflation is high
mainly for foreign weaponry, and no Pay
Commission has raised salaries since then. This
rise in defence spending raises two key
questions. One, have India's levels of external
threat or insurgency climbed proportionately in
the seven years since 1999? Two, is our spending
directed towards our greatest concerns, or are
low-threat spending areas eating up most of the
budget?

A series of recent events and statements answer
the first question. Three years into a peace
process with Pakistan, the PM has declared it
irreversible. While the Parliament attack in 2001
and the Kaluchak attack in 2002 brought India to
the brink of war, the Mumbai bomb attacks this
year evoked no more than a two-month sulk.
Terrorists, we are told, can no longer hold the
peace process hostage. A ceasefire holds on the
Line of Control. And with nuclear deterrents in
place all around, structure underpins the
statements.

In step with growing trade relations with China,
the Sino-Indian border is entirely peaceful. Both
countries have not just scaled down their
soldiers, but also their interaction, replacing
patrol clashes with volleyball matches and
friendship toasts. Wen Jiabao and Manmohan
Singh's agreement last year on political
principles for a solution to the border issue is
a great leap towards a final solution; the outcry
against China's recent reiteration of its claim
on Arunachal comes from those unfamiliar with
Beijing's negotiating history. Chinese maps now
paint Sikkim in the same colours as India.
Compared to 1999, war on any front-Pakistan or
China-is a remote possibility.

What about insurgency? The Nagaland ceasefire has
stabilised and peace emissaries are talking to
ULFA. In J&K, a halting dialogue with separatists
has moved forward since 1999. Despite two failed
ceasefires with the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, ongoing
back-channel negotiations could soon result in a
successful one. A border fence is checking
militant infiltration. J&K and Manipur remain
crippled by militancy but their situation is
considerably better than in 1999.

In mature democracies with vibrant civil
societies, a transition from hostile
confrontation to dialogue and stability provokes
a demand for defence cuts. In India, a "guns
versus butter" debate is controversial ground
that few want to tread. But with war increasingly
unlikely, and militancy not quite dead but in
retreat, can a doubling of real defence
expenditure pass unquestioned? When will it be
time for a peace dividend? Even more worrisome
than growing defence spending is India's pattern
of spending. The most cursory analysis of ongoing
programmes shows a marked trend towards
"warfighting" equipment like tanks, submarines
and fighter aircraft, which have no utility in
the counter-insurgency operations that appear to
be our primary defence requirement. This bias
also exists in indigenous R&D, where big-ticket
programmes like missiles, anti-aircraft guns and
tanks mop up a mind-boggling Rs 5,000 crore. But
then, big-ticket items mean bigger research
budgets!

Serious defence preparedness has become the
neglected step-child of a jingoistic and
xenophobic polity, whose members find it easier
to wave the tricolour and throw big money at
defence rather than sit down to a rational
assessment of India's defence needs. While
strategically sophisticated countries like the US
and the UK carefully scrutinise their defence
aims and requirements, Washington publishes a
comprehensive Quadrennial Defence Review every
four years-India's defence needs have never been
coherently formulated. A public debate remains a
distant dream.

o o o

Business Standard, November 18, 2006
BLUNTING THE COST OF DEFENCE
Financing Defence-Ii
Ajai Shukla / New Delhi
In the Budget that will be presented in March
2007, Indian annual defence spending could touch
the magic figure of Rs 100,000 crore.

To maximise the benefits of this huge
expenditure, senior defence ministry and military
officials heard presentations from experts from
26 countries at a seminar on Defence Finance and
Economics held here from November 13-15.

Earlier this year, the ministry of defence had
framed new procurement rules to cut down the time
taken to purchase equipment for the military.

Defence ministry officials have been sharply
criticised in recent years, including by their
own minister George Fernandes in 2004, for being
over-cautious and reluctant to process the
purchase of military equipment.

But the new procurement framework, it now
appears, has done little to diminish the
officials' fears of persecution for awarding a
major contract to one or other vendor.

Comptroller and Auditor-General MK Kaul became
the first high-ranking official to publicly
declare that while the new framework makes rules
clearer, defence ministry officials still believe
that the penalty for delaying a purchase is not
as daunting as the risk of finalising a contract.

According to the Kaul: "The updated Defence
Procurement Manual 2006 and the Defence
Procurement Procedure 2006 are steps in the right
direction. However, the emphasis in the current
system still seems to be on technical compliance
through a multitude of detailed rules and
regulations rather than on creating a new
organisational culture that focuses on results."

Quick results are vital, say the statistics
offered by Katherine Schinasi, managing director,
acquisitions, of the US General Accounts Office.

US procurements that take more than five years to
materialise overrun initial estimates by 50 per
cent; those that take 10 years cost 150 per cent
more than originally budgeted.

India's procurement process sees delays of up to
two decades, as in the case of the Hawk trainer
aircraft, which was proposed in 1984 and bought
in 2003.

Little can be done about some of the delays.
Denial regimes that date back to India's nuclear
test of 1974 require time-consuming permissions
in some defence purchases.

India's military reputedly conducts the world's
most comprehensive trials on all equipment
proposed for purchase - trials that could go on
for years.

Delays also occur because of domestic political
reasons, such as the one currently plaguing a
multi-billion dollar contract for artillery guns.

After repeated trials over the last four years,
the Bofors gun (the company is now owned by the
UK's BAE Systems) has proved its superiority over
its Israeli rival, Soltam. But the Congress
Party, already burnt once by Bofors, shrinks from
that very name. And so, linked to inflation, the
price will rise each year until a contract is
signed.

Discussions also focused on offsets that the
defence ministry's new procurement rules now
mandate. These are binding arrangements written
into all defence deals worth over Rs 300 crore,
which oblige the foreign vendor to invest 30 per
cent of the contract value into the Indian
economy.

These could be technology transfer or an
agreement to manufacture in India components of
the equipment being bought (for example,
navigation computers for all Hawk trainer
aircraft sold worldwide).

A series of foreign experts from supplier
countries like the US suggested that offsets were
a bad idea as the suppliers simply factored
offsets into the contract cost or supplied
technology that quickly became outdated.

If offsets have to be included in a contract they
should be teaming or cooperative agreements that
add value to the transaction and are directly
related to the supplier's main business.

For example, if Boeing enters into a contract for
supplying F-18 fighters to India, the offsets
could include a contract with an Indian software
company for jointly developing next-generation
flight control computers.

Anticipated defence spending in the Eleventh Plan
is likely to provide Indian industry with the
opportunity to benefit from up to Rs 90,000 crore
worth of business from offsets. Coordinating the
implementation of offsets will be the defence
ministry's recently set up Defence Offset
Facilitation Agency.

India, already among the world's biggest buyers
of foreign arms, is looking towards international
experts for ideas and expertise. To what extent
brainstorming benefits policy remains to be seen.

   o o o

The Financial Express, November 11, 2006
HAS INDIA'S SECURITY LIBERALISATION BEGUN?
Strategic acumen in managing India's defence
expenditure calls for greater dexterity and
perspicacity
   by C Uday Bhaskar
   India has been ranked the biggest arms buyer in
2005 by a US Congressional study and is averred
to have finalised arms transfer pacts worth $5.4
billion. Saudi Arabia and China are ranked next
at $3.4 billion and $2.8 billion, respectively.
For India, the fiscal veracity of this assertion
is moot, largely since there is a time lag
between the disbursal of payments in a fiscal.
Secondly, Chinese military acquisition programmes
lack the transparency India provides.

Clearly, India and China will be among the
world's major arms buyers over the next two
decades. But, a scrutiny of the Indian experience
and extrapolation for the near future reveals
some systemic inadequacies that need to be
acknowledged and redressed. It is also opportune
that the finance division of the defence ministry
is, for the first time, convening an
international seminar (November 13-15) in New
Delhi to holistically examine 'Defence Finance
and Economics'. Has our much needed 'security
liberalisation' begun? A brief review may help
identify the contours of India's defence
spending. In 2006-07, the budgeted amount was Rs
89,000 crore, of which the total outlay on stores
and modernisation was Rs 55,730 crore. The actual
amounts spent will be tabled in the forthcoming
Budget due in March '07. Ironically, there have
been years when large amounts of money-Rs 9,000
crore-have been returned unspent, when our
military is trying desperately to make good its
inventory obsolescence. That is only one of many
inherent systemic inadequacies.

But to stick with the big picture, extrapolating
over the period 2007-12-part of the 11th Defence
Plan period, India's defence spending is likely
to be closer to, if not upwards of, Rs 600,000
crore (around $133 billion at current prices). Of
this, the stores and modernisation component may
touch Rs 372,000 crore ($82 billion). Every tenet
of management and fiscal prudence mandates the
most astute and enabling framework for spending
such allocations. But, the caveat here arises
from our systemic deficiencies.
[. . .]
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=146125


_____


9  KASHMIR:

The Economist, Nov 23rd 2006

KASHMIR: THE INVISIBLE SCARS
A WAR-BORNE EPIDEMIC OF MENTAL ILLNESS

Nov 23rd 2006 | Dardpora and Srinagar

EVERY day of the week, Kailasa staggers to the
hospital in Dardpora, a village 120km (75 miles)
north of Srinagar, capital of Indian-controlled
Kashmir. She arrives with various complaints:
headaches, insomnia, or pains in the stomach,
legs or back. She started coming after her only
son was killed four years ago. Like other young
men from the village, he used to guide militants
across the nearby mountains lying along the "Line
of Control" dividing Indian- and Pakistani-held
Kashmir.
Two reasons for sanity

Kailasa would not describe it so, but she is a
victim of chronic post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD), the debilitating anxiety afflicting many
civilians and soldiers living through conflict.
According to some estimates, four-fifths of the
5m people in the Kashmir valley have been
directly affected by an insurgency against Indian
rule that has simmered since 1989, bringing at
least 40,000 deaths.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), an aid group, has
conducted a survey in two border districts on the
impact of the conflict. The results are
frightening. Of the 510 people interviewed, one
in ten had lost immediate family members in the
violence, and one in three had lost members of
their extended families. One in six had been
forcibly displaced and 13% had witnessed rape.
Virtually all had endured one or more raids on
their houses. Not surprisingly, fewer than half
felt safe more than occasionally. Arshad Hussein,
a local psychiatrist, talks of the
"midnight-knock syndrome". People feel so unsafe
that they prefer staying in hospital to going
home.

The MSF report concluded that one-third of the
respondents were suffering from "psychological
distress". A similar proportion had contemplated
suicide, though Islam, the main religion of the
valley, condemns even suicidal thoughts.

There are few resources for people suffering
mental illness. Many seek solace from faith
healers or prayers at Sufi shrines. Others turn
to drugs such as heroin, or over-the-counter
medicines. In the last resort, they turn to the
Psychiatric Diseases Hospital in Srinagar, the
only mental-health institution in the valley.
According to its head, Mushtaq Margoob, in the
1980s an average of 1,300 people a year used to
seek help at its outpatient department. The
number soared in the 1990s, and by 2005 had
reached 68,000. And the patients who reach the
hospital form only the tip of the iceberg. In the
villages that have borne the brunt of the
violence, sufferers do not have the time or money
for the long trip into town.

Of the female patients, 50% were suffering from
depression and PTSD, according to Dr Hussein,
often because they had suddenly become the head
of a household. One such widow, Mumtaz, in the
village of Palhalan, lost her husband two years
ago. He was a Pakistan-trained militant in one of
the valley's many armed factions. He was killed
in front of her children by a paramilitary group
of former militants organised by the Indian army.
The pressure to feed her five young children
seems to keep her sane.

For that reason her children have not yet ended
up in one of the many orphanages that have
mushroomed in the valley to cater for the tens of
thousands of children who have lost parents. Dr
Margoob worries about the mental health of the
young. "An entire generation is growing up", he
says, "that does not live one day without fear."
And this will trouble Kashmiri society for
generations to come, even if peace should prevail
tomorrow.


Tehelka, Nov 25 , 2006

Personal Account
DEATH AT KASHMIR'S DOORSTEP

Pro-government Ikhwani gunmen killed Shakeela's
husband. His crime - a brother had gone to PoK
for arms training. Peerzada Arshad Hamid reports

A gut-wrenching scream rent the still air.
Everyone in the village heard it. It was that
time of the night when the doors are padlocked
and prayers said.

It is the one thing that every mohalla, every
village fears. It means but one thing - death. In
Kashmir - in the throes of an insurgency since
1989 - so many have been mourned. Killed by
either the mujahideen, the security forces or by
surrendered militants. The scream that night had
widowed yet another Kashmiri.

Shakeela Akhtar remembers the half-past midnight
of December 21, 1998. Gunmen patronised by the
government barged into her house and killed her
husband Mohammad Yousuf Dar in cold blood. Her
father-in-law Ghulam Rasool Dar was also killed
the same day along with two others in Anantnag
district's Kaladrang village.

Shakeela says the gunmen belonged to the Ikhwan
ul Muslimeen, which consists of surrendered
militants. The Ikhwan started as a militant group
in 1990, initially known as the Students'
Liberation Front. The group switched loyalties in
1994 and turned into a counter-insurgency group
patronised by security agencies. Till then
security agencies had gained little success
against the militancy. Gunmen belonging to the
group moved about freely, and were dreaded by the
locals. "They were at least 20 of them. They came
masquerading as militants," recalls Shakeela.
They forcibly took her husband, saying they
needed him to guide them to the next village.

From another room, the gunmen dragged her
father-in-law. Shakeela tried to resist but was
locked up in a room. Sensing trouble, she jumped
out from the window and followed the gunmen
barefooted. Unmoved by her pleas, some of them
caught hold of her and pointed their guns at her
till the two were whisked to the road passing
through the village.

Shakeela's cries evoked no response. That's the
way it is in Kashmir; no one wants death at his
or her doorstep. No sooner had she managed to
free herself from the gunmen, they fired a volley
of bullets at her husband and father-in-law. When
the firing stopped, Shakeela heard loud clapping.
"Aaj Mukhtar sala mar gaya (today Mukhtar has
died)," one of the killers shouted and asked the
others to board the vehicle. Mukhtar was Yousuf's
younger brother who had gone to Pakistan-occupied
Kashmir (PoK) in 1996 for arms training. Mukhtar
never returned, but the killers avenged Yousuf
for his affiliation with militants.

In shock, Shakeela rushed towards her parents'
house barely 100 metres away from her own and
hurled stones at their door and windows,
beseeching help. They came out to find Yousuf and
his father lying in a pool of blood. The elder
Dar was alive. Shakeela's brother went to the
chemist's house but had to return without help.
The chemist feared his family would meet the same
fate if he provided first aid. Dar couldn't be
shifted to the hospital and succumbed to his
injuries just before dawn. Fear - it has become a
leitmotif in Kashmir.

Tragedies like Shakeela's - there are thousands
like her in Kashmir - are lost in the "violence
column" of newspapers, popularly called
"situation" by newsmen. Television and radio
anchors do much the same. The day after
Shakeela's world crumbled, the evening radio
bulletin quoted a police handout that said
militants entered village Kaladrang in Anantnag
and killed four people. The police fir mentioned
that unidentified gunmen entered the house of
Ghulam Rasool Dar and killed him along with his
son during the intervening night of December
21-22, 1998.

"Unidentified gunmen" is a widely used term in
Kashmir, mostly by the police and the press.
Generally they are perceived to be militants.
Police uses the term to avoid serious
investigations, the press to save its skin. Even
if the killers are thought to be insurgents, or
counter-insurgents, the press prefers to call
them "unidentified gunmen". The fear of being
next is everywhere. Life is uncertain. It is
dangerous. But in Kashmir, it is also
business-like.

Shakeela is quite sure, for instance, that the
killers were renegades but she never contested
the fir. If she had, she probably would have been
denied the ex-gratia amount. The government pays
Rs 1 lakh to the next of kin of those killed by
militants or in crossfire. Families of militants
killed by security agencies are not entitled to
the ex-gratia payment.

To be entitled, civilians killed by the security
forces have to be killed by militants "on paper".
Or, the police have to admit that the security
forces killed the civilians. The admission is
rare. But the manipulation on paper is common.

Shakeela says the killings in the village were
provoked and carried out to avenge the killing of
an Ikhwani by militants earlier in the day in the
neighbouring village of Khudwani. Their family
was chosen because one of their sons had crossed
over to PoK. Mukhtar had fled in 1996 along with
a neighbour. The neighbour's father and brother
were also killed that night.

Neither Mukhtar nor his neighbour returned from
across the Line of Control, but their families
paid the price. "If he hadn't gone there, we
wouldn't have suffered this way. He has been
living there and I had to beg for alms to make
ends meet," Shakeela says.

Everyday, someone pays a price. Mukhtar's
crossover had brought tragedy earlier. In an
earlier security check, men in uniform inquired
about Mukhtar from his mother. She candidly told
them that he had crossed over to PoK. The
statement enraged them and a soldier fired close
to her ear. The shock was too much for her and
she died within days of the incident.

Most families are ailing. Figures available at
the Valley's only psychiatric hospital in
Srinagar reveal that in 1987, the total number of
patients visiting the hospital for consultation
was 775. The figure crossed 60,000 in 2005.

Even if Shakeela suffers from a stress disorder,
she wouldn't know it. She is too busy fending for
her children. For some years she ran the
household on the ex-gratia amount but now the
bank manager rebukes her, saying, how can you
spend the money on orphans. She now gets Rs 200
from an ngo but that is too little. "For feeding
myself and my children till date, I have done
everything except going astray," she says.

Shakeela's husband was a carpet weaver and three
months before his death, he had joined the state
police as spo at the salary of Rs 1,500 per
month. However working with police couldn't save
him. "That night he had come after 15 days on
duty, and I was seeking his explanation for the
long stay. He was holding our elder daughter in
his lap and I was breastfeeding the younger one,"
recounts Shakeela. "What will happen to my
daughters? Who will accept me along with my
daughters? Kashmir is full of widows who have no
answers to the same question." As dusk creeps in,
restlessness grips her. "Howling dogs or a
child's shriek gets to her," says her father.

Apart from the ex-gratia amount of Rs 1 lakh, the
kin of killed persons are also entitled to a
government job. Shakeela has been following her
case since 1999 and visits to the deputy
commissioner's office in Anantnag every fortnight
only elicit one response - come after 15 days.
The number of pending cases of compassionate
appointments runs into hundreds in every
district. Corruption and official lethargy
complicate the problem.

In Kashmir, life's miseries are unending. Will
talking to Pakistan help? Will the prime
minister's dialogue with the Hurriyat help? Have
the elections helped? The lack of clear answers,
the futility of what tomorrow will bring has
already seen 17 years go by. An entire population
is looking for answers.


o o o

ON THE DEATH SENTENCE TO MOHAMMAD AFZAL

The Telegraph, November 10, 2006
HOUR OF THE HANGMAN
- The aftermath of Afzal's hanging may be long and costly
by Ashok Mitra
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1061110/asp/opinion/story_6976655.asp


_____


10.  MANIPUR AND THE STRUGGLE AGAINST ARMED
FORCES (SPECIAL POWERS) ACT  - AFPSA

(i)

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE, HEADED BY JUSTICE (RETD)
B.P. JEEVAN REDDY, TO REVIEW THE ARMED FORCES
(SPECIAL POWERS) ACT 1958
http://www.hindu.com/nic/afa/


(ii)

SOLIDARITY FAST
against
AFSPA, MILITARIZATION AND IMPUNITY
23rd November
at  Jantar Mantar, 11.30 a.m. onwards

The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) is
one of the most draconian legislations that the
Indian Parliament has passed in its history. The
Act violates basic parametres of human rights law
by giving the security forces wide-ranging powers
including special impunity, and has ennabled
grave human rights abuses, including enforced
disappearances, rape, torture, and killing on
mere suspicion, among many others, in the North
East and Jammu and Kashmir.
Based on a colonial ordinance this Act stands as
an emblem of the 'security perspective' of the
Indian State, wherein the multitude of struggles
for autonomy and greater democratic and civil
rights are
viewed as 'law and order' and 'security'
problems, which can be managed by an
ever-increasing deployment of armed forces.
The Act prevails as the most draconian face of
militarisation in the North East and Kashmir. It
has become a powerful tool of the security forces
to suppress all kinds of democratic dissent in
these regions. Not only AFSPA, but also other
black laws have engendered a climate of impunity
in the North East and Kashmir with security
forces given the license to perpetuate the most
barbaric acts without any fear of being held
accountable for their actions.
The people's movement against Armed Forces
Special Powers Act, 1958, (AFSPA) has been
continuing since the time of its very imposition
in 1958. The protests have garnered some public
attention since Irom Sharmila's ongoing hunger
strike since 2000, and the brutal killing of
Ms. Manorama Devi by the Assam Rifles in 2004 in
Manipur, which sparked people to come out on the
streets in the North East and other areas to
demand the repeal of this repressive act. As an
outcome of the people's uproar, the Government of
India agreed to have a committee, headed by
Justice Jeevan Reddy, to review the AFSPA.
The Government of India has refused to disclose
the contents of this committee's report for more
than a year and half. Ironically, the leaked copy
of the report has nothing substantial for public
information except its recommendation for the
'Repeal of the Act'.
The Armed Forces Special Powers Act and other
black laws of its ilk are symbols of the Indian
State's continued neglect of political solutions
to the questions of self-determination and
autonomy in the regions affected, desecration of
democracy and systematic resort to increased
militarisation to curb all such struggles. The
time calls for people everywhere to voice, in
unison, their opposition to AFSPA, impunity,
militarization, and the pervasive and continued
undermining of democracy
in North East region and Jammu and Kashmir.

We call on all concerned individuals and People's
Movements, Students, Women's groups, Human Rights
groups to join in support of Sharmila and those
people in NE and Kashmir living under the most
repressive and undemocratic conditions. Impunity
occurs now not just in the margins of
North East and JK, but also increasingly all over
the country, from Chattisgarh to Orissa to
Kerala, and we must collectively and strongly
oppose it.

Join us in demanding from the Indian State:
The repeal of AFSPA and all black laws in North
East and Kashmir.  An end to the climate of
impunity in North East, Kashmir and other regions.
A stop to the recurrent violation of its
citizens' democratic and human rights by means of
military might.
Expedite investigation into human rights abuses
and book security personnel responsible for such
acts.

CAMPAIGN AGAINST AFSPA, MILITARISATION AND IMPUNITY [The Other Media,
Forum for Democratic Initiative, NPMHR, North East Peoples' Initiative,
Indian Social Institute, Vidyajyoti, National Alliance of Peoples
Movement, Koch Rajbanshi Pancha,] *

Kindly Endorse Your Organisational Participation:

Contact: Ravi Hemadri (9871415186), Saurabh Bhattacharjee (9891022459),
K. Onil (9818781767),

(iii)

Combat Law, Vol 5 Issue 5, November - December 2006

   HOW MANY DAYS MUSTA WOMAN FAST BEFORE SHES FREE...

Six years of satyagraha. Sharmila continues her
fast, in custody, confined to a room in AIIMS,
writing poetry, reading books, doing yoga. The
struggle against AFSPA continues. In Manipur and
in Delhi. Harsh Dobhal follows Irom Sharmila's
resistance in ...

Harsh Dobhal

New private ward. All India Institute of Medical
Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi. As you enter the
building, about a dozen policemen and
intelligence personnel stop you. After seeking
permission from a reluctant inspector, about five
suspicious and armed policemen stationed at the
door of room number 57 carry on the interrogation
and more questions follow.
Inside the room, a frail young woman is lying on
her back on the hospital bed in a rather awkward
position. She is doing halasan, a plough position
of yoga. Her body carefully covered with a blue
blanket. Clean complexion, sharp eyes, unkempt
hair and a white strip of medical tape around her
nose. Che Guevara's The Motorcycle Diaries is
next to her head; she has just finished reading
the celebrated book on his young journeys by the
legendary revolutionary. "This is a very good
exercise for kidneys and to cure diabetes. I do
it everyday for few hours." She talks and
continues her yoga. "You can talk; it doesn't
matter if I am doing yoga."
A voracious reader, she has been relentlessly
reading books on Japanese folk tales, yoga,
Nelson Mandela, Che, Gandhi. Friends have been
coming with gifts, diaries, calendars and she
looks forward eagerly to pass these on to other
visiting friends, her personal life being
intensely sparse, stoic and simple. She liked
reading the biography of Nelson Mandela and has
now sent it to the central library of Manipur,
along with the other books she happens to come
across.
Irom Sharmila Chanu, 34, poetess, painter and
Gandhian activist from Manipur, has been on
fast-unto-death since November 4, 2000, being
force-fed through a pipe in her nose. Her
categorical demand - repeal the Armed Forces
Special Powers Act, 1958 (AFSPA) which gives
draconian powers to the security forces, who have
used the Act brutally and repeatedly in the
northeast.
Having completed six years of this 'satyagraha
fast' on November 4, this year, Sharmila has come
to symbolise the steadfast scaffolding of the
movement against the injustices committed under
AFSPA and in support of the protracted struggle
for justice, human rights and peace in Manipur
and the northeast. An iconic legend in Manipur's
politics, her fast is perhaps the longest
political protest of its kind in history and in
any part of the world.
Irom Nanda and Irom Sakhi Devi of Kongpal
Kongkham village, on the periphery of Imphal, had
no idea what was in store for their daughter, the
youngest among nine siblings (five brothers and
four sisters) and dearest to all, when she was
born on March 14, 1972. "I am the youngest
daughter born to an illiterate, compassionate and
strong mother - we were nine children, my eldest
brother died due to an illness. I am not
important for this world, just like a worm that
can be crushed. I failed my class XII exam. I
don't like speaking too much, but it is
inevitable when someone comes to conduct an
interview," she told a friend who has been
attending her in hospital. Sharmila never went to
college.
On the first day in hospital after regaining
little strength, Sharmila said that she did not
need assistance to wash her clothes. "This is my
work. I must keep my muscles strong. In Manipur,
I cleaned the floor of my cell each day." She has
basically remained in custody all these years.
As a 15-day-old child, Sharmila was fed with
boiled rice juice as her mother could not
breastfeed her. Few days later, brother Singhajit
would take her to "other mothers" in the
neighbourhood who had recently given birth to
babies. "She was fed by many mothers of Manipur.
If any woman came to our small grocery shop with
a small baby, we would request her to feed
Sharmila," he says. "Perhaps that is why she has
grown so socially conscious and politically
committed."
As she grew up and "when I look back now, I
realise I had a few different habits as a child.
I used to sit in the Shiva temple, close to my
house, and talk about regular, everyday things,"
says Sharmila.
When doctors at AIIMS insisted that she must seek
discharge from the hospital and the police
complicated the issue by saying she would not be
allowed out, she realised these were nothing but
pressure tactics. Anguished that the doctors
would ask her to pay the hospital bill, she told
a friend: "What do they want from me? I possess
nothing, only my organs." As expected, the hard
years of continuous fasting have taken their toll
on her health and her fasting is now having a
direct impact on her body's normal functioning.
Apart from other medical problems she has
developed, her bones have reportedly become
brittle. The doctors at AIIMS have not released
any medical report on her health.
"I need to keep myself healthy. The force-feeding
is completely unnatural." She walks for about two
hours, if given permission, in the hospital
corridor with at least one security personnel
stationed at each side of the corridor. "I must
be strong. I have to fight." Apart from learning
shorthand, Sharmila has also completed a course
in yoga and naturopathy.
When she began her fast on November 4, 2000, most
people had little inkling of her resolve. Some of
them shrugged it off, others took it
non-seriously, a handful ridiculed it. But for
Sharmila, life had taken a different turn, a
tough long-distance journey with a clear
destination, a U-turn with no return ticket.
The decision to go on long fast, though
well-thought over, was not an action planned well
in advance. In fact, Sharmila had joined the
anti-AFSPA movement just two weeks before she
began fasting. A three-member Indian People's
Inquiry Committee (IPIC) headed by Justice H
Suresh had visited Manipur in the second week of
October in 2000. The committee travelled to
various areas of Manipur and met a number of
victims, their relatives and friends, to hear
their tales of injustice - cases of rape,
violence, killings and disappearances. It held
workshops and extensive discussions with human
rights lawyers, journalists, academics and
others. Sharmila was a part of this process as a
volunteer and that was her first political
participation and initiation. During the IPIC
investigations, she was particularly shaken by
the testimony of a young girl who was raped by
the security forces at Lamden village. Sharmila
and two other women volunteers had privately
talked to the girl.
As the IPIC completed its investigations by the
third week of October, something had already
sparked inside Sharmila's soul by now. For the
next few days, she met with several human rights
activists, lawyers and journalists to learn more
about repressive laws, army atrocities and AFSPA
in particular.
On November 2, 2000, security forces fired at and
killed 10 innocent people waiting at a bus stop
at Malom, about 15 km from Imphal. That was a
Thursday when Sharmila would observe her weekly
fast since her childhood. "The same fast
continues till date, though she declared it on
November 4," brother Singhajit informs.
Though there was nothing new for the people in
Manipur about the Malom massacre as they had
witnessed similar cold-blooded killings before
when the security forces would go berserk and
kill ordinary people, Sharmila could not bear the
sight of the blood spilled on the street. That
single event changed her life. By now she had
already taken a decision. She went to her mother
on the evening of November 4 and took her
blessings "to do something better for the
people". That was the last time the mother and
daughter saw each other. "My mother knows
everything about my decision. She is extremely
simple, but she has the courage to let me do my
bounden dutyŠ My mother has given me her
blessings. If I meet her, it may weaken both of
us." Ever since, Sharmila has not combed her
hair, not looked into the mirror and not a single
drop of water has crossed her mouth. She cleans
her teeth with dry cotton.
Armed with her mother's blessings, Sharmila
headed straight to the site of the bloodbath. And
thus began her historic, peaceful fast. By
November 21, she was arrested on charges of
'attempt to suicide'. The administration began
force-feeding her nasally, confining her to the
Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital in Imphal. It has been
six years since. Under judicial custody, she has
refused to break her fast or seek bail. As is the
pattern, on the completion of one year, she is
released by the court, as the maximum sentence
given to her for 'attempting suicide' can't
exceed one year. She is repeatedly rearrested
within 2-3 days as she continues her fast without
water. And this yearly cycle continues, till date.

An iconic legend, her fast is perhaps the longest
political protest of its kind in history in any
part of the world. She symbolises the steadfast
scaffolding of the movement against injustice

"I was shocked to see the dead bodies. There was
no means to stop further violations by the armed
forcesŠ. It (fast) is the most effective way
because it is based on a spiritual fightŠ My fast
is on behalf of the people of Manipur. This is
not a personal battle, it is symbolic. It is a
symbol of truth, love and peace," she says.
This year, on October 3, as she was again
released by the court, her brother and a friend
kept her away from the media limelight for one
night. Next day, dodging media and security
personnel, they literally smuggled her out of
Manipur. She landed in Delhi the same day, in an
attempt to highlight the issue nationally. From
the airport, she headed straight to Rajghat to
pay homage to Mahatma Gandhi's <samadhi>. "If
Gandhiji were alive today, he would have launched
a movement against the AFSPA. My appeal to the
citizens of the country is to join the struggle
against AFSPA," Sharmila told journalists. Later
that day, Sharmila went to Jantar Mantar and
continued her fast with a stream of people coming
to express support. Three days later, in a
midnight swoop, police picked her up and admitted
her in AIIMS.
Sharmila is not alone in her struggle. Women in
the northeast have a history of concerted
political action, intense resistance and
sacrifice, especially the great mothers of
Manipur. Sharmila is continuing that legacy,
taking it to new heights. The state erupted in
flames in 2004, after the brutal rape and murder
of a young woman activist, Thangjam Manorama
Devi, by the Assam Rifles personnel. The brutal
incident triggered an unprecedented form of
protest by Manipuri women that shook the nation's
conscience. In an attempt to draw the attention
of an insensitive and cold-blooded security and
political establishment in Imphal and Delhi,
otherwise obsessed with giving its army and
police unrestricted powers in the name of
national security, Manipuri mothers, for the
first time, turned to their bodies to give vent
to their resentment. They bared themselves in
front of the Assam Rifles headquarters in Imphal
and challenged the army to rape them. "Come
Indian Army, Rape Us," said their banner, as they
protested, fully naked.
Meanwhile, Sharmila continues her fast, in
custody, confined to a room in AIIMS, writing
poetry, reading books, doing yoga. The struggle
against AFSPA continues. In Manipur and in Delhi.
Indomitable, firm and resolute, Sharmila's
clarity is lucid; she is in no mood to turn back.
"Unless and until they remove the AFSPA, I shall
never stop my fasting."
In her satyagraha for truth and justice, in her
pain and suffering against the violence of the
State against its own citizens, this gutsy woman
is trying to make a simple point. But will the
'largest democracy in the world' ever get this
message and act - for the sake of humanity?


(iv)

The Hindu, November 26, 2006

EBADI WILL TAKE MANIPURI WOMAN'S CASE TO UNHRC

New Delhi, Nov. 26 (PTI): Nobel Peace prize
winner Shirin Ebadi today said she would seek
support at international fora like the UN for
Manipuri woman Irom Sharmila Chanu's struggle
against the controversial Armed Forces (Special
Powers) Act.

Ebadi, who is in the capital, visited AIIMS today
to meet Sharmila, who is on a fast against the
anti-terror law, and extended support to her
campaign. Emerging from the meeting, Ebadi waved
a poster that appealed to the government to
revoke the law.

"I will report to the UN High Commissioner on
Human Rights on how this country is violating
human rights. A woman who has been arrested by
the police two months back is not being produced
in court. I will also talk to the Indian
Government about this," Ebadi told reporters.

During the hour-long meeting, Ebadi recorded her
conversation with Sharmila and said this will be
produced before the UN Human Rights Council as
evidence.

"It is a matter of shame for the people and
country. Sharmila has (said she will not) consume
anything until she is produced in court. She is
very weak and every sentence came out with great
difficulty from her mouth," she said.

Terming her meeting with Sharmila as one of the
most painful experiences of her life, Ebadi said
she had removed the food pipe used to force feed
her for the past three days.

Sharmila began her fast to demand the withdrawal
of the AFSPA six years ago after some civilians
were gunned down by security forces near
Manipur's capital Imphal.

Ebadi called on people to launch a protest
against the government for giving sweeping powers
to the security forces through the AFSPA. "If a
law allows the army to do whatever they want, we
cannot sit in silence. I appeal to the Indian
Government to immediately revoke the AFPSA and
release Sharmila on humanitarian grounds," she
said.

"The Indian Government should know that if one
Sharmila dies, there will be thousands of
protestors around the world fighting for her
cause," she said.

Ebadi also visited Gandhi Smriti and paid tributes to Mahatama Gandhi.


(v)

The Telegraph, November 27, 2006
A VERY SPECIAL ACT - Manipur may become another
Kashmir, but the AFSPA must stay
Ashok Mitra
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1061127/asp/opinion/story_7049752.asp

_____


11  2006 - BOMB BLASTS OF BOMBAY and MALEGAON :

(i)
   Sale of security gizmos rises after blasts
Shailesh Menon
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2006071804610100.htm&da\
te=2006/07/18/&prd=bl&

(ii)

www.sacw.net  | 18 November
MALEGAON BOMB BLAST TRAIL IN SEARCH OF THE ACCUSED !
by Subhash Gatade

http://www.sacw.net/hrights/gatade18nov06.html
or
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2006/11/malegaon-bomb-blast-trail-in-search-of.h\
tml

(iii)

Communalism Watch | 17 November 2006
MALEGAON BLASTS - PARTISAN APPROACH AND BIASED POLICE
by Asghar Ali Engineer
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2006/11/malegaon-blasts-partisan-approach-and.ht\
ml


_____


12   ARMS SALES TO AND FROM SOUTH ASIA - PLANS AND THE PLAYERS:


The Economist, Oct 19th 2006 | DELHI

   ARMS SALES IN INDIA - SCANDALOUS PROCUREMENT

Round up the usual suspects

DEFENCE procurement in India has a big element of
farce. For two decades, arms companies have been
forbidden to use agents in their efforts to
peddle wares to the government; a ban they have
routinely ignored. The agents are well known.
Some are fixtures on Delhi's diplomatic circuit;
one owns a central Delhi hotel; another has a
publicly declared stake in a low-cost airline.
Together with their underlings, who are dubbed
middlemen, they are present in virtually every
defence deal-though they are not allowed to visit
the Ministry of Defence (MOD) or meet officials.
Nor do they seem to suffer unduly when, in need
of a high-profile scapegoat, governments
occasionally raid their offices and homes, and
leak damaging allegations about their business
activities to newspapers. Of course, these
usually turn on the agents' involvement in a
defence deal under the previous administration.

This cycle was repeated on October 10th. The
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is
controlled by the Congress-led government, raided
35 agents' premises in Delhi and other cities. It
then registered cases against George Fernandes,
the defence minister in the previous government,
led by the Bharatiya Janata Party; Jaya Jaitley,
a former president of Mr Fernandes's Samata
Party, and Admiral Sushil Kumar, a former navy
chief, over a $269m order placed in 2000 with
Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) for its Barak
missile system.

The CBI alleged that Ms Jaitley received an
illicit payment of 20m rupees (then $433,000) on
the deal, and that the admiral "colluded" in the
scam by favouring the Barak over a missile system
called Trishul, which was being developed by the
DRDO, India's leading defence research
establishment. This is despite the fact that the
Trishul was nowhere near ready for commissioning
in 2000, 17 years after the DRDO started work on
it, and little progress has since been made.
Moreover, India's navy is happy with the Israeli
missiles. In January the DRDO and IAI struck a
$350m deal to develop jointly a long-range Barak
air-defence system for use by their two
countries' navies.

The forlorn bid to ban agents was introduced by
the late Rajiv Gandhi, a Congress prime minister
in the mid-1980s. But instead of sluicing the
system as he intended, the ban criminalised
agents without banishing them. One resulting
scandal, involving agents in a Bofors howitzer
gun contract, dragged on for almost the duration
of the ban; it was ended earlier this year. There
have been several efforts to end the farce by
registering reputable representatives of defence
companies, as opposed to dodgier freelancers. On
October 14th Manmohan Singh, the prime minister,
said that since agents could not be eliminated,
they should perhaps be recognised. But MOD
officials, some of whom have prospered from the
current mess, are loth to register anyone. For
their part, the agents fear that if they are
registered, they will have to pay a good deal
more tax.

Asia Times - Nov 4, 2006
INDIA FAILS TO KICK OUT ARMS KICKBACKS
by Sudha Ramachandran
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HK04Df01.html

THE DILEMMA OVER DEFENCE AGENTS
by Rahul Bedi  (Oct 17, 2006)
http://www.hindu.com/2006/10/17/stories/2006101703661100.htm

Outlook, Nov 20, 2006
COVER STORY: ARMS DEALS
The Octopus Gang In Muddy Shallows
Verma and Co penetrated all big secrets of the
navy, army and air force purchases
Saikat Datta

"Abhishek Verma was having access to such
official record of the defence ministry having a
bearing on the safety and security of the nation
through some compromised officers..."
-CBI chargesheet of October 17, 2006.

Call him one of India's best information banks on defence procurement secrets.
Middleman and flashy arms dealer Abhishek Verma
and his associates gained access to a wide range
of sensitive information that has shocked the CBI
investigators probing the naval war room leak
case. From a note on the acquisition of 126
multi-role combat aircraft for the air force to
"secret" minutes of a meeting of the defence
procurement board, Verma & Co managed to
penetrate and source documents from the ministry
of defence (MoD) and the headquarters of the
three services with unbelievable ease. Both these
documents are now part of the 369 pages of secret
documents that the CBI has annexed to its
chargesheet against Verma.

Interestingly, this material has been
forensically recovered from just one pen drive.
Kulbhushan Parashar, vice president of Atlas
Defence Systems, a company Verma co-founded, had
eight such pen drives full of data.

	 Despite naval HQ's persistent denials,
the CBI believes that operational information had
also been leaked.

	 The CBI has so far traced only three. Of
these, one has been electronically erased, while
the remaining two have yielded a massive 7,500
pages marked secret and confidential. Part of
these documents were submitted to the court in
July this year.

Ironically,
the navy's board of inquiry which first probed
the war room leak chose to deliberately ignore
the very files that the CBI has now annexed as
"evidence" against Verma and his co-accused-Ravi
Shankaran and Kulbhushan Parashar. Initially, it
was thought that the war room leak was limited to
the navy's procurement plans. But CBI's
investigations have revealed that Verma not only
enjoyed considerable access to the army and air
force but also to notes sent by the US embassy in
Delhi to senior defence officers. Sample the
secret documents recovered by the CBI:

      * Note prepared by Integrated Defence
Headquarters (IDS) dated December 17, 2004,
regarding the army's 10th plan.
      * An appendix to a note prepared by IDS HQs
regarding air force procurement proposals.
      * Note on multi-role combat aircraft for the
air force with acquisition plan (2004-2006).
      * Secret defence ministry note regarding
record of discussions of the meeting of the
defence procurement board.
      * Letter dated December 16, 2004, with
annexures from Greg Winston, office of defence
cooperation, US embassy, New Delhi, to Major
General Kunal Mukherjee, additional director, war
establishment directorate.
      * Letter written by then defence minister
Pranab Mukherjee to former Lok Sabha MP Ramjibhai
B. Manvani dated August 4, 2004.
      * An appendix to a note prepared by IDS HQ
regarding details of the navy's Tenth Plan
proposals.
      * A letter written by joint secretary Gautam
Mukhopadhya, in charge of planning and
international cooperation in the ministry of
defence. The letter was addressed to the Indian
high commission in London. But someone faxed a
copy to "A. Verma".
      * Part of a contract drawn up for a
74-million-dollar deal relating to the
procurement of fighter aircraft and related
training aid equipment.
      * A confidential draft regarding the naval
staff quality requirements for submarine sensors.

Among the files recovered is a document
containing a letter written by Gautam Mukhopadhya
in response to a communication from European arms
major EADS proposing to set up a voice and data
network in the Andaman and Nicobar islands. The
document was forwarded by then Indian deputy high
commissioner in London Satyabrata Pal and
addressed to senior officials in the defence
ministry and the Integrated Defence Headquarters.
[ . . . ].
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20061120&fname=Cover+Story+%28F%29&\
sid=2

INDIA BUYS 330 RUSSIAN TANKS
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/10/27/rustankstoindia.shtml

Times of India, November 26, 2006
INDIA SEEKS ISRAELI HELP FOR SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Delayed_Divya_Drishti_seeks_Israeli_help_for_\
surveillance/articleshow/580526.cms

INDIAN NAVY CHIEF SAYS THE COUNTRY NEEDS TO
PROJECT POWER ACROSS THE WORLD'S OCEANS
The Associated Press
Published: November 24, 2006
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/i_latestdetail.asp%3Fid%3D42650&cid=0

FBI LOOKS TO BOOST INTELLIGENCE TIES WITH INDIA
http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=338504&sid=NAT

The Hindu, November 17, 2006
US weapons majors upset over India's tilt to PSUs
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/003200611171560.htm

INDIA, ITALY TO CEMENT DEFENSE TIES WITH JOINT DEVELOPMENTS
By Vivek Raghuvanshi, New Delhi
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2373565&C=asia

INDIA-ITALY INK MOU TO BOOST DEFENCE AND TECHNOLOGY SECTOR
Source: IRIS (16 November 2006)
The CII and the Italian Industries Association
for Aerospace, Systems and Defence, recently
signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to
promote bilateral cooperation between the two
countries, especially in the area of defence and
technology. The India-Italy Defence Industry
Consultative Committee (DICC) has also been
formed to take forward the MoU agenda.
[. . .]
http://www.myiris.com/newsCentre/newsPopup.php?fileR=20061116134028047&dir=2006/\
11/16&secID=livenews

Washington Post, November 20, 2006; Page D04
CONTRACTS AWARDED
by Judith Mbuya
[. . .]
Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems of Linthicum
Heights won a $99.5 million contract from the
Headquarters Aeronautical Systems Center to
provide government furnished property for the
government of Pakistan for F-16 Block 50/52 new
aircraft and the modernization program.
[. . .] .
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/19/AR2006111900716.\
html

Dawn, November 16, 2006
US-PAKISTAN DEFENCE TIES BEING BOOSTED
by Anwar Iqbal
WASHINGTON, Nov 15: The US and Pakistan have been
quietly rebuilding their military-to-military
relationship disrupted in 1990 when Washington
slapped restrictions on Islamabad for its efforts
to develop nuclear weapons, says a congressional
report.
[. . .]
http://www.dawn.com/2006/11/16/top8.htm&cid=0

Dawn, November 21, 2006
$160M DEFENCE SYSTEM FROM US
by Anwar Iqbal
http://www.dawn.com/2006/11/21/top5.htm

PAKISTAN, CHINA SIGN AIRCRAFT DEAL
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200611241140.htm

_____


13     MILITARISATION, SECURITISATION AND SOCIETY:

PPP SLAMS ARMY MEN'S INDUCTION INTO CBR
Nov 7, 2006
http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=31090

A FISHY STORY
by Siddharth Varadarajan
http://svaradarajan.blogspot.com/2006/10/fishy-story.html

PM DODGES IB DEMAND FOR MORE TEETH TO FIGHT TERROR
Subodh Ghildiyal & Vishwa Mohan
[ 24 Nov, 2006
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/PM_dodges_IB_demand_for_more_teeth\
_to_fight_terror/articleshow/548209.cms

IB CHIEF'S CALL MAY SPARK POLITICAL STORM
Subodh Ghildiyal & Vishwa Mohan
[ 24 Nov, 2006
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/IB_chiefs_call_may_spark_political_storm/arti\
cleshow/548307.cms

Indian Express
UP'S KIDNAP COUNTRY HAS 50,000 VALID GUNS
Aman Sharma
November 16, 2006
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/16694.html

IN NOIDA BACKYARD, GUNS ON STREETS, KIDNAPPING AN INDUSTRY
Aman Sharma
November 15, 2006
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/16665.html

STATE OF GUARDS
Dheeraj Tiwari
November 26, 2006
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/576351.cms

SOLUTIONS COME KNOCKING
Sanjeev Sinha
Times News Network[ Sunday, November 26, 2006 09:56:26 Am]
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/577994.cms

The Telegraph, November 15, 2006
IN SEARCH OF SECURITY
The government has put in place model rules for
private security agencies, but many in the
industry are unhappy with them. Aparna Harish
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1061115/asp/atleisure/story_7001079.asp

Times of India Editorial: He's No Khalnayak
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/OPINION/Editorial/TODAYS_EDITORIAL_Hes_No_Kha\
lnayak/articleshow/627080.cms

ID PROOF NEEDED TO MAKE ISD CALL FROM MP
[ 23 Nov, 2006  TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/ID_proof_needed_to_make_ISD_call_f\
rom_MP/articleshow/547648.cms

NOW CYBER CAFÉS UNDER SCANNER!
By Herald Reporter
PANJIM, NOV 22 - After initiating tabs on rented houses and use of
second hand vehicles, it's now cyber cafés that come under the scanner
for alleged misuse of the facilities for terrorist activities.
[. . .]
http://oheraldo.in/node/20641


Himal South Asian - Dec 2006
(The Panos-Himal Southasian media gatekeepers' roundtable,11-12 November 2006
Are India and Pakistan really in control of the situation?
Cairo, Egypt, November 2006)

THE IMPACT OF FUNDAMENTALIST GROUPS ON POLICY
by Bharat Bhushan, editor, The Telegraph

Let us look at some internal factors. Does
internal electoral compulsion affect
India-Pakistan relations in India? Certainly it
does, and it should. Because in an inclusive
democracy, you must take the views of all
constituents into account, irrespective of what
we might call vote-bank politics. However, having
said that, there are cynical politicians - and
not only in the Congress, right across all kinds
of parties - who see their policy towards
Pakistan as an extension of their domestic
compulsions. So, for example, the elections in
Uttar Pradesh, which are due in February next
year, before that you will see a certain kind of
polarisation. There is a lot of guesswork
involved in democratic politics, so there will be
parties who think that being softer towards
Pakistan, being reconciliatory, would help them
with votes of certain communities or certain
sections of society.

The second question is - do fundamentalist groups
influence policy towards Pakistan? They certainly
try to do that; sometimes they're effective,
sometimes they're not. Fundamentalist Hindu
groups like the RSS, Bajrang Dal, they're only
anti-Muslim. They have a bias against Pakistan,
to put it mildly. But they tend to have far
greater influence on BJP-led governments. For
other governments, they create communal tension,
they create problems, law-and-order problems
which can be dealt with. Are there Muslim
fundamentalist groups in India which influence
policy? We have an absolutely amazing
organisation called Jamaat-e-Ulema-Hind, which
took on Jinnah earlier with the two-nation
theory. Exceptionally nationalist, even today
they argue for moderation, particularly after the
Bombay serial blasts; its influence on policy has
been fairly remarkable. There is another element
in the Muslim community that has emerged, but
this is more a response to a lack of social and
political justice. If I was a young Muslim kid
living in Gujarat and I found that there was no
justice for Muslims of Gujarat, I would turn
towards extremism.

My next point is terrorist acts influencing
policy. Some of these kids can get used by the
powers that be to create terrorism in India. Are
terrorist acts in India an internal problem in
India? People suspect they are part of an
external policy that Pakistan follows towards
India. I've had very liberal Pakistani friends
tell me that if we give up - not now, five years
ago - if we give up using violence against India,
you would never talk about Kashmir. I suspect
they're right. But after every big terrorist act,
whether it is the market blasts in Delhi, or
Bombay, or Malegaon, it becomes that much more
difficult for the leadership to pursue a line of
reconciliation with Pakistan.

Popular will influences relationships. Popular
will expresses itself in various ways - elections
are one of them, and people by and large want
peace with Pakistan, despite these aberrations
and terrorist acts. The people-to-people
contacts, which have gone up in the last five or
six years, have had an amazing influence - the
kind of warmth that has developed between the two
peoples is amazing.

The media is a major problem, because in India it
has become a force multiplier of the Defence
Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, by and large.
The best of our correspondents have become
nothing more than stenographers, somebody who
could go to the Foreign Office briefing and
people would say, 'Sir could you go a bit slower,
I missed that line.' We have internalised the
national-security paradigm completely. There are
very few newspapers which are outside of that
paradigm. We do unsourced stories from Kashmir,
we accept what the military intelligence says
about Mr X being a Pakistani agent or his name
being this or that - there is no way of
cross-checking.


Gulf News, 27 October 2006
LAHORE RESIDENTS INVEST IN SECURITY AS CRIME SPIRALS
by Kamila Hyat, Correspondent
   Lahore: Iron workers, specialising in affixing
wrought iron grill on windows, and security
companies are both doing a roaring business.

Across town, people are attempting to uncover
ways to make their houses safer, and prevent
theft. Car owners too are investing in costly
tracking systems and mobile phone companies are
planning to put in place systems that permit an
owner to disable a stolen phone.

The new demand for such devices come in the wake
of the rising tide of crime seen in the city.

Robberies at homes are reported almost daily and
there has been a sharp upsurge in street crime,
particularly the snatching of mobile phones,
which have become a prime status symbol in an
increasingly consumer-conscious society.

"We moved to Lahore from Karachi five years ago,
so we could live in a safer place. But now it
seems slowly Lahore is becoming as bad as
Karachi," said businessman Irfan Pervaiz, who has
recently employed security guards round the clock
at his house.

In more and more cases, according to accounts
narrated by victims, the robbers breaking into
homes are well-spoken and apparently educated
young men. Often they are masked and their crimes
appear to have been carried out after a careful
study of the house they target.

"It's all linked to the high unemployment rate,
the frustration among young people and what they
perceive as grave social injustice," explained
university teacher Adnan Kabir, who is also
researching crime patterns among young people in
Pakistan.

Coupled with the break-ins into houses has come
an increase in incidents of car snatching or car
lifting. Most of the stolen vehicles are swiftly
taken away to tribal areas, which fall outside
the control of security forces, and, in time,
re-sold.

In response to the growing rate of crime, the
Punjab authorities have repeatedly pledged
tougher policing measures.

A citizens Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), based
on the pattern of one that has run in Karachi for
many years, was also established a few months
ago, as part of an attempt to improve trust and
cooperation between police and the public.

A proposal to put in place a neighbourhood
patrolling system however seems to have fizzled
out.

But despite these measures, the fact is that
crime has been expanding. In at least three cases
reported in 2006 alone, people have been shot by
thieves wishing to steal their mobile phones.

Others have been killed during robberies, most
often when relatively inexperienced criminals
panic.


o o o

Press release

Source: CAPSI
Wednesday, November 15, 2006 11:57 AM IST (06:27 AM GMT)
Editors: General: People, Politics, Social
issues; Business: Business services, Defence &
security

CAPSI and APDI Conjoin for the National
Conference on Security and Intelligence 2006
GOVERNMENT EYES HELP OF PRIVATE SECURITY AGENCIES FOR INTELLIGENCE

New Delhi, Delhi, India, Wednesday, November 15, 2006 -- (Business Wire India)
The Central Association of Private Security
Industry (CAPSI), in association with the
Association of Private Detectives of India (APDI)
organized a national Conference on 4th & 5th
November on internal Security and Intelligence
titled - Security & Intelligence, A New National
Vision.

The two day conference was formally inaugurated
by Hon'ble Union Minister, Home, Shri Shivraj
Patil in the presence of Kunwar Vikram Singh,
President, CAPSI, Capt Ravee, Secretary General,
CAPSI and other distinguished players and guests
from the security industry in India and the U.K.

Favoring utilisation of the private security
guards and detectives, Hon'ble Minister, Home,
Shri Shivraj Patil, said, "The government is
completely aware of the supplementary role that
can be played by the private security industry in
the country, especially for the purpose of
gathering information against terrorist necessary
to boost its intelligence network." However, he
cautioned the private security and detective
agencies to practice self-regulation, mentioning
that failure to do so would result in action
against those who misuse the power.

Welcoming the PSAR Act 2005 for regulating the
Private Investigation business, Kunwar Vikram
Singh, President, CAPSI, said "The private
security industry can contribute to the
information gathering part and this aspect could
be a part of the proposed160 hour training for
the guards". He suggested that a nodal body could
be created that the industry can interact with
and pass on the information.

Kunwar Vikram Singh also launched "JAGTE RAHO
ABHIYAN" which would render the whole security
industry to observe the year 2007 as the year for
security and the industry of 5 million guards
would work closely with the Govt. to fight
terrorism and internal security threats. The Home
Minister appreciated this movement as he
inaugurated the emblem of JAGTE RAHO ABHIYAN.

Sharing his vision on the role played by Private
Security industry, Captain Ravee, General
Secretary, CAPSI, said, "Relying completely on
the government to provide security is impossible
because the priority task to be taken care of by
the government security mechanism are so vast.
This is where the role of Private security and
Investigation industry in contributing towards
maintenance of law and order comes to the fore".

About CAPSI

The Central Association of Private Security
Industry (CAPSI) is the Leading National Body
which represents the Interests of the Private
Security Industry in India.

[. . .]

CAPSI
http://capsi.in/

o o o

Down to Earth, Vol 14 ,No 17 January  31, 2006

THE PURIFICATION HUNT:
THE SALWA JUDUM, A COUNTERINSURGENCY DRIVE IN
CHHATTISGARH LEAVES TRIBALS STUPEFIED
by Nandini Sundar

For about seven months now, Chhattisgarh's
Dantewada district (formerly in Bastar district)
is said to be in the grip of Salwa Judum, a
spontaneous tribal uprising against the Maoists.
According to one report: "From a handful number
to thousands. This is how the anti-Naxal movement
is gaining ground in the main heartland of
Naxalites in Bastar." Another reporter identified
pizza and Pepsi as the administration's latest
and most successful weapons. He quoted a senior
official as saying, "Money spent into weeding out
the Maoist menace makes sense when it is going
into buying soft drinks and pizza that feed
hungry people.

When the people get direct money, they spend it on alcohol."

Spending money on pizza might make sense to the
administration but most adivasis in Dantewada can
make little sense of the operation. The area
between Dantewada and adjoining Bijapur has
become a battle zone, with refugee camps located
in the larger roadside villages and small qasbas.
People have fled, usually without anything at
all: the open tarpaulin shelters often contain
nothing beyond a fireplace and some vessels.
Youth, mostly non-tribal, man checkpoints along
the road. Many of them have now been trained,
armed and given status of special police
officers. The Central Reserve Police Force and
the Naga Battalion are a common sight, either on
their way to or returning from combing
operations. Villages off the main road are silent
and deserted. In Gorna, a village we visited,
houses had been burnt a while ago, there were
creepers growing in the ashes, and the paddy was
lying unattended in the fields - all this in the
name of the Salwa Judum, whose supporters gloss
over its meaning: a 'peace campaign'. Literally
translated into Gondi, the term, however, means a
'purification hunt', and this captures Salwa
Judum for what it is: a classic counterinsurgency
'sanitisation' campaign. Police officials admit
in private that there is an undeclared war
between the government and the Maoists, but the
story for public consumption is something else.
Kamlesh Paikra, the one local journalist in
Bijapur, who is willing to tell the truth, has
had to leave the place for fear of being
'encountered'.

Salwa Judum's origins are murky. But what is
amply clear is that Mahendra Karma, Dantewada's
mla, misappropriated it. He had led previous
attempts at ending Maoist influence, and this
movement too began as another Jan Jagran Abhiyan.
Somewhere along the way it acquired its fancier
title, even as Salwa Judum came firmly under
administrative management. A secretly recorded
audio message released to journalists (which the
police claim is a fabrication but which sounds
very authentic because the principal voice keeps
saying, Steno ko bulao) has Dantewada's police
superintendent saying that villages joining the
Abhiyan will be given Rs 2 lakhs each, and those
who kill Maoists will also be rewarded. However,
not all villagers who have come into the camps
have done so voluntarily. Ostensibly they are
there because of the fear of Naxalite
retaliation, but closer probing reveals that many
have been herded by the Naga Batallion. Villages
which refuse to attend Judum meetings or hand
over villagers who are part of the ' sangham',
the Maoist led village-level organisation, are
repeatedly attacked till they 'surrender'.
Captured sangham members are forced to work as
informers. On the other side, we saw a school
that had been blasted by the Maoists on the
ground that it was used as a paramilitary camp.
But one also wonders why schools should be used
as camps. In any case, no teaching is going on in
large parts of the block, since everyone has fled
either to the jungles or to the camps.

The Maoists are killing people theysuspect are
government informers. According to a government
list, 81 have been killed by them. But the
government is completely silent on the murders in
the course of Salwa Judum. The bodies are left to
decompose, in the confident knowledge that the
state has complete impunity.

The government plans to convert the camps into
long-term strategic settlements, attached to
police stations, with a permanent base of
informers. Rations were stopped long back; people
are now engaged in food-for-work schemes,
widening roads to bring in private capital and
the paramilitary. When all this ends, if ever,
Dantewada will have no resemblance to its former
self.

Nandini Sundar was part of an all-India
fact-finding team that visited Bastar in December
2005

o o o

Economic and Political Weekly, November 18, 2006

A FORCE STRETCHED AND STRESSED
Prolonged deployment of the armed forces in the
"disturbed areas" causes stress among the
personnel, leading to killing of colleagues and
suicides. This is a reflection of the use of
military force in such areas, the solution for
which is a shift in the country's politics so
that there is an end to military suppression in
the "disturbed areas".

by Gautam Navlakha

To fight to defend the life and liberty of people
and/or their borders is a noble cause for any
armed force.
But other wars fought by the armed forces are
not. Every time the armed forces are deployed,
say, for a long duration in what gets notified as
a "disturbed area" or whenthe forces are sent to
quell rebellious people, the task becomes
ignoble, if not unjust. This is especially so
when the residents of a region resent the very
pre- sence of a security force that they regard
as an alien imposition. The ensuing brutalisation
and its impact on the inhabi- tants of the
"disturbed areas" is fairly well documented.
However, what is little appreciated is that such
wars also begin to degrade the armed forces
personnel.  Some evidence is available now in
mediareports on acts of "friend" killing, or what
is called "fragging", suicides, and the rather
high incidence of stress among service personnel
working in internal combat areas.
In the absence of authoritative studies being
available to the public, we do not know how far
back does the data base go or how much of a
causal link or correlation there is between
operating in "disturbed areas" and the incidence
of stress, suicides and fragging, among service
personnel.  We therefore have to use material
avail- able in the public domain to make sense of
what the evidence suggests.
In October 2006 alone, four incidents of
fragging, i e, jawans killing their own
colleagues, were reported from Jammu and Kashmir.
In Manipur, in the last three months there have
been three reported cases of fragging. According
to the vice-chief of the army staff, fragging was
"very, very rare" (The Hindu, September 17,
2006).  However, statistics provided by the army
authorities to the media show that since 2002
there have been 150 cases in which their
personnel were involved in violence against each
other. And, 15-20 murder cases have been recorded
every year. In addition to this, the records show
that 430 officers and other ranks committed
suicide between 2001 and 2005. Also, in 2003 and
2004, 9,414 personnel were admitted to
psychiatric centres and 993 of them were released
due to psychological problems (Asian Age, October
30, 2006). A study commissioned by the army
entitled 'Im- pact of Low Intensity Combat (LIC)
Operations on Service Personnel' found stress in
a majority of personnel surveyed (Masood Hussain,
'Every 12th Army Casualty Is Outcome of Disturbed
State of Mind', Economic Times, April 17, 2006).
In the light of this, the statement of the
director-general of armed forces medical
services, V K Singh that "stress within armed
forces Is the same...in Delhi as it is in Jammu
and Kashmir" is not convinc- ing. And, the
contention that one of the causes for this is
that "family members of servicemen are being
treated badly and in some cases (are) being
threatened by local goons and the civil
administration..." (Hindustan Times, Chandigarh
edition, April 2, 2006) must be taken as a
partial explanation.
Counter-insurgency Effects
It has been reported (Tribune, November 4, 2006)
that a study ordered by the army chief took
another look at composition of the Rashtriya
Rifles (RR), i e, composition of the units and
their service conditions. The RR is the counter-
insurgency arm of the army operating in J and K.
The study, it is reported, held that mixed class
battalions did not work and that the RR should
revert to "pure class"compositions. It also
recommended "homogeneous"units as against the
compositionof the units comprising companiesof
different arms of the infan- try and services of
the army. According to the study this has a
detrimental impact on the cohesiveness of the
fighting force.  Obviously, the problem must be
acute. Or else why should the study address prob-
lems specific to the army's counter-
insurgencyforce, the RR? Why else should it
recommend increasing leave from three to four
months, enhancement of perks, and that those who
serve in counter-insurgency postings be given
good peace-time postings.  However, by linking
the issue to the com- position of RR battalions
and characterising it as harmful to cohesiveness
of the unit, other more pressing issues such as
those having to do with the prolonged use of the
army in "internal security" operations have been
ignored.
Let us go further. It is true that in J andK the
ratio of militants to servicemen killed has
increased since 1993-94, when it was said to be
as low as 2:1. The ratio is said to have risen
from 5.63:1 in 2001 to 7.5:1 at present. This is
being read to mean that fighting militants cannot
be responsible for a deterioration of mental
health among service personnel. However, a caveat
is necessary. The ratio of actual militants to
servicemen killed may be lower because many of
those who get designated as militants in official
parlance could very well be civilians.
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the ratio
has "improved".  If the number of militants in J
and K is said to have declined from the high of
1990-93, when it was estimated to be above
10,000, to no more than 1,500-2,000 since 2002
(which covers the period for which the army has
provided data), the number of operations too must
have come down.  Then the reason for the
abnormality of violence among the armed forces
personnel should be located elsewhere. These
reasons need not be directly linked to the
conduct of actual operations - although such op-
erations were found to have affected 93 per cent
of those surveyed by the study mentioned above -
but to the very deploy- ment of the troops in the
first instance.  When a force is deployed under
the Disturbed Area Act, it is empowered with
extraordinary powers under the Armed Forces
Special Powers Act, which gives it immunity from
prosecution as well as the authority to enforce
whatever laws are in operation in the notified
area. In India, the sanctioned strength of the
civil and armed police is around 1.5 million.
That is, one police personnel for 717 persons.
Of this 40 per cent are armed police. In J and K,
a 6.5 lakh-strong security force (which includes
army, central paramilitary forces and state armed
police) indicates a ratio of one armed police
personnel for every 17 persons. Note that in J
and K, armed personnel comprise more than 90 per
cent of the force in the state. Where there is
one civil or armed personnel in every 2.12 sq km
in J and K (minus Ladakh, which is not notified
as disturbed), the density of armed personnel in
that state is one in every 0.31 sq km. These
armed personnel are empowered under the AFSPA to
suppress militancy, in the words of a former DG
of Police Punjab, "within the law if possible,
outside it, if necessary" (The Hindu, June11,
2006). Since the armed forces can neither
distinguish betweencivilians and militants, the
very purpose of counter-insurgency then
becomesone of subduing the local people who are
regarded as recalcitrant. There- fore even when
the graph of militancy- related violence dips
there is no relaxing the grip of the forces.
Cantonments, camps, checkpoints, bunkers,
roadblocks remain, as do regular patrolling and
random searches. Indeed, at a time when the army
chief says that militancy-related violence has
come down by 30 per cent, frisking and search of
commuters with long queues and long waits, which
were a hallmark of the early 1990s, can again be
observed in J and K towns.
The body and spoken language of the armed
personnel is intimidating, especially if the
residents do not meekly obey com- mands or are
slow in following orders. The commonest abuse is
"s**** Pakistani". In contrast, people waiting in
queue to be frisked or whose homes are being
searched remain expressionless and mute, not
know- ing what the personnel will find provo-
cative and invite their wrath.
What Explains the Suicides?
However, treating a civilian population day in
and day out with suspicion cannot but leave the
forces unaffected. Since they are meant to
monitor the public and private lives of people in
the area, they have to remain alert. That is
where the prolonged presence of units in the
"disturbed area", with long hours of duty when
they have to be on their toes, and delayed
peace-time posting comes into play. It is
understand- able that deployment for long
stretches among people, who for the forces are
the enemy, unless otherwise established, gene-
rates considerable stress. Many personnel are
aware of the fact that their very presencearouses
fear and anger among a large number of the local
people. Worse, service personnel do not receive
the same accolade or praise when they visit their
homes from combat zones inside country's borders
as those who fight external enemieson the
borders. Perhaps what the director-general of
armed forces medical services says makes sense in
this context when he complains about how the
families of servicemen are "badly treated" by
civiliansand how the civil administration remains
"unmoved" by their plight. All in all, the fact
is that acts of indiscipline are a form of
collateral damage due to counter- insurgency
operations.
All this may explain the incidence of "fragging".
But what explains the inci- dence of suicides?
And, since a majority of suicides take place in
the "disturbed areas", what should this be
attributed to?  Perhaps a delay in postings away
from the combat zone contributes to stress and
drives some to take their lives. It is
significant that the study mentioned earlier
shows that nearly 70 per cent of personnel
surveyed had been in a low intensity conflict
area between 13 to 36 months. Thirty-seven per
cent of those surveyed had been in a combat zone
for between 24 and 36 months!  Moreover, the same
survey, in response to specific queries, found
the following percentages: 24 per cent of the
personnel surveyed admitting being troubled by a
sense of futility about continuous low intensity
conflict operations without the support of the
locals and civil admini- stration; 25 per cent
were stressed by continuous operations without
any end in sight; 50.5 per cent reported being
stressed when a colleague got killed; 66.5 per
cent were stressed seeing colleagues wounded;
93 per cent were stressed when exposed to live
operations; 98 per cent feared injuries during
ambush; 98 per cent by patrolling, and so on.
The fact is that sensitive service personnel are
bound to suffer grave doubts about the very
purpose of the role they are actually expected to
carry out. Thus the same condition in which
atrocities are inevitable and about which a
majority of service personnel may not entertain
any thoughts about their role in the "disturbed
areas", can also cause disillusionment among
others and make them want to escape this
condition. Apparently, a quarter of service
personnel surveyed experience such a condition, a
very high figure indeed (Masood Hussain, op cit).
As we go to press, Indian Express (November 11,
2006) reports that every year about 2,400
personnel "board out" due to psy- chological
disorders; an estimated 52,000 of them suffering
post-traumatic stress disorder.
Taking account of all the evidence we have
presented, the problem ought to be a matter of
great concern. The question then is not whether
the armed forces can "quick fix" this problem.
Doubling or even trebling psychological
counselling may be welcome but will this or
better remunera- tion and perquisites for the
forces result in turning an ignoble task of
suppression into a socially useful enterprise?
The point is whether we have the intellectual
courage to face up to the reality behind
fragging, suicide and stress among service
personnel and enable a shift in the country's
politics so that there is an end to military
suppression in the "disturbed areas".


BACKGROUND PAPER
NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: A Comparative Study of
Pakistan and Other Selected Countries
Published by PILDAT in August 2005
ISBN: 969-558-015-7
http://www.fes.org.pk/publications/969-558-015-7.pdf


INDIA'S NATIONAL SECURITY UNDER THE BJP/NDA: "STRONG AT HOME, ENGAGED ABROAD"
by Apurba Kundu
June 2004
European Institute for Asian Studies (EIAS)
http://www.eias.org/publications/briefing/2004/kunduindia2.pdf

______

14.

DefenceNews 11/15/06 11:33

SRI LANKA PLANS WAR BUDGET
by Amal Jayasinghe, Agence France-Presse, Colombo
Sri Lanka plans to announce a war budget Nov. 16
in which it will hike defense spending next year
by 45 percent amid a spiralling conflict with
separatist Tamil Tiger rebels, officials say.
The budget comes against the backdrop of an
International Monetary Fund warning Nov. 14 to
Sri Lanka that the escalating violence could
prompt an economic crisis with surging inflation
and dwindling foreign currency reserves.
Despite the upsurge in fighting that has claimed
over 3,300 lives since December, the economy was
forecast to expand by more than 7 percent in 2006
and more than 8 percent in the coming year,
government officials said.
"We're going to see an expansion that has not
been seen for nearly 30 years," Deputy Finance
Minister Ranjith Siyambalapitiya said.
Preliminary budget estimates placed before
parliament projected defense spending would jump
to 139.55 billion rupees ($1.29 billion) in the
12 months to December 2007 from an estimated
96.21 billion rupees in 2006.
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2359636&C=asiapac

India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch
Compilation (October 31, 2006)
Year Seven, No 165
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/176

Contents:
1   India-Pakistan 'Talkathon' - Mutual distrust (M B Naqvi)
2   The General in His Labyrinth (Reviewed by Pamela Constable)
3   'Pakistan to maintain minimum deterrence'
4   Musharraf's Coup - Seven Years Later (Pervez Hoodbhoy)
5   Grim Warning From North Korea (Praful Bidwai)
6   Equalling India (Abbas Rashid)
7   How is Pakistan 'equal' to India? (Edit, Daily Times)
8.  Balochistan: Pakistan's Nuclear Wasteland Up in Arms
9.  Kashmir:
   -   Heading  Beneficiaries of Conflict (M. Ashraf)
   -  APDP accuses security forces of running parallel govt (Syed Basharat)
    On The Death Sentence To Mohammad Afzal:
     (i) Murder, we said (Jug Suraiya)
10. India: Manipur and the Struggle Against AFPSA
- (i) Does anybody care about Manipur? (Siddharth Varadarajan)
- (ii) Of military rule by other Means (Jawed Naqvi)
(iii) Irom Sharmila : 'Iron Lady' of Manipur (Subhash Gatade)
(iv)  Call For Action: Support Sharmila, Repeal Afspa, Restore Right To Life
(v) The hated Act must go (Edit, The Hindu)
(vi) Farewell To Arms (Nandini Sundar)
(vii)  Q&A: 'New Delhi has ignored our peaceful struggle'
11  Arms Sales to the Region:
- Arms and the Men  (Ritu Sarin)
-  France's Armaris Offers Sub to Pakistan (Pierre Tran)
-  France Makes Offer To Supply India With Fighters (Vivek Raghuvanshi)
-  India to buy 80 Russian helicopters worth $660 million
-  India, U.K. joint air exercises in Gwalior (Sandeep Dixit)
-  US and Indian armies hold exercise
-  R&D work on Trishul missile to be stopped

12 Militarisation and Civil Society:
    -  Arms and the Men (Ritu Sarin)
    -  South Asia: 'War on terror' spawns new
patterns of enforced disappearance (amnesty
International)
    -  Intelligent design? (Ajit Bhattacharjea)
    - Demystifying Defence (Edit, Times of India)

_______


1.

Deccan Herald
28 October 2006

INDIA-PAKISTAN 'TALKATHON'
Mutual distrust

by M B Naqvi
The people should fight against fake patriots who
are interested in militarisation, tyranny and
backwardness.


The India-Pakistan dialogue was relaunched by
President Musharraf and Premier Manmohan Singh in
Havana in September for the fourth time. This
round will again begin by Foreign Secretaries'
meeting on November 14. Obviously the pace
remains slow.

Recent background has damped hope and
expectation. The tenor of relations has been
marked by increased mutual mistrust. Also,
US-Pakistan relations have come under a cloud.
Pakistan is deepening its relationship with China
in a fashion that America does not like who are
now wary and suspicious of Pakistan. Pakistan's
only policy maker, Musharraf, has not made a
secret of his spleen vis-à-vis India and its
leadership, including Dr. Manmohan Singh. How
does one expect good results from the dialogue,
when the Indian leadership constantly complains
of Pakistan-inspired terrorism and suspects
Musharraf's designs?

This dialogue does not seem to result from
awareness in either country that its best
interests will be served by better relations
between the two countries. This dialogue seems to
be a charade: neither side believes that the
other is ready to change its national course to
enable both sides to cooperate at a growing pace
for common ends and to become reconciled friends
for achieving good and great things together. In
all agreements since the Shimla accord the
operative word has been normalisation of
relations (normal intercourse between any two
nation-states). Nothing more has been envisaged
since 1972.

The words 'rapprochement' and 'friendship' have
been absent as goals from operative parts of any
document. Normalisation as a goal is not
inspiring enough to change one's national
objectives or to expect the other side to change
its objectives? Both sides continue believing
that the other is an inveterate enemy and will
never change.

Change in Indo-Pak relations will only come when
national politics in both countries changes and
the mistrust of each other diminishes. Look at
the two governments national security agenda.
They are constantly accelerating the arms race
that aim at doing the maximum damage to the
'enemy' - the enemy actually being Pakistan for
India and India for Pakistan.

The race now includes atomic weapons and missiles
that are being constantly increased and enhanced
in their destructiveness. Missiles of both will
take four to seven minutes to reach their
targets. Which government can trust the other?

It is remarkable that there is no party or leader
in either country that stands mainly for
friendship and cooperation with neighbours and
has a vision for this growth, while there are far
too many who thrive on demonising the other
parties to the dialogue, have unfriendly designs
and tactical stances. There is the folly of
assigning no place to nukes in the menu of
disputes, except as a secondary problem for
foreign Secretaries to discuss. Both sides
tacitly accept that they can go on doing what
they are doing and all that may be required is
some CBMs - a grave mistake. This will not work.

As for tactical stances, the Pakistani rulers
expect that by managing Mujahideen's pressure
with new formulas of Musharraf diplomacy, they
can inveigle India into solving the Kashmir
dispute. The Indians think while they keep
Pakistan engaged in a talkathon on Kashmir, they
can move rapidly toward free trade and economic
cooperation, the perceived interests of Indian
leadership. It is remarkable that neither side is
seriously interested in people-to-people contacts
by easing the visa regime. Security
establishments in both countries regard ordinary
citizens of the other country as security risks.

Aren't there people who have the vision of a
closely knit South Asia developing together, as
the West Europeans have done, and who abhor
nuclear weapons or power politics of great powers
and who are not for taking advantage at
whosoever's expense? There are many such people
in all South Asian countries. But they are too
few and scattered.

Vested interests - governments and the
industrial-military complex - are more interested
in exploiting the Indo-Pakistan animosity to
promote militarism in both countries. That earns
them influence and money.Why discuss what South
Asians are losing by the absence of the 'vision
thing'? Factually, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan
and, in many ways, Sri Lanka and Nepal are
partners of the US. None of them, however, is in
a position to influence American policy and
purpose. The Americans, on the other hand,
constantly influence these governments and their
politics. Meaning of honourable conduct in
international affairs seems to have changed. Now
politicians seek 'pragmatic' courses - and this
pragmatism has nothing to do with the
philosophical school of the same name - that are
indistinguishable from opportunism.

But all is not lost. There are enough people of
good sense and who will want honourable
relationships in South Asia. True, the weight of
history hangs heavy on the politics of this
region. But good people need to come together and
start a struggle against fake patriotisms of
those who want their states to remain mired in
militarisation, tyranny and backwardness. The
task is difficult but is worth doing.

_____


2.

Washington Post
Sunday, October 15, 2006; Page BW04

THE GENERAL IN HIS LABYRINTH
PAKISTAN'S MILITARY RULER DEPICTS HIMSELF DEFYING
INDIA, HUNTING AL-QAEDA AND FIGHTING
FUNDAMENTALISM.

Reviewed by Pamela Constable

IN THE LINE OF FIRE

A Memoir
By Pervez Musharraf

Free Press. 354 pp. $28

PHOTO Caption: President Gen. Pervez Musharraf,
right, leaving the Conference on Interaction and
Confidence-Building Measures in Asia, in 2002.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, then prime minister of
India, stands in the background. (Ivan Sekretarev
/ Ap)


Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military
president, is a contradictory figure: a dictator
convinced that he's the best hope for democracy,
a moderate Muslim reluctant to confront
fundamentalists, a powerful man who exudes
confident aplomb but suffers from lifelong
insecurity as a migrant in his own land.

In the Line of Fire , Musharraf's
English-language memoir, is an equally
contradictory effort to explain himself to a
Western world that largely views Pakistan as a
fount of Islamist terrorism, a potential nuclear
threat and an impoverished, military-ruled desert
in the sullen shadow of shining, democratic
India. In pursuit of international absolution,
Musharraf -- who seized power in 1999 -- devotes
many pages to his vision of a modern Pakistan,
his values as a soldier, his disillusionment with
corrupt civilian leaders, his efforts to seek
peace with India and his contributions to the war
on terrorism.

Last month, he launched an extraordinary
pre-publication charm offensive in New York and
Washington. The bespectacled general bantered
easily with Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" and
earned an impromptu sales boost from President
Bush after a joint White House press conference.
("Buy the book," a smiling Bush told reporters.)
But before it hit the stores, In the Line of Fire
had been dissected by a wide array of critics. In
the United States, Musharraf kicked up a storm by
accusing a former deputy secretary of state,
Richard L. Armitage, of threatening to bomb
Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" in the wake of
9/11 if it chose al-Qaeda and its Taliban hosts
over the United States. (Armitage has
acknowledged the stark tenor of his message but
flatly denied making such a military threat.) In
India, outraged critics focused on Musharraf's
description of a summit with India, where he
charges that its then-prime minister, Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, backed out of an agreement over the
disputed territory of Kashmir because mysterious
higher powers had overruled and "humiliated"
Vajpayee.

But the worst vitriol came from Pakistan itself,
where some critics trashed the book as a
self-serving rewrite of history that betrays the
nation's interest. For example, Musharraf goes to
great lengths to prove that Pakistan's 1999
invasion of the mountainous Kargil district of
Kashmir, a political and military disaster, was a
triumph that will someday be "written in golden
letters." Others expressed outrage at Musharraf's
excoriation of A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani scientist
who is believed to have sold nuclear know-how to
pariah regimes such as Iran, North Korea and
Libya but who remains a hero to many Pakistanis.
Musharraf, under heat from Washington over Khan's
activities, portrays him here as a greedy rogue
who somehow managed to hide all his evil deeds
from the government.

Many of the negative notices ring true.
Alternately coy and candid, Musharraf glosses
airily over unanswered questions, denies
widespread reports that leaders of Afghanistan's
Taliban movement are operating inside Pakistan
and portrays himself as staunchly opposed to
Islamic fundamentalism, even though he has backed
off on many reforms in deference to radical
clerics. Even when expressing noble sentiments,
Musharraf can undercut his message with clumsy
insults and undiplomatic observations that might
have been better left unsaid. (After all, how do
you edit a dictator?)

But despite its limits as a window into history,
In the Line of Fire offers valuable insights --
sometimes intentionally, sometimes not -- about
an important U.S. partner in the war on terrorism
whose powerful, secretive military-intelligence
apparatus was once the Taliban's chief patron.

At some points, the story is gripping simply
because the author was at the center of it. Much
has been written about the coup that brought Gen.
Musharraf to power after then-president Nawaz
Sharif tried to fire him while he was on a
commercial plane heading home from a foreign
trip. Now, we are finally in the cockpit of the
fuming general's plane as his pilot is ordered
not to land -- even though the craft has only
moments of fuel left.

The most compelling episodes are the operations
launched to hunt down al-Qaeda operatives and
suicide bombers, especially after two attempts on
Musharraf's life in 2003. The dutiful reader is
snapped to attention by dramatic chases that read
like a thriller, full of fascinating details that
only an insider would know -- and perhaps
outsiders should not. For instance, Musharraf
reveals that, during various operations,
Pakistani agents have found a piece of shirt
collar from a suicide bomber and traced it to his
hometown tailor, used an elaborate system to
track cell phone use among suspects, and covered
themselves in burqas to shadow and snatch a major
al-Qaeda figure.

In Musharraf's zeal to prove his counterterrorist
bona fides, he exaggerates the importance of some
captives and gloats over successful missions,
clearly enjoying the experience of calling Bush
in May 2005 to say Pakistan has captured an
al-Qaeda leader, Abu Faraj al-Libbi. (Musharraf
then undiplomatically calls Libbi "the one al
Qaeda operative whose name Bush knew, apart from
Osama bin Laden and Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri.")

The book also airs some military dirty laundry
that may infuriate Musharraf's own institutions.
The general acknowledges hurt and bewilderment at
being passed over for promotions early in his
career, much as he confesses to schoolboy pranks
and slights of a half-century ago after his
family fled India during the chaotic partition
that created Pakistan in 1947.

In his writing, as in many of his public
comments, Musharraf can prove both his own best
salesman and his own worst enemy. Still, this
memoir tells us a great deal about a military
Muslim leader we need to understand -- and about
a country to which we should have been paying
much more attention. ·

Pamela Constable, a deputy foreign editor at The
Washington Post, reports frequently from Pakistan
and Afghanistan.


_____


3.

Dawn
October 12, 2006

'PAKISTAN TO MAINTAIN MINIMUM DETERRENCE'
http://www.dawn.com/2006/10/12/top8.htm



_____


4

MUSHARRAF'S COUP - SEVEN YEARS LATER
(Dawn, 12-10-2006)

by Pervez Hoodbhoy

Some had feared - while others had hoped - that General Pervez Musharraf's
coup of October 12, 1999, would bring the revolution of Kemal Ataturk to a
Pakistan and wrest the country from the iron grip of mullahs. But years
later a definitive truth has emerged. Like the other insecure governments
before it, both military and civilian, the present regime also has a
single point agenda - to stay in power at all costs. It therefore does
whatever it must and Pakistan falls further from any prospect of acquiring
modern values, and of building and strengthening democratic institutions.

The requirements for survival of the present regime are clear: on the one
hand the Army leadership knows that its critical dependence upon the West
requires that it be perceived abroad as a liberal regime pitted against
radical Islamists.  But, on the other hand, in actual fact, to preserve
and extend its grip on power, it must preserve the status quo.

The staged conflicts between General Musharraf and the mullahs are
therefore a regular part of Pakistani politics. This September, nearly
seven years later, the religious parties needed no demonstration of muscle
power for winning two major victories in less than a fortnight; just a few
noisy threats sufficed. From experience they knew that the Pakistan Army
and its sagacious leader - of "enlightened moderation" fame - would stick
to their predictable pattern of dealing with Islamists. In a nutshell:
provoke a fight, get the excitement going, let diplomatic missions in
Islamabad prepare their briefs and CNN and BBC get their clips - and then
beat a retreat. At the end of it all the mullahs would get what they want,
but so would the General.

Examples abound. On 21st April 2000, General Musharraf announced a new
administrative procedure for registration of cases under the Blasphemy
Law. This law, under which the minimum penalty is death, has frequently
been used to harass personal and political opponents. To reduce such
occurrences, Musharraf's modified procedure would have required the local
district magistrate's approval for registration of a blasphemy case. It
would have been an improvement, albeit a modest one. But 25 days later -
on the 16th of May 2000 - under the watchful glare of the mullahs,
Musharraf hastily climbed down: "As it was the unanimous demand of the
ulema, mashaikh and the people, therefore, I have decided to do away with
the procedural change in the registration of FIR under the Blasphemy Law".

Another example. In October 2004, as a new system for issuing machine
readable passports was being installed, Musharraf's government declared
that henceforth it would not be necessary for passport holders to specify
their religion. Expectedly this was denounced by the Islamic parties as a
grand conspiracy aimed at secularizing Pakistan and destroying its Islamic
character. But even before the mullahs actually took to the streets, the
government lost nerve and the volte-face was announced on 24 March, 2005.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid said the decision to revive the
religion column was made else, "Qadianis and apostates would be able to
pose as Muslims and perform pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia".

But even these climb downs - significant as they are - are less dramatic
than the astonishing recent retreat over reforming the Hudood Ordinance, a
grotesque imposition of General Zia-ul-Haq's government unparalleled both
for its cruelty and irrationality.  Enacted into the law in 1979, it was
conceived as part of a more comprehensive process for converting Pakistan
into a theocracy governed by Sharia laws. These laws prescribe death by
stoning for married Muslims who are found guilty of extra-marital sex (for
unmarried couples or non-Muslims, the penalty is 100 lashes). The law is
exact in stating how the death penalty is to be administered: "Such of the
witnesses who deposed against the convict as may be available shall start
stoning him and, while stoning is being carried on, he may be shot dead,
whereupon stoning and shooting shall be stopped".

Rape is still more problematic. A woman who fails to prove that she has
been raped is automatically charged with fornication and adultery. Under
the Hudood Law, she is considered guilty unless she can prove her
innocence. Proof of innocence requires that the rape victim must produce
"at least four Muslim adult male witnesses, about whom the Court is
satisfied" who saw the actual act of penetration. Inability to do so may
result in her being jailed, or perhaps even sentenced to death for
adultery.

President and Chief of Army Staff General Musharraf, and his Citibank
Prime Minister, Shaukat Aziz, proposed amending the Hudood Ordinance. They
sent a draft for parliamentary discussion in early September, 2006. As
expected, it outraged the fundamentalists of the MMA, the main Islamic
parliamentary opposition. MMA members tore up copies of the proposed
amendments on the floor of the National Assembly and threatened to resign
en masse. The government cowered abjectly and withdrew.

Musharraf's government has proved no more enlightened, or more moderate or
more resolute and behaved no differently from the more than half a dozen
civilian administrations, including two terms of Benazir Bhutto as Prime
Minister and several "technocrat" regimes. None made a serious effort to
confront or reform these laws.

But the pattern is broader then deference to the mullahs. General
Musharraf has been willing to use the iron fist in other circumstances.
Two examples stand out: Waziristan and Balochistan. Each offers
instruction.

In 2002, presumably on Washington's instructions, the Pakistan Army
established military bases in South Waziristan which had become a refuge
for Taliban and Al Qaeda fleeing Afghanistan. It unleashed artillery and
US-supplied Cobra gunships. By 2005 heavy fighting had spread to North
Waziristan and the army was bogged down.

The generals, safely removed from combat areas, and busy in building their
personal financial empires, ascribed the resistance to "a few hundred
foreign militants and terrorists". But the Army was taking losses (how
serious is suggested by the fact that casualty figures were not revealed),
soldiers rarely ventured out from their forts, morale collapsed as junior
officers wondered why they were being asked to attack their ideological
comrades - the Taliban - at American instructions. Reportedly, local
clerics refused to conduct funeral prayers for soldiers killed in action.

In 2004, the army made peace with the militants in South Waziristan. It
conceded the territory to them, which had made the militants immensely
stronger. A similar "peace treaty" had been signed on 1 September 2006 in
the town of Miramshah, in North Waziristan, now firmly in the grip of the
Pakistani Taliban.

The Miramshah treaty met all demands made by the militants: the release of
all jailed militants; dismantling of army checkpoints; return of seized
weapons and vehicles; the right of the Taliban to display weapons (except
heavy weapons); and residence rights for fellow fighters from other
Islamic countries. As for "foreign militants"  who Musharraf had blamed
exclusively for the resistance, the militants were nonchalant: we will let
you know if we find any! The financial compensation demanded by the
Taliban for loss of property and life has not been revealed, but some
officials have remarked that it is "astronomical". In turn they promised
to cease their attacks on civil and military installations, and give the
army a safe passage out.

While the army has extricated itself, the locals have been left to pay the
price. The militants have closed girl's schools and are enforcing harsh
Sharia laws in all of Waziristan, both North and South. Barbers have been
told "you shave, you die". Taliban vigilante groups patrol the streets of
Miramshah. They check such things as the length of beards, whether the
"shalwars" are worn at an appropriate height above the ankles, and
attendance of individuals in the mosques.

And then there is Balochistan. Eight years ago when the army seized power,
there was no visible separatist movement in Balochistan, which makes
nearly 44% of Pakistan's land mass and is the repository of its gas and
oil. Now there is a full blown insurgency built upon Baloch grievances,
most of which arise from a perception of being ruled from Islamabad and of
being denied a fair share of the benefits of the natural resources
extracted from their land.

The army has spurned negotiations. Force is the only answer: "They won't
know what hit them", boasted Musharraf, after threatening to crush the
insurgency. The Army has used everything it can, including its American
supplied F-16 jet fighters. The crisis worsened when the charismatic
80-year old Baloch chieftain and former governor of Balochistan, Nawab
Akbar Khan Bugti, was killed by army bombs. Musharraf outraged the Baloch
by calling it "a great victory". Reconciliation in Balochistan now seems,
at best, a distant dream.

Musharraf and his generals are determined to stay in power. They will
protect the source of their power - the army. They will accommodate those
they must - the Americans. They will pander to the mullahs. They will
crush those who threaten their power and privilege, and ignore the rest.
No price is too high for them. They are the reason Pakistan fails.
-----------------

The author teaches at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad. This article
was published on the anniversary of the coup.

_____


5.

The News International
October 14, 2006

GRIM WARNING FROM NORTH KOREA

by Praful Bidwai

The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a
researcher and peace and human-rights activist
based in Delhi

North Korea has shocked and challenged the world
by punching a big hole through the global nuclear
order. The effects of its test will ricochet for
a long time, changing the Asian balance of power
and impacting Iran.

The explosion underscores some plain unvarnished
wisdom: the best way to deal with "problem cases"
like North Korea is to discard nuclear weapons as
a currency of power by pursuing the global
nuclear disarmament agenda. The alternative is to
risk a more unsafe world with yet more
nuclear-armed states.

North Korea shows that a small (pop 23 million),
poor, economically and politically isolated
country, which recently experienced famines, can
build nuclear weapons if it is determined to.
Splitting the atom requires neither high science
nor very advanced technology.

The science is more than 60 years old, and the
technology no more sophisticated than what a car
garage has--once you have fissile material or
reactors. The test sets a terrible example. Some
40 countries have significant civilian nuclear
programmes, which can be diverted to make weapons.

Why did North Korea test? It has a long history
of conflict with South Korea and the United
States. During the 1950-53 Korean War, General
Douglas MacArthur had plans to launch nuclear
strikes against the North. The Cold War has not
ended in the Korean peninsula.

More recently, President George W. Bush torpedoed
the reconciliation process between the Koreas. In
2002, he named North Korea an "exis of evil"
state and reneged on aid promises. This negated
the improvement in Washington-Pyongyang
relations, including the 1994 Agreed Framework,
under which North Korea suspended its nuclear
activities.

In 2003, Pyongyang quit the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Six-party Talks
with Pyongyang (involving the US, Russia, China,
Japan and South Korea) faltered largely because
of inept US diplomacy. Yet, in September 2005,
Pyongyang signed a preliminary denuclearisation
agreement in Beijing. Four days later, Washington
declared economic war on it.

After the US-led invasion of Iraq, North Korea
became desperate to prevent a regime change in
Pyongyang. More recently, it became uncomfortable
with the appointment of militarist Shinzo Abe as
Japan's prime minister and the lead taken by
South Korea's Ban Ki-Moon in the election of the
United Nations secretary general.

On October 3, Pyongyang foreign ministry said: "A
people without a reliable war deterrent are bound
to meet a tragic death and [loss of] sovereigntyŠ
This is a bitter lesson taught by the bloodshedŠ
in different parts of the world." The blast
followed six days later.

North Korea's test exposes the folly of relying
on purely physical controls--like International
Atomic Energy Agency safeguards under the NPT--to
prevent nuclear materials from being put to
military use. IAEA safeguards are leak-prone.

In some past years, IAEA inspections failed to
account for over 20 kg of plutonium in
reprocessing plants--enough for half-a-dozen
bombs. Besides, a country can quit the NPT at
three months' notice. That's what Pyongyang did,
and Iran might do if cornered.

More important than safeguards, and critical to a
country's decision not to cross the
nuclear-weapons threshold is its political will.
Without this, safeguards, even sanctions, won't
work. In many countries, this will has got
greatly weakened--because the nuclear-weapons
states (NWSs) have refused to undertake nuclear
arms reduction, leave alone disarmament.
Thousands of nukes remain on high alert.

The five NPT-recognised NWSs have flagrantly
violated its Article VI, which mandates complete
elimination of nuclear weapons--a legal
obligation under a 1996 World Court verdict.

India and Pakistan slavishly imitate them in
their hypocrisy. India's nuclear deal with the US
is widely seen as involving double standards:
indulgence for America's friends (India, Israel,
Pakistan), and punishment for Iran or N. Korea.
But double standards are not Washington's
monopoly. All NWSs practise them.

The world has condemned the North Korean test.
But it has few options to deal with Pyongyang.
Military force isn't one. President Bush has
ruled it out--not out of magnanimity, but
compulsion. The US is bogged down in Iraq.

Over 37,000 US troops are stationed in South
Korea. North Korea's 1.2 million-strong army,
with 11,000 artillery pieces, and an arsenal of
missiles, can make devastating conventional
strikes against South Korea and even Japan, where
another 40,000 US troops are stationed. There's
the risk of a nuclear attack.

India and Pakistan have strongly condemned North
Korea. This is another gross instance of
hypocrisy. Pyongyang has cited the same reasons
for going nuclear that they did. It doesn't lie
in India's mouth to condemn Pyongyang. Nor is it
remotely credible for Pakistan to do so after Dr
A Q Khan allegedly traded uranium centrifuges
with North Korea's missiles. Today, India and
Pakistan both practise the same hypocrisy and
double standards for which they (rightly)
criticised the N-5.

India has strongly warned against "the dangers of
clandestine proliferation". The reference is to
Pakistan. Some Indian commentators cite President
Musharraf's "In the Line of Fire", which says:
"Dr Khan transferred nearly two dozen P-1 and
P-11 centrifuges to North Korea" along with
auxiliary equipment and instruments.

However, on all available evidence, the Korean
test used plutonium, not uranium. The plutonium
came from a reactor at Yongbyon, built by the
Soviet Union in 1965. North Korea removed 8,000
used-fuel rods from it and extracted 25-30 kg of
plutonium, enough to make 4-6 bombs. It probably
ran the reactor between February 2003 and April
2005 too, and removed some more rods. It would be
foolish for India to use the Korean test as a
stick to beat Pakistan with. The demand that Dr
Khan be subjected to interrogation for his Korean
operations won't cut much ice anywhere.

North Korea's test will strengthen the
non-proliferation lobby in the US and create more
difficulties for the India-US nuclear deal, which
already faces hurdles. Japan and South Korea
would be singularly ill-advised to go nuclear in
response to North Korea. That will trigger an
arms race involving China. The whole world will
be destabilised under the impact of such an arms
race. If the US develops a "theatre ballistic
missile defence" ("Star Wars") shield for
Northeast Asia, China will respond with utmost
hostility.

The time has come for a radically different
approach, which reforms the global nuclear order
by honestly implementing the two-way bargain on
which it was originally based. Under the bargain,
the non-nuclear weapons-states agreed not to make
or acquire nuclear weapons and subjected
themselves to IAEA inspections. In return, the
NWSs committed themselves to serious negotiations
to eliminate nuclear weapons worldwide. However,
the NWSs have cheated on their part of the
bargain.

The remedy lies in negotiating a return to the
global disarmament agenda. What the world needs
is de-alerting of all nuclear weapons, separating
nuclear warheads from delivery vehicles, and
phased destruction of nuclear armaments. Regional
initiatives are also necessary to dissuade North
Korea from a weapons programme by offering it
security assurances and generous agricultural and
industrial assistance and food and fuel aid. Such
arrangements can lead to the creation of a
Northeast Asian nuclear weapons-free zone which
addresses the security concerns of all the
regional states.

The world cannot afford any more breakouts before
it takes the nuclear bull by the horns.


_____


6.

Daily Times
October 28, 2006

EQUALLING INDIA
by Abbas Rashid

For us, the real challenge then is to redefine
our objectives. Instead of forever trying to
equal India in terms of military power, we should
seek to overtake it in terms of development and
the quality of life we offer to our citizens

President Musharraf has let it be known in no
uncertain terms that he does not take kindly to
India considering Pakistan a weaker nation and
has made the point that it 'should talk to us on
an equal level'. It is true that India's tone has
been particularly abrasive in recent weeks and
the president may simply be reacting to that. And
while India is clearly much the bigger country
with a huge advantage in terms of resources, this
does not mean that Pakistan should accept India's
dictates or not defend what it sees as its core
interests. But the question is what exactly
should we be equalling India in?

In the president's articulation, equality appears
to be a synonym for power rather than, for
instance, equality in terms of development. But,
we should keep in mind that we already spend
around 3.9 percent of GDP on defence (official
figure). India with its much stronger economy is
able to maintain a considerably larger military
machine by spending 2.29 percent of GDP (official
figure). Given that equation an arms race between
the two countries would spell disaster for
Pakistan.

We should recall the consequences for the Soviet
Union of the arms race between the United States
and itself. The drain imposed by the defence
spending on the smaller economy contributed
significantly to the eventual collapse of the
Soviet Union. Our problem surely is not to equal
India in terms of force but to ensure that we
have the strength to withstand pressure and
influence, be it from India or any other source,
aimed at undermining our national interests or
objectives.

And this strength, contrary to the thinking of
the military mind, does not just come from
military force. It comes as much, if not more,
from the level of socio-economic development of
the people and a genuine sense of ownership and
participation in the enterprise of the
nation-state. Paradoxically, Pakistan and India
are relatively equal going by this measure as
only a few places separate them on the Human
Development Index.

Clearly, this should not be a cause for
celebration on the part of either. The ruling
elites of both countries must bear the shame of
acquiring the dubious distinction of presiding
over a region that is home to the largest number
of the absolute poor on the planet. Between
one-third to one-fourth of the citizens, if we
can call them that, in both countries live below
the poverty line in conditions of medieval
deprivation. And, this at a time when both boast
of nuclear status and have huge military budgets.

In fact, President Musharraf, in the same
interview brought up the issue of the country's
nuclear status by referring to the Pakistani
bomb. Whatever the imperatives of deterrence, our
nuclear programme can only be one element of our
national power. Let us not forget that the Soviet
Union had over 20,000 nuclear warheads when it
collapsed as a sovereign entity. In the absence
of major advances in the realms of education,
health and population planning, no country can
really hope to be strong. That, essentially,
should be the concern of our ruling elites as
much as it should be that of India's.

But, as President Musharraf seeks to engage
India, he would do well to know the adversary
better. The cold reality is that as matters
stand, the world does not treat Pakistan and
India as equals. It is important to understand
this because in the process of our difficult
negotiations with an intransigent Indian ruling
elite we will make mistakes if our strategy is
based on a premise that does not hold.

We found that out the hard way most recently in
our attempt to leverage Kargil to extract
concessions from India over Kashmir. Despite the
tactical success and the bravery of our men in
uniform and of those without, Pakistan could
derive no advantage from the operation, simply
because the world - almost to a state - supported
India's position and we were forced to withdraw.
There has been considerable debate on the issue
of who knew what and when did they know it and
who decided that it was time to came up with an
exit strategy. The question to ask is what led
the planners to believe that international
reaction to this move would be any different to
what it actually was.

India has a huge market, an extensive industrial
base and a reservoir of trained and
technologically savvy manpower that places it in
a different league. India, like Pakistan, remains
a highly inequitable society. Perhaps, even more
so. But, gradually, with much more success than
we have had, India has been putting in place
strong institutions that are likely to hold it in
good stead in the years to come. Pakistan needs
to do a lot better in this context and strive to
equal, if not excel, India in the realm of human
development and prosperity.

It would take some doing. Consider, for instance,
the institutions of excellence that India has
managed to develop in the field of education, the
Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the
Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), among
others. It is true that large sections of the
education system in India still remain well below
par. But the institutional framework that it has
in place represents an effective functioning
system of human resource development on a large
scale.

For us, the real challenge then is to redefine
our objectives. Instead of forever trying to
equal India in terms of military power, we should
seek to overtake it in terms of development and
the quality of life we offer to our citizens.
That indeed would be a race worth running.
Perhaps, in the not too distant future neither
country will be hovering close to the bottom of
the Human Development Index, as they do today.

Tailpiece: One Indian institution that has built
up a reputation over the years is the Indian
Supreme Court. Here is hoping that between the
President of India and it a way may yet be found
to prevent a travesty of justice in the case of
Afzal Guru who has been condemned to death by the
court for his alleged role in the attack on the
Indian parliament on December 13, 2001.

Abbas Rashid is a freelance journalist and
political analyst whose career has included
editorial positions in various Pakistani
newspapers


_____


7

The Daily Times
October 25, 2006

EDITORIAL: How is Pakistan 'equal' to India?

President Pervez Musharraf has said that India
must accept Pakistan as its 'equal' for peace in
the region: "I respect the Indian prime minister
but it is regrettable that India wants to keep
its domination in the region and wants Pakistan
to be a weaker force. India should come out of
its phobia (sic!) of being a greater nation and
should talk to us at an equal level". He said his
government would not allow anyone to interfere in
Pakistan's internal matters and that India should
set its own house in order before telling others
what to do. The next observation by the president
was even more interesting: "There are no
separatist movements in Pakistan (sic!) but in
India 21 separatist movements are taking place,
thus India should not consider us a weaker
nation". In the same breath he said "talks with
India on Kashmir were on the right path" and
progress was being made. As a part of his foray
into the country's foreign policy, he also
promised to 'review' Pakistan's policy on Israel
after the Lebanon invasion, as if this review
would somehow tip the balance of power in the
Middle East.

The president thinks India should treat Pakistan
as an equal on matters of peace. This is fine if
it is meant in terms of intrinsic rights and
wrongs. But the hidden reference here is
apparently to the 'nuclear parity' which the two
states achieved in 1998. Apparently an atomic
bomb complete with a credible delivery system is
supposed to be 'an equaliser'. Pakistan has
always chafed under the feeling that it was
militarily unequal to India which had three times
more firepower than Pakistan. So Pakistan
initially relied on its big-power links to
overcome this numerical imbalance. It obtained
weapons systems which were considered better in
technology than India's. Therefore when it fought
wars with India there was always something that
gave Pakistan an edge, whether it was better
aircraft or better tanks. Of course, the fact
that this didn't matter in the final analysis
because Pakistan never won any war against India
was conveniently ignored by this doctrine.

Pakistan has always thought militarily because it
is completely dominated by military men who think
nothing of politicians who have made a hash of
democracy whenever they have been in office.
Indeed, politicians who have ruled Pakistan
fitfully have usually come out of the crotch of
the army as its protégées. They too were broken
to thinking like the generals: get better
weapons, get F16s or AWACS or anything to get an
'edge over India'. The thinking was repetitive
but the same. Add to that the parrot-like
recitation of the '21 separatist movements' in
India and you have a dubious 'national strategic
doctrine'. General Musharraf may dislike General
(Retd) Hameed Gul but, with a thousand apologies,
we should like to remind him that he is simply
regurgitating what that man has unloaded on the
nation a thousand times before him? Where is
President Musharraf's originality?

We accept that smaller states with weak
institutions have a more intense nationalism when
they are under the onus of revisionism, but there
should be limit to unoriginality. Every
general-president who has lost a war to India has
said the same thing. Therefore we should spell
out the truth: Pakistan can't defeat India and
can't wrestle Kashmir by force. But that is not
the doctrine. Instead it is to 'wound India with
a thousand cuts' until it weakens to such an
extent that its '21 separatist movements' rear up
and bring it down from within. In other words,
India is to be nudged for it to crumble from
within so that Pakistan can simply tip it over at
the right time. How ridiculous can you get?

There are many 'third world' things where
Pakistan and India are indeed at par. The red
tape, the delay of law, the abysmal state of
their courts at the level of the lower judiciary,
the persistent poverty of the masses, the almost
zero level of infrastructure needed for a good
modern economy, etc. But India's size and India's
problems that once made it vulnerable in
comparison with Pakistan are slowly disappearing
and President Musharraf should worry about it if
he feels adversarial these days to boost his
image at home.

India's growth rate is steadily much higher than
the 'Hindu rate' it used to have. It is also not
dependent on external stimuli like security pacts
and jihad against communism from 1950 to 1987 or
support to the war against terror after 9/11 to
take it out of its troughs. In fact its economy
looks like dominating Asia together with China in
the decade ahead. Its companies are in the
multinational race and are buying up first world
companies. Its education has always been better
while Pakistan was handing its seats of learning
to the clerics and their violent 'youth wings'.
Indian scientists and scholars are spread out in
the world proving their excellence while
Pakistanis are suffering discriminatory regimes
put up by the first world to avoid getting hit by
terrorist attack. India's poverty may be on the
decline, but in Pakistan, despite President
Musharraf's success in the economic sector, it
may still be on the increase. India is expected
to attract foreign investment in the coming
months because law and order there is better than
the one obtaining in Pakistan. India has
developed a large middle class which attracts
global funds looking for consumer markets. Unlike
Pakistan, which spends 4.5 percent of its GDP on
defence (not counting the military's trespass
into jobs that used to belong to the civil
servants) while the biggest spender India is
still safely below 3 percent, the point over
which purchase of weapons may affect the quality
of life of a country.

It is therefore regrettable that there should be
the hint of menace in President Musharraf's
'message' to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The
world will not miss the contrast of the two
personalities. No one likes braggarts, especially
when they are using rhetoric to grab at whatever
is left of the support they enjoy at home. If the
president implies that India is interfering in
Pakistan's internal affairs, the world is more
likely to disbelieve him and instead point to the
internal dangers faced by Pakistan. As for
President Musharraf's ability to "disallow anyone
to interfere in Pakistan's internal matters", the
last time he tried in Waziristan to do exactly
that he ended up making a deal that looked like
capitulation.

Not long ago, President Musharraf was 'original'.
He talked about Pakistan as a 'trade corridor'
and thought about it, not in terms of 'strategic
depth', but as a 'commercial hub'. Why should he
revert to the defeated rhetoric of the generals
of yore? This 'equal of India' spiel is fine if
it is meant to refuse dictation but dangerous if
it is avowed as a strategic doctrine. The last
time we took it seriously we were 'separated'
from East Pakistan; meanwhile, India's 21
separatist movements have not stopped it from
making progress.

Such rhetoric is passé. Let us get concrete about ourselves. *

_____


8

BALOCHISTAN: PAKISTAN'S NUCLEAR WASTELAND UP IN ARMS
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2006/2006-10-27-insmus.asp
_____


9  KASHMIR:

o o o

Greater Kashmir
October 14, 2006

   HEADING  BENEFICIARIES OF CONFLICT
Kashmir burns and they get a time to warm up
Kashmir First By M. Ashraf

The Indian Ministry of Defence has prepared a
shopping list of armaments to be purchased from
the world market amounting to rupees sixty
thousand crores. The list includes fighter
aircraft, helicopters, missiles, and many other
lethal weapons. A number of countries are vying
with each other to take the Indian orders.
Similarly, Pakistan side is shopping for millions
of dollars worth armaments. Only the F-16
aircraft being purchased from USA are worth over
five hundred million dollars. Both the countries
are equipping their defence forces with the most
modern and lethal weapons. This is in addition to
the weapons of mass destruction which both sides
have been stock piling for quite sometime. India
is among the largest importers of defence
equipment in the world whose cost runs into
billions of dollars. In fact both India as well
as Pakistan spend a sizeable chunk of their
annual budget on defence and defence related
items. This region represents the largest market
for the manufacturers of defence related items
from all over the world. According to information
available from the International Institute of
Strategic Studies in 2003 the world arms spending
was $ 956 billion. Permanent Security Council
members, USA, Russia, U.K., France, and China
dominate the world trade in arms sales. India's
expenditure on arms was $ 22 billion and it
ranked at 8th position in the world. Pakistan
spent during the corresponding period $ 3.7
billion on arms. The USA because of its self
imposed role of a "Global Cop" is the largest
spender accounting for almost half the entire
world's spending. In a number of countries in the
world especially in Europe and America,
industries related to manufacture of defence
equipment form an important sector of their
economy.
These industries in the developed countries
(professing to be the leaders of the free and
democratic world) apart from earning large
amounts of foreign exchange also provide huge
employment potential to their citizens. The sale
of F-16 fighters to Pakistan ensured 5,000 jobs
for Americans in Texas, the home state of
President Bush. A similar purchase of F-18 planes
by India would provide 8,000 more jobs! In order
to promote their sales, the armament firms
undertake all sorts of overt and covert
activities. They have dozens of commission agents
in all potential buyer countries where they bribe
one and all. The bribes are given both at home as
well as abroad to promote their sales. The Bofors
scam and the recent Barrak deal are links in the
same chain. In fact, these armament firms indulge
in dissemination of false reports concerning
military and naval programmes of various
countries in order to stimulate arms expenditure.
These firms have organised international armament
rings through which armament race is accentuated
by playing one country against the other. They
also try to influence public opinion through the
control of newspapers in their own and foreign
countries. In developed countries these firms use
subtle means by supporting commercials,
journalists, and pouring money into Hollywood to
produce war movies. In fact, the weapons makers
are now framing the U.S. Foreign and Military
policies. Major defence contractors own CBS, and
NBC, two of the largest US television networks.
Arms contractors contributed at least $ 12
million to US Congress who actually vote on how
much to spend on defence spending. Their ads and
propaganda is for minimising casualties and their
attempt is to make people believe that there will
be no killing in future wars.
They project the minimum number of casualties
suffered by Americans in various global conflicts
but never truly reveal the foreign casualties
which amount to hundreds of thousands. A Lockheed
advertisement once claimed that "the perception
of peace means less jobs for Americans".
Interestingly in U.K. various elected officials
from the Prime Minister downwards act as arms
salesmen. Tony Blair during his visit to India
spent almost half of his time in trying to
convince Indians to buy British fighter jets. On
one hand he was making speeches for exerting
"Calming Influence" over the Indo-Pak Conflict on
Kashmir while on the other hand, he and the
British industrial military complex were trying
to sell a lot of weapons to India.
While international attention is focused on the
need to control weapons of mass destruction, the
trade in conventional weapons continues to
operate in a legal and moral vacuum. These
"Beneficiaries of Conflict" and "Merchants of
Death" create vested interests in the potential
markets to protect their massive stakes. Former
defence officials and high ranking officers are
recruited on huge salaries and commissions as
liaison officers to promote their sales. They
keep a number of hot spots in the world in a
state of perennial conflict to ensure regular
sales of their wares. Kashmir has been the
proverbial golden goose for these arms traders.
For almost half a century it has been providing
them on continuous basis massive avenues for
selling these lethal weapons to the two
conflicting sides.
It is quite possible that in the three major wars
between India and Pakistan, the soldiers who died
on the two sides may have been killed by the
bullets and bombs manufactured and supplied by
the same armament firms? Even now the same firms
are supplying weapons as well as high altitude
equipment to two sides in the Himalayan
battleground of Siachin. Indians and Pakistanis
are killing each other for rocks, ice and snow
wearing the same parkas, mountain boots and using
same snowmobiles! It is very strange that as soon
as two sides near an agreement, some unseen hand
throws a spanner in the works and they are back
to square one. In view of the total dependence of
these countries on the western powers, it would
not be difficult for them to pressurise the two
antagonists to come to an agreement if they meant
it? However, they always try to gently "persuade"
them to go for conflict resolution. In the heart
of their hearts they feel that a solution of this
conflict would be detrimental to their national
interests as defined by their armament firms!
The "Global Cop" did not hesitate in invading
Iraq twice on flimsy grounds. Nor did it mind
bombing Afghanistan to Stone Age. Here the
physical intervention was necessary to capture
and dominate the energy sources in the Middle
East and the Central Asia. In addition, it gave
armament firms opportunity to test all their new
weapons in a real war. William Blum in his book,
"Rogue State" mentions that US armament firms
have been testing some of the biological and
chemical weapons on their own nationals without
their knowledge. Unfortunately, even some of the
politicians on the two sides of the
sub-continental divide have been making use of
the conflict to capture or stay in power.
In such a situation the resolution of this
conflict seems a remote possibility. The various
events projected for the solution appear to be
acts in a play which are enacted from time to
time to keep the public in good humour. It is a
pity that the masses in general are not aware
about the machinations of the global players. The
people at large have no cause for conflict. They
have rather common needs on both the sides. The
only escape seems to be creation of general
awareness about all the hidden aspects of the
problem with their ramifications on the future of
the poor masses of this sub-continent. The first
step for that would be breaking of all the
physical barriers to allow the grassroots people
to meet and realise the truth. It is the people
alone who can change the fate of this
sub-continent. This is bound to happen sooner
than later. The day that happens, it would sound
a death knell for the "Beneficiaries of Conflict"
and the "Merchants of Death"!
(The author can be mailed at: ashrafmjk@...)

o o o

Kashmir Times
29 October 2006

APDP ACCUSES SECURITY FORCES OF RUNNING PARALLEL GOVT
By Syed Basharat

SRINAGAR, Oct 28: "If my son is not alive, then
for God's sake, return his body to us," was the
refrain of Parveena Ahangar chairperson of
Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons
(APDP) before the defense spokesman, both of whom
participated in a programme (woh kahan gum
hogaye) organized by the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC).
Minister for finance Tariq Hamid Qarra, former
deputy chief minister and senior Congress leader
Mangat Ram Sharma, Public Relations Officer (PRO)
defense Lt. Col. Mathur, APDP patron Pervez Imroz
and some of the parents of disappeared persons
participated in the programme. Veteran radio
broadcaster Nayeema Ahmad Mehjoor anchored the
programme.
Accusing the security forces of running a
parallel government the parents of disappeared
persons who participated in the programme
emphasized on the whereabouts of their near and
dear ones most of whom have allegedly gone
missing after they were picked up by the security
forces. However, the actual figure of disappeared
persons in Kashmir remained as the bone of
contention in the entire programme.
It is pertinent to mention here that some human
rights organizations have claimed the figure of
disappeared persons over 10,000 while the
official version negates the claim saying the
figure is around 108.
When asked about the number of disappeared
persons in Kashmir former deputy chief minister
Mangat Ram Sharma said, "Since 1990 upto October
25, 2006, the number of disappeared persons was
108. Out of 108 the number of registered cases is
96 and out of 96 a challan has been produced in
12 cases."
Giving details about these cases the minister for
finance Tariq Hamid Qarra said that government
has received a list of 743 cases of
disappearances so far. "APDP and NHRC has given
us a list of 743 cases and out of this number 108
cases have been registered because rest have a
different story. Some of the rest either were
killed during crossing LoC or they have crossed
the line of control and are settled there. Or
some have been found were kidnapped by gun men
and were later on killed by them," observed Qara.
The parents who seemed dissatisfied with the
government clarifications protested that the
police have never cooperated with them in lodging
any FIR. "They demanded Rs 10,000 for lodging an
FIR in my son's case and as I was not able to pay
the money they didn't" wailed Hajira Begum a
resident of Bandipora, whose three sons, have
been allegedly killed by the security forces and
the fourth one has disappeared since 1995.
Pervez Imroz the patron of APDP while giving
details about the disappeared persons said that
number of disappeared persons in Kashmir is high
as compared to many conflict-ridden zones of the
world. "Our estimat of the number of disappeared
persons in Kashmir is 10,000 and it is very high
then the conflict ridden zones like Beijing,
Palestine, Chechnya and other places," remarked
Imroz.
He added that even the government headed by the
former chief minister has admitted that the
number of disappeared persons in Kashmir is 3743.
Qarra while admitting that that the issue of
alleged disappearances is humane in nature said
that ever since they have taken the reigns of the
government the graph of the cases of
disappearances has decreased manifold.
"We can not rule out some cases where the police
has not cooperated with these parents and as such
some case of where the atrocities were committed
by the security forces but there are stray
incidents and the graph of these cases is
decreasing very fast," claimed the finance
minister.
Imroz said that the lack of cooperation from
police has driven the parents of disappeared
persons to the courts. He added, "That is why we
have to file a writ petition in courts here as
the police is not willing to lodge any FIR. We
have filed petitions for 300 disappearance cases
in High Court here."
The PRO defense while admitting that the problem
of alleged disappearance is grave in nature but
refuted the allegations of the parents of
disappeared that the security forces have managed
these disappearances. "Our forces are people
friendly and we inform the police after we arrest
somebody in some connection. Besides that all the
men in uniform are not military men.
On this the parents of disappeared shouted back
saying that there is a parallel government in
Kashmir run by the security forces and even the
people in power have no right to interfere in
their activities.
Qarra while negating the allegations said that
there is no parallel government in Kashmir. "Army
has it own role to play and I can not deny
hostilities because there was no need then to
taken action against the guilty army personnel.
From a Lt. Col. upto sweeper level 31 personnel
of security forces have been convicted so far,"
averred the finance minister.
Reiterating the demand of his party Qarra added
that he is of the opinion that army has played
its role in Kashmir and central government should
call the forces back in gradual manner. "The
mandate on which army was working here has been
fulfilled effectively by it and the situation is
normal now," demanded Qarra.
The minister for finance added that after they
took over the reigns the Special Task Force was
disbanded and the number of disappearances
decreased. On this Parveen Ahangar alleged that
after the Mufti government took over there were
347 cases of disappearances.
The former deputy chief minister assured the
parents of disappeared that the State Human
Rights Commission (SHRC) will be strengthened and
extra powers would be given to it. "I assure you
after one month you will see a new SHRC. The
action would be taken on its recommendations. And
it will be open for all such cases," stressed
Sharma.
On this Lt. Col. Mathur said that very soon the
people of Kashmir would see re-appearances of
their youth as most of them who have crossed the
line of control are returning to their homes.
Asked whether the government will set up some
commission for the inquiry in these alleged
disappearances the former deputy chief minister,
and minister for finance ended up with expressing
their sympathies with the parents of disappeared
person saying that the issue is very serious and
needs to be redressed.
Besides APDP chairperson Parveena Ahangar sister
of Javed Ahmad Aehngar who is disappeared since
1990, Taja Begum mother of Bashir Ahmad Sofi a
resident of Bandipora who is disappeared since
1994, Atiqa wife of Nazir Ahmad a resident of
Sheeri Baramulla who is disappeared since May 28,
1990, Shammema sister of Abdul Hamid Dar a
resident of Baramulla who is disappeared since
December 29, 1995 and Raja Begum wife of Mohammad
Shaban and mother of Mohammd Yayha Khan both of
whom are disappeared since April 16, 1996 were
present on the occasion.



o o o

ON THE DEATH SENTENCE TO MOHAMMAD AFZAL

(i)

WHAT DOES MOHAMMAD AFZAL KNOW?
http://membres.lycos.fr/sacw/article.php3?id_article=30

(ii)

MURDER, WE SAID
Jug Suraiya

If there were to be a national referendum on whether
Mohammad Afzal, the convicted conspirator in the
terrorist attack on Parliament, ought to be hanged or
not, which way would you vote, yes or no? How would
you vote in the case of Santosh Singh, convicted of
raping and killing Priyadarshini Mattoo?

Or on the fate of Sanjay Das, the Delhi domestic
servant who attacked three children, killing one aged
four? As different as these cases are, they have one
thing in common: the possibi-lity of incurring the
death penalty.

This raises several questions about our response to
what is euphemistically referred to as capital
punishment and which is really the premeditated
revenge-killing of a human being. In other words,
state-sponsored murder. Do we, as individual citizens,
endorse this act?

If we do, then we must accept the responsibility of
being accomplices in an intrinsically criminal act
speciously legitimised by the state to preserve and
protect its sovereign monopoly on the use of lethal
violence: if you kill someone it's a crime; if the
state kills you for killing someone, it's the due
process of law.

Can and ought any state which calls itself democratic
have such an unqualified and unquestioned right, which
necessarily includes the right to make each one of us
into witting or unwitting accessories to the taking of
human life?

   Often, this core issue is obscured by legal
technicalities and political contingencies. In the
Afzal case, those opposing his execution cite the fact
that he did not receive adequate legal defence; a
better lawyer would have got him off the hook.

They add that executing him would only turn him into a
hero-martyr and provoke further terrorist attacks.
Those in favour of hanging him contend that merely
imprisoning him (for life, without benefit of parole)
might instigate future hostage-taking incidents to
secure his release.

As our state has been shown to be too weak and inept
decisively to handle hostage situations, much better
just to hang the fellow and be done with it. A failing
on the part of the state is used to justify a far more
grievous moral transgression.

All these and other arguments miss the central point:
the state's legitimisation of murder, and our
compliance with it. The argument most commonly used by
advocates of such murder-by-state is that it acts as a
deterrent. Most crimi-nologists disagree.

The majority of capital crimes are committed in the
heat of the moment, in a violent spasm beyond the
control of cautionary reason: if I kill this man, then
I myself will be killed by the law.

   In fact, far from being a deterrent, the prospect of
the death penalty particularly by strange and unusual
means might actually incite psychologically unstable
individuals to commit capital crimes.

In The Executioner's Song, Normal Mailer has
compellingly shown how the killer, Gary Gilmore, was
at least partly motivated by the macabre, macho allure
of meeting his end in the blazing fusillade of a
firing squad, the then prevalent method of execution
in the state of Utah.

This would suggest that, far from purging the body
politic of the toxin of violence, capital punishment
could further poison the system, brutalising society
as a whole.

Historians of crime and punishment have documented how
public executions were like carnivals, family
entertainments during which vendors of refreshments
did brisk business. The autos-da-fe of the Spanish
Inquisition provided the spectacle of heretics being
burned alive at the stake.

The English punishment of hanging, drawing and
quartering involved hanging the victim by his neck
till he was almost dead, bringing him down and
disembowelling him, and then chopping off his four
limbs, while the remains of what had once been a human
being still screamed in agony.

   The crowds loved it. When hanging replaced
drawing-and-quartering, bookmakers would accept wagers
as to how long the hanged person would continue to
show signs of life after the drop from the scaffold,
while family members and well-wishers would pull down
on the twitching legs of the victim to speed the often
lengthy process of death.

When public executions began to get a little too
popular, governments in most parts of the civilised
world put an end to them. Capital punishment is now
meted out away from the public gaze.

But, if anything, this comparative seclusion further
feeds a morbid prurience, fuelled by media speculation
on the mechanics and minutiae of official murder: did
the hanged man's neck break when he hit the end of the
rope, or was he strangulated to death; how much is the
hangman paid for doing his (our?) job; is he 'normal',
fond of pets and little children?

In private discussions and in the letters columns of
the press, righteous citizens suggest embellishments
which will better help punishment to fit the crime:
lifelong imprisonment is far too benign for them,
rapists should be castrated; child abusers tortured by
ingenious methods commensurate with the enormity of
their crimes.

The smell of blood is overwhelmed by the odour of
vengeful sanctity. The president may or may not grant
clemency to Afzal, or to the others currently on death
row. But ought we to grant clemency not only to them,
but by the same token to ourselves as well?

The choice, and the vote, is ours. Not in any official
public referendum, but in the private plebiscite of
our individual consciences. Should we vote for
collective murder, or for that shared commonality in
ourselves that we call humanity?

_____


10.  MANIPUR and the Struggle Against AFPSA


(i)

The Hindu
10 October 2006

DOES ANYBODY CARE ABOUT MANIPUR?

Siddharth Varadarajan

THERE IS a statement, perhaps apocryphal, that
Mahatma Gandhi supposedly made to the effect that
satyagraha worked against the British but might
not have against a more ruthless opponent like
the Germans. Considering the indifference with
which Official India has greeted the
unprecedented civic protest in Manipur against
the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act these past
few years, the question arises whether we have
become the kind of opponent Gandhiji spoke about.
That we have so inoculated ourselves against the
weapon of peaceful protest that nothing other
than guns and bombs seems to rouse us from our
torpor.

Two years ago, the abduction and killing of
Manorama triggered massive protests by the people
of Manipur against the AFSPA. A group of brave
Manipuri women shook the conscience of the whole
of India by baring themselves in front of the
guns and bayonets of the Army. Thanks to the
power of democratic protest, Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh told a delegation of the Apunba
Lup - the umbrella organisation spearheading the
campaign - in New Delhi in November 2004 that he
would consider replacing the AFSPA with "a more
humane law that will address both the concerns of
national security and the rights of citizens."

Later that month, Dr. Singh went to Imphal and
met some of the women who had staged that
dramatic protest against the AFSPA outside Kangla
Fort. According to a report filed soon after by
the Press Trust of India, the Prime Minister
"held the hand of a weeping mother and said, `We
will do something'."

True to his word, the Prime Minister appointed a
high-level committee headed by Justice B.P.
Jeevan Reddy with the mandate of "review[ing] the
provisions of AFSPA ... and advis[ing] the
Government of India whether (a) to amend the
provisions of the Act to bring them in consonance
with the obligations of the Government towards
protection of human rights; or (b) to replace the
Act by a more humane Act." The members of the
committee were carefully selected so that the
concerns of the Union Government and the security
forces would not be unrepresented. There was one
retired General, V.R. Raghavan, who, prior to
joining the committee, had advocated in newspaper
columns the case for the continuation of AFSPA in
Manipur. There was also a senior retired official
from the Union Home Ministry, P.P. Srivastava.
From civil society were the academician S.B.
Nakade and the journalist Sanjoy Hazarika.

Though the composition of the committee led some
impetuous critics to suggest the outcome of its
exertions would be to advocate the retention of
the law, the Prime Minister's nominees took their
job seriously and discharged their mandate fairly
and objectively. Extensive public hearings were
conducted in all Northeastern States and in
Delhi. The views of the armed forces and various
government departments were also solicited.

The Jeevan Reddy panel submitted its
recommendations in under seven months. On June 6,
2005, its five members unanimously signed off on
the report. Shortly thereafter, a copy was handed
over to Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil. Since
then, however, the process has inexplicably
ground to a halt. Nearly a year and a half has
elapsed with the Government refusing to say
anything definitive about its recommendations.

This is presumably not what the Prime Minister
meant when he told that weeping mother, "We will
do something."

Though the report was never made public because
of the opposition of the Army and the Ministry of
Defence, a misleading summary of its findings was
leaked to the press according to which the Jeevan
Reddy Committee was seeking little more than a
change of nomenclature: Scrap the AFSPA, but
retrofit the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act
with all its controversial provisions. One can
only surmise that the intention of this
half-truth was to so discredit the report that no
one would bother agitating for its release.

This neat equation, however, came unstuck last
week with the unexpected arrival in Delhi of Irom
Sharmila. Ms. Sharmila has been on a hunger
strike for the past six years demanding repeal of
the AFSPA. Unlike other hunger strikers, she has
not allowed even a drop of water to cross her
lips all this while. She cleans her teeth with
cotton and not water and has been kept alive
through force-feeding via a nasal drip five times
a day. Last week, her fifth sequential one-year
sentence for "attempted suicide" expired and
before she could be rearrested she boarded a
plane to the national capital. After a visit to
Rajghat, she settled down at Jantar Mantar
demanding that the Jeevan Reddy Committee report
be released and the AFSPA be repealed.

Life and death issue

As the extracts published in this newspaper on
Saturday confirm, the report clearly recommends
scrapping the Armed Forces Act. At the same time,
acknowledging both the reality of insurgency and
the fact that the armed forces cannot be deployed
inside the country without a proper legal
framework, the Committee has pointed out that the
Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act already
provides the kind of protection against legal
suits the armed forces are demanding. What is
needed are amendments to protect civilians
against the abuse of power. Thus, it has sought
the insertion of important safeguards to ensure
there is no violation of human rights.

In fairness to the Committee and to all those who
have been exercised about the Armed Forces Act,
the report deserves a careful and critical
reading. Its recommendations need not be
considered the final word. In an open society,
they can and should be debated and ways found to
improve the core suggestions. But for this to
happen, it is essential that the report be put in
the public domain. The AFSPA has become a
question of life and death for millions of people
in India today. And they have a right to discuss
it.

Now that the report has been unofficially
released by The Hindu, its contents can be
studied and evaluated by civil society. But what
is mystifying is the inordinate time the Manmohan
Singh Government has taken in forming an official
opinion on its recommendations. The Prime
Minister is entitled to reject or modify the
recommendations of the Reddy committee if he
wants. In turn, the people of Manipur, the
Northeast, and the rest of India are entitled to
draw whatever conclusions they wish about the
sincerity of the promises he made in November
2004. If the Government wants to retain the AFSPA
despite the measured counsel of Justice Jeevan
Reddy and his colleagues, let it do so. The only
requirement is that Dr. Singh and his officials
should have the courage openly to defend their
decision rather than dodging responsibility by
claiming the report is "still being studied."

In the film Lage Raho Munnabhai, which the Prime
Minister himself has confessed to admiring,
citizens are urged to send flowers to someone who
is suffering from a social affliction or ailment.
For Gandhiji, indecisiveness was a disease as
deadly as indifference. Fifteen months is a long
time to study a report prepared by one's own
hand-picked experts. Is Dr. Singh suffering from
indecisiveness? Should the people of India start
sending flowers to his residence at 7 Race Course
Road?

o o o

(ii)

Dawn
October 23, 2006

OF MILITARY RULE BY OTHER MEANS

by Jawed Naqvi

THE Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee was set up
recently to review India's Armed Forces Special
Powers Act, (AFSPA, 1958) -- a law that has been
inflicting a heavy toll on democracy and civil
liberties in border states like Jammu and Kashmir
and across the northeastern swathe of primarily
tribal provinces.

The committee's report has been lying with the
government for days and human rights groups now
want it to be made public and discussed in
parliament. A "leaked" copy was distributed to
the press last week by rights NGOs, especially
those engaged in the troubled state of Manipur.
Incidences of frequent rape and killings in this
state, allegedly by security forces, have
triggered a wave of protests there.

According to the committee's findings "... the
(AFSPA) Act, for whatever reason, has become a
symbol of oppression, an object of hate and an
instrument of discrimination and
high-handedness." Giving other similar arguments,
the Reddy Committee has recommended that it would
be desirable to repeal the Act altogether. We'll
discuss the caveat entailed in this generosity.

In its initial comments on the proposed repeal of
the Act, Manipur's Human Rights Alert welcomed
the move, albeit cautiously. But some other
activists led by senior Supreme Court lawyer
Colin Gonsalves warned that the recommended
repeal could really be another way of bringing
the law back through the back door to encompass
not just the border states but the entire
country. "Remember that we could be preparing the
grounds for Martial Law in India," Gonsalves
warned his audience at the Delhi Press Club.

The Reddy Committee's report coincides with what
is seen as an apporaching change in India's
neighbourhood policy, particularly the "Look East
Policy". There is an aim here to link the country
to South East Asia, by a network of roads and
railways. The Human Rights Alert sees the move as
part of a wider globalization process that
offered a window of opportunity to the
historically ignored region. "But this is
contingent on whether and how far are the people
of the Northeast empowered and prepared enough to
leverage this opening promised by the Look East
Policy."

Colin Gonsalves is evidently not so sanguine
about the future. In a detailed critique of the
Reddy report he listed concerns, primarily the
suggestion that the key provisions of the AFSPA
could be transferred to beef up already existing
Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAP Act,
1967). To begin with, the Reddy report suggests
that even if a new law is not made, the Central
Government can nevertheless order the Army into
any particular state under Article 355 of the
Constitution to protect the State against
"internal disturbances". It can do so even
without there being a request from the state
government.

Gonsalves points to other troublesome
implications. The Reddy report, for example, says
that "it is highly advisable to repeal this Act
altogether, without of course, losing sight of
the overwhelming desire of an overwhelming
majority of the region that the Army should
remain." In other words, the Act can go but the
army should stay under different heads. "For this
purpose an appropriate legal mechanism has to be
devised."

To justify the transfer of the powers of the
AFSPA to UAP, the Committee presents arguments.
It says that a major consequence of the proposed
course would be to erase the feeling of
discrimination and alienation among the people of
the north-eastern states that they have been
subjected to, what they call "draconian enactment
made especially for them. The UAP Act applies to
entire India including to the Northeastern
States. The complaint of discrimination would
then no longer be valid."

Now that's a brilliant way of arguing against
discrimination. In other words, let's share the
same draconian laws with everyone and make it
equitable throughout the country. As Gonsalves
notes, the Reddy Committee is aware that the UAP
Act "does not provide for an internal mechanism
ensuring accountability of such forces with a
view to guard against abuses and excesses by
delinquent members of such forces."

The committee has proposed Grievances Cells to
address this problem. However, a cursory look at
the constituents of these cells makes the
proposal look laughable. The cells "should be
composed of three persons namely, a senior member
of the local administration as its chair, a
captain of the armed/security forces and a senior
member of the local police."

Not only are the cells going to be dominated by
the security forces and the police, but they
would also have no power to punish at all. All
they can do is to enquire into an allegation and
provide information. Gonsalves suggests an
alternative -- a Civilian Oversight Commission
along the lines prevalent in Britain. "This is
obvious from the principal grievance against the
security forces in India. No enquiry has ever
come to light where the security forces have been
severely punished."

Further, after setting out the principles that
the use of the armed forces ought to always be
for a limited period, the Reddy Committee
suggests an open-ended time schedule. It says
that while the Central Government should desist
from extending the period for calling in the army
beyond six months, there were circumstances when
it could do so.

"At the end of the period so specified, the
Central Government shall review the situation in
consultation with the State Government and check
whether the deployment of forces should continue
and if it is to continue, for which period. The
review shall take place as and when it is found
necessary to continue the deployment of the
forces at the expiry of the period earlier
specified."

Another proposed amendment to the clauses of the
AFSPA that may be co-opted into the UAP Act has
raised serious concern. The Reddy Committee
qualifies its suggestion that the armed forces
act in aid of the civil power by saying that the
forces will do so "to the extent feasible and
practicable... However, the manner in which such
forces shall conduct their operations shall be
within the discretion and judgment of such
forces." Worse, the Committee also suggests that
the deployment of the security forces in any
states can happen "notwithstanding that no
request for such force is received from the State
Government concerned." In the opinion of Colin
Gonsalves and others all this adds up to a
proposal to pave the way for martial law in the
country as and when that is found feasible to
have it. But many Manipuri activists are too busy
celebrating the proposed repeal of the dreaded
law to notice the warning. And given their long
ordeal, they can't be blamed.

o o o

(iii)

IROM SHARMILA : 'IRON LADY' OF MANIPUR
BLACK LAW, UNIQUE RESISTANCE

by Subhash Gatade

Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,

Pretending he just doesn't see ?

-Bob Dylan

Irom Sharmila.(Age 34). Does that name sound familiar?

Well, like most of us this youngest daughter of Irom
Nanda and Irom Sakhi Devi has many identities. For
sister Vijayanti or brother Singhajit she is their
dearest sister who had the 'never say die' spirit
ingrained in her since childhood. For some of her dear
friends she is an Yoga enthusiast who at times also
dabbled in naturopathy. For litterateurs of Manipur,
she is a budding poetess who has written hundreds of
poems but till date only one of her collections 'Imadi
Khongdai Setlaroi' has been published. And for the
vast majority of Manipuris, she is not Irom Sharmila
Thanu rather she is the 'Iron Lady of Manipur' who has
challenged a callous and apathetic government and its
regime of draconian law with her unique struggle.

Interestingly, despite plethora of TV channels and a
boom in the print media, not many of us from
'mainland' India would be able to tell what made this
young girl from a lower middle class family who could
not even continue her education after 12 th, a legend
in her own lifetime.

It is difficult to believe the saga of struggle of
Irom Sharmila Thanu

In fact it will be nearly six years that she would be
on her hunger strike.She has remained without solid
food since then, demanding withdrawal from her state,
of one of the most draconian laws in the statue books
called Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA).

At present she is lodged in AIIMS, New Delhi where she
is being 'nasal fed' by a team of doctors.

Her reaching Delhi from the environs of Jawaharlal
Nehru Hospital, Manipur where she was kept in judicial
custody and was nasal fed was another saga of her
glorious struggle. Taking advantage of the release
from custody after serving a 'yearlong custody' at the
hospital, her supporters literally smuggled her out of
Imphal to reach Delhi to turn her "regional" campaign
into a "national" one. Her first stop in Delhi was
Rajghat, where she laid a wreath at Mahatma Gandhi's
samadhi. Later she told a journalist "I want to tell
the people of India that if Mahatma Gandhi were alive
today, he would have launched a movement against the
Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. My appeal to the
citizens of the country is to join the campaign
against the army act," (The Telegraph,October 05,
2006)

0 0

Ofcourse, the historic fast launched at Malom was no
planned affair. There was a firing by security forces
at Malom bus stand, which is nearly 15-16 kilometers
from Imphal, on 2 nd November 2000. It saw blood of
ten innocents spilled on the streets. Ofcourse it was
not the first event of its kind, the streets of
Manipur had been witness to the killings of innocent
citizens umpteen times before.

Mother Irom Sakhi Devi had no inkling of what was in
store of her youngest daughter Sharmila.She merely
sought her mother's blessings to work for 'betterment
of humanity' and left. Sharmila straight away went to
the very spot where the bloodbath had occurred and
started her fast unto death. Her demand was simple to
articulate but for the powers that be difficult to
implement. She demanded repeal of the draconian law.
Initially for the residents of Malom or adjoining
areas it was difficult to fathom the idea of the
peaceful resistance put up by this young woman. For a
handful of them she was an object of ridicule also.
And none of them had even imagined that she would
persist in her determination in such a way that there
would be uproar all over the state in support of her
demand. By 21 st November the administration was
forced to give her a 'nasal feed' in a hospital in
Imphal.

The maximum sentence which a court can give for
'trying to committ suicide is one year' and Sharmila
has endured many such turns in all these years. She is
released after this one year judicial detention and
immediately rearrested and put in the same ward. and
the cycle continued . This year also the government
expected the same. Embarrassed police officials later
admitted that they had no inkling of the plan to
"smuggle out" Chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh pleaded
ignorance, too.

Irom Sharmila's legendary struggle for human rights
has become an important symbol of the resistance of
the Manipuri people who are fighting their present day
suffering at the hands of policy makers. This has
meant 'excessive militarisation of the region' and the
'promulgations of many a black laws like AFSPA at the
cost of the life and liberty of the people of this
region.'

It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs that
the rest of the world came to know about Sharmila's
unique struggle only two and half years ago only. It
was in the aftermath of a militant struggle launched
by Manipuri people demanding the abolition of the
Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 and punishment
to the Assam Rifles people for killing Thangjam
Manorama on 11 July 2004

This upsurge of the Manipuri people was marked by the
way in which women played a leading role in furthering
the movement. It was on 15 th July 2004 that around
dozen elderly and respectable Manipuri women marched
to the area headquarters of the Assam Rifles and
stripped naked and waved a banner which read as :
"Indian Army Rape Us", "Indian Army Take Our
Flesh".The naked march of these women electrified the
masses and within no time the protests against the
army reached new heights.

The conspiracy of silence which had surrounded Iron
Sharmila's solitary struggle can't be called an
exception. It is part of a general silence which
surrounds developments in northeast which for all
practical purposes exists on the 'borders of our
consciousness'. A report brought out by a National
Campaign Committee agains militarisation and repeal of
AFSPA  had rightly observed a few years back : 'Armed
militancy, intercommunity killings, 'encounters' with
security personnel ... conversely, pretty girls and
boys dancing in traditional costume. The north east
has always been a collage of the most contradictory
images, that only reflect how little is known of the
reality that lies behind them.'

0 0

There is no doubt that if the atrocities at the hands
of the security forces as are witnessed in north east
would have taken place in any part of 'mainland India'
then it would have become a cause for national uproar.
But for all those areas which are under Armed Forces
Special Powers Act all such acts by the the security
people are 'covered under the infamous act' itself. As
the provisions of the infamous act make clear the
security forces have been given unlimited powers and
even if they commit atrocities ( which is not
exception but the rule) people have no right to
approach the courts.

This 'draconian law' which has generated tremendous
anger in the minds of the people and is in many ways
worse than the infamous POTA empowers the security
people in many crucial areas.It empowers the
government ( governor of the state, or the
administrator of the union territory, or the central
government ) to declare any area a 'disturbed area' if
it reaches a conclusion that [t]he whole or any is in
such a disturbed or dangerous condition that the use
of Armed Forces in aid of civil power is necessary,'
the concerned authority may 'declare the whole or such
part of such a state or union territory to be
disturbed area.'

Section four delienates the powers sanctioned to any
commissioned officer, warrant officer,
non-commissioned officer,.in a disturbed area.

a) If in his opinion, it is necessary for maintenance
for public order to fire even to the extent of causing
death or otherwise use force against a person who is
acting in contravention of an order prohibiting the
assembly of five or more persons or the carrying of
weapons or of things capable of being used as
weapons.'

b) If in his opinion, it is necessary to do so, then
to destroy any arms dump or fortified position, any
shelter from which armed attacks are made or are
'likely to be made', and any structure used as
training camp for armed volunteers or as a hide out
for armed gangs or absconders.

c) arrest without warrant any person who has committed
a cognizable offence or against whom a reasonable
suspicion exists that he has committed or is likely to
commit a cognizable offence and to use whatever force
is necessary to affect the arrest.

d) to enter and search without warrant any premises to
make an arrest or to recover any person wrongfully
confined or to recover any arms, ammunition, explosive
substance or suspected stolen property.

Section 5 makes it mandatory for the army to hand over
a person arrested under the act to the nearest police
station with least possible delay.

Section 6 lays down that prosecution, suit or other
legal proceedings can be instituted against a person
acting under the act, only after getting previous
sanction of the central government. ( Ref: The
Illusion of Justice : Supreme Court Judgement on the
AFSPA, May 1998, People's Union for Democratic Rights,
Delhi)

The existence of this law on the statue books has thus
meant disallowing the people the right to protest, the
right to legal redress or right of any lawful
democratic activity. Ordinary people who want to live
a life of peace and tranquility, can thus easily be
framed as 'terrorists' and 'suspects' linking them to
banned organisations. Democratic rights activists who
merely document the excesses by the Army or an end to
army rule have also been picked up, tortured and
killed.The continuation of this law since last 48
years has effiectively meant that under a formal
democratic set up 38 million people residing in north
east are forced to live under an undeclared emergency
or defacto military rule.

Brigadier Sailo who served in the army for 31 years,
in a letter written nearly 30 years ago to Ms Indira
Gandhi, the then prime minister of India, said," The
feelings of the entire villages and population of
Mizoram are now totally alienated by the denial of all
decencies of human rights and any picture which may
have been painted to you to the contrary, is totally
false." (Quoted in Where 'Peacekeepers' Have Declared
War - :Report on violations of democratic rights by
security forces and the impact of the AFSPA on
civilian life in the seven states of North East -
National Campaign Committee against Militarisation and
Repeal of AFSPA, 2000, Delhi).It can be said without
any iota of doubt that what Brigadier Sailo said about
Mizoram can be applied to the whole of north east
today.

0 0

One cannot say with certainty what will happen next.

Hunger strike by Irom Sharmila continues unabated. If
earlier the venue was the dingy rooms of the
Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital in Imphal, today she lies in
a similar position in a private ward in AIIMS, New
Delhi where she is forcibly fed liquids through a
nose-pipe. It was only last month that BBC (Tuesday,
19 September 2006, 09:46 GMT 10:46 UK) had carried a
report on this marathon fast wherein it had mentioned
the deteriorating condition of her health : "Doctors
say her fasting is now having a direct impact on her
body's normal functioning - her bones have become
brittle and she has developed other medical problems
too. "

As far as the repeal of the black law is concerned,
things seem to be going nowhere. It is being said that
the Justice Jeevan Reddy committee appointed by the
Prime Minister in 2004 in the aftermath of the
militant protests in Manipur has recommended repeal of
the legislation AFPSA itself. According to reports in
a section of the media, the 146 report submitted by
the Jeevan Reddy committee talks about "The act is too
sketchy, too bald and quite inadequate in several
particulars". According to the report "the act, for
whatever reason, has become a symbol of oppression, an
object of hate and an instrument of discrimination and
high-handedness'( The Hindu, October 8, 2006)

According to few analysts a careful reading of the
report also creates an impression that the Jeevan
Reddy panel merely wanted the prerogatives of the
armed forces transferred wholesale onto another law,
the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. If
this holds true then we will have a situation where
the dreaded black law AFPSA which is basically
applicable to North East and Jammu-Kashmir may be
scrapped forthwith while the revised ULP act 1967
which incorporates all the necessary provisions of
AFPSA would come into force. It would mean the whole
of India may come under the ambit of a substiute of
AFPSA.

In any case this cannot be tolerated at any cost. All
those people who yearn for a life of peace, justice
and progress for the broad masses of people would have
to come together to defeat the machinations of the
powers that be.

While talking to the BBC correspondent Irom Sharmila
had mentioned "My fast is on behalf of the people of
Manipur. This is not a personal battle - this is
symbolic. It is a symbol of truth, love and peace,".

It is worth mentioning that while Sharmila is waging
this unequal battle against the Indian state, many of
her dear and near ones have stood solidly behind her.
We are also told that not only her brother lost a
government job, because he preferred to remain on her
side always but the family had also to go bankrupt
since it gathered lot of loans during this period.

But none of the sacrifices can match what Irom Sakhi,
Sharmila's 75 year old mother has endured all these
years. She has never met her daughter since she
blessed her on the momentous day when she undertook
her fast. Irom Sakhi, with tears in her eyes told a
correspondent : It is just possible that my getting
emotional on seeing her may weaken her resolve. And I
do not want that my daughter lose in this battle,
which is for the betterment of humanity.

----

(iv)

CALL FOR ACTION: 6 YEARS OF HUNGER STRIKE
SUPPORT SHARMILA, REPEAL AFSPA, RESTORE RIGHT TO LIFE

Dear friends,

During the last few decades, the people of Manipur
have witnessed severe repression with the
implementation of Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act
(1958). Under this law, the security forces have:

* The power to arrest and enter property without
warrant
* The power to shoot, arrest, and kill at the mere
hint of suspicious activity, even without the lives of
members of the security force being at imminent risk
* Immunity against legal action.

The implementation of this law has led to brutal rape,
arbitrary detentions, “disappearances”, killings, and
loot are being actively used by security forces to
terrorize and subordinate local communities in the
name of counter-insurgency. The implementation of this
draconian law AFSPA has challenged not only the
democratic norms of Manipur, but also of the entire
freedom loving people in India for allowing such
blatant repression to take place.

Recently the recommendations of the Justice Jeevan
Reddy Committee on Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act,
1958 formed in November 2004 has commented that
''....the Act....has become a symbol of oppression, an
object of hate and an instrument of discrimination and
high handedness'' and ''...it is equally necessary to
ensure that where they (Armed Forces of India)
knowingly abuse or misuse their powers, they must be
held accountable....'',

Protesting against AFSPA, Irom Sharmila Chanu, the
young poet from Manipur has been on an indefinite
hunger fast for many years. On November 2, 2006, the
hunger strike of Sharmila Irom is going to complete
six years. She is being forcefully nasal-fed in AIIMS,
Delhi, by the authorities. She has only one demand:
the withdrawal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers)
Act (1958) from Manipur.

This year 2006 happens to be the 100th year of the
non-violent and peaceful protest form`Satyagraha'
initiated by Mahatma Gandhi. But in the land of Gandhi
this is the first time in Indian history somebody has
gone through a hunger strike for six years.

The struggle of Sharmila Irom is generating moral and
social support and solidarity from all over. Protest
actions and solidarity actions are being planned in
Trivandrum, Trichur, Kottayam, New Delhi, Bombay,
Calcutta and Manipur.

We, the following organisations extend full support to
the struggle of Sharmila Irom and peoples oppressed by
AFSPA. We call all democratic organisations to extend
your support by joining these protests and initiating
solidarity actions wherever possible in your area.

ANHAD
National Alliance of Peoples Movements (NAPM)
Theeradesa Mahila Vedi, Kerala
Global Alternate  Information Applications(GAIA),
Kerala
Visual Search, Bangalore
Samvedan Cultural Programme (Ahmedabad)
Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), New Delhi
KRITI, New Delhi
PEACE, New Delhi
Centre for Contemporary Studies & Research, Lucknow
& many others

(Please send reports and protest stills of your
actions to campaign@... so that these
actions can be publicised.
For more information on the issue please visit: http://www.manipurfreedom.org)


o o o

(v)

http://www.hindu.com/2006/10/23/stories/2006102301381000.htm
The Hindu
Oct 23, 2006
Editorials

THE HATED ACT MUST GO

The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958
"should be repealed," as the Justice B.P. Jeevan
Reddy Committee set up to review its provisions
has recommended unambiguously. "The Act is too
sketchy, too bald, and quite inadequate in
several particulars," the committee explains,
adding that "for whatever reason" it has become
in the Northeast "a symbol of oppression, an
object of hate, and an instrument of
discrimination and high-handedness." It balances
this recommendation by noting that "the
overwhelming desire of the overwhelming majority"
of people in the Northeast is that "the Army
should remain [though the Act should go]." The
147-page report was submitted in June 2005. For
the United Progressive Alliance Government to
procrastinate any longer on tabling it in
Parliament, and acting on it, would be political
folly of the first rank. This newspaper obtained
a copy of the report and published its highlights
in the issue of October 8. Subsequently, it
posted, in the public interest, the whole report
on its website www.thehindu.com. The draconian
Act - a hand-over from the British Raj - was
brought into force in 1980 in parts of the
Northeast, including Manipur where opposition to
it is strongest. Labelling virtually the whole
State as a "disturbed" area, the armed forces
have had a free run under cover of the Act, which
empowers them to arrest, search, and shoot anyone
on the basis of mere suspicion. The rape and
murder of Thangjam Manorama by men of the Assam
Rifles in 2004 as well as other incidents came in
the backdrop of the structure of high-handedness
it engendered. Reliance on such statutes to
perpetrate state violence invites
counter-violence in a region that should be doing
much better. All this slows down the search for
political solutions and undermines development
effort.

There can be no quarrel with the committee's
recommendation that the armed forces should stay
on in the region, given its continuing
volatility. However, the rationale for the
suggested incorporation of certain provisions of
the hated Act in other laws is dubious. The state
already has all the powers it needs in other
instrumentalities. Through repealing the Act, the
Government can set the stage for an active peace
process, especially in Manipur (which accounts
for nearly 40 per cent of all violent incidents
in the Northeast). That draconian laws cannot be
repealed so long as there are forces that conduct
politics through violence is a morally feeble
argument. It sanctions a vicious cycle in
politics. If the Government asks the right
question - do the armed forces need extraordinary
protective guarantees and immunity in the line of
duty more than the ordinary people need the
constitutional protection - it will come up with
the right answer.

o o o

(vi)

The Times of India
October 9, 2006
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2132074.cms

FAREWELL TO ARMS
Nandini Sundar

When we first heard of Irom Sharmila in 2004, she
had already been fasting for four years in
protest against the Armed Forces Special Powers
Act (AFSPA).

In July that year, a young woman, Manorama, had
been killed, and perhaps also raped, by Assam
Rifles.

Something came unstuck, and a dozen middle-aged
women stood stark naked in front of the Kangla
fort in Imphal, daring the Indian Army to rape
them too.

Manipuri civil society organisations came
together to form the Apunba Lup. And finally,
Manipur and AFSPA made national headlines for a
few days. In the months that followed, some of us
visited Imphal.

Our first impression was one of shock. We had
never seen so many armed personnel - every corner
has a military jeep, army posts are set up near
villages, there is even a firing range within the
university.

We had heard of life under military rule, but
nothing prepared us for this corner of our own
country, a world apart from the democracy that it
is supposed to be. In the midst of all this, we
met Sharmila.

Alone, attached to a feeding tube in a dingy
hospital room, with nothing to look at but a
collage of newspaper cuttings fixed on the wall,
and yet with a firm belief that her truth would
prevail, that life had possibilities beyond
repression and violence.

Where does this belief comes from, a belief that
wavers in us when we see the indifference of the
Indian state? But perhaps that is why we need
someone like Sharmila.

One official view is that Sharmila continues to
fast because of pressure from the militants. One
can only pity those who put forward this
argument, for they have no sense of the sheer
power of powerlessness.

Used to taking orders from their political
masters, such people will never understand what
it is to die, or more importantly live, albeit
slowly, painfully, for a cause.

No one gives up food and even water for six years
on anyone's orders. Sharmila began her hunger
strike on November 2, 2000, after the army
arbitrarily killed 10 people at Malom, near
Imphal.

None of the victims was related to her. The army
has blocked a magisterial enquiry into the
incident. Under AFSPA, Union government
permission is needed for prosecuting any army
personnel, virtually granting them complete
immunity.

The Act empowers the army to kill anyone on
suspicion, to destroy any structure they think is
being used as a hideout, and to arrest without
warrant any person they suspect.

Once an area is declared disturbed and put under
AFSPA, assemblies of more than five people are
prohibited, as is the carrying of anything which
could be construed as a weapon, even an
agricultural implement.

   Every year, Sharmila is released for a day, and
then rearrested on charges of attempted suicide.

This year, tired of the waiting, tired of the
prevarications of a government which set up a
committee to review AFSPA and then refused to
implement or even make public its report,
Sharmila left Imphal on her sole day of freedom
and came to Delhi.

She evaded detection by reversing the order of
her name on the plane ticket. From now on,
airline managers will scan every I S Chanu that
boards a plane in Imphal to make sure Sharmila is
not flying into the sky.

Sharmila came to Delhi, unhooked to any life
support, and was fasting at Jantar Mantar. Her
first trip was to Rajghat.

Yet, possibly even Gandhi would have failed
against the sheer callousness of the
post-colonial Indian state - 72 hours without
food and water, 72 hours after almost six years
of nasal feeding, and yet all Shivraj Patil could
offer the delegation which met him was that an
official of the home ministry would come, and
durwan like, read out the relevant contents of
the Jeevan Reddy Committee report to her.

If the government was a little less inept, it
would have realised that the report could not be
concealed for ever.

The five-member committee met over 100
individuals and organisations, held a number of
meetings and public hearings across the
north-east, including at least eight meetings
with the army, CRPF and BSF.

The overwhelming opinion was in favour of repeal
(see Annexure II of the report).

In its report, the committee has balanced the
views of the army that it should not be hampered
in its fight against counter-insurgency with the
concerns of civil society that the Act is used to
shield excesses.

While pointing out that the Unlawful Activities
Prevention Act (ULPA), applicable to the whole
country, contains all the shields the army
desires, thereby making AFSPA redundant, it also
recommends introducing further safeguards into
ULPA.

These include limiting the right to fire only
where weapons are reasonably suspected, setting
up a special grievance cell, and incorporating
the safeguards suggested by the Supreme Court.

Why is the government not accepting the
recommendation to scrap AFSPA? Perhaps, scary
thought though it is, the army has veto power.

When we ask family and friends whether they have
heard of Sharmila, the answer is invariably no.

It is ironic, but perhaps inevitable, that at a
time when the media is busy celebrating
Gandhigiri, they have no time for the greatest
living embodiment of Gandhism today.

The writer teaches sociology at Delhi School of Economics.


(vii)

The Times of India
26 Oct, 2006

Q&A: 'NEW DELHI HAS IGNORED OUR PEACEFUL STRUGGLE'

Gandhigiri may have captured the imagination of
the people, but the government of India has
refused to engage with Irom Sharmila's epic
struggle for justice. Sharmila, an activist and
poet in her 30s, has been on a hunger strike for
the past six years in Imphal, Manipur. She wants
the draconian Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act,
1958 to be repealed. This controversial Act has
been enforced in large parts of the north-east.
It gives the armed forces excessive powers over
civilians even at the expense of basic rights
guaranteed by the Constitution. Sharmila, who
arrived in New Delhi to continue her strike, was
arrested and shifted to AIIMS. She spoke to
Amrith Lal about her non-violent struggle for
peace and justice:

Why are you on hunger strike?

I don't have the physical or financial power to
fight the Indian state. A shocking incident in a
Manipur village prompted me to go on hunger
strike. (Sharmila had gone to Malom village on
November 2, 2000, to attend a
meeting called to organise a peace rally. The
same day a convoy of Assam Rifles was attacked by
insurgents. The soldiers returned fire killing 10
people who were waiting for a bus. Sharmila began
her fast the same day.)

Do you have the support of mainstream political parties?

None. If I had their support, I would not have
had to wage this struggle for so long. They have
been adamant in maintaining the status quo in
Manipur.

But now the world is getting to know about our
struggle. Every time a lower court releases me,
the government orders a rearrest. The charge is
always the same: attempt to suicide. I have been
given fluids through artificial means.

It is with great difficulty that I came to Delhi.
A few human rights activists smuggled me out of
the hospital and took me to the airport.

I boarded the flight as I S Chanu. There was a
central minister travelling in the flight. So all
the officials were busy attending to him.

It was my golden chance to escape. I came to
Delhi because this is the seat of the central
government. For the
last six years, the Centre has been avoiding this most peaceful struggle.

There is a sense of sin in their (ministers and
officials) minds about the inaction.

How would you like others to respond to your struggle?

We want the support and solidarity of everybody.
I don't know how I should put it. This is a
struggle of the whole humanity and civili-sation.

It should be taken up by the entire country.
Politicians see politics as a business. My
struggle is to change their corrupted minds. I am
optimistic about my struggle.

Do you still write poetry?

An Imphal-based NGO will soon publish a
collection of my Manipuri poems. There are 70 of
them, some of them very long. I even wrote one
recently about my first experience of travelling
in a plane.


_____


11   ARMS SALES TO THE REGION - PLANS AND THE PLAYERS:

http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/15574.html

ARMS AND THE MEN
by Ritu Sarin

Posted online: Sunday, October 29, 2006 at 0000 hrs Print Email

Rumours, half-truths, some malicious gossip and,
yes, plenty of backstories. That's what you get
when you delve into the murky domain of Indian
arms-dealers. This month, they were back in the
news when, for the first time since the Bofors
years, the Central Bureau of Investigation
swooped down on the biggest guns in the business.

But the subsequent silence has been deafening.
Even as agency sleuths comb through trunkloads of
seized documents, property papers, computer
printouts, bank and credit card transactions, the
raided arms-dealers themselves appear to be a
sullen lot, still smarting from the crackdown.
How much of this bewilderment is genuine and how
much a clever facade for a quick comeback is
anyone's guess.

The CBI's action, however, has firmed up certain
facts: One, that despite their assiduous denials
and legitimate business covers, the Choudhries,
the Nandas and the Khannas-the three major
arms-dealers raided by the CBI-remain on the top
of the arms trade and of the system. Two, this
clique of middlemen continues to be in charge,
while small-time operators-like, say, Abhishek
Verma (currently behind bars) or Mohinder Singh
Sahni (who was raided as well)-pretend also to be
power players. And three, only a very resolute
and determined political regime can end their
stranglehold over arms procurement, where
commissions may run as high as 15 per cent.

Unfriendly Fire

IF one goes by the FIR filed by the CBI in the
Barak missile case, the three arms-dealers are
one happy family sharing the spoils of the Rs
1,125-crore deal. The FIR names Suresh Nanda, son
for former Naval chief S M Nanda, as the
principal broker, while Sudhir
Choudhrie-described as (Nanda's) "relative and
former business associate"-is alleged to have
received "millions of dollars" worth of
remittances from the Israel Aircraft Industries
(IAI). Arvind Khanna, Congress MLA and son of
arms dealer Vipin Khanna, is also alleged to have
got "suspected" remittances from IAI.

However, the happy family stories seem to hold
little water. True, the Nandas and the Choudhries
are distantly related (Suresh Nanda's sister
Veena is married to a cousin of Rajeev and Sudhir
Choudhrie). True, too, that they started off
together in the arms business in the '70s by
launching a company, Eureka Sales, in Defence
Colony. One of the first deals they struck
jointly was the import of Matra missiles from
France.

Soon afterwards, though, Nanda and Choudhrie fell
out over money issues and parted company. Today,
Nanda runs a clutch of companies such as Crown
Corporation and Dynatron Services, and
concentrates on the Naval sector. The Choudhrie
clan-aided by their uncle, former Hindustan
Aeronautics Limited chairman Baljeet
Kapoor-concentrates on Air Force deals.

Nanda says the CBI came calling on his father's
91st birthday, just as they were recovering from
the aftermath of the early-'80s HDW submarine
deal: The family recently got back the heirloom
jewellery confiscated by the Income-Tax
department over two decades ago.

Says Nanda, "I have no role in the alleged
pay-off to the Samata Party treasurer (R K Jain).
And the only remittance I have received from the
IAI is Rs 2.5 lakh in 2001, for selling
spare-parts for a faulty ship. The government
does more damage with its flip-flops than
Pakistan ever can. (Because of the crackdown and
the suspicions) The modernisation of the defence
forces will stop yet again."

Curiously, while Nanda denies paying bribes for
the import of Barak missiles, he admits he acted
as a "consultant" for the import of Armoured
Recovery Vehicles (ARVs) from Slovakia's Unipex,
over which, too, the CBI has lodged an FIR. Both
FIRs name Suresh Nanda and former Defence
Minister George Fernandes as accused.

And, as if to hint at the legendary rivalry
between the two families, Nanda asks one
question: "If both Sudhir Choudhrie and I have
received money from the IAI and figure in the
Barak FIR, why has he not been listed as accused?"

Flying the Coup

FEW realise that when the CBI raided 35 locations
associated with defence dealers, Choudhrie and
his family had already left the country. CBI
director Vijay Shankar (see interview) calls this
a "coincidence" but questions are being raised on
the timing of the operation, in view of the
family's closeness with powerful people in
successive Congress regimes.

The reins of the Choudhrie family firms have been
with Sudhir Choudhrie ever since elder brother
Rajeev died nine years ago. Like Nanda and Vipin
Khanna, he's an NRI, but Choudhrie is said to
claim the lion's share of the defence business
pie. He also enjoys diplomatic status as honorary
consul general for Latvia. (Interestingly,
Mohinder Singh Sahni is the consul general for
Belize, while Vipin Khanna represented Luxembourg
till recently.)

Like Nanda, who runs hotels (he owns Claridges in
Delhi and Sea Rock in Mumbai) and an e-commerce
company called CI India in his other life,
Choudhrie has interests in property. He is known
to have stakes in the seven-star spa Ananda in
the Himalayas and several Gurgaon malls and is a
director with Air Deccan.

When the CBI came knocking, it was only
Choudhrie's estranged sister-in-law Rita
("Cookie" to most) and his mother Amrit who were
in their respective homes in Sunder Nagar. Cookie
Choudhrie moved out to an independent bungalow
about six months ago, thus announcing the family
split. When contacted, she told The Sunday
Express, "I have nothing to do with the family
and nothing to do with all this. You know my
husband passed away a long while ago; he had been
ailing for two years before that. I have nothing
more to add."

Shot in the Foot

WHILE the immediate provocation for the CBI raids
were the Barak and ARV deals, the CBI had also
named Choudhrie and Vipin Khanna in its FIR in
the Hand Held Thermal Imagers (HHTI) case lodged
a year ago. Subsequently, the Khannas came under
pressure as the Enforcement Directorate, during
its Iraqi oil-for-food probe, uncovered their
defence links.

   The ED is learnt to have located dozens of
off-shore companies owned by the Khannas and
later tipped off the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on
the scam. Sources say the Khannas were also found
to be working with companies supplying arms to
Pakistan, the reason why MoD recently instructed
all its divisions to stop official dealings with
the family.

It is also believed that when the Khanna kin were
questioned about their arms deals, they pointed
the finger at the Choudhries, saying they were
only using the money transfer routes used by the
grand-dads of the business for decades.

But on the Barak FIR, Vipin Khanna's son Arvind
is clearly on the backfoot. He maintains the only
financial dealings that can link him with the IAI
is a two-year $45,000-maintenance contract for
the Barak missiles, signed with IAI's sister
concern Rafael. "I have never been part of any
commission arrangement for the missiles. I do
have the maintenance contract for them. The
agencies know that,'' he says.

Ace Up CBI Sleeve?

THE CBI, however, is hinting that they have far
more on the defence dealers than is revealed by
the Barak, ARV and HHTI FIRs, and says they will
now use the Letter Rogatory route to get to the
money trail.

But the interminable Bofors investigation and the
slow progress of the Denel probe (where the buzz
about the Khannas' involvement is growing
stronger) has left everyone wondering what will
eventually become of this bunch of
transcontinental deals.

The Centre and the MoD, as usual, don't have a
single view on what should be done about the
repeated scams involving defence middlemen. Even
as the procurement bosses are known to have
launched a 'go-slow' on file processing, Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh has suggested rejigging
the agent-registration procedures to track all
those involved in specific deals.

In the pre-Bofors years, the Defence Ministry
maintained a 100-strong list of defence agents.
Though it was recast every year, often
dramatically, the Choudhries, Nandas and Khannas
always figured among the chosen few and cornered
most of the business-as they are believed to,
today. Some of these agents often figured in the
CBI's annual Undesirable Contact Men (UCM) list
but, surprisingly, do not feature in the current
one.

Then came the Bofors-incited ban and the
"undergrounding" of the arms business. In 2002,
the MoD announced a cumbersome registration
policy for defence agents. Not one signed up.

The current action against defence agents should
be examined against the background of the
constant official flip-flop on their status. The
agents, in the meantime, have continued to
manipulate General Staff Quality Requirements
(GSQRs) and tender requirements.

Their modus operandi, insiders say, is to buy off
officials in the supplier companies as well as
the Indian defence establishment and-thanks to
their NRI status and the diplomatic immunity some
of them enjoy-launder their money abroad.

The irony is that none of the big guns has been
able to resist the temptation of pumping their
money back home to buy fancy property.
International cooperation on tracing dirty money
has become become far easier post-9/11 and, as
the Volcker probe has shown, it does not take
decades to get to the money trail.

It's now up to the CBI and the government to take
a call and cleanse the subterranean business of
trading in arms.

o o o

FRANCE'S ARMARIS OFFERS SUB TO PAKISTAN
by Pierre Tran, Paris
http://pakistanidefenceforum.com/index.php?showtopic=58909


Defense News
Posted 10/06/06 11:41

FRANCE MAKES OFFER TO SUPPLY INDIA WITH FIGHTERS
by Vivek Raghuvanshi, New Delhi
http://www.defensenews.com%2Fstory.php%3FF%3D2157420%26C%3Dasiapac

INDIA TO BUY 80 RUSSIAN HELICOPTERS WORTH $660 MILLION
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20061017/54897349.html

INDIA, U.K. JOINT AIR EXERCISES IN GWALIOR
Sandeep Dikshit
http://www.hindu.com/2006/10/14/stories/2006101401781400.htm

US AND INDIAN ARMIES HOLD EXERCISE
United Press International - Oct 10, 2006
http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20061010-023343-9176r

R&D WORK ON TRISHUL MISSILE TO BE STOPPED
http://www.hindu.com/2006/10/15/stories/2006101502771000.htm

_____


12     MILITARISATION AND CIVIL SOCIETY:


News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty International

SOUTH ASIA: 'WAR ON TERROR' SPAWNS NEW PATTERNS OF ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCE


New patterns of enforced disappearance related to
the "war on terror" have emerged in South Asia
alongside the long-standing problems in countries
such as Nepal and Sri Lanka. In all cases, the
families of the victims suffer emotionally,
socially and financially, said Amnesty
International on International Day of the
Disappeared.

Amnesty International believes that several
hundreds of people have become victims of
enforced disappearances in Pakistan in the
context of the "war on terror". Whilst many of
those have eventually been acknowledged as being
held in Guatanamo Bay, others are believed still
to be held in Pakistani detention although their
precise whereabouts remain unknown. Some people
were released after receiving threats not to
reveal details about their detention, while
others were subsequently criminally charged. In
at least one case, the body of a victim of
enforced disappearance was found six months after
he had been captured. The fate or whereabouts of
many others remain unknown

Meanwhile, there are fears that a pattern of
enforced disappearance by state agents is
re-emerging in Sri Lanka following the
introduction of new Emergency Regulations in
August 2005 that granted sweeping powers to the
security forces. Sixty-two cases of enforced
disappearance in the north of the country have
been registered by the Human Rights Commission of
Sri Lanka over the past year. The Commission is
also investigating the status of 183 other
individuals who are still missing under unknown
circumstances.

"South Asia has a history of enforced
disappearances, with tens of thousands of people
going missing over past decades in countries such
as Nepal and Sri Lanka. It is very disappointing
to see countries such as Pakistan join in a trend
that one would hope would be declining," said
Catherine Baber, Deputy Asia Pacific Director at
Amnesty International.

"Enforced disappearance is a gross violation of
international human rights and humanitarian law.
It affects not only the victims but also takes a
heavy toll on their families. Relatives are left
to agonise over the fate of their loved ones in
the face of official denials and contradictions.
They are harrassed in their attempts to obtain
information and face financial difficulties when
the victim is the breadwinner."

The fate and whereabouts of Pakistani Saifullah
Paracha was unknown for six weeks after he was
taken into US custody on arrival at Bangkok
airport on 5 July 2003. His wife Fatah Paracha
told Amnesty International that the events had
"emotionally devastated the whole family". "Can
you imagine the mental agony and anxiety we
experienced as a family when this happened and
there was no response from anyone?...[Our
children] are no longer carefree children but
have become suspicious and worried... All friends
of the family have backed off, everyone is scared
to know us." Saifullah Paracha is now known to be
held at Guantanamo Bay, but his family have no
idea how long he will remain there.

The families of thousands of victims of enforced
disappearance remain in limbo, whilst the fate of
their relative remains unknown. In Nepal, a
government committee announced in July that it
was investigating more than 600 outstanding cases
of enforced disappearance, but local activists
say there are more than 1000 individuals who are
unaccounted for. Sri Lanka has one of the highest
levels of unresolved enforced disappearances in
the world. In the Indian state of Jammu and
Kashmir, an estimated 8,000- 10,000 enforced
disappearances have been reported since 1989.
While fewer new cases are reported now, there is
still no information about past cases.

Faced with a lack of official action, some family
members have set up mutual support groups. One is
the Association of the Parents of Disappeared
Persons in Jammu and Kashmir, which provides
support to relatives including the "half widows"
-- women who are deprived of compensation so long
as they refuse to declare their husbands dead.

Armed groups are often implicated in the
abduction of people who speak out against them,
with some victims held for months and even years
in secret locations. In Nepal, thousands of
abductions are believed to have been carried out
by Maoist fighters over the decade-long conflict;
more than 330 such people are still missing,
according to the country's National Human Rights
Commission.

New cases of enforced disappearance continue to
emerge in South Asian countries. In Sri Lanka,
eight Tamil men did not return home on 6 May when
they went to decorate a Hindu temple in
preparation for a religious festival. Their
families reported them missing the following
morning, saying they had seen Sri Lanka army
personnel at the temple during the night. The
mens' whereabouts remain unknown.

In Pakistan, the indifference shown to the
enforced disappearance of terror suspects has
contributed to its spread beyond "war on terror"
related cases. The enforced disappearance of
members of other groups such as Baloch and Sindhi
nationalists are now also being reported. Courts
are swamped with habeas corpus petitions to
determine victims' whereabouts. State agents
routinely deny holding the victims or knowing
anything about their fate or whereabouts.

"People should be arrested and detained according
to the law, not forced into a van in the middle
of the night and swept off to an anonymous
detention centre where they risk torture and
further abuses. Individuals have the right to
challenge their detention, to see a lawyer of
their choosing and talk to their families.
Families have a right to know where their
relatives are," said Catherine Baber.

Notes to Editors
Amnesty International will be releasing a report
on enforced disappearances related to the "war on
terror" in Pakistan later this year. If you would
like to receive this report, please contact the
press office.

Amnesty International is lobbying for the draft
International Convention for the Protection of
All Persons from Enforced Disappearance to be
adopted by consensus and without amendment at the
61st session of the UN General Assembly this year.

To see an Amnesty International factsheet about
enforced disappearances in the "war on terror",
please go to:
http://amnesty-news.c.topica.com/maae644absXGKcgn6HIb/

AFAD, the Asian Federation Against Enforced
Disappearance, is the regional body of support
groups formed by relatives of the victims of
enforced disappearance. Its website is at
http://amnesty-news.c.topica.com/maae644absXGLcgn6HIb/

All AI documents on South Asia:
http://amnesty-news.c.topica.com/maae644absXGUcgn6HIb/


o o o

India:

HindustanTimes.com » Editorial
October 13, 2006

INTELLIGENT DESIGN?

Ajit Bhattacharjea

October 12, 2006

Four Octobers ago, a well-known Kashmiri
journalist, Iftikhar Gilani, was in Tihar jail
facing indefinite incarceration on concocted
charges. He had been jailed after a cursory trial
on June 9, 2002 and was abruptly released after
seven months when the charges were withdrawn.
Gilani had a rough time, but was relatively
fortunate. As chief of bureau of the Kashmir
Times in Delhi, he had many journalist friends
and others who campaigned for his release. The
charge against him under the Official Secrets Act
was found to be fabricated.

The primary evidence produced by the police was a
document on the hard disk of Gilani's computer
with details of the number of Indian security
forces in Kashmir. But this was not secret
information. It was, as he pleaded, a paper by
one Nazir Kamal already published in the journal
of the Pakistan Institute of Strategic Studies,
Islamabad Papers, and taken from their website.
Offers to demonstrate this by securing other
copies of the paper or contacting the website
were ignored. Gilani's copy was doctored to make
it appear secret. These and other details of the
frantic efforts of the prosecution, and the
officials behind it, to frame Gilani are detailed
in his book, My Days in Prison. Fortunately, the
patent failure of justice became impossible to
justify and he was released on January 13, 2003.
But for the influential friends who pursued his
case, he may still have been in jail. The maximum
sentence prescribed for an offence under the
Official Secrets Act is 14 years.

I recall Gilani's case because My Days in Prison
indicates why the sentencing of Mohammad Afzal
Guru to death by hanging has evoked passion and
disbelief in the Valley. It documents the devious
lengths to which investigative agencies are
willing to go to be seen as saviours of the
nation. Kashmir is familiar with stories of
people being framed, of militants claimed killed
by the security forces turning out to be innocent
civilians, of young men disappearing without
trace. Suspicions are reinforced when it is found
that in Delhi, intelligence agencies are not
above fabricating or distorting evidence to get
credit for catching persons painted as threats to
national security. In Afzal and Gilani's cases,
evidence of fabrication surfaced during hearings.

With stories concerning national security certain
to get headlines, intelligence agencies try to
exploit mediapersons to substantiate their
charges and embarrass the defence. Hints are
dropped about activities that further damage the
suspect's reputation or weaken his case. In the
Gilani case, a newspaper reported that he had
confessed his guilt, which he had not. In the
Guru case, his counsel was quoted as suggesting
that he preferred death by lethal injection to
hanging, an implicit admission of guilt. He
denied admitting any such preference.
Intelligence personnel are keen on publicity.
Arrangements to be filmed or photographed with a
'catch' are part of the routine; presumably with
an eye on a reward.

Gilani's account of his ordeal is detailed and
credible. It contains names and designations. A
copy of Afzal's letter to his lawyer from jail
has been circulated. It makes more painful
reading, with descriptions of torture and
extortion, but does not have the imprimatur of a
published document. Even so, Afzal's account of
inadequate facilities for defence, the
circumstantial nature of the evidence and other
trial inadequacies seem sufficient to provide the
scintilla of doubt about his guilt required to
merit presidential clemency. It will be too late
to make amends if evidence to the contrary is
found after he has been hanged.

Justice must be seen to have been done especially
in a case involving an attack on Parliament
House. The Supreme Court did not find any
evidence in the charge that Guru was a member of
a terrorist gang or organisation. He was not
directly involved in the attack or the planning,
which was masterminded by three persons in
Pakistan. Even if guilty as a conspirator, the
view taken by the court raises more questions
than it answers. The following is an extract from
the judgment: "The incident which resulted in
heavy casualties, has shaken the entire nation
and the collective conscience of the society will
be satisfied if the capital punishment is awarded
to the offender. The challenge to the unity,
integrity and sovereignty of India by these acts
of terrorists and conspirators can only be
compensated by giving the maximum punishment to
the person who is proved to be a conspirator in
this treacherous act. The appellant, who is a
surrendered militant and who was bent upon
repeating the acts of treason against the nation,
is a menace to the society [and] should become
extinct. Accordingly, we uphold the death
sentence."

Ajit Bhattacharjea is a former Director, Press Institute of India


o o o


The Times of India
2 Oct, 2006
Editorial

DEMYSTIFYING DEFENCE

Why should a Bofors, Scorpene, Sukhoi or Barak
excite the national imagination? Underlying the
disproportionate sense of outrage over corruption
in defence deals is a flawed assumption: That our
national interest is best protected by a state
armed to the teeth.

There is overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
People of Nagaland, Manipur and Kashmir will tell
you how army presence has stripped their lives of
dignity and meaning.

The army in these regions provokes more violence
than it claims to suppress, because that is the
nature of the beast.

Yet, the acquisition and use of weapons is seen
as a supreme national duty. When the media does
sting operations on defence deals - on how
certain individuals 'compromise the country's
interests' by taking commissions - it becomes a
shrill, self-righteous patriot.

We are not interested in making out a case for
George Fernandes or anyone else. The point is to
question the prevailing discourse on defence
which legitimises state hegemony over individuals
and communities. Since defence is projected to be
synonymous with 'national interest', the state
gets away by being secretive about its
transactions.

The individual is told that it is not in the
public interest for him to know about Bofors et
al; the Right
to Information Act, 2005 keeps defence out of its purview.

The absence of transparency allows political
parties to mount campaigns over inessential,
emotive issues, be it the price of a few cannon
or coffins, in the name of patriotism.

The media plays a major role in this fraudulent
discourse. In order to make matters of defence
seem commonplace, we should legalise commission
agents.

They are necessary intermediaries when suppliers
are private players. Our annual spending on
defence, at about Rs 80,000 crore, exceeds social
sector spending by about Rs 30,000 crore: No
reason, then, for a country that claims to be a
vibrant democracy to keep such a large part of
its budget, including commissions paid, under
wraps.

India is the world's largest democracy, but with
a remarkably militarised state. Two million
children in India below the age of five die every
year, yet the defence budget remains a holy cow.

The dominant discourse informs us that our
neighbourhood is too hostile for us to question
defence spending. Why not redefine security
instead?

Can we consider ourselves secure when more than
300 million people are dirt poor and
malnourished, when our sex ratio and maternal
mortality rates have ceased to improve in recent
years?

To legitimise defence, a mere euphemism for war,
is to accept the curtailment of basic
entitlements and freedoms. Defence scam
enthusiasts and security experts have had their
say. Let's have ours.

India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch
Compilation (October 4, 2006)
Year Seven, No 164
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/175

Contents:
1  My heroes (Farrukh Saleem)
2  A face-saving retreat : Pak 'pact' with Taliban  (M B Naqvi)
3  Fables of a ruinous tradition (Jawed Naqvi)
4  India-Pakistan Tensions Spill Into Sri Lanka (J. Sri Raman)
5  India should not join race for biological weapons (Sujatha Byravan)
6  US fuels Pakistan bounty market (Tom Burgis)
7  DRDO working on new missile (Rajat Pandit)
8  Kashmir:
   -  Sudden hardening of posture (Editorial, Kashmir Times)
   -  India: Impunity Fuels Conflict in Jammu and Kashmir (Human RIghts Watch)
   -  "With Friends Like These . . ." Human Rights
Violations in Azad Kashmir (Human RIghts Watch)
   -  On The Death Sentence To Mohammad Afzal:
     (i)  Does Afzal Deserve The Death Penalty? (Humra Quraishi)
     (ii) We Haven't Even Heard Afzal's Story (Nandita Haksar)
     (iii) Save Afzal Guru Campaign (JKCCS)
     (iv)  Petition Against Mohammad Afzal Guru's Death Penalty
   9   Anti-terrorism and Security Laws In India (NYC Bar)
10 Bombay and Malegaon Blasts in India: The social impact
(i) Political Context of Mumbai Bomb Blasts (P A Sebastian)
(ii) Malegaon:
- Reaping The Harvest: Images of Terror (Nalini Taneja)
- A Vicious Cycle (AG Noorani)
11  Arms Sales to the Region:
- Campaigners in treaty support bid
- India links partnership to arms sales by France (Amit Baruah)
- New Delhi May Buy Qatari Mirage Aircraft - From Paris (Vivek Raghuvanshi)
- Indian, French Firms Form Global C4 Effort (Vivek Raghuvanshi)
- Defence brass on 'secret' Israel trips (Rajat Pandit)
12 Militarisation and Civil Society:
    - General Figures: How much is a general worth
in real estate terms? (Ayesha Siddiqa)
    - AFSPA: Manipur woman's marathon fast (Suvojit Bagchi)
    - Another army man as VC (Dawn)
    - 'AFSPA 1958' continues bagging international awards
    - Pakistan: General in His Labyrinth (Arif Azad)
    - The death of Nawab Akbar Bugti and operations
by the armed forces in Baluchistan (Declaration
by Joint Action Committee)
13 Sri Lanka: South Asia's most militarised society (B. Muralidhar Reddy)

_______


1.

The News International
October 01, 2006

MY HEROES

By Dr Farrukh Saleem

My hero, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. On May 28, 1998,
at 3.16 p.m. (PST), my hero shook the granite
mountains of Ras Koh Hills in the Chagai Division
of Balochistan generating a seismic signal of 5.0
on the Richter scale. My hero gave us accumulated
destructive power of up to 40 KT (equivalent TNT)
and made us the first Islamic country to emerge
as the seventh nuclear power on the face of the
planet. My hero has also given us some 800 kg of
highly enriched uranium enough for three-dozen
nuclear weapons.

Thank you, Doctor sahib, we can now instantly
kill at least a million people and cause
leukaemia, other radiation-induced cancers,
cataracts, bloody discharge, anaemia, nausea,
diarrhoea and abnormally low white blood cell
count in an additional 10 million. We can now
generate temperatures of 300,000 degrees
centigrade and melt glass, tile and every
combustible material. We can crush concrete
ceilings and kill additional millions. We can now
ignite heat and light brighter than a thousand
suns (even looking at the flash will cause
blindness). We can poison the food chain and kill
even more. We also have the capability of causing
radiation poisoning.

On February 4, 2004, my hero appeared on Pakistan
Television (PTV) and "confessed to selling
nuclear weapons technology secrets to Libya, Iran
and North Korea (so that they can cause cancer
too)." On February 5, 2005, President General
Musharraf called him "his hero" too and then went
on to fire him (according to "In the line of
fire: A memoir", Dr AQ Khan is "self-centered and
abrasive Š. huge ego Š lavish lifestyle and tales
of his wealth, properties, corrupt practises, and
financial magnanimity at state expense were
generally all too well knownŠ." pages 288-294).

Time magazine has called my hero as "The merchant
of menace". Of the 192 member states of the
United Nations, some 15 dozen countries refer to
him as the world's most dangerous "nuclear
trafficker". Either the 15 dozen are all wrong or
I am on the wrong side of history.

My other hero, is the Afghan warrior-king Sultan
Mahmud of Ghazni. To be certain, Sultan Mahmud of
Ghazni was the grandson of a Turkic (Northern and
Central Eurasian) general from Balkh (Balkh is a
small town in the Province of Balkh,
Afghanistan). How this Afghan warrior sultan
became my hero I will never know.

Ghaznavi is now our long-range nuclear-capable
missile. Intriguingly, Sultan Mahmud's military
campaigns were mostly against other Muslims
particularly the Shias of the Fatimid Caliphate
(where the ruling elite belonged to the Ismaili
branch of Shi'ism). Mahmud's military expeditions
always took back a train of slaves as plunder.

My other hero, Sultan Muhammad Ghauri, another
Afghan warrior king (Ghauri is one of the 34
provinces of Afghanistan). Ghauri is now our
medium-range, nuclear-capable ballistic missile
and Prithvi is theirs.

Interestingly, in 1191, Prithvi Raj Chauhan
defeated Sultan Muhammad Ghauri. Under Kshatriya
rules, Prithvi let Ghauri escape. The following
year, Ghauri came back captured Prithvi, had his
eyes gouged out and took control of his kingdom.
Prithvi, with no eyes, was then challenged to an
archery competition. When Ghauri's generals
ordered Prithvi to shoot his arrow he refused
demanding orders directly from Ghauri himself.
When Ghauri shouted at Prithvi, the skilled
archer that Prithvi was, turned around located
the source of the voice and shot his arrow right
through Ghauri's threat (Ghauri died instantly).

Why are my heroes associated with death,
destruction, annihilation, devastation, loss of
life, brutality, murder, cruelty and violence?
Can't I have heroes who have actually contributed
to human civilisation? Isn't the 'preservation of
life' Islam's fundamental premise?

Why can't Shirin Ebadi be my hero? After all, she
is the only Muslim woman -- of the 600 million
alive -- to have won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Shouldn't Shirin be my hero for her pioneering
work for the rights of Muslim women and children?
Why can't Prof. Dr Abdus Salam be my hero? Here's
someone from Jhang who actually made a
contribution to human civilisation. Why can't
Naguib Mahfouz be my hero (the only Arabic
language writer to have won the Nobel Prize)?


_____


2.

Deccan Herald
September 15, 2006

A FACE-SAVING RETREAT : PAK 'PACT' WITH TALIBAN
by M B Naqvi

The Pak Army can show for its success the fact
that Tali-ban and other militants have promised
to lay down arms

Musharraf regime has made a virtue of necessity
in an unexpected way. It has made an "agreement"
in the embattled North Waziristan with an
amorphous Jirga, an assembly of tribal elders.
But that Jirga throws little light on the exact
identity of who in fact was confronting the
Pakistan Army in North Waziristan. Originally
they had been called "Islamic militants of
foreign origin" who later turned out to be the
Mujahideen of the Jihad of l980s in Afghanistan
and they were of foreign origin. But that was a
quarter of a century ago. They had found refuge
in Tribal Areas with government approval and
could not go home for fear of facing the
persecution of their governments. They have
settled down and are all too vulnerable and
unlikely to fight the Pak Army that has helped
them find a safe haven. So who are the actual
fighters and what is the significance of this
peace "agreement"?

It is now known and is tacitly acknowledged by
authorities that Taliban has grown in strength
and influence in both Waziristan Agencies.

They have begun to exercise the functions of a
state, like promising people protection, taxing
them and administering justice [a rough and ready
one, to be sure] and have been killing the
informers and supporters of the Pakistan Army.
They had inflicted heavy casualties on the Army
and had made it plain that the Army will have a
far too long and bloody a campaign on its hands
that might never end.

And so the authorities did what the British had
done long, long ago- make an agreement with them
to let them live the way their forefathers lived
according to tribal customs, so long as they
accept the overall, largely theoretical, control
of Islamabad. The latter has learnt nothing other
than what the British Pathan Affairs' experts
have written. Pakistani bureaucrats, both civil
and military, still regard the British Frontier
policies to be the acme of wisdom. Hence, this
"agreement".

Its terms are heavily weighted in favour of
Taliban. Pakistan will withdraw its Army and all
its new check posts from North Waziristan. All
the older check posts will remain. But they will
be manned by locally recruited paramilitary
forces. All matters will be settled in accordance
with time-honoured way of consultation with the
Jirgas. In exchange, Taliban has promised not to
carry on their war with the Pakistan Army. So
what has changed?

The short answer is that Pakistan Army has been
able to withdraw and it can show for its
successes the fact that Taliban and other
militants have "promised" to lay down and hand
over their arms. They have also "promised" not to
kill informers and noted supporters of Pakistan
Army.

Pakistan Army's withdrawal has to be weighed
against loads of unexceptionable promises by a
force that is engaged in a revolutionary struggle
of its own conception. Guarantors of the promises
are those elders who make daily deals with
Taliban for self-protection. These promises are
little more than a face-saving device to cover
the Army's retreat after failing to achieve the
aim of driving out the militants.

The promises include that Taliban will not use
FATA territories for attacking Afghanistan. That
is for the benefit of the US, NATO and Karzai
government. Hopefully they will be happy.

That leads to the main question: Would the US and
NATO buy this treaty that virtually leaves
Taliban free to carry on their politics that
indubitably includes the war against foreign
devils?. Maybe recovering Afghanistan is a part
of their agenda. There is little prospect that
the US and NATO leaders will take the same view
of the "agreement" as Islamabad will project it.
But there is also no reason to suppose that
Pakistan Army, so friendly to America, will do
something that the Americans are unlikely to
accept. Could it be that Islamabad and the US are
on the same wavelength so far as the threat from
Taliban is concerned?

Remember what Gen Pervez Musharraf was pleading
with Americans even after they had invaded
Afghanistan and won initial battles? He had
pleaded that make a deal with the moderate
Taliban and fight the extremist ones. Pakistan
was there to help.

It seems Pentagon and NATO have discovered merit
in what Musharraf had suggested. To be sure,
President Hamid Karzai had offered to include
Taliban in his government, though neither pursued
the idea. Meantime, Taliban has increased their
anti-foreign attacks.

The NATO troops, mainly the British, have mounted
big operations in Helmand and Kandhar provinces
and claimed to have inflicted heavy casualties on
Taliban. Western troops are stretched to the
limit and no victory is in sight. It might be
that the Americans might take political help from
Pak Army in arranging for a grand deal with the
Taliban and end the crisis.

It is hard to see how that can now happen.
Taliban, being fanatics and inflexible, are
unlikely to do a deal with "great Satan". There
might be no way out of Afghanistan for anyone:
America, NATO or Pakistan. The only available
option is to cut and run and leave Afghanistan to
its fate.


_____


3.

Dawn
25 September 2006

DATELINE NEW DELHI: Fables of a ruinous tradition

by Jawed Naqvi

LAST week's revelations about a US threat to bomb
Pakistan "back to stone age" prompted this rework
of an old fable. There was a monkey, which could
be the leader of any of the two South Asian
countries, India or Pakistan. And there was a
scorpion, which could be any president of the
United States. Once the neighbouring Taliban
river was in flood. The monkey was able to cross
it with ease, but not so the scorpion.

One day the scorpion begged the monkey for a
ride. The unsuspecting simian promptly invited
the helpless creature to hold on to his back for
the journey across the Taliban river. They looked
snug together as the monkey swam effortlessly.
But half way through the roaring river the
scorpion stung the monkey. Before succumbing to
the poison, the monkey turned his head to look at
the scorpion with disbelief. "I was trying to
help you but now we are both going to die. Why
did you do this?" the monkey asked with a hint of
bewilderment. The scorpion mustered a sheepish
grin and said demurely: "To help those who seek
your friendship is your nature; to sting just
anyone and ever so pointlessly is my habit."

Just why the reworked fable involves India would
not be easy to discern for many of today's TV
presenters who were either not born or were too
young to remember the day the United States
dispatched its Seventh Fleet into the Bay of
Bengal in 1971. The intention was clear and
spine-chilling. The Seventh Fleet was India's
first brush with an implied threat of nuclear
assault. The man who issued the threat during the
unfortunate India-Pakistan conflict was President
Nixon himself. What happened with Nixon
eventually would give a new peep into his
essentially criminal streak, not only with
distant and small countries but also with
trusting and guileless fellow Americans.

The man quoted by President Musharraf in his book
"In the Line of Fire" as threatening Pakistan
with bombardment so intense that it would put the
country into the stone age is former deputy
secretary of state Richard Armitage. He has a
similar history of gross indiscretions at home.
Armitage only this year grudgingly acknowledged
that he was the original source in the leak of
former CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. The
Plame case led to an investigation into leaks of
her identity that Bush administration critics
said were to punish Plame's former diplomat
husband for his criticism of how pre-Iraq war
intelligence was used. It is curious that
President Bush didn't know of Armitage's
involvement in the Plame leak. Now he says he
didn't know of Armitage's threat to bomb Pakistan
into the dark ages. Curious.

President Musharraf says in his yet to be
released book that he decided to join the
American hunt for the Taliban and Al Qaeda after
"war gaming" a scenario with the United States.
His conclusion was that if he didn't join the war
on terror, the United States would destroy
Pakistan. Was he echoing the threat issued by the
bodybuilder bullnecked Armitage? Is there a war
game theory that imbues Venezuela's Chavez,
Cuba's Castro, Iran's Khomeini, Vietnam's Ho Chi
Minh and now Lebanon's Nasrallah with some kind
of special powers that they were able to resist a
bullying superpower and which do not obtain in
Pakistan? All told it is not a very flattering
conclusion to draw for the self-respecting people
of Pakistan.

Likewise with India. Here is a country with a
chronic fondness for foreign conquerors. From the
time of Alexander the Great, or even before, to
the current George Bush era, the story has been
the same. Mao Tse-Tung had a name for the ever
present class of people who traditionally and
historically colluded with foreign powers to the
detriment of their own people. He called them
comprador. In mediaeval history, Jaichand
betrayed his cousin Prithviraj against Muhammad
Ghori; during the early days of still nascent
British rule Mir Jaffer betrayed the Bengal ruler
Sirajuddaullah by switching loyalty to Robert
Clive.

Similarly, there is a class of Indians and
Pakistanis who feel happy, even content when
their governments find reasons to collude with
say the FBI to hunt their own. The FBI now has a
fully-fledged office in Delhi and probably a much
bigger one in Islamabad. The same comprador folks
however go into a sulk if cooperation is put on
the anvil between the two countries that really
and truly most urgently need to get their
intelligence heads together -- India and
Pakistan. Worse, with a robust media that clones
the daily perspectives doled out from the "mother
country", and with a growing number of their
zealous followers in the recipient countries
there is very little space left to argue against
the overpowering trend.

George Perkovich, author of the incisive and
comprehensive account of "India's Nuclear Bomb",
sees a traditional desire in India to move on
from the client-donor relationship Delhi has had
with the United States to one of equal
partnership. Since Morarji Desai's time at least,
the country has striven to move on from the days
of food assistance it received from the United
States under the PL480 dole and from the days
when it reciprocated with sherpas who would plant
nuclear-powered gadgets on the rugged peaks of
Nanda Devi for the United States to spy on China.
It also wants to move on from the days when the
controversial U2 American spy planes would take
off from southern Indian bases to keep an eye on
China but would occasionally veer into the Soviet
airspace with at least one disastrous
consequence, towards parity in their relationship.

It would be a laudable idea, but the ground
reality looks unyielding if forbidding. News is
coming in as we write of how an offer of plum
portfolios in US multinational companies like
Microsoft was all it took for two senior staffers
of India's National Security Council Secretariat
to leak top secret documents to American diplomat
Rosanne Minchew.

Classified documents seized from the accused,
include India's Nuclear Doctrine draft report,
the foreign policy on the Thai KAR Canal and
futuristic NSCS plans for data-sharing network
among security agencies, Delhi police are being
quoted as saying.

In the faraway Schofield Barracks in Hawaii,
Indian soldiers are carrying out a demonstration
for their American counterparts. As some 140
Indian soldiers descend on a mock village in the
Oahu mountains to hunt for insurgents, they are
watched by US Army officers looking for lessons
they can apply when leading their units through
the same exercise.

The troops are on the island for the biggest
joint drills the Indian and US armies have had to
date, the latest sign of growing military
relations between the two nuclear powers. A wire
agency report says the bilateral exercise, called
Yudh Abhyas, or "training for war" in Hindi,
started four years ago with a handful of Indian
and US soldiers. It has since ballooned to
feature hundreds of troops, including 140 Indians
who flew to Hawaii, which hosts the US Pacific
Command whose reach extends to their homeland.

Ageing Indian thespian Dilip Kumar once used a
simple folksy couplet to illustrate the
complexities of Mao Tse-Tung's comprador class.
"Kulhadi mein lakdi ka dasta na hota, to lakdi ke
katne ka rasta na hota," he told millions of his
followers. (The axe has its handle made of wood;
for the trees it's a betrayal, and not very good.)



_____


4

http://www.truthout.org/
13 September 2006

INDIA-PAKISTAN TENSIONS SPILL INTO SRI LANKA
by J. Sri Raman

      The internal conflicts of India and Pakistan - in
Kashmir and Balochistan - are known to endanger the
"peace process" between South Asia's nuclear-armed
neighbors. A raging civil war in a third country
reinforces the serious threat to the process,
suspended for over a month now.

      From strife-torn Sri Lanka emanate disquieting
signs of India-Pakistan animosities spilling over a
narrow sea strip into the island's ethnic conflict
that has just witnessed a terrible escalation,
spelling a heavy toll of human lives and displacement
of tens of hundreds.

      A major sign followed days after a dramatic
attempt on the life of a Pakistani diplomat in Sri
Lanka's capital. On August 14, his country's
Independence Day, Pakistan's high commissioner in
Colombo Bashir Wali Mohammed was proceeding to a
flag-hoisting function through a high-profile and
heavy-security area of the city, when a
remote-operated claymore mine hit his convoy, missing
him but killing four Sri Lankan army commandos besides
some bystanders.

      Colombo was quick to blame the attempt on the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Sri Lanka's
defense spokesperson (and policy planning minister)
Keheliya Rembukwella attributed it to the Tigers'
unhappiness with the strengthened defense relations
between Colombo and Islamabad. Colonel Wali (retired),
for his part, reacted then only by reiterating
Pakistan's support for Sri Lanka's security and
"territorial integrity."

      Back in Pakistan, a couple of weeks later, Col.
Wali dropped a bombshell. In a statement issued to the
media in Islamabad, he declared that it was not the
LTTE but the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of
India's External Affairs Ministry that had made the
attempt on his life. He charged that the RAW (which
has acquired the unenviable reputation of "India's
CIA" in neighboring nations) had started a "proxy war"
with Pakistan in Sri Lanka.

      Col. Wali himself is a former director of the
Pakistan Intelligence Bureau and a former senior
officer of Pakistan's justly infamous Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI). Available indications make it
amply clear that a heightened ISI-RAW conflict has
accompanied the increasing Colombo-LTTE hostilities
over the recent period.

      Col. Wali has recalled the opposition his Sri
Lanka mission has encountered from an ex-RAW man. B.
Raman, who reportedly headed the RAW's
counter-terrorism division for over a decade until his
retirement in 1994, opposed Col. Wali's appointment
and has continued, through his writings in newspapers
and on web sites, to depict the Pakistan High
Commission's role in Sri Lanka's domestic conflict as
dangerous.

      Raman is now the director of the Institute for
Topical Studies, based in Chennai (formerly Madras), a
vantage point for Lanka-watchers. The institute is one
of the elite think-tanks known to serve India's
security establishment.

      As early as in June 2004, soon after Col. Wali's
Colombo appointment, Raman wrote on the South Asian
Analysis Group web site: "India has to carefully
analyze the implications of his (Wali's) presence in
Colombo and take the necessary follow-up action. His
presence in Colombo will pose a threat not only to
India's national security, but also to stability and
law and order in Sri Lanka's (Muslim-majority) Eastern
province."

      Raman went on to berate New Delhi for not heeding
earlier warnings: "India should not have agreed to his
(Wali) being based in Colombo, which would pose a
threat to our national security. If it had not, it
speaks disturbingly of the insensitivity of the
present government to India's concerns over likely
threats to its security."

      Soon after the attempt on Col. Wali's life, Raman
reverted to Pakistan's role in the Sri Lankan civil
war. He charged: "About 12 to 15 members of the
Pakistani Armed Forces, including four or five from
the Pakistan Air Force, are stationed in Colombo to
guide the Sri Lankan security forces in their
counter-insurgency operations."

      Raman has also alleged that Pakistani advisers had
proposed to Colombo a "decapitation" air strike or a
"bunker-buster" operation to eliminate LTTE supreme
Veluppillai Prabhakran. Whether the allegation is
correct or not, the consequences of such an action may
be beyond easy containment, as Pakistan's experience
in Balochistan has proven.

      As Raman sees it, Col. Wali's main focus was on
the military ties between Pakistan and Sri Lanka - the
most prominent part of which consisted in the
partnership between the Sri Lanka Air Force and its
Pakistani counterpart. On this ground, above all,
Raman has also opposed the replacement now of Col.
Wali by Air Vice-Marshal Shehzad Aslam Chaudhry.

      Balochistan figures again as Raman says that the
posting of Chaudhry, "who had in the past handled
air-mounted operations against the Baloch freedom-
fighters, is expected to further step up the Pakistani
involvement in Sri Lanka's use of air strikes to
subdue the LTTE and intimidate the Tamil population."

      An influential section of the Sri Lankan media
sees all such charges as India's attempts at
intervention in the island-nation's internal affairs.
They are also seen as covert but ill-concealed
intervention in support of the LTTE, even if it is an
outlawed organization in India.

      The India-Pakistan controversy rages on in Sri
Lanka. Forgotten, in the dust and din of the debate,
are the deaths of at least fifty-one Sri Lankan
teenagers in an air strike on the same August 14.
These deaths could have revived the Sinhala-Tamil
dialogue if only extremists on both sides were not
determined to deny it any chance.

      The controversy, however, has served a purpose. It
proves that the peace movement is indulging in no
rhetoric when it repeatedly stresses the importance of
the India-Pakistan peace process for the entire region.


_____

5

The Hindu
September 30, 2006

INDIA SHOULD NOT JOIN RACE FOR BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

by Sujatha Byravan

New Delhi has the opportunity to step up as the
global leader it aspires to be by taking a
practical approach and the moral high road on the
subject.

AS INDIANS celebrate Mahatma Gandhi's birthday
this October 2, it is worth interpreting his
message of peace and non-violence in today's
context, especially in the area of biological
weapons.

The Biological Weapons Convention, signed by 147
countries, including the United States and India,
went into force in 1975. Regarded as one of the
major achievements in the history of arms
control, it is meant to "exclude completely the
possibility of bacteriological agents and toxins
being used as weapons" by prohibiting the
development, production, stockpiling,
acquisition, and retention of such weapons.

However, in biodefence research, there is little
difference between research, development, testing
and evaluation for defensive reasons and for
developing weapons. This dual use dilemma may be
addressed by enabling multiparty inspection of
biodefence research facilities, but in 2001 the
U.S. Administration derailed efforts to create a
Protocol for enforcement and verification of
biological weapons, a decision that upset many
countries. Following the U.S.' disruption of the
Protocol, The New York Times published a report
on secret and highly provocative U.S. biological
weapons related activities, including the
construction of an anthrax production plant in
Nevada, the genetic engineering of anthrax for
which there is no protection from existing
vaccines, and the manufacture of biological
submunition (bomblet) prototypes. While the
experiments were described as defensive, a number
of experts in biological weapons control, as well
as former government officials, believe that such
programmes might violate the Convention and could
provoke increased biological weapons production
by other countries unsettled by apparent U.S.
aggression.

Between 2001 and 2007, according to a recent
report from the Center for Arms Control and
Non-Proliferation, the U.S. Government has spent
$36 billion among 11 different federal
departments and agencies to address the threat of
biological weapons. Less than half of this amount
(41 per cent) is meant for research, development,
testing, and evaluation. A portion has gone
towards building at least 20 new high containment
research facilities across the country. These
facilities are Biosafety Levels 3 and 4, the two
highest levels of containment, where increasingly
dangerous agents are studied and safety and
security measures are the most stringent. While
national security is the stated reason for this
expansion by the U.S., the proliferation of these
labs greatly increases the likelihood of
accidental and intentional releases that could
threaten public safety and security. The
knowledge of, and access to, resources these
facilities create can also be misused. In 2001
there were numerous anthrax mailings suspected to
have come from a laboratory within the U.S. These
mailings showed that biodefence laboratories
could become a source of home-grown terrorism.

The increase in spending in biological weapons
research has understandably made other countries
nervous and there are reports of the possibility
of increased spending by India and China in this
area. While some biotech companies, India's
pharmaceutical industry, and other scientists in
India might salivate at the prospect of
capitalising on such research, participating in a
biological weapons arms race and justifying this
as "threat assessment" and "defensive measures"
certainly does not make India safer.

The current situation provides India the
opportunity to step up as the global leader we
aspire to be by taking a practical approach and
the moral high road on this matter.

One option is for India to request a formal
investigation through the U.N. if we believe that
another country has violated the Convention.
Further, emphasising that a verification strategy
is the only way for everyone to be secure from
such weapons, India should raise its concerns at
the international level and further address this
global challenge by calling upon the Bush
administration and other countries to comply
with, and to agree on, a protocol for
international verification. Participating in a
global race for biological weapons is not the
answer if we want the country and the world to
indeed be safe from biological and chemical
weapons in the medium term and in the long run.

Somehow, I don't think the Mahatma would support this arms race either.

(The writer is President, Council for Responsible
Genetics, Cambridge, Massachusetts.)


_____


6

Financial Times
September 28 2006

US FUELS PAKISTAN BOUNTY MARKET

by Tom Burgis in London

Bounties offered by the US for suspected
terrorists have created a black market in
abductions in Pakistan, according to a report
published on Wednesday.

People have been seized by Pakistani police,
border guards and bounty hunters eager to claim
rewards offered for suspected terrorists,
evidence compiled by human rights organisation
Amnesty International shows.

Many were handed to Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence, which in turn passed at least 369
detainees to American operatives, writes
Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, in his
book In the Line of Fire, also published this
week. Amnesty's report says people abducted in
Pakistan account for about two-thirds of the 759
past or present inmates at Camp X-Ray, the US
military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The report - "Pakistan: human rights ignored in
the 'war on terror'" - found "hundreds of people
have been arbitrarily detained".

Incentives for bounty hunters came in leaflets
dropped from American aircraft after the invasion
of Afghanistan in November 2001 and recovered by
locals and reporters. Rewards included $5,000
(¤4,000, £2,700) for information on al-Qaeda or
Taliban fighters and up to $25m for alleged
terrorist masterminds such as Khalid Sheik
Mohammed.

The CIA on Thursday declined to comment. The
State Department did not respond to repeated
requests from the FT for a comment. A Pentagon
spokesman said: "The rewards programme is
effective in helping to protect Americans and
citizens around the world from terrorists,
including those who harbour or aid the enemy."

Professor Shaun Gregory, a UK expert on Pakistani
security at Bradford University's Department of
Peace Studies and a visiting fellow at
Islamabad's Institute for Strategic Studies,
Pakistan's leading military think-tank, said
leaflets dropped in Afghanistan spread into
Pakistan.

The market in abductees was at its most frenetic
in late 2001, Amnesty said. Pakistan's security
services continue to deny the existence of such
detainees when pressed by relatives of the
disappeared. The bounty trade "is the logical
working-through of the notion that the CIA will
pay for 'bad guys'," Prof Gregory said.

Prisoners in Pakistani jails have allegedly been
"groomed" to appear more like potential
terrorists before being sold to American
personnel, Angelika Pathak, one of the report's
authors, told the FT.

Mark Denbaux, professor of law at Seton Hall
University law school, New Jersey, and a lawyer
representing two Guantánamo detainees, said his
client, Rafiq Alhami, a Tunisian Arab resident in
Afghanistan, was bundled into a van during a
medical visit to Pakistan in late 2001.

Mr Alhami, 40, a honey broker with a heart
condition, believes his captors were paid a
bounty, Prof Denbaux said. He remains in Camp
X-Ray, not charged with any offence.

Gen Musharraf writes that since the September 11
2001 attacks his agents have rounded up hundreds
of suspected terrorists: "Some are known to the
world, some are not. We have captured 689 and
handed over 369 to the United States.

"We have earned bounties totalling millions of
dollars. Those who habitually accuse us of 'not
doing enough' on the war on terror should simply
ask the CIA how much prize money it has paid to
the government in Pakistan."

Western diplomats said the allegations would dent
the image of martial democrat cultivated by Gen
Musharraf, who dined with President George W.
Bush and Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, on
Wednesday. The guests, who blame each other for
the Afghan insurgency, refused to shake hands.

Gen Musharraf arrived in London on Thursday, and
spent the afternoon with Tony Blair, the prime
minister. On Friday he will address the Oxford
Union.

Additional reporting by Farhan Bokhari, Islamabad

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

_____


7  MISSILE TEST POLITICS

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1988827.cms
The Times of India
14 Sep, 2006

DRDO WORKING ON NEW MISSILE
Rajat Pandit
[ 14 Sep, 2006 0112hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: The Defence Research and Development
Organisation (DRDO) cannot be faulted for at
least one thing: thinking big. Despite frequent
technical glitches and time and cost-overruns in
its missile programme, it's going ahead with
development work on the beyond visual range (BVR)
air-to-air missile 'Astra'.

BVR missiles are fired by fighter jets to destroy
enemy aircraft at ranges beyond 40 km. They are
urgently needed these days since BVR combat, as
compared to dogfights or WVR (within visual
range) combat, has become the norm in modern-day
aerial warfare.

Being a complex system, only a few countries like
US, Russia, France and Israel have managed to
develop BVR missiles. IAF's frontline fighters
like Sukhoi-30 MKIs and Mirage-2000s, for
instance, are armed with expensive BVR missiles
of French and Russian origin like the "Matra
Super 530D" and "AA-12 Adder".

DRDO is not deterred by all this. Holding that
the "systems design, aerodynamic configuration
design etc of various sub-systems" of Astra have
now been completed, DRDO plans to soon conduct
"controlled flights" of the missile "from
under-slung ground launchers".

The DRDO, incidentally, had conducted test-firing
of three primitive Astra prototypes from the
Chandipur-on-Sea interim test range in May 2003.
But nothing much was heard after it. On March 31,
2004, the government approved the Rs 1,000-crore
project to develop Astra, with a 80-km "head-on
range".

"I don't think DRDO will be able to deliver Astra
to IAF by 2009 as promised," said an expert.


_____


8  KASHMIR:

o o o

Kashmir Times
September 27, 2006
Editorial

SUDDEN HARDENING OF POSTURE
NEW DELHI'S ATTITUDE ON CEASEFIRE IS INEXPLICABLE

While talking of joint mechanisms and peace with
Pakistan New Delhi has, suddenly and almost
inexplicably, hardened its attitude toward
militancy, both in the east and in the west. The
ceasefire with the ULFA, announced on 13 August,
was called off on Sunday. Around 20,000 troops
immediately became active with guns in Naogaon,
Darrang, and Barpeta districts of lower Assam,
and in Jorhat and Tinsukia districts of upper
Assam, in their search for the ULFA activists
hiding in the forests there. Though the immediate
cause, rather the occasion, of the restart of
combat operations, was the murder of Harendra
Nath Das, manager of Hoolongabi tea-estate, who
had refused to pay the ULFA Rs. 12 lakhs, the
real reason for this was the centre's refusal to
release the senior rebel leaders held in their
custody. The centre insisted on a written
commitment from the present ULFA leadership
expressing their commitment to join talks, but no
such letter came. The ULFA, on the other hand,
argues that their decision, in 2005, to set-up a
peace panel comprising eleven members from
outside their cadre, was a sure indication of
their commitment to talks and peace; but they
cannot give any thing in writing as long as some
of their top leaders are in police custody and
are unapproachable by them for consultation. But,
the centre is stubborn in its refusal to allow
the release of those in their custody. So, every
one is again back to the square one, to the days
of blasts, bullets, and bloodshed. What purpose
does it serve? Is it not for the stronger party
to break the impasse in common interest?
Equally confusing is New Delhi's approach to the
question of a ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir
during the holy month of Ramadan. At the
recently-held conclave of Congress chief
ministers at Nainital, the prime ministers
literally took every one by surprise by declaring
that, though there is a definite fall in the
leave of infiltration across the LoC, there was
no plan to announce a ceasefire on the occasion
of the holy Ramadan. His statement has, actually,
come as an anti-climax to the hope of a ceasefire
that had been built up in the last few weeks. In
fact, it was the state chief minister who first
proposed, nearly a month ago, that if the
militants proposed and agreed to observe there
could be a ceasefire, during the holy Ramadan. It
has been experimented with in 2000, when it was
allowed to continue beyond the holy month, from
November to May 2001. Only a few days ago the
Hizb-ul-Mujahideen responded to his officer for
the second time by asking just for
de-militarisation, without insisting that it
should be to the level of 1989. Their other two
demands were, as before, regarding release of all
political prisoners and the stoppage of human
rights violation. Those, every one knows, cannot
be achieved at one go, and were clearly
negotiable. So, it was again hoped that the
centre could generously respond to their
statement and declare a unilateral ceasefire to
morally motivate the militants to fall in line.
The demand for a ceasefire is so high among the
common people--virtually all parties of this
state except Congress and BJP have openly
welcomed the suggestion of a ceasefire-that the
centre's gesture would have been extremely
popular, and it would have been almost impossible
for, not only the H.M., but also for other
militants groups not to respond favourably to the
offer of a ceasefire. Thus, quite likely, New
Delhi could have stolen the wind out of the sail
of the militants, and compelled them to observe a
ceasefire, despite their so many reservations.
And, once a ceasefire is observed, rather
enjoyed, by the common man, it acquires a
momentum of its own which few may dare to defy at
the cost of their own popular support. It needs
more courage and calculation to start a peace
offensive than a war, and obviously New Delhi
pathetically lacks these.


o o o

INDIA: IMPUNITY FUELS CONFLICT IN JAMMU AND KASHMIR
by Human RIghts Watch
Sunday Sep 17th, 2006  (Human Rights Watch)

      (Srinagar, September 12, 2006) - The Indian
government's failure to end widespread impunity
for human rights abuses committed both by its
security forces and militants is fueling the
cycle of violence in Jammu and Kashmir, Human
Rights Watch said in a report released today.


The 156-page report, "'Everyone Lives in Fear':
Patterns of Impunity in Jammu and Kashmir,"
documents recent abuses by the Indian army and
paramilitaries, as well as by militants, many of
whom are backed by Pakistan. Indian security
forces have committed torture, "disappearances"
and arbitrary detentions, and they continue to
execute Kashmiris in faked "encounter killings,"
claiming that these killings take place during
armed clashes with militants. Militants have
carried out bombings and grenade attacks against
civilians, targeted killings, torture and attacks
upon religious and ethnic minorities.

These abuses have taken place against the
backdrop of almost two decades of the failure of
the political and legal systems in India and
Pakistan to end abuses or punish the
perpetrators. Since 1989, the armed secessionist
struggle against Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir
has claimed more than 50,000 lives. Kashmir
remains a potential flashpoint between the
nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan.

"Human rights abuses have been a cause as well as
a consequence of the insurgency in Kashmir," said
Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
"Kashmiris continue to live in constant fear
because perpetrators of abuses are not punished.
Unless the Indian authorities address the human
rights crisis in Jammu and Kashmir, a political
settlement of the conflict will remain illusory."

The new report, based on research from 2004 to
2006, documented abuses that have occurred since
the election in 2002 of a Jammu and Kashmir state
government with an avowed human rights agenda and
the resumption of peace talks between India and
Pakistan that same year (after the countries
nearly went to war in 2002).

Indian security forces claim they are fighting to
protect Kashmiris from militants and Islamic
extremists, while militants claim they are
fighting for Kashmiri independence and to defend
Muslim Kashmiris from an abusive Indian army. In
reality, both sides have committed widespread and
numerous human rights abuses and violations of
international humanitarian law (or the laws of
war).

Extrajudicial executions by Indian security
forces are common. Police and army officials have
told Human Rights Watch that security forces
often execute alleged militants instead of
bringing them to trial in the belief that keeping
hardcore militants in detention is a security
risk. Most of those summarily executed are
falsely reported to have died during armed
clashes between the army and militants in
"encounter killings."

The Indian government has effectively given its
forces free rein, while Pakistan and armed
militant groups have failed to hold militants
accountable for the atrocities they have
committed. Through documentation of the failure
to prosecute in recent cases and some older, key
cases, the report shows how impunity has fueled
the insurgency. If the Indian authorities had
addressed these abuses seriously when they took
place, public confidence in the authorities would
have increased and future abuses may have been
substantially reduced. Instead, India failed to
prosecute or discipline the perpetrators.

Impunity has been enabled by Indian law. The
report documents cases where Indian security
forces have shot civilians under the authority of
laws such as the Jammu and Kashmir Disturbed
Areas Act and the Armed Forces (Jammu and
Kashmir) Special Powers Act. These laws, enacted
near the beginning of the conflict, allow lethal
force to be used "against any person who is
acting in contravention of any law or order for
the time being in force in the disturbed area."
Other laws offer state agents effective immunity
from criminal prosecution. For example, Article
197 of the Indian Code of Criminal Procedure only
allows the prosecution of state actors with the
permission of the relevant ministry. This is
rarely provided. Prosecutions of security force
personnel, even where the facts are well
established, are therefore rare.

Human Rights Watch also stated that the work of
both the National Human Rights Commission and the
State Human Rights Commission in Jammu and
Kashmir is severely hampered by laws that
prohibit them from directly investigating abuses
carried out by the army or other federal forces.
Although government officials claim that
disciplinary measures have been taken against
some security personnel, it is unclear this
happens, as details are almost never made public.

"It's absurd that the world's largest democracy,
with a well-developed legal system and
internationally recognized judiciary, has laws on
its books that prevent members of its security
forces from being prosecuted for human rights
abuses," said Adams. "It's time for the Indian
government to repeal these laws and recommit
itself to justice for victims of all abuses,
whoever the perpetrator may be."

The report also documents serious abuses by
militants, many of whom continue to receive
backing from Pakistan. Numerous massacres,
bombings, killings and attacks on schools
attributed to the militants are often
intentionally downplayed by supporters of
Kashmiri independence or its accession to
Pakistan. Militant groups have targeted
civilians, including women and children, whom
they consider to be "traitors to the cause" or
for expressing views contrary to those of one or
another armed group. Alleged militants have
murdered nearly 600 Kashmiri politicians since
the conflict began, usually as retribution for
joining in the electoral process. Officials
conducting the polls have been killed or
tortured, some with their noses or ears chopped
off.

Militants have also been responsible for bomb
attacks that targeted civilians. They have
attacked religious minorities in Kashmir such as
Hindus and Sikhs, as well as ethnic minorities
such as the Gujjars, whom the militants target
because they believe them to be government
informers. Although many of the militant groups
currently operating in Jammu and Kashmir have
become increasingly unpopular, Kashmiris are
afraid to speak out against them. A conflict over
Kashmiri identity and independence has slowly but
visibly mutated into a fight under the banner of
religion, pitting Islam against Hinduism and
drawing religious radicals into its heart.

There is considerable evidence that over many
years Pakistan has provided Kashmiri militants
with training, weapons, funding and sanctuary.
Officially, Pakistan denies ever arming and
training militants. Under pressure from the
United States after the attacks of September 11,
2001, Pakistan banned several militant groups in
January 2002, including the Jaish-e-Mohammad and
the Lashkar-e-Toiba. But these groups have
continued to operate after changing their names.
India blames these groups for many armed attacks.
Pakistan appears to be keeping its options open
should peace talks collapse by continuing to
support these groups. Pakistan remains
accountable for abuses committed by militants
that it has armed and trained.

"The militants and their backers must end the
bombings and the targeting of civilians," said
Adams. "Continued abuses ensure that the cycle of
violence will continue. And these abuses only add
to the suffering of the people in whose name the
militants are ostensibly fighting."

http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/09/08/india14159.htm


o o o

"WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESEŠ"
HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN AZAD KASHMIR
This 71-page report, based on research in Azad
Kashmir, uncovers abuses by the Pakistani
military, intelligence services and militant
organizations. In Azad Kashmir, a region largely
closed to international scrutiny until a
devastating earthquake hit in 2005, the Pakistani
government represses democratic freedoms, muzzles
the press and practices routine torture.
HRW Index No.: C1812
September 21, 2006    Report
Download PDF, 720 KB, 73 pgs
http://hrw.org/reports/2006/pakistan0906/pakistan0906web.pdf

o o o

ON THE DEATH SENTENCE TO MOHAMMAD AFZAL

(i)

The Tribune
October 1, 2006

DOES AFZAL DESERVE THE DEATH PENALTY?
by Humra Quraishi

The big question now is whether Mohammad Afzal
ought to be put to death or saved from the
gallows. I got in touch with the well known
lawyer ND Pancholi, who is one of those lawyers
who has been regularly meeting Afzal. Along with
a team of senior advocates, he is currently
preparing a mercy petition on his behalf.

Reacting sharply to the death sentence, ND
Pancholi set out the facts which are likely to
form the main points in the petition:

"I feel it is important to know certain facts
regarding this case - Afzal did not have the
assistance of any lawyer at the trial stage. The
lawyers sought by him were not provided by the
Court. Amicus Curie advocates were given by the
court, some of whom withdrew from the case and
the one who remained was there only for the name
sake.

"The court asked Afzal to cross examine the
witnesses, which he did, but this is a task which
can be performed by a lawyer and no litigant can
be expected to cross examine the witnesses
against him. In absence of a proper advocate, he
was not able to demolish the evidence fabricated
by the police. The Supreme Court and High Court
have held that the police version of the arrest
of the accused was not believable, i.e., the time
and day of the arrest of the accused as claimed
by the police was false.

"The Supreme Court has admitted that there is no
direct evidence against Afzal but certain
circumstances if taken together can give a safe
presumption that he was involved in the
conspiracy to attack Parliament, though he
himself did not participate in the attack. The
three main accused, i.e., Mohd. Azhar, Gazi Baba
and Tariq are stated to be in Pakistan. Three
were given death penalty i.e. Geelani, Shaukat
and Afzal. Afsan Guru (wife of Shaukat) was given
ten years imprisonment. In the High Court Geelani
and Afsan Guru were acquitted. In the Supreme
Court the death sentence of Shaukat was commuted
to ten years imprisonment. In such a situation,
giving death penalty to one accused on assumption
of circumstantial evidence is not justified."

Pancholi adds: "In America, with regard to of
9/11, one accused, Zakaria Mosvi, has been given
life imprisonment because he was not directly
involved. Similarly, in the Mahatma Gandhi
assassination case, Nathuram Godse was given the
death penalty but his brother was given a life
sentence because he was not directly involved.
The same is the case with Afzal, as he was not
directly involved. "


o o o

(ii)

Indian Express
September 30, 2006

WE HAVEN'T EVEN HEARD AFZAL'S STORY
by Nandita Haksar

Hanging him will be a blot on Indian democracy

   Mohammad Afzal has been sentenced to death by
hanging for the offence of conspiring to attack
the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001. The
news that the date for his hanging has been fixed
for October 20, 2006, has been greeted by most of
the media with approval, if not celebration. But
before we endorse the decision to hang Afzal we
need to inform ourselves of the hard facts of the
case without emotion. It is important to remember
that we are not discussing whether Afzal was or
was not a part of the conspiracy to attack the
Parliament. He has already been found guilty of
the crime and convicted. The question is on the
sentence.

There are three principal reasons why hanging
Mohammad Afzal would violate basic principles of
natural justice and equity. First, the charge
sheet was against 12 persons: three Pakistanis
(Masood Azhar, Tariq Ahmed and Gazi Baba) who
were said to have master-minded the attack (none
of the three were arrested or brought to trial.
If Pakistan were to extradite them they would be
protected from death penalty); five Pakistanis
who actually attacked Parliament and were
responsible for the death of nine members of our
security forces; and the four people who actually
stood trial. Afzal was not responsible for
anyone's death or injury. He did not mastermind
the attack. The Supreme Court has noted that
there is no direct evidence of his involvement.
Second, all the three courts, including the
Supreme Court, have acquitted him of the charges
under POTA of belonging to either a terrorist
organisation or a terrorist gang. Third, he was
denied a fair trial. The investigation was full
of illegalities and the courts noted with concern
that evidence was fabricated and he never had a
lawyer who represented him. The Designated Judge
passed an order giving Afzal the right to
cross-examine witnesses but even a person with
legal training without knowledge of criminal law
would find it difficult to conduct such a trial.
The Supreme Court has held that "The incident,
which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken
the entire nation and the collective conscience
of the society will only be satisfied if capital
punishment is awarded to the offender." Can the
collective conscience of our people be satisfied
if a fellow citizen is hanged without having a
chance to defend himself? We have not even had a
chance to hear Afzal's story. Hanging Mohammad
Afzal will only be a blot on our democracy .

The writer is a civil rights activist, closely
associated with the rights of defendants in the
Parliament attack case and is leading the public
campaign for mercy in this case

o o o

(iii)

October 1, 2006

Dear Friends,

Mohammad Afzal Guru, 35, a resident of a north
Kashmir town of Sopore, was arrested in December
2001 in connection with the attack on the Indian
parliament in New Delhi. Afzal is presently
lodged in New Delhi's high security Tihar jail
and is facing death penalty, the date for which
has been fixed as 20th October 2006.

We condemn Mohammad Afza's capital punishment and
therefore appeal you to join our efforts for the
withdrawal of death sentence.

Keeping in view the international humanitarian
standards, we are of the opinion that the Afzal
Guru's trial was not satisfying the standards
laid out for fair trial. In his case the
confession that was basis of his conviction in
trial court was rejected by the Supreme Court of
India and according to the evidence produced by
the State he was accused as a facilitator and not
directly involved in the attack. Thereby, the
death penalty is disproportionate even according
to the Indian Supreme Court's different
judgements and the case doesn't even fall under
the "rarest of rare" cases in which the Supreme
Court of India has observed death penalty should
be awarded. The trial was completely influenced
by the propagandist Indian media, which had
pronounced its verdict even before the trial had
actually begun. The Kashmiris perceive the death
sentence to Afzal Guru as an act of appeasement
to the jingoistic pride of India. Also the timing
and date fixed by the Court seems to be motivated.

Attached is the appeal for signature campaign
[http://www.sacw.net/hrights/Appeal.jpg]. We also
appeal you to either write in your individual or
the organisational capacity the protest letters
to the Indian President or send a copy to us.

Please send a copy of your letters to us [at <ccs@...>].

In struggle,

SAVE AFZAL GURU CAMPAIGN
Organised by: JK Coalition of Civil Society


o o o

(iv)

Dear Friends,

Here is a template of a petition addressed to the
President of India, which is self-explanatory.
You're earnestly requested to act on it and send a copy to <ccs@...>.

Sukla

To
The President of India,
Rashtrapati Bhavan,
New Delhi.
<presidentofindia@...>

Sub: PETITION AGAINST MOHAMMAD AFZAL GURU'S DEATH PENALTY

Respected Sir,

It is to bring to your kind notice that one
Mohammad Afzal Guru, 35, a resident of Sopore, a
town in north Kashmir, was arrested, to our
knowledge, in December 2001 in connection with
the armed assault on the Indian Parliament on
Decmeber 13 2001. He is presently lodged in the
Tihar Jail, New Delhi waiting to be hanged on
20th instant as per the verdict delivered by the
Hon'ble Supreme Court of India.

In this connection we'd like to draw your
attention further to the fact that under
international human rights standards people
charged with crimes punishable by death are
entitled to the observance of strictest fair
trial guarantees in view of the irreversible and
most extreme nature of the penalty. Hence meting
out of death penalty upon conclusion of a trial
in which the provisions of International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights had not been
respected, which can no longer be remedied by
appeal, would constitute a gross violation of the
right to life as per the article 6(1) of the
aforesaid Covenant.

Keeping in view the above international
humanitarian standards, we are of the firm
opinion that Afzal Guru's trial was not according
to the standards laid out for fair trial.  In his
case the Supreme Court of India has rejected the
confession that is the basis of his conviction in
the trial court. And according to the evidence
produced by the prosecution, he was accused as a
facilitator and not as one directly perpetrating
the said crime. And thereby death penalty is
grossly disproportionate to the alleged crime
committed by him according to the prosecution. By
no stretch of imagination it falls under the
category of the "rarest of rare" cases. It is
also highly pertinent that the trial, from the
word go, was highly influenced by the sustained
propaganda of the Indian media, which had
pronounced him guilty even before the trial
started.  It is no wonder and highly significant
that under the circumstances the people of
Kashmir valley perceive this verdict nothing but
as an act of appeasement to the jingoistic pride
of India.
The verdict has come at a time when there is
global campaign going on against capital
punishment. So far 128 nations have reportedly
abolished it from their statutes and more are
expected to follow.

In this context the impact of hanging Mohammad
Maqbool Bhat, another Kashmiri, in 1984 in the
same Tihar Jail, at the end of a trial which was
perceived as patently unfair by the people of the
valley, radically aggravating the sense of their
alienation with hugely tragic consequences must
also be kept in mind.

In view of above we the undersigned earnestly
urge you to exercise your Constitutional
prerogative to set aside the said death sentence
and also institute a judicial enquiry to find out
the real truths behind the dastardly attack on
the Indian Parliament, as facts have been clearly
fudged and fabricated by the investigation agency
which have been clearly acknowledged by the
higher courts, and the flawed investigations
carried out thereafter.  This would not only set
a healthy precedent and reinforce the common
people's trust and faith in Indian democracy but
also go a long way to soothe the inflamed
feelings of the people of the Kashmir valley and
thereby help the "peace process" now under way.

Yours sincerely,

Sukla Sen,
EKTA (Committee for Communal Amity),
Mumbai


_____


9.

Press release and a couple of wire stories about
a recently released study by the New York City
Bar Association on human rights issues arising
from Indian anti terrorism and security laws:

<http://www.nycbar.org/PressRoom/PressRelease/2006_0919.htm>http://www.nycbar.or\
g/PressRoom/PressRelease/2006_0919.htm
<http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060926/india_nm/india269401>http://news.yahoo.com/\
s/nm/20060926/india_nm/india269401
<http://in.news.yahoo.com/060925/210/67x69.html>http://in.news.yahoo.com/060925/\
210/67x69.html

The NYC Bar has actively worked on this range of
issues for some time in a variety of countries,
including Northern Ireland, Hong Kong, and of
course the United States since 2001.

ANTITERRORISM AND SECURITY LAWS IN INDIA: A
REPORT TO THE ASSOCIATION OF THE BAR OF THE CITY
OF NEW YORK ON A RESEARCH PROJECT FOR THE
COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS

by Anil Kalhan, Gerald P. Conroy, Mamta Kaushal,
Sam Scott Miller, and Jed S. Rakoff*

The full, 135-page report is available at:

<http://www.nycbar.org/pdf/ABCNY_India_Report.pdf>http://www.nycbar.org/pdf/ABCN\
Y_India_Report.pdf

_____


10  2006 - BOMB BLASTS IN BOMBAY AND MALEGAON : The social impact

(i)

Economic and Political Weekly
September 2, 2006
Commentary

POLITICAL CONTEXT OF MUMBAI BOMB BLASTS

The government's reaction to the Mumbai bomb blasts of July 11
seems like a ploy to conceal one's motives by appearing
merelyas the victim and to falsify the issues involved. There is
aneed to situate the problem of terrorism in the international
and national political context of which it is a part and
understand the frustration, hopelessness and intense sense of
humiliation that breed people who vow to sacrifice their lives and
avenge what they perceive as  injustice. Force cannot remedy
such a situation.

by P A Sebastian

Referring to the Mumbai bomb
blasts of July 11, prime minister
Manmohan  Singh said on July14:
"They clearly want to destroy our grow-
ing economic strength, destroy our unity
and provoke communal incidents".
"Terrorists are spreading their tentacles
across the country", he added, and
emphasised that "these terror modules
are instigated, inspired and supported
by elements across the border". Is this an
honest and genuine analysis of what
happened on that day in Mumbai or a ploy
to conceal one's motives by appearing
merely as the victim and to falsify the
issues involved?

Terrorist activities are a global pheno-
menon today and India is no exception.
The reasons are both national and inter-
national. It is necessary to go back a little
in history to understand the phenomenon
called terrorism.

The International Context
In the wake of second world war two
blocks emerged - American and Soviet.
There was intense competition between
the two. The Soviet system ostensibly
guaranteed work and shelter to every
individual. The US block subscribed to
capitalist ideology and claimed that
themarket was the best mechanism to
distribute resources. However, this
systemactually had to be supplemented
by large-scale social welfare measures if
it were to retain its legitimacy.
In the course of the cold war the Soviet
Union degenerated from within and col-
lapsed. This collapse emboldened the
capitalist system led by the US to come
out in its true colours. A campaign was
launched against social welfare measures
with the intention of discrediting them,
and they were dismantled one by one in
quick succession and a new model called
neoliberalism was evolved and installed.
This model is being enforced all over the
world through international institutions
like the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund and the World Trade
Organisation. Such a development required
the formulation of a different ideology to
legitimise the changed policies and to
distract the attention of the deprived from
the stark realities of life and to rally them
against a newly contrived enemy. This
newly articulated ideology is called the
"clash of civilisations", and it predicts an
Armageddon between the Christian
"civilisation" and Islamic "civilisation".
And in this final and decisive conflict
the Hindu "civilisation" will join forces
with Christian "civilisation". Both the
Muslim fundamentalists and the Hindutva
forces subscribe to this ideology - a
pernicious ideology upheld and promoted
by fundamentalists of all religious hues.
The theatre of action where this ideology
has been put into operation is west Asia
and other places where Muslims pre-
ponderate. In west Asia Israel spearheads
this policy under the benign eyes of the
US and the European Union - Israel
described graphically by Lohia as a dag-
ger driven into the heart of independent
west Asia by imperialist powers. The
Zionists occupied Palestine and drove out
the Palestinians, rendering them refugees.
The Zionists could do this only because
the US and her allies unreservedly sup-
ported them. Israel has been waging a war
on the Palestinians for the last 60 years
or so, first to defeat communism and now
to defeat Islamic fundamentalists. The latest
was the bombing of Gaza, which soon
extended to a fierce onslaught on Leba-
non. The attack has destroyed the infra-
structure of Lebanon on a massive scale
and killed more than a thousand civilians
and rendered about a million people
homeless.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks,
the US invaded and conquered Afghani-
stan. The next target was Iraq. An over-
whelming military force was used against
Iraq and it was reduced to a state of pre-
historic existence under the pretext of
totally false allegations. At present Iran
is under imminent threat of attack. The
whole world has been intimidated and
blackmailed into passive acceptance of
American aggression and occupation of
certain strategically chosen places. The
world media toes the line laid down by
the US because in the words of Ted Turner,
90 per cent of what we read, what we hear
and what we see is controlled by five
corporations, which are all pro-American.
The brunt of this American aggression
and hostile propaganda is borne by the
Muslim world. They are not capable of
militarily fighting the US and defending
themselves.

It is pertinent to note that at the time of
the cold war the US promoted, financed and
armed religious and fundamentalist organi-
sations in west Asia and other Muslim
countries to fight secular and left-oriented
nationalist forces that sided with the Soviet
Union on several vital issues. The US used
religious fanatical forces to organise
military coups against progressive regimes
in Muslim countries and instigated them
to make attempts on the lives of leaders like
president Nasser. Once the cold war was
over these forces were of no use to America.
On the contrary, they became a menace

in the light of the new strategy and its
imperatives. Now an open war has been
launched against them and "the clash of
civilisations" has been set in motion as new
strategy for the unchallenged domination
of the world.

The National Context
In this scenario where does India stand?
India has moved towards a close and cordial
relationship with Israel, primarily in the
military and intelligence fields and con-
cluded agreements to buy weapons worth
several billions of dollars. India has taken
an open and mean stand against the sov-
ereign right of Iran to enrich uranium. The
Indian media repeatedly calls Iran a rogue
state. India has a strategic alliance with the
US, and outdoes the latter in its rhetoric
on Islamic terrorism. India tells the US with
an air of great wisdom that Pakistan is the
nerve-centre of terrorism, and in fact, more
dangerous to the world than Afghanistan
and Iraq were, implying thereby that
Pakistan be bombed and devastated as it was
done in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Anti-Muslim riots have become a regular
feature in India. In all such riots the armed
forces of the state have connived at crimes
against Muslims and, in several instances,
have actively participated in the crimes
committed by anti-Muslim rioters. Almost
invariably the perpetrators of such crimes
as murder and rape have gone scot-free. In
Gujarat the man who ordered and executed an
anti-Muslim pogrom rules the state. Judicial
commissions were appointed to inquire
into some of these massacres and large-scale
destruction of Muslim properties. Such
commissions often made scathing remarks
on the governments concerned for their
collusion with criminals who committed
heinous atrocities against Muslims. The
commissions even identified the accused.
Nevertheless, the governments took no action
against them. On the contrary, the police
treated the victims as the accused and
charged them with various offences and
gathered and produced false evidence against
them. This has happened wherever there
was massive violence against Muslims.
The bomb blasts in the local trains in
Mumbai on July 11 is an episode in a
continuum. It has a past and it has a present.
But the ruling classes and the media make
an all-out effort to make it appear that there
is no connection between the train blasts
and the national and international political
context of which they are a part. When the
bombs exploded in Mumbai on March 12,
1993, L K Advani instantaneously issued
a statement in which he said that there was
no link between the demolition of Babri
masjid and the riots in its wake on the one
side and the bomb blasts on the other. And
he added that it was a conspiracy hatched
by the Pakistan's ISI to sabotage the unity
and integrity of India. Even a child in
Mumbai knew that they were interlinked.
However, the Congress government in
power got along well with the interpreta-
tion of Advani.

The plot to disconnect the present from
the past can be discerned at a global level
too. The Palestinian intifada is dissociated
from its historical context, as also the
resistance of the Hizballah. It is conve-
niently forgotten that the Hizballah was
formed in 1982 to fight Israel's occupation
of south Lebanon. No mention is made that
Zionists fought for the creation of a Jewish
state, bombing hotels and installations and
killed Palestinian civilians. The British,
who then governed Palestine, called these
Zionists terrorists. Many of these terrorists
later became rulers of independent Israel-
Moshe Dayan, Yitshak Rabin, Menachem
Begin and Ariel Sharon. Ironically, once
they achieved power, they denounced and
denigrated the Palestinian freedom fight-
ers as terrorists. It is worth remembering
that the Nazis had bitterly condemned
terrorism and conducted what they called
counter-terrorism against terrorist parti-
sans. The US drew from the Nazi model
and consulted Wehrmacht officers.

Lessons to Learn
Terrorism is the desperate act of desperate
people - the act of those who have been left
with no choice but to throw bombs at their
enemies. The first condition to deal with
such a situation is that the world accepts
that Muslims in general feel defeated, and
alienated from their own resources. None-
theless, in the present circumstances, they
cannot imagine fighting a war and winning
it against the mighty forces ranged against
them. This cauldron of frustration, hopeless-
ness and an intense sense of humiliation
breed people who vow to sacrifice their lives
and to avenge what they perceive as in-
justice. Force cannot remedy such a situ-
ation. It will lead to more and more disas-
ters and tragedies as we experience today.
This calls for radical remedial measures
to alter the situation drastically. However,
the reaction which one sees around the
world does not give much scope for op-
timism. George Bush declares that America
is in a state of war with Islamic fascists
who are seen as freedom fighters by vast
sections of the Muslim population. Tony
Blair lumps the insurgency in Kashmir and
Chechnya as Islamic terrorism, with no
regard to history and the social background.
Such a response aggravates the situation.
Will Muslims consider Hizballah as a gang
of terrorists as projected by the world media
or as freedom fighters that valiantly fight
Israel that is a terrorist state par excellence
in their perception? In India the ruling
classes and the media have unleashed a
massive campaign with no holds barred
against Pakistan in the wake of train blasts
of July 11. Pakistan is often used as a
substitute for the Muslims in the Indian
subcontinent. The facts do not substantiate
the allegations against Pakistan in this
respect. Lashkar-e-Taiba has been banned
in Pakistan. Pakistan has caught or killed
dozens of Al Qaida and Taliban members.
There have been three attempts on
Musharraf's life. Those who carry out
such a campaign and vilify the Indian
Muslims do not realise that there are
120-150 million Muslims in India. It is in
the interest of the majority community that
they do not drive the Muslims to the wall
where they are left with no choice but to
retaliate violently. In this respect, India has
a lesson to learn from Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka
was once called the paradise of Asia. Then
the Sinhalese majority developed a kink
in their brain and declared Buddhism as
the state religion and Sinhalese as the only
official language that stirred up a hornet's
nest from which Sri Lanka has never
recovered.

The Indian state has several lessons to
learn from the recent past. Will they learn
them or get drawn into the maelstrom of
the vicious and communal politics? All of
us Indians have a huge stake in the matter
unless we think that we can all migrate to
the US.
_____

(ii)

AFTER MATH OF THE MALEGAON BLASTS IN INDIA


People's Democracy
September 24, 2006

REAPING THE HARVEST: IMAGES OF TERROR

by Nalini Taneja

The recent bomb blasts in Malegaon should force
us to reflect on the constructed images of terror
prevalent in our media and among the
intelligentsia and the political leadership of
this country. The RSS and its affiliated
organizations have achieved such unprecedented
success on this score-with a little help from the
right wing western political leadership of
course-as they would never have imagined. The
gradual rise to dominance of right-wing,
'embedded' journalists, and kar-sevaks in the
name of journalists, in India has ensured this
for them.

Most people look on and react to bomb blasts in
the way that the RSS would like them to. Bomb
blasts are no longer perceived as just violent,
abhorrent, and unacceptable forms of
action/intervention, which they are; they are in
the main identified in the minds of most people
with Muslim fanatics. And the pictures of Muslim
fanatics they evoke could as well be of any poor,
bearded, lungi-clad or pajama-wearing Muslim,
such as one sees anywhere on the sub-continent;
and increasingly now, also, of burqa-clad women,
who, simply by virtue of hiding their faces are
seen as having much more to hide.

The images of AK-47 rifles have been replaced by
the mention of RDX, and bombs now equal Muslims,
be it in any part of the world. It would seem
that bombs are special weapons made by and for
Muslims, unheard of by others and certainly never
used by anyone else, if we are to go by what our
media tells us. This of course then provides
justifications for humiliating searches, and much
more. They dull us to sights of Muslims being
specially searched-whether at airports, railway
stations or simply anywhere-of having their
mobile phones cross checked, and of having the
little pleasures of life denied and many human
rights trampled on, simply because they are
Muslims.

From descriptions of bomb blasts there it is an
automatic slide into their identification with
the highly potent and destructive cocktail of
anti-nationalism and separatism, which finds its
expression through a very 'legitimate' anger
against Pakistan. Pakistan then represents
everything we abhor and have a right to act
against in the spirit of
'all-is-fair-in-love-and-war', and anything that
reminds us of Pakistan justifiably deserves our
anger and resentment. And who reminds us of
Pakistan, if not Muslims, identified in popular
mind with the creation of Pakistan in the first
place? And so it goes on, from one stage to
another, until we are ready to accept any
atrocity on Muslims, by seeing it as brought on
them by their own actions.

The Malegaon blasts had barely happened when
headlines screamed "Terror hits Malegaon",
supremely confident of providing the cue for what
was to follow. Few readers of newspapers in this
country would have imagined these terrorists to
be other than Muslim terrorists. Even perfectly
secular people refer only to Muslim militants as
terrorists, and have a different vocabulary to
account for the terror and violence perpetrated
by Hindutva forces, even if they are equally
critical of them.

Therefore, apart from a few secular activists who
have been talking of the use of bombs by the
Hindutva forces in the recent past, and an
initial report in The Hindu, which recalled the
Bajrang Dal's role in the recent bomb blasts at
Nanded and then several mosques in Maharashtra,
there would be little doubt in the minds of
readers and listeners of news on TV channels,
that other Muslims could be involved in the
Malegaon killings via bombs. The CPI(M) Polit
Bureau statement (September 13, 2006), asking for
an enquiry in the context of the earlier Nanded
bomb blasts has simply been ignored.

This is not to argue that those who planted those
bombs in the mosques and in the kabristan in
Malegaon, killing and wounding several people,
could not have been Muslims simply because the
place chosen was mosques and the targets were
Muslims (just as the RSS could well get it own
people killed for political gain). They could be
Muslim groups, but what one needs to ask is: why
was the Indian, and most western, media so
anxious to pin it on Muslims, without proof, and
without using elementary reasoning? It seemed
from media discussions and news reports that
there simply could be no one involved except
Islamic terrorists. 'Indian Express' actually
went so far (in its front page coverage a few
days later) as to argue that the presence of RDX
pointed to Muslim terrorists, and that the
material used in the house of the Bajrang Dal
activist was different and of a cruder variety.

So now, when evidence of bombs used by Hindutva
forces is beginning to emerge, we will have
'Muslim' bomb material and 'Hindu' bomb material
being dissected-with no prizes for guessing whose
bombs are more deadly, and whose bombs are
'benign'(?)! And no questions asked of course,
that if one set of bombers wanted the blame put
on the other side, could they not choose their
targets and bomb material accordingly. Does it
not achieve the same purpose, and are they all so
dumb, and so foolish as not to think of this?
What is being implied, and gently suggested to us
instead, subtly, and through poignant pictures of
victims is that Muslims are heinous enough to
kill their own. The same may not apply to the
Hindutva forces. Muslims are the killer agents
when bombs explode in mosques, and of course they
are the killer agents when bombs explode in/near
temples. It could not be otherwise in the former
case, and more certainly not in the latter case!

It is amazing how, despite the activism of
Hindutva forces in Maharashtra, and the long
legacy of violence by the Shiv Sena in the state,
the possibility even, of other leads is not being
considered, by the police or in the media. That
this should be so tells us something about the
state of politics of this country today, the
rightward shift that the entire polity has taken,
and the complicity and acquiescence of most
mainstream bourgeois politics in communalism, and
a concern with the Hindu vote bank, particularly,
the middle class Hindu vote bank, and is
explainable if not understandable or justifiable
in the context of the twin assaults from
imperialism and fundamentalism (of all kinds).
What needs to be noted and is a matter of grave
concern is the naturalness with which people in
this country accept the equation of terror and
Muslims, and the success of the carefully
constructed and nurtured images authored by the
right wing western media and our own home grown
fascist forces. They have successfully utilized
religion and fractured historical memory to
demonise an entire community. We need to be alert
that we do not imbibe some of these images within
ourselves.


o o o

Hindustan Times
September 25, 2006

A VICIOUS CYCLE

by AG Noorani

'Though the law itself be fair on its face and
impartial in appearance, yet, if it is applied
and administered by a public authority with an
evil eye and unequal hand, so as practically to
make unjust and illegal discrimination, as
between persons in similar circumstances material
to their rights, the denial of equal justice is
still within the prohibition of the
Constitution." The United States Supreme Court
delivered this stinging rebuke in 1868 in the
celebrated case of Yick Wo vs Hopkins.

Of San Francisco's 320 laundries, 240 were run by
Chinese nationals in buildings constructed of
wood, as were nine-tenths of the houses in the
city. The country ordained that licences were
required "except the same be located in a
building constructed either of brick or stone."
All applications for licence by Chinese
laundrymen were rejected. All others, bar one,
were accepted.

The order was struck down. "The court held that
the very idea that one man may be compelled to
hold his life, or the means of living, or any
material right essential to the enjoyment of life
at the mere will be another, seems to be
intolerable in any country where freedom
prevails, as being the essence of slavery
itself." How much greater should be the outrage
if 'the public authority' happens to be the
police force with wide powers of arrest and
detention and extra-legal powers of harassment?

The indiscriminate arrests of Muslims in the wake
of the Mumbai blasts of July 11 this year were a
repeat of a similar performance by the police
after the 1993 blasts. They were grave enough for
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to ask the Chief
Ministers, on September 5, to "embark immediately
upon a proactive policy to ensure that a few
individual acts do not result in tarnishing the
image of an entire community and remove any
feelings of persecution and alienation from the
minds of the minorities."

Five days after he spoke, came the Malegaon
bombings near a major mosque and a graveyard, on
an auspicious day when Muslims throng these
places for prayer. It also happened to be a
Friday.

People recalled recent events in Maharashtra
which had a bearing on Malegaon. At Nanded, on
April 6, two Bajrang Dal activists, Naresh
Rajkondwar and Himanshu Phanse, were killed while
attempting to make a bomb in the former's house
along with three others. The police reportedly
recovered a second bomb, timers, switches,
detonators and gunpowder, as well as evidence
that they had struck before. A diary recovered
had pictures of all ex-RSS chiefs and notes on
bomb-making techniques. It also had mention of
the Bajrang Dal-sponsored camps that Himanshu had
attended. Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS)
Joint Commissioner of Police KP Raghuvanshi told
Communalism Combat that the incident could have
"frightening repercussions".

The warning was overdue. Kondwar and Phanse were
suspected to be key figures in a bombing incident
at Parbhani that very month, in which 25 persons
had been injured. It was at a mosque, as were the
bombings at Parbhani and Jalna in April 2004,
where 18 persons were injured.

These incidents obviously formed a pattern. A
reasonable, though not conclusive, presumption
arises that Malegaon formed part of this pattern.
Pointing fingers while investigations are on is
unfair and hazardous. Fingers accustomed to
pointing in one direction, however, pointed in
the same direction after Malegaon.

From the very next day, 'sources' in the police
began pouring out pet theories. On September 9,
Raghuvanshi of the ATS said "our probe would
include not only Simi but consider all other
groups that might be involved." An unattributed
source in the ATS said Simi activists committed
the crime to create communal tension. This became
a running theme in later 'disclosures'. 'Police
sources' told the press that "the police are
beginning to rule out the possibility of the
Bajrang Dal's involvement in the Malegaon blasts"
because "the bombs used in Parbhani were of the
crude variety. The Hindutva organisation does not
have access to the type of sophisticated bombs
and timers used in Malegaon".

On September 13, two unidentified packages of
fake bombs were discovered. The Additional
Commissioner of Police, ATS, Subodh Jaiswal, gave
the following explanation. "The aim was to
unleash panic". The motive: to create "rage
against the police and Hindu residents so that
riots could break out". With equal speed he
asserted: "They were planted by the same terror
outfit that triggered the Friday blasts." This
gave the game away. By then no 'outfit' had been
identified officially. Evidence was admittedly
scant. The investigators seemed to be groping in
the dark. Yet, Subodh Jaiswal was all certitude.

On September 16, the Additional SP, Rajwardhan,
attacked the media: "There seems to be a
deliberate attempt in a section of the media to
pressurise the police into taking a line of
investigation - of Hindu fanatics being involved
- but we will go by the ground reality and the
rule book, and explore all the possibilities."

Precisely what he had in mind became clear when
he added: "But it seems to be the handwork of
organised terrorists who want to destabilise the
country and incite communal violence." The
patriotic Bajrang Dal was exonerated.

An informed correspondent found, however, that in
Maharashtra, "the problem is that the
intelligence gathering mechanism is focused on
Islamic terrorist outfits.  The Maharashtra
police have few dossiers on Right-wing Hindu
militants". Despite the arrest of a Bajrang Dal
activist, Sanjay Chaudhari, in Nanded for the
bomb blast outside the Parbhani mosque, "the
probe has not progressed."

What has 'progressed' is the confidence in police
assertions. 'Local police backed by the ATS'
flatly told a noted correspondent that the
Malegaon blasts "resemble the handiwork of
Islamic terrorist organisations". According to
one correspondent, the Intelligence Bureau is
also "working on the theory" that the LeT was
behind those blasts and its men were at large

These pronouncements do nothing to narrow the
trust deficit. None of the 32 police officers and
men named in the Srikrishna report on the 1993
riots in Mumbai has been convicted.

Muslim MPs called on the PM after the Mumbai
blasts and on Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh
after the Malegaon blasts to represent the
community's grievances. They were entitled to do
so and discharged a duty. But they must not stop
there.

Every injustice to any group is a deviation from
Indian ideals. The communal bias of some
policemen is part of a wider problem affecting
secular values as well as the probity and
effectiveness of the police force. It concerns
all Indians.



_____


11   ARMS SALES TO THE REGION - PLANS AND THE PLAYERS:

o o o

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6076228,00.html
CAMPAIGNERS IN TREATY SUPPORT BID

Press Association
Wednesday September 13, 2006 3:28 AM

Campaigners will target the embassies of five
governments with a demand that they support an
international arms trade treaty.

Activists from South Africa, India, Pakistan,
Nigeria and Brazil will join Amnesty
International and Oxfam to call on their
governments to support a treaty making it illegal
to sell weapons if they will be used to abuse
human rights.

The campaign for tough new controls on the
international arms trade has received the backing
of Prime Minister Tony Blair and Conservative
leader David Cameron.

A new treaty would aim to make suppliers more
accountable and stop exports to unscrupulous
regimes.

The lobbying, part of the Control Arms Day of
Action running in 16 countries, is in preparation
for a draft resolution to be presented to the
United Nations General Assembly next month.

The campaign currently has the support of 50
countries, but the draft resolution will need 192
member states to vote in its favour at the UN
next month.

Ambassadors are set to discuss the proposed
controls with UK ministers on September 14.

Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen
said: "The international community now has a
golden opportunity to stop the flow of weapons
into the wrong hands. It is crucial that an arms
trade treaty is formally on the UN agenda."

She continued: "We are pleased that the UK has
led the process in putting forward a draft
resolution. However, the draft does not go far
enough - there is currently no reference in the
resolution to human rights law which is a serious
omission."

Campaigners are also concerned that the process
could drag on for several years. Anna MacDonald
of Oxfam said: "Currently, 1,000 people are
killed every day by armed violence. Governments
must take this opportunity to make sure that
progress towards an arms trade treaty is speedy
so no more lives are lost unnecessarily."

© Copyright Press Association Ltd 2006, All Rights Reserved.

o o o


The Hindu
Sep 06, 2006
http://www.hindu.com/2006/09/06/stories/2006090608901200.htm

INDIA LINKS PARTNERSHIP TO ARMS SALES BY FRANCE

Amit Baruah

PARIS: India and France are keen on jointly
developing cruise missiles, Defence Minister
Pranab Mukherjee told presspersons after talks
with his French counterpart, Michele
Alliot-Marie, here on Monday.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation
(DRDO) has been talking to MBDA, the
French-European missile manufacturer, and is
close to reaching a technical arrangement for
joint development.

During the talks at the Defence Ministry, India
expressed interest in French participation in the
co-production of state-of-the-art weapons,
sensors, communications and surveillance systems.

Mr. Mukherjee linked the Indo-French strategic
partnership with that of arms sales by Paris to
Pakistan and China. New Delhi, he said, would
like a French response to a strategic partnership
with India to be reflected in its arms sales
policies to China and Pakistan and investment in
India's defence industry.

New Delhi is using this clout to restrict French
arms sales not just to Pakistan, but China as
well. According to Indian officials, if the
French sell, for instance, submarines to both New
Delhi and Islamabad, it creates a major issue.

Mr. Mukherjee raised with Ms. Alliot-Marie the
issue of export clearances for the transfer of
technology relating to "ring laser gyro," a
component used in high-tech navigation systems.
He also referred to "proposals" relating to the
Air Force, and pointed out that certain
technologies had either not been provided or were
withdrawn by the French side. On the Scorpene
submarine deal, the French agreed to set up a
"task force" to enable the implementation of the
contract signed last year.

India said it had no intention of withdrawing its
contingent from the United Nations Interim Force
in Lebanon. The French not only command the
UNIFIL but have also taken the lead in sending
additional troops to beef up the force.


o o o


http://www.defensenews.com
Posted 09/25/06 12:20

NEW DELHI MAY BUY QATARI MIRAGE AIRCRAFT – FROM PARIS
by Vivek Raghuvanshi, NEW DELHI

If Indo-French negotiations pan out, France would
buy 12 used Mirage 2000-5 jets from Qatar and
resell them to India along with eight French Air
Force Mirage 2000-Hs.
The broad contours of such a deal were worked out
in Paris during a Sept. 3-5 visit by Indian
Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee. Final details
are expected to be settled when French MoD
officials visit New Delhi in late September, a
senior Indian Defence Ministry official said.
A French diplomat here confirmed the proposed
deal. Neither official provided more details.
Last year, India negotiated directly with Qatar
to buy the aircraft, but talks broke down over
price, the Defence Ministry official said.
Ministry officials failed to properly calculate
the cost of buying, operating and supporting the
aircraft, and therefore offered a price based
purely on the cost of the used aircraft, omitting
other factors, the official said. He called this
a blunder that has embarrassed India, which fears
to antagonize Qatar, the country’s second-largest
source of natural gas.
The Defence Ministry official said that is why
Mukherjee asked his French counterpart to buy the
Mirage 2000-5s from Qatar.
Roles for Dassault, HAL
After the aircraft arrive in India, Air Force
officials intend to hire Dassault to upgrade the
Qatari 2000-5s and six Indian 2000-Hs to the
2000-9 standard, using Israeli avionics and
electronic warfare gear and Russian weapons, an
Indian Air Force official said.
He said Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.’s (HAL’s)
Bangalore plant would then get technical help
from Dassault to upgrade India’s current 52
2000-H Mirages — whose midlife upgrades are five
years overdue — to 2000-9s.
The Air Force official said service leaders have
asked the Defence Ministry to buy at least 40
additional Mirage 2000-H aircraft that are
currently in service with the French Air Force.
The French diplomat said the French Defense
Ministry would propose selling to India 40 more
2000-H aircraft through 2011.
He also said Paris had in January expressed its
unhappiness with New Delhi’s 2004 decision to
reject an offer to allow licensed production of
more than 100 Mirage 2000-5s.
In 2004, the Indian Air Force asked Dassault to
study the possibility of making the jets at HAL
facilities. But the new United Progressive
Alliance government decided instead to buy 126
Multirole Medium Range Combat Aircraft (MMRCA).
The French diplomat said Indian defense officials
had told France that New Delhi is awaiting the
outcome of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal to issue a
request for proposals for the MMRCA.
The diplomat said Indian defense officials intend
to split the MMRCA order, buying two types of
aircraft.
Mirage is still the choice for Indian Air Force
pilots because it has an almost accident-free
record in India, he said. •

o o o

http://www.defensenews.com/

Posted 09/25/06 12:21

INDIAN, FRENCH FIRMS FORM GLOBAL C4 EFFORT
By VIVEK RAGHUVANSHI, NEW DELHI

Paris-based Thales and Rolta India have joined
forces to develop communications and intelligence
systems for the global market.
The Rolta Thales Ltd. venture, with initial
capital of $10.6 million, will be owned 51
percent by Rolta and 49 percent by Thales, and
focus on command, control, communications,
computers, intelligence, surveillance, target
acquisition and reconnaissance (C4ISTAR) systems.
Headquartered in Mumbai, the new firm will
transfer technology to make state-of-the-art
products in India for export, said Kamal Singh,
Rolta chairman and managing director. The deal
still needs Indian and French regulatory
approvals, expected in the next two to three
months.
The board will comprise four directors from Rolta
and three from Thales. The chairman and managing
director will be from Rolta, said François
Dupont, country director here for Thales.
He said Thales is looking at becoming a
multidimensional defense company in India. To
launch that endeavor, Thales in 2003 set up
Thales International India here to service Thales
equipment in service with the Indian Defence
Forces.
Singh said the venture will develop
state-of-the-art C4ISTAR systems for the defense
and homeland security markets in India and
internationally.
“We foresee a business potential of around $500
million during the course of the next five
years,” he said.
Dupont said the idea behind setting up the joint
venture with Rolta is to meet the vast C4ISTAR
requirements of the Indian Army.
Dupont added that the French systems house is
looking at more joint ventures in aerospace,
land, naval, security and simulation systems with
both private and state-owned Indian companies.
Last year, Thales set up an avionics maintenance
center in Gurgaon, near New Delhi, with 40
specialists to work on maintenance of a range of
avionics systems.
Thales in July also set up Thales Software India,
with 35 personnel to develop software for Thales
units around the world.
Without elaborating, Dupont said Thales plans two
other joint ventures with Indian companies in
other defense sectors.

o o o

DEFENCE BRASS ON 'SECRET' ISRAEL TRIPS
Rajat Pandit
[ 2 Oct, 2006 0035hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: The ever-expanding Indo-Israeli military relationship,
which came out of the closet during the previous NDA regime, has once
again gone underground under the UPA government.

In July, defence minister Pranab Mukherjee was forced to call off his
visit to Israel due to political sensitivities, both domestic and
international. CPM and CPI even demanded India sever all military ties
with Israel in wake of the bloody conflict in Southern Lebanon.

Now, top defence officials are being forced to make "covert" visits to
the Jewish state. Consider this: IAF chief Air Chief Marshal S P Tyagi
and Navy vice-chief Vice-Admiral Venkat Bharathan, among others, have
made "secret" trips to Israel over the last five days, say sources.

On one hand, it underlines the fact that there has been no slowdown in
the bilateral military relationship, with Israel becoming the
second-largest defence supplier to India, notching sales worth around
$900 million every year as compared to Russia's $1,500 million.

On the other hand, it is amply clear that the Manmohan Singh
government does not want the military relationship to figure on
anybody's radar screen, including its Left allies.

Sources say the bilateral relationship is only going to grow in the
coming years, with negotiations or joint R&D projects underway for
more advanced radars, long-endurance and high-altitude UAVs (unmanned
aerial vehicles), electronic warfare systems, third-generation
night-fighting capabilities and the like.

Missiles and anti-missile defence systems, of course, remain a priority area.

"A wide array of missiles, ranging from Crystal Maze air-to-surface
and Python air-to-air missiles to Popeye cruise missiles, have already
been contracted or are being negotiated," said sources.

The Navy, for instance, is pursuing the joint project to develop
long-range surface-to-air missile systems to succeed the Barak-I
anti-missile defence systems already inducted on several Indian
warships. "While Barak-I has a 9-km-range, the new missiles will have
a 60-km range," said sources.

India is also looking closely at the Israeli Arrow-II anti-ballistic
missile defence system. India, incidentally, acquired two Green Pine
early-warning and fire-control radars, a crucial component of the
Arrow system which can detect and track hostile missiles from 500 km
away, in 2001-2002.

IAF, on its part, is keen to acquire some more Aerostat radars,
basically phased-array radars mounted on blimp-like balloons tethered
to ground, to bolster air defence capabilities.

"The final acceptance trials of the two Israeli Aerostat radars we got
earlier are taking place in Gujarat and Punjab now. But, we need at
least 10 more such radars. Though expensive, one Aerostat can
substitute for 30-40 ground-based radars in providing
three-dimensional low-altitude coverage," said sources.

During his visit, ACM Tyagi also reviewed the progress of the
$1.1-billion 'Phalcon' project, with the first of the three AWACS
(airborne warning and control systems) scheduled for induction in
November 2007.

Israel is helping with the modernisation of India's Russian-origin
platforms ranging from MiG-21s and MiG-27s to the T-72 tanks, apart
from several other joint R&D projects.

_____


12     MILITARISATION AND CIVIL SOCIETY:


o o o

Newsline
July 2006
Cover Story

GENERAL FIGURES
HOW MUCH IS A GENERAL WORTH IN REAL ESTATE TERMS?

by Ayesha Siddiqa

According to an assessment based on the value of
rural or urban plots, the worth of a general in
the army in real estate terms is anything from a
hefty 150 to 400 million rupees. And that is a
conservative estimate. Many senior generals own
up to seven to eight properties in rural areas
and in the cities. This development of a
land-rich military is the result of a decades-old
policy of awarding land, particularly
agricultural land, to loyal military personnel.
However, a number of officers own more than just
one piece of land due to the fact that every
gallantary award is accompanied with a piece of
urban or rural property. Subsequently, service
chiefs were given the option of getting a plot of
land in the city of their choice. This provision
is traced back to General Zia-ul-Haq's era. As
such, many senior officers obtained prime
properties. The list includes: General (Retd.)
Shamim Alam Khan, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
Committee (allotted a 1,066-square-yard plot in
the costly F-7 sector on June 11, 1994), former
chief of Army Staff, General (Retd.) Abdul Waheed
Kakar (allotted a 1,200-square-yard plot, number
6 in sector G-6/4 on September 7, 1996), Air
Chief Marshal (Retd.) Farooq Feroze Khan
(allotted a 1,033-square-yard plot, number 13 in
sector F-7/2 on January 29, 1995), former Naval
Chief Admiral (Retd.) Saeed Muhammad Khan
(allotted a plot measuring 1,066 square yards in
sector F-7 on June 11, 1994), former Naval Chief
Admiral (Retd.) Muhammad Saeed (allotted an
800-square-yard plot, number 19 in sector F-8/1
on August 30, 1987), and former Naval Chief,
Admiral (Retd.) Yasturul Haq Malik, (allotted a
800-square-yard plot. number 551 in sector F-10/2
on November 4, 1991). The current market value of
these plots varies from Rs. 70-100 million each.

            However, there is no limit to the land
acquired by some other officers. For instance,
according to a list of land awards to officers,
eight plots were allotted in the name of the
Director General, ISI. The list placed before the
Senate shows that five plots were allotted in the
name of the DG, ISI on April 15, 1994 in sector
F-11/2. The plots measuring 666 square yards,
included plot numbers 193, 194, 261, 262 and 263.
The DG, ISI was also allotted two more plots on
November 16, 1994 in sector F-7/4 and F-7/2, each
measuring 1,600 square yards. Another plot,
measuring 1,244 square yards, was allotted in the
name of the DG, ISI in sector F-7/1 on October
26, 1994.

             Apart from the officially allocated
plots, senior military officers get land in the
defence housing schemes at concessional rates.
However, developed, these plots add another Rs.
50-100 million each to the general's total worth.

            According to Lt. General (Retd.)
Moinuddin Haider, the DHAs pay market value for
the land. However, the concept of market rate is
debatable. The market rate is charged for
agricultural land, which is phenomenally cheaper
than urban property. The profit earned on
property converted from rural to urban by the
DHAs is much more than what would have been
obtained had the real estate been sold as rural
property. While the price of 600 square yards of
agricultural property would be around
Rs30,000-40,000, the same piece of urban land is
worth approximately Rs50-100 million.


____


16.

BBC News
19 September 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5348414.stm

MANIPUR WOMAN'S MARATHON FAST
By Suvojit Bagchi
BBC News, Manipur

Sharmila says her battle is symbolic
Guarded by armed policemen, a frail young woman
lies on a bed in Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital in
Imphal, capital of the north-eastern Indian state
of Manipur.

On hunger strike since 2000, Irom Sharmila Chanu
is being force-fed through a pipe in her nose on
the orders of the state administration.

The 35-year-old is an iconic figure in Manipur's
politics. She completes six years of fasting in
November, in what is perhaps the longest such
political protest ever recorded.

Sharmila is demanding the repeal of the
controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act or
AFSPA, which gives sweeping powers to the army in
the state.

Manipur, with a population of 30 million, has
been administered by the Indian army since 1980
and human rights organisations often describe the
army's powers as "draconian".

Atrocity

While the government maintains that the law is
necessary to restore normalcy in a state racked
by a militant secessionist movement, civil
society groups allege gross human rights
violations by the army.


My fast is on behalf of the people of Manipur. This is not a personal battle
Irom Sharmila Chanu

In fact, Sharmila's hunger strike started after one such alleged atrocity.

Her brother, Irom Singhajit Singh says she began
her fast after soldiers of the Assam Rifles
paramilitary force allegedly killed 10 young
Manipuri men in Malom.

"The killings took place on 2 November, 2000. It
was a Thursday. Sharmila used to fast on
Thursdays since she was a child. That day she was
fasting too. She has just continued with her
fast," says Mr Singh.

Three days later, police arrested Sharmila on
charges of trying to take her life.

Later she was transferred to judicial custody and
taken to hospital where she remains to this day,
force-fed a liquid diet through her nose.

From her hospital bed, Sharmila says she will not budge under pressure.

Women protest in Manipur against the law
There have been a number of protests against the law

"I will withdraw the fast as and when the
government withdraws the Armed Forces Special
Powers Act unconditionally."

Hers is not a lone voice.

In 2004, Manipur erupted after the brutal rape
and murder of a young woman activist, Manorama
Devi, allegedly by soldiers of the Assam Rifles.

After days of violent protests, the government
withdrew the law from certain areas of Manipur.

'Symbolic battle'

But Sharmila says she will relent only after the
law is withdrawn from the entire state.


Manipur police chief AK Parashar
She is doing her job - we are doing our duty
Police chief AK Parashar

"My fast is on behalf of the people of Manipur.
This is not a personal battle - this is symbolic.
It is a symbol of truth, love and peace," she
says.

As one would expect, the years of hunger strike
have taken their toll on her health.

Doctors say her fasting is now having a direct
impact on her body's normal functioning - her
bones have become brittle and she has developed
other medical problems too.

The government cannot afford a high-profile
martyr for the Manipuri nationalist movement. So
they cannot let Sharmila die.

To keep her alive, she is fed a cocktail of
vitamins, minerals, laxatives, protein
supplements and lentil soup through the nose with
a rubber pipe.

The state director general of police, AK
Parashar, says: "A young citizen of the country
cannot be allowed to die. We have an obligation
to see that she doesn't die an unnatural death.

"We are doing our best to keep the young lady
alive. She is doing her job - we are doing our
duty."

The editor of a local daily newspaper, Irengabam
Arun, feels the administration has its own
reasons to keep Sharmila alive.

"On the one hand, human rights activists across
the world know about her and on the other hand,
if she dies, the armed forces act will be back on
the centre stage. The government cannot afford
that," he says.

In Manipur, women have always been at the
forefront of political and social movements. And
many say Sharmila is part of that legacy.

But some analysts say her protest may be losing
its sting. And that she may be fighting a losing
battle.

Sharmila being forced fed
Sharmila's health is failing fast

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which is
operational in the north-eastern states of India
and Jammu and Kashmir, has been in force in
Manipur for 26 years now.

A committee formed by the government has
suggested the act be scrapped, but its report has
been rejected.

"The AFSPA is to stay. It is difficult for the
armed forces to function without it", says
India's Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

So Sharmila continues her unequal battle against
the Indian state - sacrificing, according to her
brother, "what could have been the best years of
her young life".


o o o

Dawn
September 29, 2006
Editorial

ANOTHER ARMY MAN AS VC

THE appointment of a retired brigadier as the
vice-chancellor of Bolan University by the
Balochistan government is contrary to what
FAPUASA and the HEC had expected. Barely a week
ago, Dr Attaur Rahman, chairman of the Higher
Education Commission, had assured a delegation of
the Federation of All Pakistan Universities
Academic Staff Association that no army person
would now be appointed VC in any university. It
is shocking that in total disregard of academic
requirements, the governor of Balochistan has
proceeded to break the rules to accommodate yet
another retired military officer as VC. The
prescribed procedure is pretty clear and
straightforward. It calls for a 'vice-chancellor
search committee' to be formed with the
governor's approval, followed by an announcement
by the HEC for the position of vice-chancellor in
all national dailies. The applicants are then
short-listed and interviewed by the search
committee after which it has to forward the names
of three candidates for the chancellor's
(governor of the province) approval. The
chancellor will then have the prerogative to
select a person from amongst them or ask for
fresh recommendations.

Obviously nothing of this sort has been done in
this particular case. Thus Balochistan University
becomes the third institution of higher education
in the country in recent years to have an ex-army
officer at the helm. Punjab University, the
oldest university in the country with a proud
tradition of learning, is headed by Lt Gen Arshad
Mahmood who is not a PhD but just an MSc in War
Studies and Defence and Strategic Studies (QAU).
The Quaid-i-Azam University is also headed by a
retired captain of the Pakistan army allegedly
with a questionable degree. At this rate,
Pakistan which has the dubious honour of having
no university of world standing (to quote the HEC
chairman) will do serious harm to the few
institutions it has. At one time, the Balochistan
University was headed by giants such as the
venerable Prof Karrar Husain, the founding
vice-chancellor. The HEC, headed by an academic,
understands the negative implications of such
appointments. In the case of Balochistan, a
province suffering from the throes of a military
crackdown, an army man at the head of its premier
institution of learning has serious political
implications as well. How will the HEC react?

o o o

The Hindu
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/009200609280310.htm

'AFSPA 1958' CONTINUES BAGGING INTERNATIONAL AWARDS

Imphal, Sept 28. (UNI): The 77-minute documentary
film 'AFSPA 1958' has continued bagging awards at
various international film festivals.

In the 10th Ismailia International Film Festival
Egypt, the film managed to grab three awards,
which was a record in that festival, sources said.

The film had won the Jury Award in the long
documentary category, and the Egyptian Cinema
Critics Association's ACT (Appropriate
Communication Techniques and Developments) Prize
for the Best Film dealing with women problems.

The documentary dealing with some bitter
realities in connection with the murder of one
Manorama by Asom Rifles had already bagged two
International Awards in the Mumbai International
Film Festival of Documetaries, Short and
Animation Films organised by the Union Ministry
of Information and Broadcasting this year.

It also bagged National Award in the SIGNS 2006,
a Festival of Documentaries and Short Films in
Video organised by Federation of Film Societies
of India, South West Region in Thiruvananthpuram.

" I never expected so many awards as there was a
tough competition. I was touched by the films
from Arab world and the courage of its film
makers," Director Paban Kumar said.

Mr Paban's latest film 'A Cry In The Dark' had
its world premiere at the Real to Reel Section of
the festival.

AFSPA was the first Manipuri film to have a world premiere abroad.

" I thought nobody will be present for my
screening as there were many Hollywood films but
to my surprise the hall was very crowded," the
director said.

o o o

Economic and Political Weekly, September 16, 2006

PAKISTAN: GENERAL IN HIS LABYRINTH

The charter of democracy agreed on by Pakistan's two leading
opposition politicians has given a fillip to the long dormant
democratic process in Pakistan. If the campaign sustains and
gathers momentum, Musharraf, who has thus far held to power by
subverting constitutional norms and reaching an unsavoury
alliance with fundamentalist religious parties, may find the going
tough. The promised elections of 2007 now appear full of
unexpected possibilities.

by Arif Azad

Nay, but this dotage of our general's
Overflows the measures.
- Opening line of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra London has become
the hub of Pakistani politics lately, at least since the arrival of
Nawaz Sharif
in December 2005. The ousted prime minister and head of Nawaz-faction of
the Pakistan Muslim League took up a "flexible" exile in London...

Complete article at:
http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2006&leaf=09&filename=10551&filetype\
=pdf


o o o

www.sacw.net - August 31, 2006

The death of Nawab Akbar Bugti and continuing
operation by the army and or paramilitary forces
in Baluchistan

DECLARATION PASSED BY JOINT ACTION COMMITTEE (JAC)
   Karachi, 30th August 2006
http://www.sacw.net/peace/JACDeclarationBaluchistan.html



_____


13   SRI LANKA

The Hindu
Sep 27, 2006

South Asia's most militarised society

by B. Muralidhar Reddy

A study details the effects on Sri Lanka of the 23-year-old ethnic conflict.

A STUDY by a Mumbai based think-tank, Strategic
Foresight Group (SFG), has confirmed what many
long feared: Sri Lanka has emerged as the most
militarised society in South Asia. More worrying
is the conclusion that it could get worse unless
urgent action is initiated towards ending the
23-year-old conflict.

The study, "Cost of conflict in Sri Lanka," says
the island nation has 8,000 military personnel
per one million population. Even Pakistan - of
which it is said that while every country has an
army the Pakistan army has a country - has only
half that number, 4,000 military personnel per
one million population. The figures for other
South Asian countries are: Nepal 2,700; India
1,300; and Bangladesh 1,000.

In terms of military expenditure as a percentage
of gross domestic product (GDP), too, Sri Lanka
spent the most - 4.1 per cent. In the case of
Pakistan it is 3.5 per cent; 2.5 per cent in the
case of India and Nepal; and 1.5 per cent in the
case of Bangladesh. The figure cannot be expected
to be an accurate representation of the
actualities as there is very little information
and knowledge about the military expenditure by
the LTTE.

"Sri Lanka's defence expenditure as a percentage
of its GDP is the largest not only in South Asia
but is also higher than other conflict-ridden
countries such as Colombia, Myanmar, Sierra
Leone, Sudan, the Philippines, and Uganda to name
a few," the researchers of the study, Semu Bhatt
and Devika Mistry, note. In other words, even
among the conflict-afflicted countries there
could be very few that have witnessed the level
of militarisation seen in Sri Lanka, variously
described as "paradise on earth" and "pearl of
the Indian Ocean."

The study has established a direct linkage
between the ongoing ethnic conflict and the steep
rise in defence spending. "Sri Lanka witnessed
one of the most dramatic increase in military
expenditure from an allocation of 0.5 per cent of
the GDP in the 1970s to as high as 6.3 per cent
in 2000," the study said. It is supposed to have
declined to 4 per cent of the GDP after the 2002
Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) brokered by Norway.

The figures cited in the study pertain to the
2004-05 period. The CFA, which began to come
under strain in mid-2003, has now been almost
reduced to a piece of paper; the Sri Lankan
forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
have been engaged in an intense "undeclared war"
in the latest phase for over four months now. It
is unlikely that the defence expenditure as a
percentage of the GDP for 2005-06 can be
contained at the level seen in the period after
the CFA.

The strength of the Sri Lankan Army, 15,000 in
the early 1970s, is now 1.5 lakh. Its arsenal
includes multi-barrel rocket launchers, long
range artillery, mortars, battle tanks, and
armoured personnel carriers. The Navy is much
smaller; it has 20,000 personnel and uses fast
attack craft with 23 mm guns, inshore and
offshore patrol vessels, landing craft, etc. The
Air Force uses Kfir supersonic fighter-bombers,
MiG-23s, and choppers, including MI-24s.

The LTTE's estimated strength is 10,000 but this
does not reflect its actual capability given its
use of suicide bombers and guerrilla tactics. Its
navy has about 2,000 personnel. The LTTE has no
functioning air force and no anti-aircraft
defences but it is said to have acquired two to
five small aircraft, and built one or two
airfields. The study puts the LTTE's annual
expenditure on its cadres and military-oriented
networks, both in the island and abroad, in the
range of $8 million.

The SFG study says that for the LTTE, which is
essentially a military outfit, expenditure on
weapons and the maintenance of a war economy gets
top priority. "It does precious little for the
economic well being of the people under its
control, despite running a few social and
economic organisations." But given that the
outfit's annual income is anywhere between $175
million and $385 million, the expenditure on
cadres and the informer networks is
"insignificant," the study says.

"The LTTE spends a minimum on its cadres and the
maximum on sustaining a war economy and its
support base internationally." Of the total
income, $100 million to $250 million is believed
to come from drug trafficking, although there is
yet no direct evidence of the outfit's
involvement in this trade. Local taxation and
extortion are said to contribute about $30
million; human smuggling and funds siphoned off
from NGOs gives $3-5 million; contributions from
the Tamil expatriate community fetch $40-50
million; and profits from businesses $35-50
million.

The conflict and the consequent militarisation
have meant enormous human suffering in social,
economic, and political terms. By 2005-end,
65,000 persons had died. Latest estimates show at
least a million have been displaced, 2.25 lakh in
the current phase of hostilities since April.
Life is subject to never ending checkpoints and
security drills. Current inflation hovers around
15 per cent and the struggle goes on.

In the words of SFG researchers, "The possibility
of it [Sri Lanka] becoming less militarised
nation lies only after 2011, conditional on the
resolution of internal conflict before 2006-07."
Is anyone out there listening?

India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch
Compilation (July 17, 2006)
Year Seven, No 163
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/174

Contents:
1  World Military spending in 2005 ($ Billions, and percent of total)
2  Pakistan: Defence budget and accountability (Masooda Bano)
3  Pakistan 'cannot afford nuclear race with India' (Farhan Bokhari)
4  Pak. nuke programme driven by threat perception of India: Kasuri
5  Fissile materials in South Asia and the
U.S.-India nuclear deal (Z. Mian, A.H. Nayyar, R.
Rajaraman, and M.V. Ramana)
6 ISI's pervasive role (Editorial, Dawn)
7  The "Deal" and New Delhi's Nuclear Dreams (J. Sri Raman)
8  Missile Test Politics:
    - India tests new ballistic missile
    - Indian missile test 'was failure'
    - US stand facilitated missile test
    - Exposed by Dud Missile, Space Vehicle Crash  (Praful Bidwai)
    - Dangers of a regional missile race (Praful Bidwai)
9  Kashmir:
   - Voices of despair - Ominous signs of return to
strong-arm policy (Edit, Kashmir Times)
   - A bus journey to nowhere (Kuldeep Nayar)
   - CRPF embroiled in turf war with BSF in Kashmir
   - Troops decimate trout in south Kashmir (Praveen Swami)
   - Shameful Pattan killings  (Edit, Kashmir Times)
   - Army in the dock (Rakesh Shukla)
   - Chittisinghpora and Protection of Human Rights Act (Y P Chhibbar)
   - Caring For Kashmir'S Dead Is A Killing Task (Palash Kumar)
   - Pakistan: Abuses Feared in Kashmir Elections (Human Rights Watch)
10  National security redefined (Javid Husain)
11  Pakistan, India Defense Budgets - A Wild Goose Chase
12 India: The New Central Asian Player (Stephen Blank)
13 Discerning Judgment about War and Peace (Praful Bidwai)
14 Arms Sales to the region - plans and the players
    - Bush plans $5 billion arms sale to Pakistan (Jim Wolf)
    - F-16 sale to Pakistan hits snag in Congress (Jim Wolf)
    - US set to notify on F-16 deal
    - Plane Sense (Unsigned editorial, The Wall Street Journal)
    - Russia may lease nuclear submarine to India (Vladimir Radyuhin)
    - N-deal will boost US military sales to India
    - India to buy three stealth warships and 28
cruise missiles from Russia for more than $1bn.
    - India plans to buy 80 Mi-17 copters
15 Militarisation and Civil Society:
     - Don't block information (Shekhar Singh)
     - Pakistan - TV Journalists Kidnapped and
Tortured For Filming Airbase Used by US Military
(RSF)
     - Shocking murder of journalist - Press freedom under threat (M B Naqvi)
     - Pakistan, India play tit-for-tat with prisoners (Nirupama Subramanian)
     - Pakistan's flourishing arms bazaar (Aamer Ahmed Khan)
     - India should take lead in controlling small arms: Oxfam (Rahul Kumar)
     - The saga of Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh (E.A.S. Sarma)
     - India: Time to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act
     - India: Pipe Bomb Blast In Nanded- Police,
Media Cover Up RSS Role (Subhash Gatade)
16 New Delhi's Silence on Nepal's Change (J. Sri Raman)
17 July 11 Bomb Blasts in Bombay and After:
   - Indo Pak peace process derailed - Human Rights take a hit
   - Gathering the Pieces After the Mumbai Blasts
   - BJP demands "hot pursuit" of terrorists
   - Mumbai blasts revive demand for POTA
   - blogspot.com is reportedly being India after a long blockade in Pakistan

_______


1. MILITARY EXPENDITURE

Military spending in 2005 ($ Billions, and percent of total)

Country                 Dollars
% of total              Rank

   United States       420.7
43%                  1
   China*                62.5
6%                    2
   Russia*               61.9
6%                    3
   United Kingdom     51.1
5%                    4
   Japan                  44.7
4%                    5
   France                41.6
4%                    6
   Germany              30.2
3%                    7
   India                   22
2%                    8
   Saudi Arabia         21.3
2%                    9
   South Korea         20.7
2%                    10
   Italy                   17.2
2%                    11
   Australia              13.2
1%                    12
   Brazil                   13.1
1%                    13
   Canada                10.9
1%                    14
   Turkey                9.8
1%                    15
   Israel*                9.7
1%                    16
   Netherlands          9.7
1%                    17
   Spain                8.8
1%                    18
   Taiwan              8.3
1%                    19
   Indonesia*         7.6
1%                    20
   Myanmar            6.9
1%                    21
   Ukraine*            6
1%                    22
   Singapore          5.6
1%                    23
   Sweden             5.6
1%                    24
   North Korea*      5.5
1%                    25
   Poland               5.2
0%                    26
   Iran                  4.9
1%                    27
   Norway              4.7
0%                    28
   Greece*            4.5
0%                    29
   Kuwait               4.3
0%                    30
   Colombia*          3.9
0%                    31
   Switzerland        3.8
0%                    32
   Pakistan            3.7
0%                    33
   Vietnam             3.5
0%                    34
   Belgium              3.4
0%                    35

   Source: U.S. Military Spending vs. the World
http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/archives/002244.php

_____


2.

The News International
July 14, 2006

DEFENCE BUDGET AND ACCOUNTABILITY
DISSENTING NOTE

By Dr Masooda Bano

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz recently said that
the government will use all resources to
modernise the Pakistani military. The government
made similar claims when presenting the budget
which registered an increase in the defence
expenditure. Even during 2005-2006, military
spending was revised upwards from Rs223 billion
to Rs241 billion. In addition, other military
expenditures like pensions of military personnel
and garrison and cantonment expenditures were
already under civilian heads - and if one
includes them total military expenditure comes to
Rs312 billion.

The increase in the military budget has been
justified against a similar move by India.
However, this does not resolve Pakistan's
dilemma. Our notoriously low human development
indicators demand much greater investment in
social services by the state than the current
allocations. Some trade-offs have to be made in
order to release greater resources for the social
sectors. The current budget does promise an
increase in education and health budget under the
increased Public Sector Development Programme
(PSDP) for this year. But they are many concerns
around that.

First, given the trends in the past year, the
development budget is likely to be revised
downwards during the year. Second, much of the
allocated amount is unlikely to be utilised. If,
however, the full amount is actually spent it
will be mobilised through increased loans and
indirect taxation which affects the middle and
low income groups rather than the rich. In
particular, loans are not the ideal way to fund
development expenditure given that the liability
incurred has to be paid back some day.

The issue is simple: if Pakistan is to make a
serious investment in social sectors then the
government has to first of all demonstrate
greater efficiency in utilising the allocated
resources; secondly, it has to reorder its
priorities. There is little room to play with in
the budgetary allocations, when debt servicing
and defence together end up consuming fifty per
cent of the budgetary outlay. The debt trap
cannot be escaped as the government has to meet
its obligations. The only option is to reduce the
military expenditure as it is a matter of choice.

True, a country needs some level of investment in
defence to protect its borders. There can be
little difference of opinion on that. But what
level of investment is sufficient to ensure
effective deterrence is highly contested. The
government increasingly argues that all it wants
is a basic level of deterrence, yet at the same
time it keeps raising investment in military
spending. It is keen to acquire a fleet of F16s
from the US and wants to increase its acquisition
of traditional military weaponry. Is all this
expansion necessary for basic defence?

After all, isn't the whole argument for having
nuclear weapons is precisely this that they
establish deterrence to attack? No responsible
nation can actually think of using nuclear
weapons. More so in case of India and Pakistan,
it would be suicidal to use nuclear weapons as
being neighbours, the nuclear emissions from the
bomb would, in the case of most targets, travel
back to the country that used the bomb. Still,
both countries have invested heavily in improving
their nuclear technology on the ground that it is
an essential deterrent: the fear that the country
on the losing end might actually use nuclear
weapons will stop both countries from going to
war.

In the presence of this nuclear deterrence, the
extent Pakistan needs to support a big
conventional army with the latest weaponry is
debateable. It also has to be borne in mind that
many countries have developed other means to
safeguard their border other than maintaining
large armies. Compulsory military service
requiring all male members to take part in
military training for a year or more so that they
can be recruited in time of need is one practice.
The other is to enter pacts with bigger powers to
take on the responsibility for providing
protection if attacked.

However, the key issue in case of the Pakistani
military is not really the spending on
acquisition of military arsenal and the number of
actual troops; the real problem is with the
unaccountability in regard to the defence budget
to the civilians. Much of the budget ends up
going to support military clubs, golf courts,
guest houses, housing schemes and other such
expenditures. Plots routinely allocated to
military officials have to be paid for by
someone. Not to forget the development of the new
army headquarters in Islamabad at an exorbitant
cost.

There is need for higher accountability of
government spending everywhere, but more so in
the military sphere. This is particularly
important for military purchases are also
notorious for huge cuts for commissioning
officials given the large amount of resources
involved. It has to be remembered that national
security cannot last without human security. A
nation cannot survive for long on the basis of
defence alone, and if its people remain
illiterate, sick, and unskilled and are unable to
engage in the international market.

If Pakistan is to progress, the priority has to
shift from investment in military to human
capital. A balance has to be struck between these
two competing demands on public resources. It
should be possible to attain such a balance
without sacrificing Pakistan's ability to defend
its borders. But, it will require cutting back on
many benefits currently enjoyed by the military's
high command.

The author is undertaking post-doctoral research at Oxford University.


_____


3.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2b49cb1c-017a-11db-af16-0000779e2340.html
Pakistan 'cannot afford nuclear race with India'
By Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad
Published: June 22 2006 00:04 | Last updated: June 22 2006 00:04
Pakistan's financial constraints mean it can only
maintain a strategy of "minimum deterrence" in
its nuclear weapons and missile programmes and
will not enter an arms race with India or any
other country, senior defence planners said.
Responding to concerns over rising defence
spending, they said Pakistan had learned from the
experience of the Soviet Union, which many
believe collapsed because of its expensive arms
race with the US. "We are only going to maintain
a minimum deterrence. We are aware of our
resource constraint," a senior defence official
said.
Recently announced plans to buy conventional arms
worth $7bn-9bn over the next five years have
prompted analysts to warn of potential dangers
for the Pakistani economy, which has only begun
to recover in the past two years. Military
spending is set to rise 11 per cent to Rps250bn
($4.2bn, ¤3.3bn, £2.3bn) a year.
According to the defence official, spending on
nuclear weapons and missiles programmes has
averaged only 2.3 per cent of total military
spending over the past 35 years.
Without elaborating on a target for the number of
nuclear warheads and missiles to be developed, he
said "financial constraints" were built into
future plans and that "minimum deterrence rather
than missile-for-missile or bomb-for-bomb is our
goal".
Pakistan's strategic weapons programme is focused
mainly on India, which introduced nuclear weapons
to south Asia with its maiden tests in 1974.
Pakistan carried out its first tests in 1998.
Another senior official, responsible for the
nuclear establishment, said the average cost of
missile production was lower than that incurred
by the US or the Soviet Union, as "India and
Pakistan are neighbours and we do not have to
invest in systems requiring additional flying
time over thousands of miles".
Pakistan's nuclear programme has been under
international scrutiny since revelations in 2004
that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the country's top nuclear
scientist, traded know-how and technology with
Iran, Libya and North Korea. Hasan Askari Rizvi,
a prominent analyst on defence affairs said: "As
long as you don't have civilian scrutiny of
military affairs, military spending will remain
controversial. Pakistan is run by the military;
civilian politicians are a subservient force."

_____


4
The Hindu,
July 12, 2006
PAK. NUKE PROGRAMME DRIVEN BY THREAT PERCEPTION OF INDIA: KASURI
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200607130323.htm

_____


5

"Fissile materials in South Asia and the
implications of the U.S.-India nuclear deal"
by Z. Mian, A.H. Nayyar, R. Rajaraman, and M.V. Ramana

is available on the IPFM website at
http://www.fissilematerials.org/southasia.pdf

_____

6

Dawn
July 13, 2006
Editorial
ISI'S PERVASIVE ROLE
http://www.dawn.com/2006/07/13/ed.htm#2

_____

7

THE "DEAL" AND NEW DELHI'S NUCLEAR DREAMS
by J. Sri Raman (truthout.org, 12 July 2006)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SAAN_/message/924

_____

8  MISSILE TEST POLITICS

BBC News
9 July 2006
INDIA TESTS NEW BALLISTIC MISSILE
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5162416.stm

BBC News
10 July 2006
INDIAN MISSILE TEST 'WAS FAILURE'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5162416.stm

Hindu
10 July 2006
US STAND FACILITATED MISSILE TEST
http://www.hindu.com/2006/07/10/stories/2006071005401200.htm&cid=0

EXPOSED BY DUD MISSILE, SPACE VEHICLE CRASH
Praful Bidwai (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33919)

NEW DELHI, Jul 11 (IPS) - The failure in rapid succession, this week,
of a satellite launcher and a new ballistic missile have shown up the
technological and budgetary difficulties faced by India's space
establishment -- civilian and military.

Hours after the 50 million US dollar Geosynchronous Satellite Launch
Vehicle (GSLV) with a communications satellite on board was ordered to
self-destruct, as it veered off course soon after lift-off on Monday,
authorities at the civilian Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)
said one of its four strap-on rocket motors had failed.

Like the GSLV, a new intermediate-range ballistic missile 'Agni III'
that was launched by the secretive Defence Research Development
Organisation (DRDO), failed soon after lift-off on Sunday and crashed
into the Bay of Bengal, less than 1,000 km away from the launch site.

The failure of the Agni III was in some ways more serious because it
exposed the political limitations of India's attempts, despite its
ambitions, to pursue a military capability which is truly independent
of the United States' strategic calculations.

The surface-to-surface ballistic missile, designed to have a range of
3,500 km, took off in a "fairly smooth" manner at the designated hour.
But "a series of mishaps" occurred in its later flight-path.

The Agni-III was originally meant to be tested in 2003-04. However,
the test was postponed owing to technological snags. After their
rectification, said reports, the missile's test-flights were put off
twice largely for "political reasons", so as not to annoy the U.S.

Earlier this year, India decided to postpone the missile test out of
fear that a test could hamper U.S. Congressional ratification of the
India-U.S. nuclear cooperation deal. Publicly, the Indian defence
minister cited "self-imposed restraint" to justify the postponement.

However, last month, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff of the U.S. military, visited India and declared that "I do not
see it (a test) as destabilising" or upsetting the regional "military
balance" since "other countries in this region" (read, Pakistan) have
also tested missiles.

Following this "facilitation" or clearance, and after indications of
favourable votes in U.S. Congressional committees on the nuclear deal,
India's stand changed. A week later, the DRDO announced it was ready
to launch Agni-III.

This is the ninth missile in the Agni series (named after the Sanskrit
word for "fire") to have been tested. The first was tested in May
1989. The last test (Agni-II) took place in August 2004.

Unlike major powers like the U.S., Russia or China, which test the
same missile 10 to 20 times before announcing that it is fully
developed, India considers only three or four test-flights to be
enough for both producing and inducting new missiles.

This is not first time that the test of an Agni series missile has
failed. In the past, some tests of the shorter range Agni-II (range
2000 km-plus) also proved unsuccessful.

But what makes the Agni-III's failure significant is that unlike its
shorter-range predecessors, it was a wholly new design, developed with
the specific purpose of delivering a nuclear warhead.

The Agni-I (range 700 to 800 km) and Agni-II, were both products of
India's space programme married to its Integrated Guided Missile
Development Programme (IGMDP), itself launched in 1983. Originally,
their design used a satellite space-launching rocket (SLV-3) as the
first stage, on top of which was mounted the very-short range (150 to
250 km) liquid fuel-propelled Prithvi missile.

The Agni-III's brand new design, in which both stages use solid
propellants, was to enable it to carry a payload weighing up to 1.5
tonnes and deliver it to targets as far away as Beijing and Shanghai.
At present, India lacks an effective nuclear deterrent vis-à-vis
China, based on a delivery vehicle carrying a nuclear warhead.
Agni-III was meant to fill the void.

The causes of the failure of the test-flight are not clear. Scientists
at the DRDO, which designed and built the missile, have been quoted as
saying that many new technologies were tried in the Agni-III,
including rocket motors, "fault-tolerant" avionics and launch control
and guidance systems. Some of these could have failed. Other reports
attribute the mishap to problems with the propellant.

"The DRDO isn't the world's most reliable weapons R&D agency," Admiral
L. Ramdas, a former chief of staff of the Indian Navy told IPS. "The
Indian armed services' experience with DRDO-made armaments has not
been a happy one. Their reliability is often extremely poor. We often
used to joke that one had to pray they would somehow work in the
battlefield."

The agency has a budget of Rs 30 billion (670 million dollars), which
is of the same order as the annual expenditure of the department of
atomic energy which is responsible for India's civilian and military
nuclear programmes.

"This figure is extremely high for a poor country like India, with a
low rank of 127 among 175 countries of the world in the United Nations
Human Development Index," said Anil Chowdhary of the Coalition for
Nuclear Disarmament and Peace. "Yet the DRDO has delivered very
little."

None of the three major projects assigned to the DRDO has been
completed on time or without huge cost-overruns. These include the
development of a Main Battle Tank (MBT), a nuclear power plant for a
submarine, and an advanced Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), all involving
expenditures of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The MBT project was launched in 1974. But the tank has failed to meet
service requirement tests. It is reportedly too heavy and undependable
to be used in combat operations. The Indian army prefers imported
Russian tanks over the indigenous MBTs and says it will use the MBTs
for training, not operations.

The nuclear submarine project, launched 31 years ago, is not yet
finished despite the almost one billion dollars spent on it. The LCA
project, launched in 1983, is still in the doldrums: the DRDO has
failed to develop the right engine for it. Even with an imported
engine, the plane is unlikely to enter service anytime soon.

"The primary reason for these shocking instances of underperformance
and inability is lack of public accountability and oversight of the
DRDO," says M.V. Ramana, an independent technical expert attached to
Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development,
Bangalore. "The DRDO, like all of India's defence and nuclear service
establishments, is not subject to normal processes of audit. It has
used 'security' as a smokescreen or shield and refused to be held to
account," he adds.

The DRDO says it will try to rectify the faults in Agni-III. Whether
or not and whenever that happens, India's missile development
programme, with future plans to develop an intercontinental ballistic
missile with a range of 5,000 km or more, has suffered a major
setback. (END/2006)

o o o

The News International
July 15, 2006

DANGERS OF A REGIONAL MISSILE RACE
Praful Bidwai

The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a
researcher and peace and human-rights activist
based in Delhi

The crash of India's intermediate-range Agni-III
missile last Sunday, followed by the failure of a
satellite launch on the Indian Space Research
Organisation's Geostationary Space Launch Vehicle
the next day, serves to highlight many issues.
For one, it belies the claim, made both in
Pakistan and India, that missile development
would not carry the risk of triggering an arms
race in and beyond the South Asian region and
therefore not destabilise regional security.

For another, it shows that once-Non-Aligned
India, with a mind of its own and a broad-horizon
foreign policy, is willing to be roped in by the
United States to contain China. The Agni-III,
with a range of 3,500 kilometres, is specifically
meant to bring mainland China, including Beijing
and Shanghai, into the range of India's nuclear
deterrent. The Agni-II, with a range of
2,000-2,500 km, can at best reach western China.

Equally important, the Agni-III test-flight was,
so to speak, "cleared" last month by none other
than chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff
Peter Pace. General Pace publicly encouraged
India to test-fly Agni-III by declaring that it
wouldn't destabilise the regional military
balance -- "other countries in this regionŠ have
also tested missiles."

Contrary to this claim, a successful test would
have affected Sino-Indian relations and the
regional security balance. It's bad enough that
India and Pakistan are engaged in a nuclear and
missile arms race. Extending such rivalry to
China would be bad for India's long-term security
too.

And for a third, the Agni-III crash shows how far
India (and probably, Pakistan) has to go in
raising the competence of its weapons designers
and manufacturers and making them more
accountable. The unreliability of weapons,
especially powerful armaments like
nuclear-capable missiles, can only heighten the
nuclear danger in South Asia.

It's clearly premature -- and unconvincing -- for
Samar Mubarikmund, chairman of Pakistan's
National Engineering and Science Commission, to
claim that the Agni-III's failure reflects the
"incompetence" of Indian missile designers and
planners, and the "superiority" of Pakistan's
missile programme. And it's simply ludicrous to
contend that Pakistan's missile development
programme is "indigenous". There is overwhelming
evidence that it has borrowed technology and
components from North Korea and China.

Besides, there are significant differences
between the two Indian agencies which handle
rocketry - the ISRO, and the Defence Research and
Development Organisation, which developed
Agni-III. The ISRO crash sets back the civilian
programme of launching INSAT communications
satellites, which has been a moderate success.

But the ISRO's failure is, relatively speaking,
"honourable" and redeemable. Such mishaps are not
uncommon in the global satellite launch industry.
Satellite launches and operations take place
under extreme stress, so even minute faults
translate into large abnormalities.

However, the DRDO's failure may not be
redeemable. It comes on top of an indifferent,
even embarrassing, performance of its Integrated
Guided Missile Development Programme.

This is a good occasion to take a critical look
at India's missile programme, and more generally,
at the DRDO. It has an annual budget of Rs30
billion -- of the same order as the Department of
Atomic Energy, which runs India's civilian and
military nuclear programmes. The sum exceeds
central spending on university and higher
education (excluding technical education). This
is reason enough to hold the DRDO strictly
accountable.

It has rarely succeeded in developing new missile
designs -- as distinct from some (partial)
reverse-engineering. In the 1970s, it launched
two missile programmes but had to abandon them.
"Project Valiant", an ambitious attempt to
develop a 1,500 km-range missile, was a total
failure.

"Project Devil" partially succeeded in
"reverse-engineering" the Soviet SA-2
surface-to-air missile to produce the Prithvi.
The Prithvi (range, 150-250 km), then, isn't
truly indigenous. Nor is it very dependable. Its
liquid fuel is highly corrosive and messy to
handle. Its launch demands half-a-day-long
preparation. No wonder the armed forces resist
buying it.

DRDO didn't develop the Agni series entirely on
its own. The missile's first stage is the SLV-3
space-launching rocket borrowed from the ISRO.
The DRDO simply fitted a Prithvi on top! The Agni
was first test-flown in 1989. But after three
test-flights, it was declared "a technology
demonstrator", not a missile on production track.

Between 1994 and 1999, India suspended all Agni
tests. When it was re-launched as Agni-II (range,
2,000-2,500 km), it had an all-new avatar, with
both stages solid-fuelled. Agni-II was test-flown
just three times before it was declared ready for
production and induction.

This is strange. By international standards, a
missile isn't considered developed unless it
undergoes 12 to 20 test-flights under different
weather and operational conditions to validate
its range, accuracy and reliability. Because
missiles can carry nuclear warheads, it's vital
that they have a near-zero failure rate -- to
minimise the risk of accidents and crashes over
civilian populations. But the DRDO has always
taken shortcuts, compressing several stages of
development and system testing into a few
launches.

In 2002, when Agni-II was still under
development, the DRDO announced a new
shorter-range (800-900 km) missile, the Agni-I.
This too was declared ready for production in
2003 after just three tests. It started work on
Agni-III in 1999 and announced it would be ready
for a test-flight by late 2003. The test was
postponed twice. Although "political" reasons --
averting Washington's displeasure -- were cited,
it's not clear that the DRDO was really ready to
test until last week.

The DRDO's poor performance isn't confined to
ballistic missiles alone. "It isn't the world's
most reliable weapons R&D agency", says Admiral L
Ramdas, a former chief of staff of the Indian
Navy. "The Indian armed services' experience with
DRDO-made armaments has not been happy. Their
reliability is extremely poor".

No major DRDO project has ever been completed on
time or without huge cost overruns. Consider the
three biggest: developing a Main Battle Tank
(MBT), a nuclear-powered submarine, and an
advanced Light Combat Aircraft (LCA). The MBT
project was launched in 1974. But the tank has
failed to meet service requirement tests. It's
reportedly too heavy and undependable for combat.
The Indian army says it will use MBTs for
training, not operations.

The submarine project, launched 31 years ago, is
unfinished despite an estimated Rs30 billion
spent on it. The reactor hasn't yet been tested
with the vessel's hull. The LCA project, launched
in 1983, is still in the doldrums. The DRDO has
failed to develop the right engine.

The primary reason for these shocking instances
of underperformance and ineptitude is lack of
public accountability and oversight. The DRDO's
malaise must be understood both in the context of
India's (and Pakistan's) relatively low standards
in manufacturing technology and its
hyper-bureaucratic, authoritarian culture.

It's not that Indians are not technologically
gifted. Their success in Information Technology
and fields like metallurgy, petrochemicals and
pharmaceuticals belies the claim. Where Indians
show real weakness is in meticulous adherence to
good manufacturing practices, an eye for detail,
and high levels of workmanship. These weaknesses
get magnified in institutions like the DRDO.

South Asian military-science establishments
suffer from excessive hierarchy under
overpowering bosses, who are lionised by the
media and pampered by politicians. This must
change. We are entering into dangerous terrain by
developing nuclear-tipped land-attack cruise
missiles in both countries. These will greatly
enhance the risk of accidents and disasters. It's
time to halt the missile race altogether.

_____


9  KASHMIR:

o o o

Kashmir Times
June 24, 2006
editorial

VOICES OF DESPAIR
OMINOUS SIGNS OF RETURN TO STRONG-ARM POLICY

Some of the hawkish utterances of those in
authority in New Delhi and Srinagar for the past
few days are frightening enough to convey that
the much talked about policy of "healing touch"
is being replaced by a policy of strong-arm
methods to deal with the militancy in the
troubled state. The knee-jerk reaction to some
escalation in the militant attacks targeting the
innocent civilians can only contribute to further
aggravating the situation rather than moving
forward on the path of peace and reconciliation.
The objective of those involved in such
condemnable acts of selective killing was to
perpetuate a communal divide and to provoke the
authorities to revert to a policy of repression
that can only derail the ongoing peace process.
Instead of seeing through the game those at the
helm are betraying signs of desperation. These
are ominous signs of going back to the bullet for
bullet policy instead of moving fast on the road
to peace by healing the wounds and through
various confidence building measures. While
alertness and tightening of the security and
intelligence network to prevent strikes by the
militants is understandable the situation does
not warrant any hysteric reaction. That New Delhi
is contemplating to revert back to the policy of
repression is evident from the reported "tough
talking" on the security by none other than the
National Security Advisor who paid a surprise
visit to Srinagar on Thursday to chair a
high-level meeting. The periodic review of the
security situation can be understood but there
was certainly no reason to reverse the
well-conceived policy of dialogue, reconciliation
and healing touch and thus isolating the
extremist elements determined to vitiate the
atmosphere. M.K. Narayanan has asked all the
security agencies to ensure synergy among
themselves with the "one-point "agenda of
"hitting" the militants. Blowing a few acts of
violence out of proportion, the National Security
Advisor not only expressed apprehension at the
increase in the militancy from across the borders
but also impliedly blamed Pakistan authorities
for it. Intriguingly enough the authorities in
the State and the Centre were claiming till
recently that there has been perceptible decrease
in the infiltration from across the Line of
Control but suddenly they have started asserting
that such infiltration has gone up.
It's one thing to deal with militancy but quite
another to create an alarm to justify the
bullet-for bullet policy that is being advocated
presently. Such a policy in the past has failed
to pay any dividends. Combined with grave human
rights abuses like custodial killings, fake
encounters, combing and search operations and
revengeful retaliation the strong arm policy can
only contribute to further alienation of the
people. Already there has been increase in the
human rights violations during the past few
months. These have naturally evoked strong
protests by the people who came out on streets to
condemn the killing of innocent persons. Instead
of dealing with such a situation with sympathy
and compassion the security forces have even been
resorting to firing and other human rights
abuses. Even those protesting against the
gruesome Wullar boat tragedy were dealt with in a
similar manner. Instead of restraining the forces
the chief minister has publicly justified such
brutal action against the protesting people in
the name of maintaining law and order. It should
be clear to those in authority that such an
approach will only further vitiate the
atmosphere. Instead of isolating the militants
such a policy can only result in popular sympathy
and support for them. Worse, it can lead to the
derailing of the peace process which has already
come to a halt. Gun is certainly no answer to the
situation and dialogue continues to be the only
way out. New Delhi has yet to take steps to move
forward by initiating a meaningful dialogue with
the separatists and even local militants to
achieve any breakthrough.

o o o o

Gulf News (UAE)
06/24/2006

A BUS JOURNEY TO NOWHERE
by Kuldip Nayar, Special to Gulf News

If the number of buses started between India and
Pakistan were to be the criterion, the
relationship would have been normal. The fact is
that the enthusiasm over the inauguration of a
bus does not last beyond the duration of the
ceremony.

Many bus routes have been started I have lost
count but they generally carry more officials and
staff than the passengers.

There are too many hassles an unending series of
checks and re-checks, besides the hazards of
going to Islamabad and New Delhi, as the case
might be, to get a visa for the bus journey.

I wish the two governments would explain the
purpose behind this frustrating and
non-productive exercise. I find people-to-people
contact lessening, not increasing.

Apart from the bureaucratic lethargy, the
recurrence of violence in Kashmir is pouring cold
water on whatever work has been done to improve
relations between the two countries.

Who is instigating the terrorists or, more aptly,
who is using them to sabotage the peace parleys?
Many such questions bewilder the public.

The bigger worrying point is: how does violence
help solve the Kashmir problem? This is not the
first time that the terrorists have gone haywire.

They go over the exercise every now and then
throwing bombs in crowded places or shooting
indiscriminately at people, including women and
children.

The security forces respond to the incidents,
equally ruthlessly, caring little about human
rights violations. At times, the security forces
have themselves been the cause of violence.

More determined

This vicious circle has continued for almost two
decades. I thought that the terrorists or their
masters would have realised by this time that no
amount of violence was going to force India to
agree to something which it did not want to do.
If anything, violence has made the Indian mind
more determined than before.

The process began after the Kargil war. The
recent killing of pilgrims and labourers, when
shown on TV, spread a sense of horror throughout
the country.

Tourists who had flocked in thousands quitted the
Valley quickly. An average Kashmiri is on the
dumps again because what he earns from the
visitors meets his yearly bill and also provides
him with some leeway for the winter when he
produces handicrafts and woollen shawls and
carpets.

True, the terrorists do not want normalcy to
return lest Kashmir goes out of the world's gaze.
But how does it matter whether the problem is on
the backburner or on the front one?

Kashmir is at the point where it was decades ago.
The only thing which has happened in the
meanwhile is that thousands of people have been
killed. The terrorists have alienated more
Indians than before. Still worse is the communal
edge that the problem has acquired, restricting
the space of secular Kashmiriyat.

I concede that the parties concerned Kashmiris,
Indians and Pakistanis have to agree among
themselves for a settlement. But this does not
seem to be coming in the near future.

What should happen until then? Even a layman will
admit that individual and state terrorism have to
stop for a congenial atmosphere for talks. But
here all the three have a holier-than-thou
attitude.

Let me begin with the Kashmiris. They are at best
indifferent to the terrorists, if they are not
their sympathisers.

Once in a while, I hear the words of condemnation
by the JKLF leaders. The Hurriyat too chips in
with its remorse at times. The Abdullahs and
Muftis, when in power, are worked up against the
terrorists. But once they are not rulers, they
rationalise the terrorists' acts.

My suspicion is that political elements in
Kashmir have come to develop a vested interest in
terrorism. They feel that it acts as a pressure
on India. Probably, it does. The idea of the
roundtable conference of terrorists (called
separatists) and others cropped up only after
violence cut a swathe through Kashmir.

India's own response to terrorism suffers from a
particular slant. There is more dependence on the
army than the political machinery even though the
top brass have characterised Kashmir as a
military problem.

This may well be the reason why the proposal for
demilitarisation does not take off. Even
otherwise, when terrorism remains unchecked, no
government can afford to take a chance, even
though groundswell of opinion is in its favour in
the Valley.

Failing to understand

New Delhi is convinced that Islamabad has not
given up terrorism as an option and "retains" the
training camps and recruitment centres.

Pakistan does not seem to understand the
compulsions of a democratic system. The
terrorists cannot hijack it with attacks here and
there.

Parliament is in no way cowed down by the attack on it.

I am afraid New Delhi is not getting the Kashmir
problem right. True, there are separatists in the
state and I do not rule out the Pakistan
assistance to them.

But that is only a part of the problem. The real
problem is the people's alienation.

The state had acceded to the Union of India on
only three subjects: defence, foreign affairs and
communications.

Shaikh Abdullah did not want New Delhi's
encroachment in any other field, directly or
indirectly. His straight talk cost him not only
the state's prime ministership but also some 12
years of his life in detention in Kodaikanal in
the south.

With his exit, New Delhi, under the very nose of
his friend, Jawaharlal Nehru, changed the
complexion of Kashmir and disfigured its identity
on the plea that all the states in the country
had to have, more or less, uniformity.

Despite the limit of three subjects New Delhi
usurped a lot of other authority which was
Kashmir's according to the instrument of
accession.

Kuldip Nayar is a former Indian High Commissioner
to the UK and a former Rajya Sabha MP


o o o o

The Hindu
June 25, 2006
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200606251245.htm

CRPF EMBROILED IN TURF WAR WITH BSF IN KASHMIR

Srinagar, June 25 (PTI): In the face of growing
acts of violence by militants in Jammu and
Kashmir, two central para-military forces, the
BSF and the CRPF, are working at cross purposes,
which has caused serious concern in the Union
Home Ministry.

The BSF, which was in-charge of counter
insurgency operations for long 15 years from 1990
to 2005 before being asked to hand over the
operations to the CRPF, appears to be engaged in
a turf war in the Valley with the CRPF at lower
ranks. This is going to be a handicap.

National Security Advisor, M K Narayanan, who
flew on a day's visit to the summer capital on
June 21, has asked all security agencies to
ensure synergy among themselves with the
one-point agenda of "hitting" at the militants.

Narayanan, in a tough message, told senior
officers of the Army, CRPF, BSF, state police and
IB to put their heads together and work as a team
to combat militancy, sources said.

The top bosses of the BSF and CRPF in Delhi
declined to comment on record about these
problems but sources within the two para-military
forces conceded that there are problems.

Though the CRPF took command of fighting
militancy in the state in August 2005, the BSF
wants to continue with operations in the Kashmir
Valley and the border guarding force was showing
reluctance in bowing out of counter-insurgency
operations and is using its intelligence wing in
show up the mistakes of the paramilitary force.

The decision to let the CRPF take charge of
counter-insurgency operations in the country was
recommended by the K Subrahmanyam committee on
Kargil so that the BSF could focus on its primary
task of guarding the frontiers.

Senior Home Ministry officials, who preferred not
to be named, said the chiefs of the BSF and CRPF
had been asked to pass on an order to their men
on the ground to work in tandem.

However, the sources said the actual situation is very different.

Whenever an incidence of violence occurs in any
part of Srinagar, lower rung BSF officials are
seen doing the rounds of the city's press colony
to hold "corner meetings" with reporters,
briefing them as to how this attack took place
and what was the laxity on the part of the CRPF.

The latest such incident was a suicide attack by
militants on a BSF bus at Hyderpora on May 24
when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was in
Srinagar to chair the second roundtable
conference on Kashmir.

At least 29 BSF personnel were injured in the
attack and BSF officials, especially from its
intelligence wing, were seen going to media
offices to "feed information" to reporters that
the area was manned by the CRPF.

At various security review meetings, BSF
officials point out that the CRPF has been unable
to conduct counter-insurgency operations even
though the CRPF achieved a major breakthrough by
catching a "fidayeen" militant alive in November
2005.

A senior CRPF official who was a part of that
operation said even as his force was celebrating
its catch, some BSF officials had claimed to
reporters they were responsible for the success.

o o o o

The Hindu
June 26, 2006

TROOPS DECIMATE TROUT IN SOUTH KASHMIR
Widespread poaching by troops and CRPF personnel threatens ecology and tourism
Praveen Swami
http://www.hindu.com/2006/06/26/stories/2006062600521300.htm

o o o o

Kashmir Times
June 29, 2006
Editorial

SHAMEFUL PATTAN KILLINGS
PM'S COMMITMENT ON HUMAN RIGHTS HONOURED IN BREACH

The Pattan-Palahallan killings that have yet to
evoke a response from the civil administration
have once again brought to fore the sham of prime
minister's promise for zero tolerance to human
rights violations. It is not just the killings
that become a heinous crime, causing agony to the
people and enhancing the levels of alienation.
What does greater damage and causes humiliation
to the people is the complacency and apathy of
the civil administration in waking up to the
allegations of human rights abuse coupled with
the attitude of the top rung of security grid to
cover up for the deeds of the security personnel
by making thoughtless statements without even a
preliminary investigation. Very often, the
statements issued after such allegations are
baseless, lack truism and are contradictory with
police, army or other para-military forces
speaking different things. The Pattan case is no
different because on the day one, the security
forces began to dismiss the whole event as an
encounter with a 'militant' who had just returned
from Gujarat, charges that are totally denied by
the residents of both the villages in Pattan that
lost one member each. The sequence of events
reveals the mindset of the security forces and
the statements thereafter betray the patronage
the personnel enjoy from the top.
The manner in which the youth was targetted by
the CRPF and thrown on the road-side was shameful
in itself. Adding to the trauma was the total
callousness of the police who, people allege, was
watching the scene and did virtually nothing. In
fact, when the woman working nearby took the
initiative, asking the BSF men on patrol there to
carry the young boy, who had been shot and left
to die on the road, to the hospital, she too was
killed brutally. The entire incident right from
the CRPF shooting the boy to BSF leaving the
injured woman unattended in a park reflects the
contemptuous attitude for locals with which the
security forces operate in the Valley. In this
scenario, the promise of the prime minister about
zero tolerance for human rights abuses sounds
rather hollow. If he really intended to bring
down the graph of abuse in Jammu and Kashmir, he
needs to ensure it on ground as well to appear
sincere about not just human rights but also
peace. The latter cannot exist as long as the
state's agencies continue to wreak injustice on
the people. The case has once again highlighted
the need for minimizing and withdrawing of
forces, whose presence is creating more violence
and spreading greater fear, often also provoking
militancy related attacks. While the prime
minister needs to live up to his promise, New
Delhi also needs to rethink its policy about
demilitarization, which is no kind of unpatriotic
blasphemy, as is being treated by the
professional hawks.

o o o

The Times of India
June 29, 2006

ARMY IN THE DOCK
by Rakesh Shukla

In a rare exception, a chargesheet has been
presented before criminal court against five
officers of the army, for the murder of five
innocent villagers.

The five were killed after being labelled as
militants responsible for the Chitti-singhpora
massacre of Sikhs at the time of the Clinton
visit.

The protest at the killing of innocents was met
by firing in which 10 more people died. Finally,
despite a blatant cover-up attempt by the army,
to the extent of manipulating the DNA samples
sent in order to establish the identity of the
victims, the truth has emerged.

CBI has managed to pinpoint individuals
responsible for killing the villagers. Now, the
army wants permission to hold court martial
proceedings against indicted officers, instead of
a trial in a court of law.

Court martial proceedings are held under the Army
Act, 1950. Under the legislation, a sentry who is
found asleep or intoxicated at time of alarm or
war is punishable with death and with 14 years'
imprisonment in peace time.

Similarly, a person leaving his post is
punishable with death at times of active service
and otherwise with 14 years' imprisonment. A
person who in the presence of the enemy
misbehaves in such manner as to show cowardice
can be given capital punishment.

Disobedience to superior officer is punishable
with 14 years' imprisonment. Infractions like
quitting the parade or overstaying leave granted
can lead to three years' imprisonment.

Acts violative of good order and discipline can
lead to seven years' imprisonment. It is clear
that the object of court martial proceedings is
maintenance of discipline in the army.

Acts punishable with such severe penalties are
not offences under the ordinary criminal law of
the land. Court martial proceedings are not
intended to deliver justice for acts committed
against civilians, which amount to offences under
criminal law.

An integral part of criminal justice delivery
proceedings is an impartial judge. A court
martial consists of fellow army officers. Every
profession has a brotherhood; however, the
feeling of being a family in the army vis-a-vis
the civilians is a class apart.

   The highly emotive appeal of the wives of the
accused army officers, that their husbands were
tackling terrorists and protecting the integrity
of the nation, is a case in point.

Courts conducting criminal trials are situated
outside army premises and inspire confidence on
impartiality of the proceedings. That proceedings
are held in army compounds, with judges being
fellow officers of the accused, is bound to
undermine the confidence of civilian individuals
who are witnesses.

The Army Act does have provisions in cases of
overlapping jurisdictions being exercised by the
courts martial and ordinary criminal courts.

However, the key word is 'exercised' and the
Supreme Court, in 1961 in the Major E J Barsays
case, laid down that the provisions come into
play only if the army chooses to act in the
matter.

In cases where the army does not initiate court
martial proceedings, the Army Act cannot come in
the way of a criminal court exercising its
ordinary jurisdiction. In the present case, the
incident occurred six years back in 2000.

The army chose not to initiate any court martial
proceedings. The army knew that CBI was
investigating and did not stake claim to try
officers responsible for the criminal acts.

Today, the investigation has been done and the
evidence collected by the CBI. The army is in no
position to prosecute the indicted persons.

In any case, except for desertion, fraudulent
enrolment and mutiny, the Army Act lays down that
trial by court martial cannot be commenced after
the expiration of three years from the date of
offence.

As per the principles of criminal jurisprudence,
a person cannot be tried twice for the same
offence. However, the Army Act provides that a
person convicted or acquitted by a court martial
may be tried again by a criminal court for the
same offence or on the same facts.

The provision further illustrates the two
distinct fields occupied by courts martial and
criminal law.

The writer is a Supreme Court advocate.

o o o o

Kashmir Times
July 15, 2006

CHITTISINGHPORA AND PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS ACT
by Y P Chhibbar

The CBI has formally charged five army officers
in the Pathribal fake encounter case. The
chargesheet was filed in the Chief Judicial
Magistrate's court here.
The chargesheeted officers were identified as
Brigadier Ajay Saxena of 6 Independent Armoured
Brigade, Lt Col Brajendra Pratap Singh of Punjab
Regimental Centre, Ramgarh, Major Sourabh Sharma
of 202 Mountain Brigade, Major Amit Saxena of 505
ASC Bn, and Subedar Idrees Khan of Junior Leaders
Academy, Bareilly.
The army officers are being tried for abduction,
murder, attempt to murder, criminal conspiracy
and destruction of evidence under IPC sections
307, 302, 364, 201, 120-B and sections 7 and 25
of the Arms Act.
On March 24, 2000, five Kashmiri villagers were
picked up and killed at Pathribal in Anantnag
district, allegedly because they were involved in
the the Chittisinghpora massacre of March 20, in
which 35 Sikhs had been killed by militants. The
Army and the J-K Police claimed the five men were
foreign militants. When local residents protested
they were men from nearby villages, they were
fired upon near Brakpora. Ten protestors were
killed. - The Indian Express, May 12, 2006
The above news-report refers to the tragic
incident of March 21, 2000 when 36 Sikhs were
lined up outside a Gurudwaaraa in Chittisinghpora
in South Kashmir and were gunned down by unknown
persons. The army claimed on four days late that
the personnel of 7 Rashtriya Rifles had an
encounter and killed 5 persons belonging to
Lashkar-e-Toiba, the people responsible for the
March 21 massacre of 36 Sikhs.
This incident takes us back to the debate
concerning the implications of section 19 of The
Protection of Human Rights Act 1993, read along
with section 2 (1) (a). These two provisions are
as follows:
19. Procedure with respect to armed forces
(1) Notwithstanding anything contained in this
Act, while dealing with complaints of violation
of human rights by members of the armed forces,
the Commission shall adopt the following
procedure, namely:
(a) it may, either on its own motion or on
receipt of a petition, seek a report from the
Central Government;
(b) after the receipt of the report, it may,
either not proceed with the complaint or, as the
case may be, make its recommendations to that
Government.
(2) The Central Government shall inform the
Commission of the action taken on the
recommendations within three months or such
further time as the Commission may allow.
(3) The Commission shall publish its report
together with its recommendations made to the
Central Government and the action taken by that
Government on such recommendations.
(4) The Commission shall provide a copy of the
report published under sub-section (3) to the
petitioner or his representative.
Section 2 (1) (a)
(1) In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires-
a. "armed forces" means the naval, military and
air forces and includes any other armed forces of
the Union;
These two provisions effectively exclude the
Military, Navy, and the Air force of India along
with all the paramilitary forces from the
investigative powers of the National Human Rights
Commission (NHRC), although in large parts of the
country, because of peculiar security conditions,
these forces are either deployed on civil duties
or as a part of their defense responsibility,
have to deal with civilians. The People's Union
for Civil Liberties has been objecting to this
exemption from the very beginning. In its
submission before the 'High Level Advisory
Committee to review The Protection of Human
Rights Act 1993', headed by the former Chief
Justice of India, Justice A M Ahmadi, in 1998,
the same point was raised. Many other
organisations also raised this point.
The Vietnam conflict brought to the fore the
concept of low intensity wars or conflicts. This
area of operation is dominated by political
considerations rather than military. The armed
forces and the para-military forces perform
duties of the civilian police though they are
under their own line of command. There is a
delicate relationship that exists between the
civilian administration and the military line of
command. It has been seen that this type of grey
area of operation thrust upon the armed forces
opens up the gates of corrupt practices that
plague the civilian administration and police.
In the domain of law intensity conflict the
various branches of the armed forces who are
trained to use indiscriminate power to kill the
enemy, will do so here also. But in the civilian
domain their actions are open to public
accountability and media scrutiny. Now and then
this creates embarrassing situations for the
government. Time has now come to re-examine the
situation and to bring the actions of the armed
forces operating in civilian duty with in the
provisions of the protection of Human Rights Act
1993. The conduct of the armed forces in actions
against the enemy forces are already governed by
international protocols.
Transparency and accountability, where it exists,
may exist on paper only. But, still the civilian
administration is open to some sort of public
scrutiny and that gives a degree of confidence to
the public. The absence of these provisions from
the area of operations of the armed forces and
the para-military forces puts them under an
unfriendly bracket. The exemplary record, the
humanitarian work, the security blanket that they
provide, all comes under a cloud when these
forces are put beyond the operations of the laws
like the Protection of Human Rights Act 1993,
At the time of the ghastly tragedy of
Chittisinghpora President Bill Clinton was in
India and therefore the incident received
international attention. When the then Union Home
Minister L K Advani visited the place on March
25, the local police and Army officers informed
him that an operation of 7 Rashtriya Rifles had
eliminated five Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives, at
Pathribal the day before, who were responsible
for the above massacre.
The local population contested the claims of the
security forces saying that the slain persons
were innocent local villagers. They raised the
issue, facing the wrath of the civil and military
administrations. They faced bullets and ten
persons lost their life. The government headed by
Farooq Abdullah was forced to suspend Anantnag's
SSP and SHO and order that the bodies of the
persons said to be Lashkar's operatives be
exhumed and be subjected to DNA tests to
ascertain their identities. The protests
persisted. The role of administration and civil
and military forces was subjected to scrutiny. It
was suspected that the DNA samples were tempered
with. Ultimately a CBI enquiry was ordered. It
was acknowledged that the five persons killed
were Zahoor Ahmed Dalal, Juma Khan, M Y Malik,
Bashir Bhat, and J Khan (as reported in the press
at that time) and based on the report of the CBI
enquiry a charge sheet was filed as mentioned in
the beginning.
We have reported the above case in details to
emphasise the argument that in such situations it
is not necessary to treat the armed forces as a
sacred cow. These forces, functioning within the
borders of the country, performing civilian
duties need to be treated like any other law and
order maintaining outfit. Exemptions create
unnecessary partitions in the citizenry.
Violations of human rights of the citizens of all
parts of the country have to, be taken up by the
same zeal. Abduction, torture, detention without
legal authority, and actions like that should be
treated alike. Let there be a provision that the
borderline cases for exemption due to genuine
security considerations be left to the court of
law.
*(The author is a human right activist and
general secretary of People's Union for Civil
Liberties)


o o o o

Dawn
July 6, 2006

CARING FOR KASHMIR'S DEAD IS A KILLING TASK
by Palash Kumar

SRINAGAR: They are the men who care for Kashmir's
dead, but the work is slowly killing them. Since
an uprising against Indian rule began in occupied
Kashmir in 1989, Mohammad Maqbool Bhat, now in
his late 40s, says he has helped perform
autopsies on at least 30,000 corpses.

Each time a civilian, militant, soldier or
policemen dies, Maqbool is called into action, to
cut open their bodies while doctors prepare
reports on exactly what killed them: a bullet
through the heart or kidney; an explosion ripping
through the intestines; or something else?

It takes just 20 to 30 minutes to cut open a
corpse "from head to the navel", he said.

"When I am at the post-mortem table, all I want
to know is the cause of death," he said. "The
only time I get flustered is when a child's body
comes. Then I get very angry. No one should talk
to me at that time."

The stocky, bespectacled man, who is not a
qualified doctor but is widely known as Dr
Maqbool, admits having nightmares.

It's hardly surprising. In the past five or six
years he has had to contend with a wave of
suicide bombings and attacks which has left him
to piece together scattered body parts of victims
and attackers alike.

"Once, I got the body parts of four people," he
said, speaking from his hospital bed in Srinagar,
where he was recovering from a gradual weakness,
the cause of which doctors were still trying to
determine.

"I had to match legs with pelvises, hands with
shoulders and necks with chests to find out whose
body was whose."

Maqbool says he can usually recognise a suicide
bomber, who often seem to come from outside the
troubled state.

"They normally have different hair," he said.
"They don't look Kashmiri and sometimes, they
have a smile on their face."

At his tin-shed home in a squalid area on a hill
with a labyrinth of narrow lanes, his daughter
Babli says she leaves her father alone for at
least an hour after work each day.

Then, after he has cleaned up and eaten he relaxes - by watching the news.

In the past six months, Maqbool has fallen ill,
and has to spend increasingly long periods in bed
or in hospital.

Babli says she knows why.

"It's very clear: the dead bodies, their smell
and the tension is killing him," she said. "But
no one is helping us. He has served for so many
years but today he is spending from his own
pocket for the treatment."

When the corpses leave Maqbool's operating table,
they often end up with 65-year-old Abdul Kabir
Sheikh.

Known as Kabir "Chacha" or Uncle Kabir, he is
responsible for burying the unclaimed bodies of
violence - mostly the militants themselves.

This is Kabir's family job - his father, and his
father's father also earlier buried the dead of
Srinagar.

In 1992, he had to bury the corpse of his own
son, killed by Indian security forces while
trying to cross the Jhelum river in a canoe, or
shikara.

"With these hands, I buried my boy," Kabir says
with tears in his eyes. "On the same day, I
buried eight other people - all killed in the
militancy."

Kabir has lost four family members to the
violence and is bitter about India's rule.

"The leaders make promises but nothing changes,"
he says. "Four corpses have gone from my house -
all at the altar of militancy," he adds, showing
a pretty picture of his young niece, killed in a
crossfire between Muslim militants and security
forces.

"Hamid's brother is young and jobless. I can't
guarantee he will not pick up the gun." His face
turns suddenly ashen.

He recalls the time when 29 people were killed
and 60 wounded when militants attacked Kashmir's
parliament building in 2001.

"It takes courage to do this job," he says. "The
bodies are mutilated and rotting by the time they
are given to me. When they attacked the state
assembly, I had to collect the flesh of six
bodies from the road. Nothing was left.

"Even when I have buried a single hand or a leg,
I have read the last rites."-Reuters

o o o

Human Rights Watch
   Press Release, July 7, 2006

PAKISTAN: ABUSES FEARED IN KASHMIR ELECTIONS
GOVERNMENT SHOULD REPEAL LAWS LIMITING FREE POLITICAL EXPRESSION

(New York, July 7, 2006) - Pakistan's government
should ensure that pro-independence political
groups in Pakistani-administered Kashmir are free
to organize peaceful political gatherings in the
run-up to legislative assembly elections on July
11, Human Rights Watch said today.

In 2001, when pro-independence groups attempted
to participate in the previous elections for the
legislative assembly of Azad Kashmir, Pakistani
authorities responded with arbitrary arrests and
detention, harassment and beatings.

Under Azad Kashmir's constitution, which Pakistan
imposed in 1974, election candidates are
pre-screened to ensure that only those who
support Kashmir's union with Pakistan can contest
elections. About 60 pro-independence candidates,
belonging to the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation
Front (JKLF), the All Parties Nationalist
Alliance (APNA) and some smaller groups, filed
nomination papers for the July 11 elections. All
have been barred from the contest by election
authorities.

Human Rights Watch fears that a repeat of the
2001 violations is likely as the elections
approach and nationalist parties organize protest
rallies in the run-up to polling day. A major
nationalist protest rally is planned for July 10
in the Kashmiri city of Rawalakot.

"The electoral law undermines Kashmiris' basic
political rights by barring them from seeking
office if they oppose Kashmir's accession to
Pakistan," said Brad Adams, Asia director at
Human Rights Watch. "Those who favor independence
invite the ire of Pakistan's abusive intelligence
agencies and military, and they risk being beaten
and jailed."

To prevent those who support Kashmiri
independence from circumventing the
constitutional bar, the Azad Kashmir electoral
law disqualifies a person from running for
elected office if: "He is propagating any opinion
or acting in any manner prejudicial to the
ideology of Pakistan, the ideology of the State's
accession to Pakistan or the sovereignty,
integrity of Pakistan or security of Azad Jammu
and Kashmir or Pakistan, or morality, or the
maintenance of public order, or the integrity or
independence of the Judiciary of Azad Jammu and
Kashmir or Pakistan."

Human Rights Watch called upon the Pakistani
government to ensure free and fair elections in
Azad Kashmir through the repeal of constitutional
restrictions and election laws that limit
participation on the basis of peaceful
expression.

Moreover, the electoral law bars from seeking
elected office anyone "who defames or brings into
ridicule the Judiciary of Azad Jammu and Kashmir
or Pakistan, or the Armed Forces of Pakistan."

Human Rights Watch expressed particular concern
about the provision of the law that bars
candidates who "bring into ridicule" the
Pakistani military. Behind a civilian façade, the
Pakistani military effectively rules Azad Kashmir
with little regard for basic protections from
arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and other
mistreatment. This law and other similar
provisions effectively penalize any criticism of
the ruling authorities.

"Under current laws, Kashmiris who have suggested
that the Pakistani military mishandled earthquake
relief could be disqualified from holding elected
office," said Adams. "The restrictions on
political participation and the harassment and
persecution of Kashmiri nationalists in Azad
Kashmir violate international standards on free
expression and expose the Pakistani government's
hypocrisy about Kashmir."

_____


10.

http://www.dawn.com/2006/06/26/ed.htm#4
Dawn
June 26, 2006

NATIONAL SECURITY REDEFINED
by Javid Husain

IN an earlier article on the subject of national
security, I suggested that we must implement a
comprehensive national security policy taking
into account its military, economic, diplomatic
and internal dimensions in an optimum mix, rather
than focusing exclusively on the military
dimension as has been our wont during most of our
history.

The purpose of this article is to assess in the
light of the information contained in the budget
for 2006-07 and the Pakistan Economic Survey
2005-06 whether we are practising a comprehensive
concept of national security or whether we are
still executing our national security policy
mostly in military terms.

Let us see what the Pakistan Economic Survey
2005-06 tells us about our national security
policy in the past. We can then examine the
implications of the budget for the fiscal year
2006-07 for the future of our national security.

A careful study of the Pakistan Economic Survey
2005-06 leaves one in no doubt that historically
speaking our policymakers, whether under military
or civilian governments, have over-emphasised the
military dimension of national security to the
neglect of the economic dimension, particularly
human resource development which provides the
foundation for the process of sustainable
economic development.

We have consistently overspent on the military
under the false assumption that this would
strengthen national security while the economic
development sector was denied the resources
necessary for a sustainable high rate of economic
growth. Consequently, we have performed far below
our potential in the economic field. It is
noteworthy that whereas the per capita incomes of
Pakistan and South Korea were more or less the
same in the early sixties, the latter has joined
the ranks of developed countries with a per
capita income of over $16,000 as against $847 for
Pakistan.

Further, despite the propaganda campaign launched
by the government, there has not been any marked
improvement in the management of the economy
under it compared with the performance of
preceding civilian governments. This is borne out
by the fact that the average per annum GDP growth
rate during the period 1999 - 2006 under the
present government was 5.2 per cent, (despite the
favourable external circumstances in the
aftermath of 9/11) as against the rate of 4.6 per
cent achieved during the 1990s under civilian
governments, notwithstanding the economic
sanctions imposed on Pakistan in October 1990 in
May 1998.

The marginal improvement in the GDP growth rate
during the period 1999-2006 was mainly due to
exogenous factors including the lifting of
economic sanctions, massive inflows of foreign
economic assistance and record levels of
remittances by Pakistanis abroad after the U-turn
in our pro-Taliban policy and our entry into the
international coalition against terrorism rather
than any significant improvement in the
management of the economy.

Admittedly the economy has recorded higher growth
rates during 2005-06 and the preceding two years
but at the expense of serious internal and
external imbalances in the form of a high current
account and budgetary deficits and a high rate of
inflation. But, unfortunately, our economic
fundamentals remain weak as seen in our low
national saving and investment rates (16.4 per
cent and 20.0 per cent of GDP respectively in
2005-06). It must be underscored that national
saving and investment rates are the key
determinants of economic growth. In comparison,
India and the fast growing economies of East Asia
save and invest about 30 per cent or more of
their GDP annually.

Consequently, our GDP growth rate of 8.6 per cent
in 2004-05 declined to 6.6 per cent in 2005-06
with a trade deficit of about $11 billion and a
high inflation rate. By way of comparison, India
achieved a GDP growth rate of 7.7 per cent with
an inflation rate of 4.2 per cent during 2005.(
Interestingly, the latest issue of the Pakistan
Economic Survey, while giving the economic and
social indicators, conveniently omits mentioning
the figures for 1991-92 when Pakistan under a
civilian government achieved a GDP growth rate of
7.7 per cent.)

The litmus test of economic development of a
country lies in the improvement in the quality of
the people who inhabit it. It is in this sphere
that our most serious failure lies and for which
both the military and civilian governments bear
responsibility. Our expenditure on education was
only 0.8 per cent of GDP during the 1980s but
rose to 2.3 per cent during 1990s. Following the
military takeover, it declined to 1.6 per cent of
the GDP in 2000-01, and thereafter gradually,
increased to 2.1 per cent of the GDP in 2004-05.
India, on the other hand, has been consistently
spending more than four per cent on education.
The situation is equally bad in the health sector
where the expenditure as percentage of GDP
declined from 0.7 per cent in 1990s, to 0.5 per
cent in 2005-06.

The relatively low allocation of resources to
human resource development in Pakistan, both
under military and civilian governments, has been
accompanied by an inexorable increase in defence
expenditure in absolute terms.

The defence expenditure increased from Rs143
billion in 1998-99 to Rs241 billion in 2005-06.
In fact, the defence expenditure in 2005-06 would
be closer to Rs280 billion if one were to add
military pensions to it as was done before the
military takeover of October 1999.

Let us now see whether the budget for 2006-07
would change the situation for the better.

From the point of view of national security, a
positive feature of the 2006-07 budget is the
welcome jump in the Public Sector Development
Programme to Rs385 billion (excluding Rs.50
billion for earthquake reconstruction activities)
as against Rs. 313 billion allocated for this
purpose in the revised budgetary estimates for
2005-06. However, it remains to be seen whether
the actual development expenditure during the
next fiscal year will meet the target or fall
short of it. The past experience in this regard
generally has not been encouraging.

The increase in the interest rates on savings
should help raise the national savings rate to
some extent. However, even the new higher
interest rates do not adequately reflect the high
scarcity value of the capital in our economy,
especially if one takes into account the current
high rate of inflation. Our national savings
rate, because of this reason and because of
government encouragement of to ostentatious
expenditure both in the public and private
sectors is likely to remain far below that of
India and the fast-growing economies of East Asia.

Given the low level of the savings rate, which
will have a restraining effect on the national
investment rate, it is doubtful that the economy
would reach the GDP growth rate target of seven
per cent set for 2006-07.

The latest budget provides for only a marginal
increase in the allocation of resources to
education and health. The national expenditure on
education and health as percentages of the GDP,
therefore, is likely to remain at very low levels
as in the past.

On the other hand, the defence budget has been
increased to Rs250 billion, which in actual fact,
is likely to be over Rs320 billion during 2006-07
if one adds the military pensions and takes into
account the tendency of the actual defence
expenditure to exceed the amount allocated in the
budgetary estimates. This shows that our
leadership and policymakers continue to operate
on the basis of a uni-dimensional interpretation
of the concept of national security focusing
mostly on its military aspect.

Even more disturbing from the point of view of
national security is the tendency exhibited by
the present leadership to resort to the use of
force in dealing with political issues that must
be resolved first and foremost through political
means. The way the government has handled the
situation in Waziristan and some areas of
Balochistan merely shows that our leaders have
not drawn the right lessons from our own national
history.

The direct involvement of armed forces in
handling such issues will not only vitiate the
political atmosphere in the country and aggravate
the feeling of provincial disharmony but also
result in the loss of prestige and respect of the
armed forces in the eyes of the people at large.

To conclude, it appears from the latest
developments that the mindset of our national
security planners remains unchanged. They
continue to focus mostly on the military
dimension of national security. In the process
the country has lagged far behind other nations
in the race for economic development.

The domination of the military establishment has
debilitated other institutions of state and
encouraged authoritarianism and one-man rule.
Repeated suspensions of the Constitution have
robbed the document of its sanctity. We are,
thus, on a slippery path which can only lead to a
disaster in the long run.

The country cannot afford to go on in this
manner. Our leaders and the intelligentsia must
wake up to the dangers confronting our nation and
understand that nobody is indispensable. The
principle of supremacy of elected institutions
must be firmly upheld. The armed forces must
withdraw to the barracks and operate strictly in
accordance with their constitutional role,
eschewing any involvement in politics.

The economic system must be made more humane
while efforts should be stepped up to accelerate
economic development. Our diplomacy should aim at
defusing tensions in external relations and
minimising the risk of an armed conflict by
formulating a coherent regional policy. Above
all, we need to learn that national security can
be safeguarded only by a cohesive nation of
well-educated and healthy people upholding the
Constitution, the law and the principle of merit
in a democratic system, rather than by heaping
advanced weaponry on an impoverished and
malnourished nation under a authoritarian rule.

_____

11

http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=148353

Pak Tribune
PAKISTAN, INDIA DEFENSE BUDGETS - A WILD GOOSE CHASE

Thursday June 29, 2006 (1007 PST)

In April 2006, when India announced it was
raising its defense budget by 7 percent to $20.1
billion, or less than 2.5 percent of its gross

domestic product, Pakistan said it would amount
to starting an arms race in the south Asian
region. Instead of staying away from the arms
race, Pakistan increased its defense budget for
financial year 2007 by 12 percent to $4.1
billion, or more than 3 percent of its gross
domestic product.

So the arms race continues.

The region of sub-continent, including bigger
countries such as Pakistan and India, account for
more than one-fifth of the world's population and
almost one-sixth of the world's poor. The two
countries spend meager amounts, only a fraction
of their GDPs, on education, health, clean
drinking water and social amenities. More than 30
percent of Pakistan's 160 million population
lives in poverty, while about 20 percent of
India's 1 billion population live below the
poverty line. In such a situation, the two
countries spending exorbitant parts of their
resources on purchasing defense equipments and
maintaining large armies appears unintelligent.
Yet, the democratic government in India and
military government in Pakistan continue to
follow the anti-people policies.

In the June 5 budget speech, Minister of State
for Finance Omar Ayub Khan said Pakistan needs to
be alive to defense needs and, hence, came the
increase in defense budget announcement. The
government cites tension with India and defense
budget hike by its neighbor as the reason for
maintaining a high defense expenditure.
Pakistan's proposed defense budget for financial
year 2006-07 accounts for about one fifth of the
total budget and is 20 times more than what the
country plans to spend on education and health.

``Looking at the past, this army doesn't deserve
such a big budget,'' said Khawaja Asif, an
opposition MNA in the budget debate in the
National Assembly. ``Every mother in Pakistan
should give birth to a General, if the country
wants to end poverty,'' said another opposition
MNA sarcastically.

In yet another and extremely gruesome incident
emanating from poverty, a young bearded man in
Lahore killed his three daughters while they were
sleeping and volunteered arrest. according to
television and newspaper reports, the killer had
no crminal background nor he was known for any
kind of violent behaviour. Yet, he had the
courage to commit the crime, and it was no simple
crime. The reports said the killer was mentally
upset because of of his ill-health and could not
feed his daughters. Poverty is such a menace that
it can cause unthinkable things to happen. Not
that this is a first incident in Pakistan in
which a father or a mother in extreme poverty
killed their own children. Such incidents have
happened before, but it goes on to illustrate
that how urgent there is a need to address the
poverty issue and the rulers have to drastically
cut unnecessary expenditures to spend on poverty
reducing measures.

Pakistan's army was not used to such blatant
criticism in past. The fact that the army is
being directly criticized is for two reasons.
Firstly, its involvement in politics and
governance and, secondly, because the defense
budget is not open to scrutiny and debate in the
parliament or parliamentary committees.

The army's involvement in politics dates back to
1950s to General Ayub Khan, the country's first
Martial law administrator, and to date marks that
fact that more than half of Pakistan's 58 years
as an independent country, it has been ruled by
the army. Since the 1950s the army through its
different wings, particularly the Inter Services
Intelligence (ISI) has been directly or
indirectly guiding the political administration.
The rule of General Pervez Musharraf has been the
most blatant example of army penetrating into key
political and bureaucratic positions. The
army's-guided 2002 general elections, the
political maneuvering that followed to install a
Musharraf-favorable set up in the parliament, led
to larger discontent among masses and the
opposition.

Whether Pakistan needs to maintain a high defense
budget after becoming a nuclear weapon state in
1999 is debatable. But since the army maintains
it has achieved a deterrence by possessing
nuclear weapons, the larger defense budget
doesn't hold good in view of high poverty rate in
the country.

The very fact that army is involved in politics,
encourages opposition and the masses to criticize
the defense budget. For instance in the 1990s
when the military wasn't directly governing the
country directly, the criticism on defense budget
was negligible.

Secondly, the opposition parliamentarians want to
debate and scrutinize the defense budget in the
parliament. If Pakistan has a democratically
elected government, as claimed by General
Musharraf, and it has civilian leadership, there
should be no problem with debating the budget.
Every government expenditure is open to scrutiny
in a democratic government. After all it is tax
payers money, the army is using and Pakistan's
tax payers have the right to ask where the money
is being spent. The Generals are getting
salaries, perks and privileges and allotment of
residential and commercial land, the construction
of high profile GHQ from the tax payers money.

An open debate on the defense budget, if not
completely end, will at least lower the level of
criticism and if the army has no skeletons to
hide, they should open their accounts to public
scrutiny.

If compared, the governments in India decide on
raising the defense budget according to needs.
Since India has a long history of democracy and
their Generals never getting involved in
politics, they somehow get away with the defense
budget. Secondly, the Indian defense budget is
debated in the parliament and the parliamentary
committees, giving no room for criticism. Yet,
Indian defense budget is criticized because of
high poverty rate in that country and
international donors and foreign countries demand
from Indian governments to cut defense expenses
and spend more on public.

Both Pakistan and India appear to be
directionless as far as the defense expenditures
are concerned. There seems no end to it. People
of the two countries continue to suffer because
these two countries want more weapons. Unless
sanity prevails, there appear no end to this arms
race.

_____


12

EURASIA INSIGHT

INDIA: THE NEW CENTRAL ASIAN PLAYER
Stephen Blank 6/26/06
A EurasiaNet Commentary

India's move to establish an air base in
Tajikistan is adding a new wrinkle to the
geopolitical struggle unfolding in Central Asia.
Some of India's strategic interests coincide with
those of the United States, but others appear to
encourage stronger Indian-Russian ties. As a
result, geopolitics in Central Asia stands to
become more complicated.

Reports began circulating in April that the
Indian air base at Ayni (also called Farkhor) in
Tajikistan was operational. Both Indian and Tajik
officials issued immediate denials, but they did
admit that India had been renovating the base
since 2002. Moreover, Russian sources confirmed
that indeed such a base existed and that it was
co-located with the Russian air base at Ayni,
which is part of Russia's own determined drive to
rebuild its military presence and capabilities in
Central Asia. [For background see the Eurasia
Insight archive].

When fully operational, the Indian base is
expected to host between 12-14 MiG-29 fighter
bombers, according to various reports. India's
intention to open its first base located on
foreign soil was first reported in 2002. At that
time, some reports claimed, that the Ayni
facility was already operational, and, therefore,
could have been used for operations against
either Islamic militants operating in Central
Asia or Pakistan. Indeed, the origins of this
base lie in Pakistan's closure of its air space
to India during their crisis of 2001-02, and
India's resolve to get around this restriction
for both its commercial and military aircraft,
while also gaining an ability to strike in
Pakistan's rear.

The potential implications of this base go far
beyond the Indo-Pakistani rivalry on the
subcontinent. First of all, the Ayni base is a
tangible manifestation of India's move to project
its power in Central Asia, a policy goal formally
enunciated in 2003-04. It not only signifies
India's determination to play a role in Central
Asian security, but its genuine ability to do so.

At the same time, the Ayni base represents a
major element in India's efforts to promote
stability in Afghanistan, and to enhance New
Delhi's ability to contain Islamic terrorism both
in South Asia and Central Asia. India obviously
will not accept being confined to an exclusively
South Asian geo-strategic role any longer.

But India's determination to project power
throughout Central Asia is not just for military
purposes. Access to Central Asian energy is
vitally important for India. New Delhi seeks
access to Kazakh oil and gas and involvement in
"mega-projects," such as a pipeline from
Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India, and another
linking Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India.
Either or both of these pipelines would
substantially improve India's reliable access to
energy supplies, while encouraging better
Indo-Pakistani relations.

In addition, India wants to develop a new power
grid that integrates Central Asian states with
those of the subcontinent, an idea that has
received strong backing from the United States of
late. [For background see the Eurasia Insight
archive]. While India would use a new grid to
enhance its overall economic profile in Central
Asia, Washington sees the project as a way to
counter the growing economic and political
influence of Russia and China in Central Asia.
[For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

The importance of India's Ayni base does not end
here. Its appearance suggests that India's
long-standing strategic ties with Russia remain
on a sound footing. This, of course, could
complicate New Delhi's power-grid plans, as
Moscow is unlikely to be supportive of any
project that diminishes its regional political or
economic influence. It is unclear how far India
is willing to push to realize its power grid
plan. In the strategic sphere, India and Russia
share a common enemy in Islamic terrorism, and
India needs Russian energy as much as Russia
needs Indian diplomatic support and arms deals.
At present, the US government is maintaining a
low-key approach toward India, refraining from
applying pressure on New Delhi to make a
decision. Indeed, as President George W. Bush's
visit to India in April underscored, Washington
seems intent on using carrots rather than sticks
to sway New Delhi. [For background see the
Eurasia Insight archive].

At the same time, it will be interesting to see
what Pakistan and China make of India's actions.
Pakistan is still turning a blind eye to Taliban
organizing in Afghanistan, and China is still
selling it much weaponry and providing
significant diplomatic support. Although both
India and Pakistan are observers in the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization, China is undoubtedly
wary of the Indian presence at Ayni. Moreover,
Indian policy intellectuals continue to view
China as a strategic rival in Central Asia, as
well as closer to home. Thus, India's
power-projection ambitions are in a certain sense
directed toward China.

Finally, India's Ayni base helps illustrate one
of the ways in which the regional security agenda
is being militarized. The proliferation of
foreign bases in Central Asia, it ought to be
stressed, predates 9/11 and the US strategic move
into the region. The presence of so many bases is
prompting a far-ranging reevaluation of the
region's geo-strategic importance.

Not only is Moscow ensconced in numerous bases,
either through bilateral arrangements or via the
Collective Security Treaty Organization, China
too is seeking military facilities, reportedly in
Kyrgyzstan, and for sure in Uzbekistan. [For
background see the Eurasia Insight archive].
India's base, seen in this context, is merely the
latest example of foreign governments' thirst for
military bases. The base at Ayni tells us that
not only is another major player throwing down a
marker in the so called new Great Game, the game
itself is becoming larger, deeper, and ever more
intense.

Editor's Note: Stephen Blank is a professor at
the US Army War College. The views expressed this
article do not in any way represent the views of
the US Army, Defense Department or the US
Government.

Posted June 26, 2006 © Eurasianet

_____


13

Navhind Times
June 29, 2006
http://www.navhindtimes.com/stories.php?part=news&Story_ID=062935

DISCERNING JUDGMENT ABOUT WAR AND PEACE

by Praful Bidwai

LIKE 'the party with a difference' (the Bharatiya
Janata Party), which ruled it for six years,
India too seems to be evolving into a 'country
with a difference'. Even as the image of the
United States takes a severe beating the world
over including in states closed allied to it, it
remains bright in India. According to the
Washington-based Pew Research Centre, which
polled 17,000 people in 15 countries, as many as
56 per cent of Indians have a 'favourable
opinion' of the US. Worse, 56 per cent also
approve of President George W Bush, whose ratings
have fallen in his own country to 31 per cent.

Although the proportion of Indians who rate the
US favourably this year is significantly lower
than last year's 71 per cent, it is among the
highest scores in the world, matched only by
Britain - derisively referred to as "America's
Poodle" and exceeded only by Japan (63 per cent)
and Nigeria (62 per cent). The score stands in
contrast to the sharp fall registered in
America's rating since 1999 in France (down from
62 to 39 per cent), Germany (78 to 37 per cent)
and Spain (50 to 23 per cent). Even in Britain,
approval of its closest ally has slumped from 83
per cent to 56 per cent.

Over the past year, approval of the US has
plummeted in every single European country
barring Britain: in Germany (from 41 to 37 per
cent), France (43 to 39), Russia (52 to 43) and
Spain (an even sharper 41 to 23 per cent). Even
more dismal is the fall in Turkey, a NATO member
(23 to 12 per cent), ally Jordan (21 to 15 per
cent), and Indonesia (38 to 30 per cent). In
Pakistan, it has risen marginally from an abysmal
23 per cent to a poor 27 per cent (or less than
half that of India's).

India is clearly the world's 'odd-man-out'. Even
worse, Indian support for the US-led 'global war
on terrorism' (GWOT) stands at a record 65 per
cent - the world's highest and 13 percentage
points greater than last year. India and Russia
are the only two countries in which the GWOT
draws majority support. But, says the Pew Centre:
in most other countries, support for the GWOT "is
either flat or has declined." In Japan, only 26
per cent favour the GWOT, down from 61 per cent
in 2002. Only 39 per cent of Indonesians back it,
compared with 50 per cent a year ago. And in
Spain, the site of a devastating terrorist attack
two years ago, four times as many people oppose
the GWOT as support it.

According to the survey, "the Iraq war continues
to exact a toll on America's overall image and on
support for the struggle against terrorism.
Majorities in 10 of 14 foreign countries surveyed
say that the war in Iraq has made the world a
more dangerous place." In Britain, 60 per cent
say so, while only 30 per cent feel "it has made
the world safer."

The Iraq occupation is so unpopular that a global
majority sees it as a "greater danger to world
peace" than Iran with its nuclear programme. Says
the Pew Centre: "Despite growing concern over
Iran's nuclear ambitions, the US presence in Iraq
is cited at least as often as Iran - and in many
countries much more often - as a danger to world
peace." Forty-one percent of Britons say the Iraq
occupation represents a greater danger than the
Tehran regime. In Russia, Spain, France, and
China the relative proportions are 45:20, 56:38,
36:31 and 31:22. It is only in the US and Germany
that the proportions are inverse - 31:46 and
40:51. The rest of the world takes an even dimmer
view of the occupation. Over 50 per cent in
Turkey, Jordan and Egypt see it as more
dangerous. The threats attributed to the
occupation exceed those from Iran by 4 times in
Indonesian and 7 times in Pakistan.

India too has a two-to-one proportion of such
danger ratings but those who regard the Iraq
occupation as its source are just 15 per cent -
the lowest in the world, and less than half the
rating in the US (31 per cent), only a third of
the average in Germany, Russia or Spain. A
majority of Indians also believe that the world
has become safer after Saddam Husseins toppling.
A huge 59 per cent believe US efforts to
establish democracy in Iraq will succeed - a
desperate hope not even shared by most Americans!

Yet, the poll results cannot be interpreted to
damn all Indians as people unable to make a
discerning judgment about war and peace. This is
because the Pew poll represents a narrow urban
sample in just five of our 18 major languages.
The interviews were by all accounts conducted
amongst the 10 per cent people who have landline
telephones. It is thus an elite opinion poll as
far as India goes. It may also reflect an upbeat
mood following Mr Bush's visit to India.

Even so, this elite pro-US sentiment is shocking.
Not long ago, the same elite was an ardent
supporter of Non-Alignment and opposed American
hegemony in matters political, military, economic
and cultural. It justified India's nuclear
weapons as a means of countering overwhelming US
influence. The same policy-makers and-shapers
have now become abjectly pro-America. Indeed,
their admiration for 'the American people' (67
per cent) exceeds even their support for the US
in general.

What has gone wrong? It would be simplistic to
attribute the obsessive Americophilia of India's
middle classes to the Indo-US nuclear deal or to
'strategic partnership'. That deal was only
signed last July. Three other factors seem
weightier: the burgeoning of a consumerist and
hedonistic middle class under neoliberal policies
which have deepened steadily since 2000; the
moral-political disorientation of this elite; and
the hangover of Hindutva's Islamophobia in which
the 'war on terrorism' is seen as directed
largely against Muslims. These produce a
dangerous amalgam of callousness towards the
cruelty of war and occupation, amnesia about the
false excuses about Saddam's weapons of mass
destruction, and the generally baneful global
influence of the US. They also betray a craving
to collude with 'the winning side' to share the
spoils.

Let's face facts. The US occupation has created a
far worse situation than that under Saddam, whose
regime was unpopular and brutal enough. Despite a
semblance of democracy - under a Constitution
dictated by the occupation powers, daily life is
far harsher and the economic situation more
dismal. Insecurity rules Iraq. There is
systematic loot of the country's huge resources
by multinational corporations and contractors.
Saddam had his death and torture squads. But it
is hard to say that the tortures of Abu Ghraib,
the ravaging of Fallujah, or the massacre in
Haditha are any better. Most people in the West
and in the Middle East know about the Abu Ghraib
and Guantanamo prison abuse. But only 23 per cent
of Indians do.

Haditha should disgust us all as the worst
massacre by the US since My Lai. The atrocious
ways of US troops have forced even Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki to accuse the US of entrenched
prejudice. Grave misconduct on a daily basis, he
said, "has become common among many of the
multinational forces - No respect for citizens,
smashing civilian cars and killing on a suspicion
or a hunch. It's unacceptable."

Some examples of atrocities by US troops,
published in Time and Newsweek, are numbing. The
occupation troops emerge as unhinged, mentally
unstable, high on drugs, and prone to perverse
behaviour. For instance, says ex-soldier Cliff
Hicks: US troops "were taking steroids, Valium,
hooked on painkillers, drinking. The US is not a
benign power in Iraq. Nor anywhere else. It is
out to establish an empire by military force,
coercion, trickery, and bought consent. Its
leaders and ideologue barely hide their
intentions. Colluding with them is the worst
thing that a country's elite can do - unless it
has lost its political direction and moral
compass. Ultimately, the Indian public will have
to pay the price for this.

_____


14. ARMS SALES TO THE REGION - PLANS AND THE PLAYERS:

o o o

Reuters
July 3, 2006

BUSH PLANS $5 BILLION ARMS SALE TO PAKISTAN
By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush Administration
said on Monday that it planned to sell Pakistan
up to 36 advanced F-16 fighter jets built by
Lockheed Martin Corp. in a weapons package that
could be worth more than $5 billion.

The proposed sale of 18 new "Fighting Falcon"
fighters with an option for 18 more demonstrates
the United States' commitment to a long-term
relationship with Pakistan, White House spokesman
Tony Snow told reporters.

The State Department said it was part of a drive
to broaden a strategic partnership with Pakistan
and advance U.S. interests in South Asia.

The new F-16 C/D Block 50/52 aircraft would be
used for close air support in the U.S.-declared
global war on terrorism, among other things, the
Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency
said in a notice to Congress. The agency,
responsible for government-to-government arms
sales, said the fighters would be worth $3
billion if all options were exercised.

"This proposed sale will contribute to the
foreign policy and national security of the
United States by helping an ally meet its
legitimate defense requirements," the Pentagon
said in the notice.

The proposed sale includes upgrades for
Pakistan's fleet of 34 earlier model F-16s and a
support package for up to 26 refurbished F-16s
that Pakistan eventually may buy, Snow said.

These 60 "mid-life upgrade" kits -- which would
improve on-board radar and make it possible to
carry more precision-guided weapons -- could be
worth as much as $1.3 billion, the Pentagon told
Congress in one of four related notices dated
June 28 and made public on Monday.

Once notified, Congress has 30 days to block such
a sale. It is not expected to do so in light of
Pakistan's strategic importance to the United
States. Consultations with Congress have been
under way since last year, Snow said.

In March 2005, the United States said it would
resume sales of F-16s to Pakistan after a 16-year
break intended to sanction Pakistan for its
nuclear program.

Formal notification coincided with initial votes
in Congress for the administration's plan to
create a broad nuclear cooperation agreement with
India, Pakistan's archrival, that reverses
decades of U.S. policy.

Pakistan initially had asked about buying as many
as 75 new F-16s and 11 refurbished ones, Air
Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kohler, head of the
Pentagon's security cooperation agency, told
Reuters in May 2005. The deal was scaled back
after the October 8, 2005, earthquake that killed
more than 73,000 people.

U.S. weapons that would equip the F-16s include
500 AIM-120C5 advanced medium range air-to-air
missiles and 200 AIM-9M-8/9 "Sidewinder"
heat-seeking missiles, both built by Raytheon
Co., as well as 500 satellite-guided Joint Direct
Attack Munitions made by Boeing Co., the notice
to Congress said.

India, which has fought three wars with Pakistan
since the 1947 partition of British India,
objected to the sale before it was made public.
"We can reiterate our position that this step is
not conducive to improving ties between India and
Pakistan," Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej
Sarna told reporters in New Delhi.

Washington has offered India a chance to buy
F-16s or Boeing's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet strike
fighter as part of a deal that could cement a sea
change in U.S.-India ties since the end of the
Cold War.

Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon's biggest supplier,
said the proposed sale to Pakistan could mean an
extension of the F-16 production line beyond 2009.

Lockheed spokeswoman Catherine Hernandez-Blades
said that if all options were exercised the
company could sustain more than an additional
1,200 jobs in Texas, where the F-16 is assembled.


reuters.com
F-16 SALE TO PAKISTAN HITS SNAG IN CONGRESS
By Jim Wolf
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060713/pl_nm/arms_usa_pakistan_dc_2;_ylt=AoNYgy7f1t\
vtur5j7gTL1B_zPukA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Dawn
June 29, 2006
US SET TO NOTIFY ON F-16 DEAL
http://www.dawn.com/2006/06/29/top9.htm


THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 5, 2006
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Unsigned editorial

PLANE SENSE

Weapons sales are a notoriously touchy subject,
particularly in nuclear South Asia. Yet New Delhi
barely raised a peep when the Bush Administration
announced a $5 billion arms package to Islamabad
on Monday. That's a tacit vote of confidence in
the strengthened U.S.-India relationship, and
another step toward normalized relations with
Pakistan.

The deal -- made public by the White House on
Monday, but submitted to the U.S. Congress last
week -- includes the proposed sale of up to 36
F-16 fighter jets, munitions, upgrades for old
planes, and logistics support. White House
spokesman Tony Snow confirmed that the
Administration has been in talks with Capitol
Hill for more than a year on the package.
Islamabad, too, feels confident it will pass
without a problem.

What a sea change in U.S.-Pakistani ties.
Starting in 1990 with the invocation of the
Pressler Amendment, America has long tried to
pressure Pakistan -- a rare ally in the region
during that decade -- through sanctions and
arms-sale freeze-outs. In 1998, in reaction to
Islamabad's nuclear tests, President Bill Clinton
invoked sanctions that almost completely cut off
U.S. funding to Pakistan, save for humanitarian
aid.

As the A.Q. Khan nuclear arms network showed,
that tactic didn't stop Pakistan from acquiring
weapons on the black market. And in the public
sphere, eager neighbors like Beijing rushed to
fill in the gap that the U.S. left. The first
batch of JF-17 Thunder, a multi-use fighter jet
co-produced by China and Pakistan, will roll off
assembly lines in March. There's little doubt
that Beijing would move to expand its strategic
influence in Islamabad further, given the
opportunity.

September 11 also rammed home the importance of
engaging Pakistan in a regular dialogue. The Bush
Administration, to its credit, quickly
re-established a defense consultative group with
Islamabad in February 2002, during President
Pervez Musharraf's visit to Washington. There,
the U.S. committed to a "long-term relationship"
with Pakistan, on a number of fronts.

That commitment gave General Musharraf the
confidence to push forward, amid much domestic
criticism, in the war on terror. The
Pakistani-Afghan border ranks as a major
faultline in that fight. General Musharraf has
proved a solid ally, putting his domestic
political reputation and the lives of Pakistani
citizens at risk to root out al Qaeda's bases in
the rugged northwest of the country. The F-16s,
with their advanced missile targeting capability,
will prove useful for those missions.

The untold story here is how Pakistan and India's
bilateral relationships with the U.S. are
developing independently from each another.
That's a welcome change. Sure, India's Foreign
Ministry issued a rote statement of disapproval
on Tuesday ("this step is not conducive to
improving ties between India and Pakistan," a
government spokesman said). But it's clear that
New Delhi understands that Washington's
relationship with Islamabad doesn't threaten its
own dialogues. What's more, India is considering
its own purchase -- of F-16s, or the more
advanced F-18s.

Relations between New Delhi and Islamabad are
also improving, if slowly. Last month, General
Musharraf proposed demilitarization and
self-governance for the war-torn province of
Kashmir, the main point of contention between the
two countries. He's also invited Indian Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh for a face-to-face chat
on the topic.

America doesn't have much of a role to play in
those discussions. But it's a step forward that
Washington can improve its relationships with
both countries, without hurting their
relationship with each another.

o o o

The Hindu
July 01, 2006

RUSSIA MAY LEASE NUCLEAR SUBMARINE TO INDIA
Vladimir Radyuhin
http://www.hindu.com/2006/07/01/stories/2006070118091800.htm

The Times of India
N-DEAL WILL BOOST US MILITARY SALES TO INDIA
[ Wednesday, July 05, 2006 10:33:02 am IANS ]
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1706993.cms

BBC News
6 July 2006
INDIA AGREES RUSSIA WARSHIP ORDER
The Russian-built frigate INS Talwar
India took delivery of its first Russian stealth frigate in 2003
India has agreed to buy three more stealth
warships and 28 cruise missiles from Russia for
more than $1bn.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5155292.stm

The Hindu, July 12, 2006
INDIA PLANS TO BUY 80 MI-17 COPTERS
http://www.hindu.com/2006/07/12/stories/2006071200380900.htm

_____


15     MILITARISATION AND CIVIL SOCIETY:

The Times of India
July 8, 2006

DON'T BLOCK INFORMATION
by Shekhar Singh

One would think that a report on the right to
information by the Administrative Reforms
Commission (ARC), coming out about a year after
the Right to Information (RTI) Act was passed,
would make recommendations to streng-then the Act.

However, a close look at the report recently
submitted to the government reveals that at least
three of the recommendations threaten to
fundamentally undermine the RTI Act.

The first of these is the recommendation that a
public information officer (PIO) should be
allowed to refuse a request for information if
that is manifestly frivolous or vexatious.

The ARC states that certain instances have been
brought to their notice of requests that are mala
fide and intimidate, harass and even humiliate
officials.

However, the ARC neither gives any specific
examples, nor does it go on to explain how the
truth can be used for mala fide purposes
(what-ever that might mean), or for intimidating,
harassing or humiliating an officer.

The ARC lays down no criteria for determining
what is manifestly frivolous and/or vexatious,
perhaps because these terms are essentially
subjective.

For instance, an officer who deals with millions
of rupees, might find a dispute over Rs 10 of
wages to be frivolous, but to a poor, daily-wage
labourer these Rs 10 could represent two
kilograms of wheat and the difference between her
child living or dying.

The same is true of the term 'vexatious'. Any
request questioning the judgment, the efficiency,
the impartiality, the commitment or the integrity
of a bureaucrat could be considered vexa-tious.

The right to ask vexatious questions is the
essence of the RTI Act, and flows from the
fundamental right of the public to question the
public servant. If accepted, this recommended
clause would lead to most applications being
rejected as frivolous or vexatious.

The recommended automatic appeal to the
information commission is no solution, for it
would just add to the growing backlog of appeals
pending before these commissions.

In the absence of penalties, there would be
little incentive for PIOs to act responsibly.
Besides, even if information commissions
decentralise, as recommended by the ARC, the poor
and the illiterate would find it difficult to
attend hearings or send written submissions to
support their applications.

The ARC also recommends that information can be
denied if the work involved in processing the
request would substantially and unreasonably
divert the resources of the public body.

As justification, ARC states that there may be
cases where the efforts in compiling information
may not be commensurate with the results
achieved. Nowhere in the RTI Act is there any
obligation on a public authority to compile
information, or collect primary information.

The obligation is simply to provide information
that is collected, or should have been collected.
In fact, Section 7(9) of the RTI Act further
clarifies that "An information shall ordinarily
be provided in the form in which it is sought
unless it would disproportionately divert the
resources of the public authority".

ARC surprisingly recommends that armed forces
should be excluded from the purview of the RTI
Act, because most of their functioning is already
exempt on security grounds.

However, this is no reason why the rest of their
functioning should not be brought under public
scrutiny. Security agencies have many employees;
they make decisions which impact the lives of
people, affect the environment, spend public
money, award contracts and make purchases.

Why should citizens be denied access to
information about these matters? In fact, the
blanket exemptions for all agencies currently
listed under Schedule II should be withdrawn.

The exemptions provided in the RTI Act are
adequate to safeguard national interest. Perhaps
these faulty recommendations might never have
been made if the ARC had functioned in a
participatory and consultative manner.

Interestingly, the recommendations of the one
consultation that the ARC reportedly orga-nised
at Bhopal in December 2005 have been totally
ignored.

The Bhopal meet recommended that the RTI Act
should not be amended, and exemptions do not need
rationalisation. Nevertheless, the ARC went ahead
and did the contrary.

The writer is convenor, National Campaign for People's Right to Information.


o o o o

Reporters Without Borders/Reporters sans frontières
Press release

22 June 2006

PAKISTAN
TV JOURNALISTS KIDNAPPED AND TORTURED FOR FILMING AIRBASE USED BY US MILITARY

Reporters Without Borders voiced outrage today at
the action of Pakistani military intelligence
officers in kidnapping and torturing two
journalists who filmed an airbase used by the US
military in the southern province of Sindh.

Mukesh Rupeta, a correspondent with the Pakistani
independent television station Geo TV, and
freelance cameraman Sanjay Kumar, were finally
taken before a judge today after being held
secretly for more than three months. They are now
formally detained on a charge of "divulging
official secrets."

"It is high time that Pakistan's president, Gen.
Pervez Musharraf, told his intelligence services
to refrain from such unacceptable practices,"
Reporters Without Borders said. "Like Hayatullah
Khan, these two journalists were kidnapped and
tortured for filming US military equipment on
Pakistani territory."

Reporters Without Borders added: "President
George W. Bush's government also has a duty to
remind its Pakistani ally that the war on
terrorism in no way justifies such excesses. We
call for the immediate release of Rupeta and
Kumar, as well as the release of Munir Mengal,
who was also kidnapped by intelligence agents."

Reporters Without Borders has registered at least
21 cases of Pakistani and foreign journalists
being kidnapped by Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) since Gen. Musharraf became
president in October 1999.

Rupeta and Kumar were detained on 6 March while
filming the base at Shahbaz, in Sindh province,
where the US military has equipment and troops.
Thereafter, Geo TV received no news of its
missing correspondent for more than three months.

They were handed over yesterday to the Jacobabad
police, who formally arrested them under the
Official Secrets Act. Rupeta is also reportedly
accused of forging passports for members of the
Hindu community, of which he is a member.

The two journalists were taken today before a
judge in Jacobabad, who gave the police
permission to hold them for another seven days
while they pursue their enquiries. The judge also
said they should be transferred at once to a
hospital for a medical examination.
Both showed clear signs of having been tortured
when they appeared in court. Rupeta told
journalists in the courtroom: "I cannot tell you
what they did to me. I thought they were going to
kill me." His mother, who was also present in the
court, fainted seeing on the marks of the torture.

-------------
Reporters Sans Frontières
5 rue Geoffroy Marie
75009 Paris
www.rsf.org

o o o o

Deccan Hearld
June 22, 2006

SHOCKING MURDER OF JOURNALIST - PRESS FREEDOM UNDER THREAT
By M B Naqvi
Govt does not own up to arresting people, just as
it claimed ignorance in Hayatullah's case

The whole civil society in Pakistan was shocked
by the murder of a tribal journalist, Hayatullah
Khan, who had been picked up on December 5 last
year. His handcuffed dead body was found in North
Waziristan on June 16. He was in the same clothes
he was wearing when he was abducted or picked up.
He was shot from behind and at least five bullets
pierced his frail body.

The government has said time and again that they
did not know anything about the whereabouts of
Hayatullah. His family, particularly his younger
brother Ihsanullah Khan Dawar, 21, was assured by
a government official on May 15 last that the
Hayatullah family would hear something about him
on or about June 15.

No government agency has so far owned up to the
fact that it picked him up; the government
continues to reiterate total ignorance about what
happened to Hayatullah. The family and others had
been assured by Taliban and other militants that
they had nothing to do whatsoever with the
disappearance of Hayatullah. They had no reason
to either.

The family of Hayatullah has been absolutely sure
about the identity of the Agency that picked him
up and kept him incommunicado for these seven
months. Let's pause awhile and look at the case.
What had Hayatullah done? It is known that the
Army as a matter of policy prevents all Pakistani
and foreign journalists from reporting events in
the Tribal Areas.

They simply do not want them there, except in
special cases where the Army's PR department
takes charge of a visiting journalist and takes
him around. These are favoured or perhaps
embedded journalists. The issue is what precisely
did Hayatullah do.

What he did was to release pictures of the parts
of a missile that had killed a noted al-Qaeda
operative in a house in North Waziristan on
December 1 last year. The government story was
that there was an explosion in the house where he
worked and he got killed. But experts quickly
established that the pictures Hayatullah released
were of the parts of an American missile fired
from a drone or helicopter. Hayatullah had given
a lie to an official story. This would appear to
be the only reason why he was picked up.

The modus operandi in this case is instructive.
And this is not the only case. Other tribal
journalists had been murdered earlier. In the
last year or so many have 'disappeared' from
Balochistan and Sindh. Nobody knows who picked
them up, where they are and how they are. The
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan thinks their
numbers may be in hundreds, if not in thousands.

The difficulty about such 'disappearances' is
that the government seems unable to own up that
they have arrested people for any definite
reason; owning up means explaining the reason why
they have arrested them and under what law. It
would also become necessary for them to file a
case in a court of law. Even in Pakistan no
government agency can arrest and keep a citizen
in captivity on its own without a judicial
warrant.

The question arises: can they be released safely?
Would they also meet Hayat's fate? Many such
issues are being raised by international human
rights organisations. How can a modern state and
socalled democracy do this kind of things to
their own citizens? If they could own a man's
arrest even after seven months how can they then
release him safely? Many outsiders believe that
Pakistan press is so free; 'it is so critical of
the ruling junta'. Even the President is freely
criticised in the press. That is true. But which
part of the government takes notice of what is
written or even spoken. The government draws its
power from Gen. Pervez Musharraf and not from the
people of Pakistan.

Ordinarily there would seem to be no way of
releasing the 'disappeared' persons. Someone will
have to own up that this or that agency had
picked them up, kept them in safe houses or how
it treated them and why after so many solemn flat
denials by most tiers of government. Those who
own up having kept these persons totally
incommunicado against all statute law will have
to explain on whose authority they did so. It
will give a lie to claims of rule of law and
democracy.

This is in fact Latin Americanisation of
Pakistan's security establishments. One used to
hear 'disappearances' from Latin American
countries, usually the banana republics. No one
ever thought that this phenomenon would surface
in South Asia.

But it has. It is a worrying development. Insofar
as this regime is concerned, its modus operandi
has had to balance its socalled democracy with
extraordinary powers for the intelligence
agencies. Without the 'agencies' making sure of
the victory of the King-favoured parties, the
whole structure would collapse. That the rulers
are ready to prevent by any and all means.
Apparently, the means now include
'disappearances' on a growing scale.

It would seem that the rulers are trapped in the
power game: of surviving in power no matter how
and no are holds barred. The Pakistani society
is, all said and done, an open one; people like
to talk and comment. This new trend does not gel
with the South Asian ethos. What may impend is
not easy to predict.

o o o o

The Hindu
July 02, 2006

PAKISTAN, INDIA PLAY TIT-FOR-TAT WITH PRISONERS
Nirupama Subramanian
http://www.hindu.com/2006/07/02/stories/2006070207320800.htm

o o o o


BBC
21 June 2006

PAKISTAN'S FLOURISHING ARMS BAZAAR
by Aamer Ahmed Khan
BBC News, Peshawar

Weapons in Darra Adam Khel
All kinds of weapon are on sale in Darra Adam Khel

"There is nothing we cannot copy," grins Haji
Munawar Afridi, an arms trader at Darra Adam Khel
near Pakistan's northern city of Peshawar.

"You bring us a Stinger missile and we will make
you an imitation that would be difficult to tell
apart from the original."

It is not uncommon to come across such swagger
from Pashtun tribesmen populating the lawless
tribal belt along the country's western border
with Afghanistan.

But it would perhaps be unwise to dismiss it as sheer bluster.

The hot, dry and dusty little town of Darra Adam
Khel, barely a half-hour drive from Peshawar, is
one of the major suppliers of small arms to the
residents of the tribal belt.


Master gunmaker Haji Alizai

In pictures: Deadly trade

From a distance, it looks no different from any
suburban settlement in North-West Frontier
Province.

The main road meanders into a market where few
outlets are larger than a single room.

But the fare they flaunt is deadly: revolvers,
automatic pistols, shotguns and Kalashnikovs line
the shelves of a typical shop.

Only five years ago, the list would also have had
items such as anti-personnel mines, sub-machine
guns, small cannons and even rocket launchers.

Betrayal

"This farcical war on terror has been hard on us," says Haji Afridi.

"The government has forced us to stop
manufacturing heavy arms. It says such weapons
are used by terrorists."

For Darra tribesmen, the government's crackdown amounts to a betrayal of sorts.

They say it was the government itself that
transferred heavy weapons technology to Darra in
the late 1980s.

In April 1988, a major ammunition dump in
Rawalpindi used for stockpiling US and
Saudi-funded arms for the Afghan fighters blew up.

The entire dump, called the Ojhri camp, was
gutted in a day-long inferno during which dozens
of people were killed as unarmed missiles rained
down on citizens living in the heavily-populated
areas around.

Tribesmen say the government sold all the
destroyed ammunition as scrap to arms dealers in
Darra Adam Khel, a claim never quite denied by
the authorities.

Haji Afridi, who has been a member of parliament
and is an active player in the bazaar's politics,
say it was a windfall for local manufacturers.

Arms trader
Arms traders continue to focus on local markets

"From those destroyed weapons, we overnight
acquired the technology for manufacturing mines,
machine guns, small cannons and even multi-barrel
rocket launchers."

It made Darra a household name in neighbouring
Afghanistan, where the Afghans had descended into
factional infighting after the Soviet withdrawal.

Amid waning international interest in
Afghanistan, Darra became the focal point for
various antagonists engaged in the country.

Within a couple of years, it had outgrown other
tribal arms bazaars such as those in Bajaur and
Jundollah.

But the so-called war on terror seems to have put paid to the glory days.

Under threat

Analysts say these open arms markets were an
invaluable asset for Pakistani policy-makers
before 9/11.

Influential traders in Darra Adam Khel proudly
talk about their role in arming the Islamist
fighters engaged in Kashmir.


Arms trader Haji Afridi
Punjabis love small arms and Punjab is our major market
Arms trader Haji Afridi

Others recall the times when the Pakistani
authorities would encourage them to supply more
to one Afghan commander than the other.

This privileged status now seems to be under threat.

Senior military officials say open arms markets
are contributing significantly to the conflict
between Taleban fighters and Pakistani security
forces in the tribal belt.

One official told the BBC News website that
Pakistan's top army intelligence unit had
recommended the immediate closure of all arms
markets in the tribal belt soon after 9/11.

For several years now, the government has been
seen encouraging the arms manufacturers in Darra
to participate in international defence weapons
exhibitions held annually in major Pakistani
cities.

The idea is to introduce the tribesmen to the
international arms market and create new,
above-board relationships that are more easily
regulated.

That was perhaps the thought behind the
government's decision to route all export orders
awarded to Darra arms manufacturers through the
ministry of defence.

The move backfired, however, as most of the
tradesmen started accusing the government of
channelling international orders to their
"favourites".

At present, only a handful of the 2,000-odd
families involved in arms manufacturing in Darra
are supplying clients abroad.

The rest continue to focus on local markets.

"Punjabis love small arms and Punjab is our major market," says Haji Afridi.

His claim is rubbished by intelligence officials,
who say places such are Darra are critical in
sustaining major conflicts in the region.

Whatever the reality, it is clear that the
government will have to come up with a highly
innovative and aggressive strategy to bring this
lethal trade under control.


o o o

OneWorld South Asia
23 June 2006

INDIA SHOULD TAKE LEAD IN CONTROLLING SMALL ARMS: OXFAM
Rahul Kumar

New Delhi: International organisations expect
India to play a lead role in the global control
of small arms because the country has been a
major victim of the illegal trade in foreign-made
sophisticated arms.

In a press conference on Friday, Oxfam - which
has been spearheading a global campaign to
control trade in small arms along with Amnesty
International and the International Action
Network on Small Arms (IANSA) - said India has
nearly 40 million small arms, which are
exacerbating conflicts in the country.

Weapons ranging from pistols to AK-47 rifles are
defined as small arms and include those weapons
which can be handled by one person.

South Asia Control Arms Policy Advisor, Oxfam,
Binalakshmi Nepram said: "Nearly 1,000 people are
killed globally every day by small arms but there
are no legally binding international norms on
transfer of arms. It is ironical that the world
has controls on sharing of music and films but
there are no proper controls or international
norms on trade in small arms."

© OXFAM
Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Anuradha
Chenoy, who also is the Honorary Vice President
of Control Arms Foundation of India (CAFI) said:
"India has taken a lead in asking for controls on
trade of small arms. It also has taken a
proactive role in marking and tracing weapons
which help track down the origin of sophisticated
weapons. We want India to push for a consensus on
international regulation on transfer of illegal
arms at the UN conference that begins on Monday."

Rifle
Rifle © Oxfam Great Britain
The UN is holding the World Conference on Arms on
June 26, 2006 and seeks to bring about a
consensus regarding international regulation on
arms trade between countries. 18 Nobel Peace
Laureates, who are supporting curbs on small arms
trade, have evolved a draft regulation that
brings together existing global principles that
can form the basis for a consensus between the
countries.

The organisations are calling for global controls
on the arms trade that escalates conflicts and
increases poverty. Some of the measures proposed
are: countries will not sell arms to regions
where human rights violations are occuring; where
there is an armed conflict and where genocide is
taking place.

45 countries, including India have endorsed the
global campaign against illegal trade in arms.
These countries want that governments should be
responsible for all buying and selling of arms.
Also, all manufactured arms should be properly
marked and traced so that it becomes hard to
procure arms.

© Oxfam Great Britain
Chenoy said: "In the north Indian state of Jammu
and Kashmir, the security forces have seized over
30,000 AK-47 rifles. It is clear that these
weapons are meant for misuse and these are all
linked to illegal activities like mafia, drug
running, trafficking of women and other criminal
activities."

Oxfam and its allies have also mobilized
thousands of people for a photo petition that
will be presented to UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan. This petition - Global Million Faces
Petition - which is the world's largest photo
petition also includes photographs and signatures
of actress Nandita Das and singer Rabbi Shergill.

o o o

The Hindu
June 26, 2006

THE SAGA OF SALWA JUDUM IN CHHATTISGARH
The government's anti-Maoist strategy has pitted
brother against brother and village against
village. Civil strife is rife in Dantewada.
by E.A.S. Sarma
http://www.hindu.com/2006/06/26/stories/2006062603261000.htm



o o o o

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Public Statement

AI Index: ASA 20/016/2006 (Public)
News Service No: 179
10 July 2006

INDIA: TIME TO REPEAL THE ARMED FORCES SPECIAL POWERS ACT
Amnesty International is seriously concerned
that, two years after widespread protests against
India's Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1958)
(AFSPA), the Government of India is yet to repeal
this controversial law.

Exactly two years ago, 32-year-old Thangjam
Manorama Devi of India's north-eastern state of
Manipur was sexually assaulted and
extra-judicially executed, allegedly by soldiers
from the Assam Rifles Regiment. These shocking
events sparked widespread demonstrations in
Manipur against the APSPA and its effects.

The 48-year-old AFSPA, which grants special
impunity powers to India's security forces, has
long been in force in a number of areas affected
by armed insurgencies, including the
north-eastern states of Manipur, Assam and
Nagaland, as well as Jammu and Kashmir.

Amnesty International has continuing concerns
about the AFPSA and related breaches of
international standards. The organisation
detailed these in a 2005 Briefing.*

Following the protests in Manipur, the Government
of India constituted a five-member panel led by
former chairperson of the Law Commission, Justice
B. P. Jeevan Reddy, to review the AFSPA's
provisions. This panel submitted its report in
June last year and its members were unanimous in
their key recommendation - the repeal of AFSPA.

However, the Government of India is yet to act on
this panel recommendation. It is also yet to make
public an inquiry commission's report into the
alleged extra-judicial execution of Manorama
Devi, despite a Guwahati high court directive.

Amnesty International fully supports the
recommendation to repeal the AFSPA and notes,
with concern, the recent statement by India's
defence minister Pranab Mukherjee that the Indian
security forces would not be able to function
without the AFSPA.

The organization continues to call for swift repeal of the AFSPA.

*India: Briefing on the Armed Forces Special
Powers Act, 1958 (ASA 20/0135/2005).
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA200252005?open&of=ENG-IND

o o o

People's Democracy
July 9, 2006

PIPE BOMB BLAST IN NANDED
Police, Media Cover Up RSS Role
by Subhash Gatade

Much has been written about the Jihadi terrorism
unleashed by groups like the Jaish-e-Mohammad,
Lashkar-e-Taiba and others. It was only last
month that there was a large haul of arms from
some of their cells in Maharashtra. The attack on
RSS headquarters, allegedly by activists
belonging to one such organisation, was also
widely reported.

It is surprising that while terrorism of the
Jihadi variety, which rather tends to stigmatise
the whole community, gets tremendous coverage,
with print and electronic media vying with each
other to present the latest 'scoops,' similar
actions by the Hindu extremist groups are not
even found worthy of mention.

The Nanded bomb blasts displaying clear
involvement of activists of the Sangh Parivar,
when a centre for manufacturing bombs was
unearthed at an RSS activist's house, is a case
in point. The accidental bomb blast killed two of
its activists also.

While a deeper communal conspiracy could be
averted, the ongoing investigations point
accusing finger at the involvement of such Hindu
extremists in earlier cases of bomb blasts in the
same region.

WHY RSS PLAYED DOWN THE ATTACK

Why did the RSS decide to play down the attack on
its headquarters in Nagpur, allegedly by
terrorists belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba? If
the newsperson's version is to be believed,
former RSS spokesman Ram Madhav merely condemned
the attack and praised the police for quick
action. Sudarshan, the present supremo of the
organisation, appealed to RSS volunteers not to
get provoked.

No appeal for bandh. No appeal for any agitation.
Remember the contrast when terrorist had attacked
Ayodhya, or for that matter Varanasi, and how the
whole fire-spitting gang was out in the streets.

And this despite the fact that the Jihadi
terrorists, as they are known in the common
parlance, have upped their ante in this part of
Maharashtra. It was only last month that the
Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) had nabbed three
militants belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)
on the Manmad-Aurangabad road with a large cache
of arms and had also recovered arms and RDX in
Malegaon.

Is it because the Parivar felt that, whatever
might be their wishes, the plan may turn out to
be a damp squib, making it evident to its
adversaries that the countdown has already
started for this eighty years old organisation?
Or is it because the Parivar felt that any demand
to look deeper into the particular case might
accelerate a process which is already underway
but whose ramifications might add to the
discomfort of this cultural organisation (!)
itself? Perhaps the statement the Maharashtra
deputy chief minister R R Patil made to the media
that the police had information about a terrorist
plan to attack the RSS headquarters more than
seven months ago and had duly informed the Sangh
people in advance, had an inkling of what lies in
store before the RSS:

"The deputy chief minister also said police have
collected vital clues that link the Nanded blast
held some months ago, with the Parbhani blast
earlier this year. Patil said the possibility of
Hindu extremists being responsible for the two
blasts cannot be ruled out (DNA, June 1, 2006).

It was evident from a newspaper report in Lokmat
(May 24, 2006) datelined Aurangabad that the
minister meant what he said:

"The police commissioner Uddhav Kamble informed
the media that the police is investigating the
interconnections between the Nanded pipe bomb
blasts done by Bajrang Dal activists and the bomb
blasts in Aurangabad in 2001 and 2002.

"There was a bomb blast near Ganesh temple in
Nageshwarwadi in Aurangabad on 18th May 2001.
When the case was still being investigated there
was another bomb blast near VHP office in Nirala
market on 17th November 2002 followed by a bomb
blast near Mahadev temple in Khadkeshwar. Pipe
bombs had been used in Nirala market and
Khadkeshwar bomb blasts. It is worth noting that
the month old bomb blast in Nanded was also
triggered by a pipe bomb. It was revealed that
activists of the Bajrang Dal were making pipe
bombs in the house.

"Looking at the similarities between the Nanded
bomb blast and the two bomb blasts in Aurangabad,
the interconnections between the two are being
investigated (translated from Marathi).
WHAT HAPPENED  IN NANDED

After all, what is so significant about the
Nanded bomb blasts to have compelled the Sangh
Parivar, which calls itself a character-building
organisation, to run for cover? Perhaps a recap
of the Nanded bomb blasts is in order to put the
matter straight.

It is now more than three months that Nanded, a
Maharashtra town described as being communally
sensitive, witnessed a bomb explosion (April 6,
2006) in a house belonging to an old activist of
RSS. To be precise, it was the time when L K
Advani's (now abandoned) Bharat Suraksha Yatra
was to enter the state of Maharashtra. The
initial investigations done by the police made it
very clear that the deceased and the injured
belonged to Bajrang Dal, an RSS affiliated
outfit. Looking at the minute details, one could
infer that serious plans were afoot to foment
communal tension in the area by taking advantage
of the simmering tensions between the Sikhs and
the Muslims. A raid on the house of one of the
deceased recovered dresses and caps normally worn
by Muslims in the area and also some maps of
mosques in nearby districts. One of the accused,
Rahul, confessed to having made bombs earlier.

The idea was that RSS men, wearing those dresses,
would attack some mosques and gurudwaras and
instigate a riot. The expectation was that the
community under attack would retaliate and a
full-scale riot would ensue. The idea was to
leave behind such explosives of one kind or
another as could cause maximum damage to the
places hit. The making of the bombs in a house
owned by an old RSS hack, who dealt in
firecrackers, also seemed rather perfect.

Nanded happens to be a place of pilgrimage for
the Sikhs as it was the place of samadhi of Guru
Gobind Singh. This habitation of around a million
people (5 lakh Hindus, 2 lakh Muslims or one lakh
Sikhs) was already reeling under communal tension
then when the blast occurred. The alleged
elopement of a Sikh girl with a Muslim boy had
put both the communities at loggerheads.
Retrospectively, one can say that the accidental
bomb explosion rather saved a broad section of
the population from a riot or riot-like
situation, at least for the time being. It
alerted the administration to take extra
precautions so that any volatile situation won't
turn ugly.

It needs be noted that the Marathwada region of
Maharashtra has a history of mysterious attacks
on religious minorities. It was only two and a
half years ago that miscreants on motorcycles had
fired at a crowd offering Friday prayers in
nearby Parbhani. Then the whole of Marathwada
went up in flames by the evening. To date the
police have not apprehended the criminals who
fired at a religious congregation.

A report (available on www.pucl.org), brought out
by a fact finding team of PUCL, Nagpur, and
Secular Citizens Forum, which visited the city on
April 22, and met many ordinary citizens as well
as representatives of the administration, made
clear a few pertinent points which need special
mention. To quote,

1) Bomb blast at the house of the RSS activist at
Nanded was not reported in any newspaper outside
Nanded. Even the administration at Nanded
prevailed upon the city media not to write about
the incident anymore.

2) The immediate story that was published in the
next morning newspapers was that the blast
occurred due to sudden burst of crackers stored
in the house as part of the family business. But
the doubts persisted, since there is normally a
series of bursts if crackers catch fire and not a
single powerful blast as had happened in this
case. Moreover, the house did not catch fire as
is expected in an accident involving crackers.
The cracker theory was blasted at 4 p m on April
7 when the post mortem report was released. It
revealed that bomb parts were found and extracted
from the bodies of the dead. The doubt that it
must have been a bomb blast was further confirmed
by April 7 night.

3) Suryapratap Gupta, IG of Nanded, confirmed
that a live pipe bomb was found at the house of
Laxman Rajkondwar, which was a centre for
manufacturing bombs and that all the accused were
connected with the Bajrang Dal. However, the
police maintained silence on the motive behind
this bomb manufacturing at Rajkondwar's house,
about wherefrom they acquired the material for
making the bombs and whether the perpetrators of
the crime had nationwide connections.

4) The most worrying fact to have been revealed
was that the live bomb discovered under the sofa
was an IED type sophisticated bomb with timer and
operated through remote control. A supplier of
chemical material to colleges has been questioned
in this regard. It is also reported the accused
had been arrested during the Ayodhya Ram Mandir
episode.

5) Though the report remained inconclusive due to
lack of availability of authentic information
from official sources, it did give strong
indications that deep communal conspiracies were
being hatched by the Hindutva forces in the city
of Nanded. It was the accidental blast of a bomb,
while in the process of making at the house of a
prominent RSS activist of the city, that
implementation of such conspiracies was
temporarily aborted.

Looking at the hierarchical nature of the Sangh
Parivar where even the topmost leader of its mass
political formation has to pay obeisance before
the Supremo or the power coterie surrounding him,
it would be incorrect to say that the local
leaders of the Bajrang Dal or for that matter RSS
envisaged and implemented the plan themselves. To
put it straight the centre for manufacturing
bombs being run at a RSS activists house would
not have seen the light of the day if the top
bosses of the Parivar had not given a green
signal to this 'patriotic' work. The larger
gameplan which the ringleaders of this group had
in mind need to be unearthed at the earliest.

As things stand today the administration is
keeping its mouth shut, but looking at the raids
on houses of RSS as well as Bajrang Dal activists
and the feeling of panicky among them one can
hope that the administration comes out with
concrete proof of 'conspiracy' and the real
kingpins of this operation. Looking at the nature
of crime, which could be averted by sheer chance,
the administration should not shy away from
naming the real conspirators. It was not for
nothing that the local leaders of BJP and Shiv
Sena became overactive in the aftermath of the
explosion to 'warn' the administration that it
does not adopt a vindictive attitude towards its
workers.

It is for everyone to see that it is not for the
first time that RSS or its plethora of frontal
organisations have come under cloud for their not
so glorious role in precipitating a riot. The
different judicial commissions of enquiry
costituted in post-independence times have time
and again indicted the RSS for its complicity in
communal riots. A writeup detaling 'A Half
Century's Gory Record' ( A.G.Noorani, The
Statesman, January 15, 2000) rightly summarises
how the role of the RSS was viewed by different
such commissions : "If the Jaganmohan Reddy
Commission on the Ahmedabad riots ( 1970) exposed
the Unified Front tactics of the RSS and its
political wing, the Jan Sangh, Justice
Vidyarthi's report on Tellichery riots ( 1971)
censured the RSS for "rousing up" communal
feeling and for "preparing the background for the
disturbances." Justice Jitendra Narain's Report
on the Jamshedpur riots (1979) censured the RSS
supremo Deoras personally for the communal
propaganda that had caused the riots."

Of course the Nanded operation rather had lot of
similarities with the way it had gone ahead
during post partition riots. There are enough
documentary proofs to show its ignoble role
during  that period. It would be opportune to
look at the memoirs of a senior civil servant who
was posted as Chief Secretary of UP in those
tumultous times to get to know one such instance.

Rajeshwar Dayal, the then chief secretary reveals
in his memoirs, A Life Of Our Times (1998, Orient
Longmann) that soon after the partition the
deputy IGP of the western range, BBL Jaitely
produced before him two steel trunks. They
"revealed incontrovertible evidence of a
dastardly conspiracy to create a communal
holocaust throughout the western districts.
"There were accurate maps marking out the Muslim
localities and habitations...Timely raid
conducted on the premises of the RSS had brought
the massive conspiracy to light. The whole plot
had been concerted under the direction and
supervision of the Supremo of the Organisation
himself - both Jaitley and I pressed for the
immediate arrest of the prime accused M.S.
Golwalkar". Incidentally the then chief minister
of UP, G B Pant refused to order the arrest. He
was arrested only after Gandhi's assasination.

It is easy to comprehend why Sardar Patel, had in
a letter to Shyamaprasad Mukherjee on July 1,
1948 wrote, " The activities of the RSS
constituted a clear threat to the existence of
the government and the State".

This happens to be the birth centenary year of
the Golwalkar. And his followers have made
elaborate plans to celebrate it. Can it then be
said that the activists of the Hindutva brigade
at Nanded just wanted to do 'Golwalkar' in their
hometown as mark of 'tribute' towards him? Only
time will be able to divulge the crucial details.

____


16.

truthout.org
22 June 2006

NEW DELHI'S SILENCE ON NEPAL'S CHANGE
      By J. Sri Raman

      A week of worldwide notice has elapsed after
what has been described as a "historic accord"
between Nepal's interim prime minister, Girija
Prasad Koirala, and the hitherto mystery-shrouded
Maoist leader, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, with the
popular nom de guerre of Prachanda. Only eloquent
silence, however, has emanated from the two
capitals, though it is their official responses
that the people of the Himalayan state await with
utmost anxiety.

      The accord between the top leaders of the
Seven-Party Alliance (SPA) in interim power and
the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) or the
CPNM, reached and announced on June 16, can mean
a quantum leap for the mountain country that has
just overthrown a cruelly despotic monarch. But
it is a leap in the dark, so long as the accord
is not assured of a modicum of support by these
two capitals that stood by the now-dethroned king
till the very last.

      The silence from Washington was very much
expected. The anti-monarchy movement, which had
brought the CPNM and the parliamentary parties
together, did not make the Bush administration
more benign toward the Maoists. The US ambassador
to Nepal, James F. Moriarty, said on June 8 that
the administration had not yet taken the CPNM off
its list of "terrorist organizations," on the
basis of which it had backed King Gyanendra with
military largesse. Moriarty has made no
subsequent statement that shows any change in the
US assessment.

      New Delhi, however, was in a different
category, despite its anxiety not to be out of
step with its newfound "strategic partner" in
Washington. Its pro-king diplomacy, when the
popular upsurge against Gyanendra was its peak,
drew considerable flak inside India as well -
even from peddlers of the "strategic partnership"
who felt that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's
government should not have allowed itself to be
seen on the losing side.

      Ever since the king's defeat in the streets
of Kathmandu, New Delhi's mandarins have stopped
talking of the "twin pillars" of Nepal's
stability as the monarchy and the parliament,
tacitly putting the Maoists out of the pale.
India's external affairs ministry has not
followed Moriarty in reiterating that the Maoists
are not yet free from the "terrorist" tag. Its
reluctance to hail the historic accord, however,
is an ill-concealed expression of its continuing
reservations about the Maoists.

      The government would seem to have left it to
a Left ally to welcome the accord. Sitaram
Yechury, a leader of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist) or the CPI (M), had brokered an
SPA-CPNM alliance against the king earlier. And
the CPI (M) extends crucial outside support to
the minority government of Manmohan Singh. This,
however, does not ensure indefinite or
unconditional New Delhi indulgence for the
Maoists.

      As noted before in these columns, Gyanendra
enjoyed support from India's far right and some
of its feudal "houses of royalty." They kow-towed
to him, above all, as a "Hindu king" and, indeed,
sought to crown him as a "Hindu emperor." It is
now too late in the day for them to pursue this
particular line of support. But they can still
ally covertly with Gyanendra (who may not have
given up the game for lost) on anti-Maoist
grounds.

      Here they can find an ally also in the Singh
government and its retinue of security experts.
New Delhi has lately discovered that Indian
variety of Maoists, better known as Naxalites,
pose the primary internal security threat to
India. They thrive especially among tribal
people, who have been losing their land and
forests to a variety of exploiters ranging from
the feudal to the transnational. The far-right
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - which rules in two
States with sizeable tribal populations,
Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand - is making
anti-Maoism a multi-purpose issue.

      The BJP regime in Chhattisgarh is pursuing a
program called "Salwa Judum (Campaign for
Peace)," portrayed in its propaganda on
television channels and elsewhere as popular
resistance to the local Maoists. The CPI (M) has
exposed the program as really "a police action,"
with the participation of deserters from the
Maoist ranks. The BJP has not stopped with
condemning this as Left support for "terrorism."
The far-Right's media friends are busy trying to
rouse fears of dangerous links between Nepal's
Maoists and those wearing the same label in
Chhattisgarh and elsewhere. We may hear more of
the same in the coming days.

      The CPNM would seem to nurse no illusions on
this score. Around the same time as Moriarty was
warning Nepal's Maoists, Prachanda was cautioning
India and the SPA against hatching any
anti-Maoist "conspiracy." "Why are they trying to
bypass us?" he was quoted as asking.

      He and his colleagues may be less suspicious
now of the SPA, and the CPNM is also indulging in
its share of what history may prove to be hype
over the accord of June 16. Nepal's Maoists,
however, do not conceal their continuing worry
and wariness over New Delhi's future role.

      Dev Gurung, a top CPNM leader and a member of
the Maoist team holding talks with the CPA, has
spelt it all out. On the day of the
Koirala-Prachanda accord, Gurung told the media
of the importance the Maoists attached to
abrogation of the India-Nepal Treaty of Peace,
Friendship and Cooperation signed in 1950. There
is no section of Nepal's political spectrum that
does not denounce the treaty as utterly unequal.
Even impeccably pro-Bush sections of the India
media have asked for a replacement of the treaty
with one representative of the post-monarchy
Nepalese reality.

      When Koirala came to New Delhi in the first
week of June, he came with an SPA mandate against
committing himself to any treaty with India. If
the Singh government plans to propose a new
treaty, it is a closely guarded secret.

      Gurung raised another prickly issue of
India-Nepal relations when he said the
1,800-km-long border between the two countries
could not remain porously open forever. He could
not but have alarmed interests with clout in the
Indian capital when he declared that Nepal could
not continue to be "a captive market for Indian
goods."

      The Maoists are not silent all about their
India-related apprehensions. It is for New Delhi
to break its silence over its response to the
change in Nepal, to new history in its
neighborhood.

      A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India,

_____


17  BOMBAY'S JULY 11 BOMB BLASTS - THE IMPACT

o o o

South Asia Citizens Wire | 16-17 July, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2274
   [1]  India-Pakistan:  Knee-jerk reaction (Editorial, Kashmir Times)
   [2]  India-Pakistan: A sad aftermath (Editorial, Dawn)
   [3]  Limit to tolerance, but options are limited too (Siddharth Varadarajan)
   [4]  India: Will there be another Gujarat after Mumbai? (Foqia Sadiq Khan)
   [5]  India:  Terror Tales (Ram Puniyani)
   [6]  India: Battalion Tactics (Seema  Mustafa)
http://bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/2006/002313.html

o o o

Gathering the Pieces After the Mumbai Blasts
Praful Bidwai (IPS, July 12, 2006)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33943

The Hindu
July 13, 2006
BJP demands "hot pursuit" of terrorists
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200607131740.htm

Financial Express
July 12, 2006
Mumbai blasts revive demand for POTA
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php%3Fcontent_id%3D133783&cid=0

blogspot.com in India being blocked

http://www.gonomad.com/traveltalesfromindia/2006/07/what-is-up-with-blogspot-blo\
gger-sites.html
http://www.withinandwithout.com/?p=854
http://www.vulturo.com/2006/07/the-indian-government-does-a-big-brother/

India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch
Compilation (June 14, 2006)
Year Seven, No 162
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/173

Contents:

1 On the 8th anniversary of the nuclear tests of May 1998:
     - What a Bomb Cannot Buy (Pervez Hoodbhoy)
     - South Asia Needs A Bomb-Less Deal (Pervez Hoodbhoy)
2  Tit for Tat Missile Tests:
     - Ballistic Missile Defense: South Asia's arms race (Martin Sieff)
     - Pakistan tests-fires long-range ballistic missile
     - Pak to produce a modified version of Qiang Wei-2 missiles
    -  Nuke-capable Prithvi-I tested
     - Delays, glitches hit missile plan (Rajat Pandit)
     - Agni-III launch in August or September (T.S. Subramanian)
     - India holds back from test firing Agni III (Rahul Bedi)
     - A dud in the manger? (Brahma Chellaney)
3  Defence Spending:
(i) Pakistan
      - Letters to the Editor by Gulsher Panhwer and Ayyaz Hussain Shaikh
      - Need for debate on defence budget (Talat Masood)
      - Pakistan to increase defence spending 11% (Farhan Bokhari)
      - Pakistan Panorama: Budget 2006 - Fuzzy
maths or genuine article? (Kamran Rehmat)
      - Pakistan Raises Defense Spending by 3.78 Percent (Zeeshan Haider)
      - Senate committee asks for defence budget presentation (Maryam Hussain)
      - Editorial, Daily Times : ISI to brief the Senate
      - Editorial, Dawn: Unchanged defence spending
      - 11% increase in defence budget likely (Sajid Chaudhry)
(ii) India:
       Defence to spend more on gear
4  Kashmir:
      - Talks on Siachen make no headway (Jawed Naqvi)
      - Indo-Pak Siachen Talks Fail (Vivek Raghuvanshi )
      - Of belligerence and bullets (Editorial, Kashmir Times, May 11, 2006)
      - Slow and unsteady (A.G. Noorani)
      - VVIP-centric security (Edit, Kashmir Times)
5 Tensions Among South Asia's Three Anti-"Terror" Allies (J. Sri Raman)
6 NATO in Pakistan: Halt, who is sneaking in? (M B Naqvi)
7 Bush-Backers Want Interventionist India (J. Sri Raman)
8 Arms Sales to the Region; Acquisitions plans and the players:
    - Eyes in the sky
    - Pakistan to buy one-billion-dollar AWACS
    - Awacs purchase okayed
    - Pakistan increases its warship arsenal
    - Frigate deal with China finalized
    - FMS Pakistan Harpoon Block II Anti-ship Missiles
    - US plans missile gift to Pak
    - France OKs Sub Talks With Pakistan; Islamabad
Wants U.S. Harpoon Missiles To Arm Subs
    - Battle for Arms (Sandeep Unnithan, Prerana Thakurdesai)
    - EADS guns for India deal
    - The Indian military's gold mine (Indrajit Basu)
    - Saab's Gripen fighter aircraft faces crucial sales test in India
    - Aviation : Bell hovers over $400 mn India chopper sale
9 Militarisation and Civil Society:
     - Panel calls for end to Salwa Judum campaign
     - Chhattisgarh : Repression Garbed as Security
     - Physiognomy of Violence  (K Balagopal)
     - Press Release by Independent Citizens
Initiative, Citizens' panel warns of civil war in
Chhattisgarh
     - Waging War Against The People-Dangerous
anti-Naxal strategy (Praful Bidwai)
     - Spot the difference: Bajarang Dal and Laskar-e-Toiba
10 Ignoring the unjustifiable: Impoverished
majority belies hopes of India shining
11 Pakistan to sell arms to Sri Lanka

_______


1.

The News on Sunday
May 28, 2006

pakistan
WHAT A BOMB CANNOT BUY

Eight years after the nuclear test, a lot many
promises remain unfulfilled and costs
unacknowledged

By Pervez Hoodbhoy

On the eighth anniversary of Pakistan's nuclear
tests, there is little point in debating whether
we should have followed India down the nuclear
gutter. But there is need for a sober
stock-taking that moves us away from the still
rampant, simple-minded, nuclear triumphalism. So
far the region's nuclear 'experts' and
'strategists', actively assisted on both sides of
the border by their respective states, have
effectively monopolised discussion on nuclear
policy. But many promises remain unfulfilled and
various political and social costs for Pakistan
are barely acknowledged. What are these?

The most obvious fact is that testing the bomb
speeded up the subcontinent's arms race, rather
than slowing it down. If you had believed what
the nuclear pundits used to say, it should have
been the other way round. Their argument was so
seductive and simple that even well-meaning
people were taken for a ride. They said acquiring
the bomb would ensure national security into
eternity -- the threat of a nuclear response
would deter territorial violations by the other,
and hence the need for conventional arms would
evaporate. Just a few bombs would do. Before the
May 1998 tests, and even for several months after
it, some Pakistanis cheerfully wrote that after
going nuclear, little more than salaries for
soldiers would be needed. Defence budgets could
be slashed, and (at last) funds would go into
development and education.

Instead, what have we seen? Today the need for
acquisition of battle tanks, artillery, fighter
aircraft, surface ships, submarines,
anti-ballistic missile systems, early warning
aircraft, and space-based surveillance systems is
now claimed -- by many of the same people -- to
be more urgent than ever before.  The US-India
nuclear deal, if ratified by Congress, will add
fuel to the fire. After India's breeder reactors
come on line, it will be able to produce as many
nuclear warheads in just one year as it had in
the previous 30. Pakistan is sure to react in
various ways.

The once-popular concept of 'minimal deterrence'
died after India's firm statement that the
requirements for a deterrent force will be
'dynamically determined' and cannot be explicitly
stated. In other words, it will never say how
many bombs are enough. That is not how it used to
be. I well remember my intervention during a
conference in Chicago (1992) which provoked the
Indian strategist K. Subramanyam to angrily
protest that "arms racing is a Cold War concept
invented by the western powers and totally alien
to sub-continental thinking". We Pakistanis and
Indians were supposed to be infinitely wiser than
the compulsive Americans and Soviets. But one
sees that Cold War racing has been followed to
the letter on the subcontinent. Tactical nuclear
war-fighting, once considered escalatory, is
reported to be incorporated into current Indian
and Pakistani military doctrines.

The fact is that nuclear racing and doctrines is
everywhere and always driven by the same
implacable, mad, runaway logic. Should there be
the slightest danger of the race slackening, a
nuclear 'expert' will point to the other side's
latest acquisition and shout wolf. With every
passing decade, advances in technology make it
easier and cheaper to create ever more deadly
nuclear weapons, buy or make longer range and
more effective missiles, and go for various
hi-tech weapon systems that could not have been
imagined just a while ago.

For Pakistan, the nuclear cost -- political and
social -- has been even higher than for India.

First, nuclear weapons led to Pakistan's Kargil
debacle. The 1998 tests gave the country's
leaders a false sense of security. This was the
direct cause of a misadventure that ended in a
stunning political and diplomatic defeat for
Pakistan. If anything, it made clear that
Pakistan could no longer hope for a military
victory in Kashmir.

The Kargil episode offers the very first example
in history where nuclear weapons, by dint of
creating a presumed shield for launching
conventional covert operations, were responsible
for having brought about a war. The unrestrained
propagation of false beliefs in nuclear security
brought India and Pakistan to the brink of a
full-blown confrontation that could well have
been the very last one. Arguably it was the
Bharatiya Janata Party that, by ordering
Pokhran-II, fathered Kargil.

Second, Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear weapons
has made it effectively a less independent state,
rather than it being the other way round. While
Pakistan became popular in Saudi Arabia and other
Muslim countries after testing, its inability to
stand up for real Muslim interests remains as
chronically weak as ever. Unlike many European
and non-aligned countries -- which were
vociferous in their opposition to the US war upon
Iraq -- Pakistan chose the side of pragmatism.
One can also be sure that if Iran's nuclear
facilities are bombed by the US, Pakistan's
leaders will do no more than shake their heads in
mild disapproval. The Iran-Pakistan-India
pipeline provides yet another example of weakness.

Although nukes have pushed up Pakistan's rental
value for fighting the wars of other nations, the
constraints on its behaviour have also greatly
increased. The danger that our nukes may turn
loose is a source of deep discomfort to
Pakistan's chief patron and paymaster, the United
States of America. The fiery rhetoric of
religious parties, who claim the bomb for the
entire Muslim Ummah rather than just for
Pakistan, understandably terrifies many in the
West. Moreover, the A. Q. Khan episode -- in
spite of Pakistan's repeated assertions that the
matter has now closed -- is still very much on
the minds of the US establishment and media.
These reasons account for the US's flat rejection
of any kind of nuclear deal with Pakistan along
the lines that it had proposed to India.

For the time being, with General Pervez Musharraf
in power, the US is willing to tolerate
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal -- and may even
satisfy some of its needs for advanced
conventional weaponry. But this could be
shortlived. Many gaming scenarios played in the
US strategic war planning institutions indicate
there are well-rehearsed contingency plans if
Pakistan's political situation changes radically
in the event of General Musharraf's departure.
Clearly, Pakistan is a country that is closely
watched and monitored.

Third, and finally, while a connection is
sometimes alleged, in fact nuclear weapons have
been irrelevant to two of Pakistan's critical
needs -- national integration and high
technology. If anything, the effect has gone the
other way.

National integration remains a distant goal, and
the hope that the bomb would be a rallying call
for all Pakistanis has disappeared. The
tumultuous, officially inspired, 1999
celebrations of 'yaum-e-takbir' all over the
country were supposed to infuse a new sense of
national spirit in Pakistanis. Bomb and missile
models were installed at every other street
corner; many still survive. But instead of love
for the centralised Islamabad-based Pakistani
state, the ongoing widespread insurgency in
Balochistan and rising bitterness in Sindh are
sending clear messages of a dangerous
disaffection. Nuclear weapons cannot compensate
the absence of a democratic process, which alone
can weld Pakistan's disparate people into a
nation.

The failure is evident. Punjab celebrates the
bomb while Balochistan protests it. It resents
the fact that the nuclear test site -- now
radioactive and put out of bounds -- is located
on Baloch soil. Accused of dumping nuclear
wastes, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission is
now being increasingly targeted by Baloch
nationalists as an instrument of foreign
domination. On May 15, 2006, Baloch insurgents
reportedly launched a mortar attack on a
Pakistani nuclear establishment controlled by the
PAEC in the vicinity of the Dera Ghazi
Khan-Quetta highway.

And, what of the Bomb being a technical miracle?
Over thirty years ago, fearful of India's newly
acquired nuclear weapons, Pakistan set out on its
own quest to become a nuclear weapons state. It
lacked a strong technological base. But its
secret search of the world's industrialised
countries for nuclear weapons technologies was
successful. It now advertises itself as a
high-tech state.

But in a world where science moves at super-high
speeds, nuclear weapons and missile development
is today second-rate science. The undeniable fact
is that the technology of nuclear bombs is six
decades old. Famine-stricken North Korea, with
few other achievements, is probably also a
nuclear power and clearly has a very advanced
missile programme. In fact it had transferred
this technology to Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya,
and other countries. While Pakistani and Indian
weapons programmes have diverted substantial
financial and material resources away from social
and scientific needs, they have merely used
scientific principles discovered and developed
elsewhere. Not surprisingly, there are no
worthwhile spin-offs. Surely it is time to drop
the pretence that making nuclear weapons and
guided missiles is a wonderful thing.

The author is professor of nuclear and
high-energy physics at Quaid-e-Azam University,
Islamabad.

o o o


SOUTH ASIA NEEDS A BOMB-LESS DEAL
by Pervez Hoodbhoy
(South Asians Against Nukes - April 23, 2006)
URL: http://tinyurl.com/gamqo


_____


2.

World Peace Herald
May 14, 2006

BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE: SOUTH ASIA'S ARMS RACE
by Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
Published May 11, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The South Asia ballistic missile
and nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan
rivals the one between Israel and Iran for being
the most dangerous on the planet.

      Relations between India and Pakistan are
currently not remotely as fraught as those
between Israel and Iran. New Delhi and Islamabad
regularly hold talks to at least explore the
possibility of reducing tensions and agreeing
upon confidence building measures. Yet the costly
race between them to develop and deploy ever-more
complex and deadly weapons, defense
countermeasures and even survivable second strike
capabilities never slows down.

      The latest development came May 6 when
Pakistan announced it had successfully tested its
Shaheen II/Hatf VI ballistic intermediate-range
ballistic missile. The pakistandefense.com Web
site of the Pakistani armed forces announced that
the nuclear-capable missile had a range of 1,500
miles and was highly accurate. Previous reports
had given earlier versions of the missile a range
of 1,200-1,250 miles. It was the first test of
the Shaheen II, a two-stage, solid fuel missile,
in 14 months since the successful March 2005.

      Ironically, the test came two days after
Pakistan and India concluded a three-day session
of negotiations in the Pakistani capital
Islamabad to discuss confidence-building measures
between them in their nuclear program and other
areas. However, the two nations failed to reach
the agreement they had sought on reducing the
risk of accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear
weapons.

      Pakistandefense.com described Pakistan Prime
Minister Shaukat Aziz as "overwhelmed" by the
success of the test. It said Aziz congratulated
the engineers, scientists and technical staff who
were present at the launching.

      India's answer to the Shaheen II is its own
indigenously developed Agni missile. Short and
intermediate range versions of the Agni with
ranges of 420 miles and 1,500 miles have already
entered service with the Indian armed forces.
That missile, like the Shaheen, is solid fueled,
and therefore capable of being deployed and
launched far more quickly than older liquid
fueled ballistic missiles were.

      The Agni class missiles are also road and
rail mobile, making it more difficult for
Pakistan to wipe out the force in any preemptive
first strike.

      Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf
continues to give top priority to the development
of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and their ballistic
missile delivery systems. He sent a special
message to congratulate the missile test team and
said the entire nation was proud of their
brilliant performance, the report said.

      For Musharraf knows that nuclear missiles are
Pakistan's great strategic equalizer with India.
Although Pakistan is probably the fifth most
populous nation in the world (Its high birth
rates are believed to have put it past Russia),
its economy and army are both much smaller than
India's. And in the three conventional wars India
and Pakistan have fought over the past six
decades - in 1947-48, 1965 and 1971, India always
won in the end. The Indians also celebrate the
1999 Kargil mini-war as a victory.

      But Pakistan has received massive boosts from
outside friends in developing its nuclear and
missile programs. Much of the funding for its
nuclear program came from Saudi Arabia. It has
received over the years a massive infusion of
North Korean Nodong missile technology to the
Pakistan nuclear missile program over the past
decade. The accuracy of the guidance systems in
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal are believed to be far
superior to India's, thanks to the technology
that China has supplied to Islamabad.

      Aware of the vulnerability of their much
touted but relatively old fashioned and
vulnerable nuclear missile bases, India has
responded by taking a leaf out of Israel's book
and has already deployed under its Eastern
Command at least one submarine, the INS
Sindhuvir, that is believed to be armed with
Danush/Saganika cruise missiles.

      India is also eager to develop ballistic
missile defenses in partnership with the United
States and President George W. Bush has already
gave the green light for this. The United States
is preparing to sell India its state of the art
Patriot PAC-3 anti-ballistic missile, the most
advanced defense system of its kind in the world.

      However, Pakistan has successfully tested a
new solid fuel cruise missile. Cruise missiles
can be produced in great numbers very cheaply
once one has access to the high-tech guidance
systems that allow them to zigzag over the
landscape. And just by deploying them in any
significant numbers, Pakistan will be stretching
India's air-space ballistic missile defense
system very far, and forcing India to spend more
of its limited financial and technological
resources to combat the threat.

      The successful Shaheen II test last week
served notice that the deadly nuclear arms race
between India and Pakistan -- threatening the
survival of one fifth of the human race --
continues unabated.


o o o

PAKISTAN STAGES NEW MISSILE TEST
(BBC News, 29 April 2006)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4957218.stm

PAKISTAN TESTS-FIRES LONG-RANGE BALLISTIC MISSILE
(Reuters.uk, UK - Apr 28, 2006)
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-04-\
29T050927Z_01_ISL36672_RTRUKOC_0_UK-PAKISTAN-MISSILE.xml

o o o

http://www.dnaindia.com/

PAK TO PRODUCE A MODIFIED VERSION OF QIANG WEI-2 MISSILES
PTI
Wednesday, May 24, 2006  11:36 IST
LONDON: Pakistan is geared up to produce a
modified version of the Chinese Qiang Wei-2
man-portable surface-to-air missile system known
locally as the Anza Mk III, the Jane's Defence
Weekly has reported.

Development of the system has been facilitated by
transfer of Chinese technology, including
thermal-imaging and infra-red night-vision system
technology, the Jane's Defence Weekly stated.

Citing photographic evidence, it said Pakistan
has made several modifications to the system,
probably to conform to local requirements and
operational use with the Pakistani armed forces.

One such major modification is the firing unit,
or 'grip-stock', which in the Pakistani version
seems more modern and of the type associated with
the Russian Igla missile, as opposed to the
Chinese firing unit, which is of the type
normally associated with the Russian Strela
man-portable SAM.

The Igla system is known to contain circuitry
that enhances the weapon's engagement
capabilities.


NUKE-CAPABLE PRITHVI-I TESTED
(The Times of India, June 11, 2006)
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1637678.cms

DELAYS, GLITCHES HIT MISSILE PLAN
Rajat Pandit
(The Times of India, June 11, 2006)
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1637679,curpg-1.cms

AGNI-III LAUNCH IN AUGUST OR SEPTEMBER
T.S. Subramanian
(The Hindu, June 7, 2006)
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2006/06/07/stories/2006060702721500.htm

INDIA HOLDS BACK FROM TEST FIRING AGNI III
by Rahul Bedi
(Jane's, UK - May 24, 2006)
http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jdw/jdw060524_1_n.shtml

A DUD IN THE MANGER?
by Brahma Chellaney
(New Delhi, May 23, 2006, Hindustan Times)
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1703918,0008.htm



_____


3.  DEFENCE SPENDING:


(i)  PAKISTAN


Daily Times
May 30, 2006

LETTERS:


Defence

Sir: It looks as if our rulers are bent upon
pushing more people into the quagmire of poverty
in the name of national defence and national
interest. Despite the positive macro indictors -
the economy has been doing well in recent years
and we have $12 billion in foreign exchange
reserves - one third of the population is living
in abject poverty.

As far as the country's defence is concerned,
buying and stocking up weapons does not guarantee
the defence and security of the country. People
who have the will to defend their motherland have
been able to do so with little resources and
meagre weaponry. Vietnam is a case in point. The
USA with its resources and modern weaponry was
unable to defeat this tiny nation and had to
withdraw in 1973.

When Pakistan conducted nuclear explosions in
1998 we were told that we had acquired minimum
deterrence. It seemed that we would be able to
cut down on defence expenditure and divert money
to the social sector development. Instead seven
years later, defence expenditure has gone up and
so has poverty.
GULSHER PANHWER
Dadu

Defence II

Sir: According to a news report, the government
is contemplating an increase of 50 billions
rupees in defence expenditure for the next
financial year to keep pace with India. The
Indian budget of 2006-07 has increased defence
spending.

In the past, our defence forces have been given
billions of rupees. Some of the defence spending
is even camouflaged; for example, pensions paid
to armed forces have been transferred to the
civilian account. There is no accountability of
defence spending. Probably Pakistan is the only
country in the world where no questions are asked
about the defence budget, not even in the
parliament.

Now that Pakistan and India are inching towards
reconciliation either due to their own expediency
or under American pressure there is no
justification for such an increase in defence
spending. In particular it makes no sense, when
the government itself has declared that Pakistan
does not believe in carrying out an arms race
with India.

It is high time the government adopted realistic
and pro-people policies and invested more funds
for human development. A state that is ninth in
the list of the top ten failed states of the
world will not improve its standing unless we
provide education, clear water and health to the
people instead of buying weapons and building new
GHQs.
AYYAZ HUSSAIN SHAIKH
Karachi


o o o

NEED FOR DEBATE ON DEFENCE BUDGET

By Talat Masood
(Dawn, 5 June 2006)

THE demand for opening up the defence budget and giving more details of it
to parliament has grown over the years. Currently, legislators belonging to
the government party are required to dutifully get the defence budget passed
as a one-liner item, without any changes. The growing assertion of
opposition leaders in defence matters is indeed a manifestation of the
problem of the military's dominant role in national affairs and the
underlying tension in civil-military relationships.

As the struggle to establish a normal political system in the country gains
momentum, this subject will acquire greater significance. Politicians want
their due role in defence policy formulation, their views on the acquisition
of major weapons systems and, above all, greater transparency in and
oversight of the military affairs. They also feel that controlling the purse
would be the most effective way of asserting their authority and reducing
the influence of the army.

On the contrary, the armed forces maintain that there is nothing unusual
about the current system, as many democracies too give few details of their
defence expenditures. The example of India is cited but that country too is
not very transparent about its defence spending.

It is argued that providing details of the budget would compromise security.
In any case our politicians are so uninformed and disinterested that they
can hardly contribute to the debate. There may well be some truth in all
this, but the problem needs to be understood and addressed in a wider
perspective. There are distinct advantages in giving more details about the
defence budget.

Firstly, the politicians and the public in general would be more confident
that the money apportioned for defence is being well spent and if there are
differences over defence policy or priorities, these could be settled
through debates and discussions.

Defence is an issue where national consensus and public support are vital.
Besides, a major part of the defence expenditure does not justify secrecy.
Approximately, 75 to 80 per cent of defence allocations relate to
administrative expenses. The irony is that foreign countries, and especially
our adversaries, are better informed about our defence expenditures than our
own people.

In any event, where secrecy is justified it can be ensured by masking the
provisions and providing details to the select committee on defence or any
other appropriate body designated by the parliament or by the government.

Experience of other countries has shown that politicians once associated
with defence matters, gradually acquire an understanding of the
sensitivities involved even develop a high standard of expertise, which
enables them to take the lead role in the parliament on defence matters.

It is important that our politicians take greater interest and develop an
understanding of defence matters if they want to command respect and assert
their parliamentary responsibilities of supervision. There are enormous
benefits of having both military and civil input to the formulation of
strategic policy and the allocation of resources.

Moreover, opening up the defence budget for debate and scrutiny could remove
misunderstanding about several military issues and help in bridging
differences between the civil and the military.

There is no doubt that armed forces are exercising a high level of
departmental oversight and all defence expenditures are being subject to
both internal and external audit, which largely ensures professional ethics
and combat effectiveness.

The scrutiny carried out by the auditor-general is comprehensive, so that
major irregularities, if any, are brought before the notice of the Public
Accounts Committee. But what is lacking is the principle of checks and
balances, which is the fundamental basis of a democratic polity.

Even in the existing pseudo-democratic scenario certain changes could be
made to improve the level of transparency. As a beginning, the tri-service
distribution of budget allocations could be made public. Payment of pensions
should revert to the defence head as it logically falls under it. By hiding
legitimate expenditures governments do not gain anything, apart from
indulging in self-delusion.

Revenue and capital expenditures could also be shown separately. Parliament
could be taken into confidence on major defence acquisitions and programmes.
Expenditures on civil armed forces, Rangers, Coast Guards could be shown
clearly.

Additionally, every effort should be made to reduce inessential expenditure.
The lavish Cold War standards that was set by the Americans, when money was
not an impediment, found their way with our military services as well during
the 1980s and '90s and still continue to some extent.

Moreover, there are specific areas, such as logistics, training and
personnel, where a combination of joint and lead-service approaches could
result in substantial savings and enhanced efficiency. No doubt, restrictive
policies of the world's major weapon suppliers have restricted to a single
source of purchases eliminating possibilities of competition.

Still there is considerable scope for streamlining our acquisition
procedures and systems to achieve savings. Pakistan's plans of progressively
undertaking indigenization of sophisticated weapon systems such as armoured
vehicles, fighter and trainer aircraft, missiles and submarines should be
pursued and efforts to find export markets continue to amortise investment
and reduce costs. Most of our defence industries require thorough
restructuring and modernization to affect savings and remain competitive.
The organisations concerned need greater autonomy and, at the same time,
have to be subjected to greater accountability.

Regrettably, defence spending by India has increased manifold over the last
decade. India's increased spending is attributed to its ambitious
modernisation programme that includes purchases of multi-role aircraft,
submarines, airborne radars and other strategic and conventional systems.

To keep a relative balance Pakistan has also been increasing its defence
allocations. The military feels that to defeat any credible offensive, our
capabilities need to grow, because Indian military capabilities are growing
and becoming more sophisticated at an incredible rate.

With India growing at a raped both economically and militarily, it will be
harder for Pakistan to retain the relative balance of forces that it had
tried to maintain in the past.

Military spending takes up nearly one-third of Pakistan's budget and is
one-sixth to one-seventh of India's budget. This year it is expected to be
22 to 25 per cent higher than the 2005-2006 budget allocation of 223 billion
rupees.

Pakistan armed forces are also engaged in new acquisitions. It is believed
that the government has requested America for the purchase of 18 F-16s, with
the option to buy another 18 aircraft in due course. Pakistan Air Force
already has a long-term contract for the acquisition of J-17 multi-role
aircraft from China.

Pakistan Navy is interested in obtaining F-22 Frigates from China and
possibly a new class of submarines from France. Purchase of airborne radars
from Sweden is likely to materialise soon. All this would be an additional
burden of eight to nine billion dollars spread over the next five to six
years on the exchequer.

No peace process can be durable unless India and Pakistan seriously address
the problem of restraining their defence expenditures and move toward a
conventional and strategic restraint regime. Meanwhile, the nature of threat
in the region is changing. India and Pakistan face less danger from each
other, but more from within.

The growing menace of insurgency facing Pakistan in Balochistan and the
tribal belt are the result of years of neglect, fragile political
institutions, lack of economic development and a highly volatile
neighbourhood. The cumulative effect of these adverse factors has alienated
some groups to a point where their anger has reached a bursting point,
threatening peace and stability in large parts of country.

Similarly, India is beseeched with a surging insurgency covering nearly 116
districts and posing a great challenge to state authority. It is important
for both states that while modernising their armed forces, they also adopt
the concept of comprehensive security that encompasses economics, energy,
and food and water security. Both states need to channel larger portion of
their resources and energy in human and infrastructural development and
relatively less in the acquisition of expensive weapons systems. For this a
significant change in thinking and attitude on the part of the political and
military leadership of the two countries is required. In the light of India'
s global aspirations prospects of this materialising in the near term appear
remote.

The writer is a retired lieutenant-general.

o o o

PAKISTAN TO INCREASE DEFENCE SPENDING 11%
By Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad
(Financial Times, June 5 2006)

Pakistan is expected in Monday's budget to announce an increase in defence
spending of at least 11 per cent from the Rps224bn ($3.7bn, ¤2.9bn, £2bn)
allocated last year, senior Pakistani government officials said yesterday.

The size of the defence budget will be closely watched by suppliers of
military hardware worldwide as Pakistan begins preparations for its most
ambitious expansion of conventional weapons in years.

The effective increase remains unclear as the money actually spent by the
defence forces in the last financial year, which ends this month, was likely
to have been more than initially budgeted - mainly due to the cost of
mobilising troops to tackle relief and rescue operations following last
October's devastating earthquake.

The Pakistani military is believed to be adding to its conventional arms as
it tries to begin narrowing the gap with India - the main impetus for new
arms purchases. "There is a very strong belief, shared by Pakistani military
planners, that they need to build up their force through acquiring new
   arms," said a western diplomat in Islamabad last night.

Pakistani officials said this year's increase in defence spending was
significantly below the rise in India's military expenditure.

"Our increased military spending is by no means reckless. We want to be
responsible but our planned defence acquisitions are crucial," said one
official, who asked not to be named.

In the past three months, Pakistan has announced its intention to buy an
unspecified number of J-10 fighter aircraft from China. Western diplomats
believe Pakistan is seeking to purchase about 36 of the aircraft, among the
most sophisticated fighter jets produced by China, for about $1.2bn-$1.4bn
(¤930m, £640m).

This is in addition to plans to buy up to 150 of the JF-17 Thunder fighter
aircraft developed jointly by Pakistan and China - a deal western military
experts believe could be worth at least $2bn.

Last month, the government approved an order for $1.2bn worth of aircraft
produced by Sweden's Saab, equipped with an Ericsson-manufactured airborne
early warning system. There is also the planned purchase of at least 18 new
and 36 used F-16 fighter jets from the US in a package that could be worth
$1.8bn-$2bn.

A Pakistani official said building up Pakistan's conventional weapons was
vital to reduce the country's dependence on its nuclear force. "Over the
years, we have been told by western governments that we have to reduce our
dependence on nuclear. Expanding our conventional force is the perfect way
to achieve that", he said.

Opposition politicians, however, criticised the government for failing to
provide details of its defence spending. "We can't tell how much of the
military budget is for essential items and what part is dedicated to perks
and privileges," said Fawzia Wahab, member of parliament for the Pakistan
People's party.

o o o

PAKISTAN PANORAMA: BUDGET 2006 - FUZZY MATHS OR GENUINE ARTICLE?
by Kamran Rehmat
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/commentary/commentaryother.asp?file=junecomment\
ary322006.xml


PAKISTAN RAISES DEFENSE SPENDING BY 3.78 PERCENT
By Zeeshan Haider, REUTERS, ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
(Defence News, June 6, 2006)
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=1848516&C=asia


SENATE COMMITTEE ASKS FOR DEFENCE BUDGET PRESENTATION
by Maryam Hussain
(Daily Times, May 25, 2006
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\05\25\story_25-5-2006_pg1_5)


ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on
Defence has asked for a presentation on the
2006-07 defence budget from the Pakistan Army.

The army has never presented the defence budget
to a parliamentary committee, and the decision to
demand one was made unanimously at a closed-door
committee meeting on May 3.

The committee's decision has been conveyed to the
Ministry of Defence, but there has been no
official word of whether the army will agree to
this. According to official minutes of the
defence body meeting, seen by Daily Times and
signed by committee chairman Nisar Memon and
secretary Iftikar Babar and circulated among its
members on May 13, the senators said that
parliamentary oversight of the defence budget was
very important and common practice in other
countries.

The issue was raised by Senator Prof Khursheed
Ahmed of the MMA, who noted that the defence
budget is normally a one-line proposal devoid of
any details. He suggested that the committee be
briefed in-camera about the "focus and
priorities" of the 2006-07 defence budget.

No exact date for such a briefing has been set,
but if it occurs, it is likely to be just before
or after the announcement of the 2006-07 budget
on June 5.

o o o

EDITORIAL : ISI TO BRIEF THE SENATE
(Daily Times, May 24, 2006)

We hear that for the first time in this country's
history, officials of the Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) will appear before the Senate
body on defence to brief its members about the
agency's functions and covert operations. The
briefing will apparently also include information
on the agency's infamous political cell and how
it operates. The briefing will be in-camera.

This is a good beginning, though not enough for
two reasons. First, it does not seem that the
senators will have the authority to grill the ISI
brass; the tone of the report, based on
information given out by the committee itself,
indicates that the ISI officials will simply
brief the members, not be accountable before
them; second, the briefing is in-camera and not
open to the media. This means we will not know
the exact contents of what has been said or
discussed.

Even so, given that this has not happened before,
we should commend this step and hope that this
might become a regular feature and the National
Assembly's committee on defence will also take a
cue from the Senate. It is both interesting and
ironic that the standing committees of these
assemblies have worked more effectively than they
did during the civilian interregnum, for which of
course the credit must go to General Musharraf.
Now that the ball is rolling, this process must
be carried forward and made more meaningful. A
recent report also mentioned that the Ministry of
Defence would place selective content of the
defence budget before parliament. While details
of this plan are not available, if this happens,
as reported, it would again be a good step.

General Pervez Musharraf has constantly defended
his presence in the system as being imperative to
strengthen democratic norms. To that extent, the
parliament has to be strengthened and precedents
and procedures put in place. In all democracies,
parliaments have oversight functions in relation
to all institutions, including the military.
Parliamentary bodies monitor every action and all
funds and everyone is answerable to them. So too
it should be in Pakistan. *

o o o

UNCHANGED DEFENCE SPENDING
(Editorial, Dawn, May 11, 2006)

IT IS a positive trend that various committees of
the National Assembly have been discussing the
government's financial record every year on the
eve of the annual budget. This allows the
people's representatives to debate many of the
policy matters which relate to the government's
spending. On Tuesday the Public Accounts
Committee was informed that retired officers and
employees of the armed forces have been paid Rs
35.6 billion in pension so far in the current
financial year. The committee was also informed
that this amount was shown in the civilian
budget. This raises many questions. Since 2000-01
when the military personnel's pensions were
shifted to the civilian side of the budget, the
big chunk that has been removed from the defence
spending has not been reflected in our defence
budget which has continued to rise over the years
in spite of assurances that cuts would be made in
it as a peace dividend. The second aspect that
needs to be pointed out is the large size of the
military pensions. The amount earmarked for this
head has grown from Rs 28 billion in 2000-01 to
Rs 43 billion this year. Given the fact that
armed forces personnel retire at a relatively
young age, they receive a pension for a longer
period. This partly accounts for the big pension
budget. But there may be other factors too that
could reflect a shift in the pattern of defence
administration. If the number of personnel being
recruited is going up because the defence forces
are growing in size - according to one source,
their size has risen from 400,000 in 1977 to
700,000 today - the pension budget will also
increase. Moreover, a top heavy force - with more
promotions taking place to the higher echelons -
would mean an increase in salaries and that would
mean higher pensions. This is something the
defence planners should look into. It also needs
to be asked: should retired officers from the
armed forces who are so liberally absorbed in the
civil administration, be entitled to pensions
while they are drawing salaries from the
exchequer? One hopes that the defence forces have
not followed the unhealthy pattern set by the
civilian administration that has expanded
indiscriminately leading to overlapping and
duplication of functions contributing to
inefficiency and ineptitude.

o o o

11% INCREASE IN DEFENCE BUDGET LIKELY
by Sajid Chaudhry
(The Daily Times, May 19, 2006)

ISLAMABAD: The Finance Ministry has okayed 11
percent increase in the defence budget for the
2006-07 fiscal year, fixing the total allocation
at Rs 248.250 billion, which is Rs 25 billion
more than the ongoing year's allocation.

Sources told Daily Times on Thursday that the
Finance Ministry, in a recent meeting, finalised
the defence expenses for the next fiscal year.
The federal cabinet will now approve the budget
on June 5 following which it will be tabled
before the National Assembly.

Sources said that the armed forces had demanded
Rs 330 billion for the upcoming fiscal year but
the Defence Ministry had recommended Rs 257
billion to the Finance Ministry. "However the
Finance Ministry has finalised Rs 248.250
billion," sources added.

The defence budget for the current year was Rs
223.250 billion however defence expenses are
projected to reach Rs 240 billion by June 30.

The proposed defence budget for 2005-06 is Rs 8
billion higher than the projected defence
spending during the current year. Sources said
that increase in the defence spending during the
current fiscal year were mainly due to the
earthquake-related operations because forces had
launched a major rescue operation in the
earthquake-affected areas of Azad Kashmir and
North Western Frontier Province.


o o o

(ii) INDIA


Defence to spend more on gear
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
(The Telegraph, May 16, 2006)

New Delhi, May 15: The government will increase
expenditure on buying new equipment for the armed
forces to half of the defence allocations.
Capital expenditure will be stepped up gradually
to 50 per cent of the defence budget from about
42 per cent currently, defence minister Pranab
Mukherjee said here today.

In the last seven years, defence allocations have
grown at an average 9.5 per cent per annum.
Capital expenditure has also increased from
around 25 per cent in 2000-2001 to about 42 per
cent in 2006-2007, Mukherjee told controllers of
defence accounts. He was opening a three-day
conference on defence accounts.

The defence ministry was finalising the 11th plan
for the armed forces. Even if expenditure would
be stepped up, he said "optimal resource
allocation for defence within total central
government outlay would continue to be a daunting
task given the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget
Management Act obligations and interest and
subsidy burdens".

The minister said defence personnel would be
given more responsibility and powers to take
decisions on acquisition of equipment.

On the sidelines of the conference, the defence
minister said India was not testing the strategic
Agni III missile (range of about 3,000 km)
because of "self-imposed restraint". He said
there was no political pressure on the Defence
Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to
put off the test.

"As responsible members of the international
community, we want to keep our international
commitments on non-proliferation," Mukherjee
said. The DRDO was at liberty to carry out "cold
bed tests" for the sub-systems of the missile.

The DRDO chief and scientific adviser to the
defence minister, M. Natarajan, had said
yesterday that the outfit was ready to test the
Agni III missile.


_____


4.  KASHMIR:

TALKS ON SIACHEN MAKE NO HEADWAY
by Jawed Naqvi
(Dawn, May 25, 2006)
http://www.dawn.com/2006/05/25/top1.htm

INDO-PAK SIACHEN TALKS FAIL
by Vivek Raghuvanshi
(Defence News, June 5, 2006)
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=1842323&C=asiapac


OF BELLIGERENCE AND BULLETS
Demilitarization needs to be considered in totality
(Editorial, Kashmir Times, May 11, 2006)

Belligerence is at its best. Union defence
minister Pranab Mukherjee's assertion that there
can be no question of demilitarization but
instead there was need to enhance the presence of
security forces is a case in point. While it has
been a sigh of relief that the government has
decided to go ahead with the dialogue process
despite the step up in killings, especially after
the massacres in Kulhand and Basantgarh in Doda
and Udhampur respectively, the decision against
considering any kind of reduction in troops is
not so welcome. The government's commitment to
peace process is encouraging but this needs to be
guided by some scientific logic as well. It is
argued that mere silence of guns cannot be
construed as peace. But equally true is the fact
that peace is unthinkable with no measures to
treat the violence. Peace process and armed
battles cannot go hand in hand. They send
confusing messages. Ever since the peace process
started, the long pending demand of reducing
troops presence in Jammu and Kashmir has been
lying in cold storage. Some attempts were made a
little less than two years ago when some
battalions of army were removed from certain
pockets of the Valley and replaced with an equal
number of troops of central reserve police force.
The government, which claims to be making serious
efforts for bringing peace and normalcy to Jammu
and Kashmir cannot ignore the fact that a large
presence of troops not only cause fear, panic,
humiliation and alienation; it also often
encourages a step up in graph of militancy. Most
of the militancy related attacks take place where
there is a massive presence of troops. Therefore,
replacing army by BSF or CRPF will not suffice
the genuine demands of demilitarization, which
does not in any way mean offering concessions to
militant organizations. In fact, this is the best
manner in which the latter can be engaged and
asked to giving up the gun in place of
negotiating table. When leaders and human rights
activists in Kashmir raise the demand of
demilitarization, it simply does not mean
withdrawal of forces, it also means a gradual
enforcement of ceasefire from all sides which
needs consistent efforts and patience. The
defence minister's assertion that there is no
militarization of any zone in Jammu and Kashmir
in the sense of international law is itself
misleading. The massive presence of troops
including army accounting for about 5 to six
lakhs in a state with a population of simply 10
million is a big number as per international
standards. Statistics are disputed but any rough
estimate would not put army presence below the
five lakh mark, which would mean there is one
army personnel for every 20 persons of the state.
If the bullet for bullet policy can be a solution
to normality and ending violence, which has a
political genesis, then militancy should have
been long over. Apart from the army, there are
other para-military forces including the state's
own cadre of police force. The enhancement in
troops thus cannot be justified on merits of
carnages like Kulhand and Basantgarh. Mukherjee
may be quite naÐve in believing that this is no
violation of international norms and rules.
Perhaps, he needs to be reminded that apart from
the massive troops build-up, there has been
attempt to militarise most parts of Jammu and
Kashmir, especially the remote, rural militancy
infested areas, where surrendered ultras, village
defence committees and SPOs are given official
patronage and used not only in counter insurgency
operations but also to unleash a reign of terror
against common masses. Even where the VDCs and
other informers recruited by the forces have
proved crucial in counter insurgency operations,
there are reports that the armed civilians are
often used as human shields, which the learned
minister needs to be informed is against the
principles of international law, justice and
human rights. The union defence minister is
requested to do his home work properly, rather
than relying on one or two incidents, to give his
recommendations about troops cut. The entire
process of demilitarization, its need, its
practicability and its prospective gains need to
be studied in totality before resorting to the
easy course of belligerence that enables the
political leadership to hide their follies behind
the might of the gun.



SLOW AND UNSTEADY
by A.G. Noorani
(Hindustan Times, June 12, 2006)

By now, the near decade-old composite dialogue
between India and Pakistan has run out of steam.
There is little progress on any of the eight
topics listed in the joint statement issued in
Islamabad on June 23, 1997. Least of all on the
item placed least significantly, namely
'promotion of friendly exchanges in various
fields'. There has been some improvement in the
last two years since the Saarc summit in
Islamabad in January 2004, but not much. While
there are obstacles on both sides in this matter,
the honours are not evenly divided. Pakistan has
been by far the more blatant offender though
India has not lagged too far behind in this silly
game.

Since the governments of both countries control
the academia and wield influence over what pass
for 'think-tanks', private initiative cannot go
far without official support. Professions of
commitment to freer intellectual exchange have
not prompted any government of India, regardless
of its political complexion, to rescind the
long-standing obscene circular that requires
Indian citizens to seek permission from the MEA
and the Union Home Ministry to hold any seminar
within the country in which South Asians
participate.

Yet, it would be unfair to dismiss professions of
commitment to freer exchange of persons and ideas
as altogether insincere. One suspects that one
drawback is that not much thought has been given
as to how the process can be put on rails so that
it moves smoothly. Another is ignorance and
suspicion on both sides.

As to the first, a good roadmap was drawn up 45
years ago at the Indo-Pak Cultural Conference in
New Delhi in April 1961. Its moving spirit was Dr
Tara Chand, while Humayun Kabir, as then chairman
of the ICCR, gave his strong backing. Behind the
scenes, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru lent his
powerful support and inaugurated the conference.
Nothing like that has been witnessed in the years
since.

Erudite papers were read by scholars on
archaeology, history, education, fine arts,
journalism, films and languages. Among those who
participated enthusiastically were I.H. Qureshi,
R.S. Sharma, G.C. Chatterjee, K.G. Saiyadain,
Mulk Raj Anand, Balraj Sahni, Gopinath Aman and
Gopichand Narang.

Four papers stand out: A.R. Rashidi's on Indo-Pak
historiography since 1947; Mulk Raj Anand's on a
common basis for contemporary art in India and
Pakistan; Yadu Vanshi's on growth of scientific
and technical literature in Hindi and Urdu; and
Gopinath Aman's on Urdu literature in
post-Independence India. It was not dominated by
Urdu-speaking scholars nor by any single
intellectual discipline. There were only three
papers in Urdu: by Ehtesham Husain, Gopichand
Narang, and Balraj Sahni. Born in Rawalpindi,
Balraj Sahni's thought-provoking paper on the
language issue makes poignant reading. Indeed, to
read the papers today is to realise what both
countries missed because of their obdurate and
short-sighted policies.

For a roadmap, the Resolution which the
Conference unanimously adopted can serve as a
good model. Its very first recommendation was
that 'for exchange of information on literary and
cultural matters centres may be established in
the two countries'. Others were 'exchange of
professors and students', 'facilities for
research', 'exchange or transmission of books and
journals'; agreement on protection of copyright;
periodic conferences on 'scientific and academic
subjects' and 'the institution of a new type of
visa, to grant facilities to students and
scholars who visit the country for the purpose of
study and research'.

Politics killed these ideas. How can any such
centre exist in a hostile environment and without
official support? The odd seminar, the jamboree,
and visits of public figures are no substitute
for organised, institutional exchanges, say,
between the leading universities of both
countries.

The generation with memories of the pre-Partition
subcontinent is fading away. Most of the
stalwarts of the Progressive Writers' Movement
are gone. The new generation combines healthy
curiosity with inherited suspicion. There is
little appreciation of the intellectual ferment
on both sides of the divide in which there is
sharp questioning of conventional wisdom, not
excluding the policies of the national heroes
that led to the Partition.

Chaudhary Khaliquzzaman, a leading figure in the
Pakistan movement, lamented, "Look at the
condition of the three isolated Muslim
communities [in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh].
They dare not communicate with one another.
Pakistan today is not one-third as important as
the pre-Independence Muslim India was. Are the
Indian Muslims a third of their forebears in
political weight? And the Muslims of Bangladesh -
well, you know, they do not count as much as even
Pakistan". This was said in an interview with
M.B. Naqvi ages ago (Pakistan Economist, April
15, 1979). The distinguished poet, Munir Niazi,
told The Herald (Jan. 2006) that "Partition was
the worst thing that could have happened to us."

Air Marshal (retd.) Zafar Chaudhri had no
hesitation in asserting that the so-called
"Pakistan ideology", a euphemism for religious
bigotry, was no part of Jinnah's credo and cited
his famous speech in 1947 which brought our poor
L.K. Advani to grief. He said, "The Pakistan
ideology was invented after the birth of
Pakistan" (Jang, July 10, 1987).

While religious bigots hijacked Jinnah's
Pakistan, the bureaucracy and armed services also
put on it the stamp of their own outlook.
Ironically, Pakistan's civil and military
bureaucracies could boast of a large number of
writers and intellectuals from among their own
ranks. There began an increasing domination of
religious bigots and civil and military
bureaucracies over the intellectual life of the
society.

As Mohammed Waseem pointed out, their credo was
"anti-communism, anti-secularism and
anti-Indianism". But there was another school,
intellectually no less powerful, with bases in
Lahore and Karachi. I.A. Rehman and Khaled Ahmed
represent it in their analyses. They are as
nationalistic as any other Pakistani but are
secular and liberal to the core. We laud their
criticisms of Islamabad, ignore those of New
Delhi. The school they represent received no
understanding from us at any time.

The reality of Pakistan's cultural scene was
portrayed accurately by Zeno in MAG on Aug. 5,
1982. On the surface, Islamisation held sway.
Yet, there was an 'Indian-Muslim dimension of our
culture', as Indian as it was Muslim. Efforts to
denude, if not eliminate, the former could not go
far. The 'new view of Pakistan's culture being
presented by our diehard Islamists...  does not
exclude the Indian element from the Indo-Muslim
culture'. In fact, 'it affirms the Indianness of
the Pakistan tradition'. A statesmanlike policy
by India will strengthen this school of thought.


Editorial, Kashmir Times
May 23, 2006

VVIP-CENTRIC SECURITY
IT CREATES A NUISANCE AND PREVENTS A FOOLPROOF SECURITY SYSTEM

The fidayeen attack on Congress rally in Srinagar
on Sunday does not only expose the chinks in
security armour but also reflects how VVIP
centric the entire security ring is. News reports
have revealed that as soon as the attack began,
the entire security network was simply engaged in
the pursuit of shifting the VVIPs on the bullet
proof podium to safer places, while the commoners
were left on their own. Even the injured were
given second priority. There is a massive
presence of security forces in entire Jammu and
Kashmir on the plea of providing safety to people
but the focus is unfortunately only in protecting
the lives of the influential who travel around
with a huge convoy of security guards. What about
the common man, who not only faces the bullets of
the militants but also faces the retaliatory fire
of the security forces, whose strong presence
itself is known to provoke most of the militancy
related attacks? The security grid is obviously
not meant for him. It has been reserved for the
people at the helm of affairs. For the latter's
security, huge manpower and state's financial
resources are drained every year and the
tax-payer has to squeeze his pocket to ensure
that the influential are well protected. The
entire security ring is a money spinner and every
time any incident takes place, the security noose
is tightened around the VVIPs only and the others
are left out of the purview. The practice of
lavishly spending money to ensure security for
the protected species of politicians, bureaucrats
and prominent citizens has enabled every tom,
dick and harry to apply for security personnel,
whether or not they come in the list of the
threatened lot not only because it has become a
status symbol but also because of the benefits it
bestows upon the individuals getting the security
cover. The blatant misuse of this security ring
by the beneficiaries for personal domestic work
is already too well known. There are also a
plethora of cases where security personnel
deployed for the self-styled VVIP have been
unable to protect the lives of the latter, either
because they were incompetent or because they
were away performing domestic chores for the
VVIP. Besides, it creates a public nuisance. The
very presence of security personnel ensures that
the car of the VVIP gets the green signal at
every barricade easily even though it has also
been found that most of the car bombs took place
in the official cars of the influential. The VVIP
centric security syndrome not only creates a
nuisance and prevents a fool-proof security
system, it also distances the masses from the
ruled. And this distance lies at the core of
alienation and provocation to take up the gun.
While a system of an individual or organization
paying for extra security cover for VVIPs needs
to be introduced on Punjab pattern, the security
grid needs to cover everybody - not just the
VVIPs which is only proving counter productive.


_____


5.

TENSIONS AMONG SOUTH ASIA'S THREE ANTI-"TERROR" ALLIES
by J. Sri Raman
(truthout.org, 19 May 2006)

      When the story broke about the Taliban
beheading an Indian engineer in Afghanistan on
April 30, some may have expected the tragedy to
lead to minor New Delhi-Kabul tensions. It has,
however, only served to vitiate further the
vastly more important India-Pakistan relations,
with Afghanistan fanning the South Asian fires.

      The Taliban killing of 41-year-old K.
Suryanarayana, an engineer working with a
Bahrain-based company in the Zabul province, came
in the wake of the militants' call for all
Indians to quit Afghanistan, as they were
suspected to be supporters of the US-led
occupation forces. We have talked, in these
columns, of what the pro-Washington image of
India's rulers entailed for the country's
expatriates.

      The image, however, did not strengthen
relations with others who shared it. The
US-propped regime in Kabul has given a new
dimension to the controversy by all but accusing
the US ally in Islamabad of complicity in the
Taliban crime.

      True, the Afghan authorities only quoted the
Taliban leader as asserting that Surya (as the
victim has come to be known) was killed on the
orders of the infamous Inter Services
Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan. But the alleged
Taliban charge received official publicity of a
tell-tale order. And Afghan President Hamid
Karzai hastened to demand a "clarification" in
the matter from the Pervez Musharraf regime.

      The Pakistani side was predictably prompt in
denying the charge. Not far less predictable was
New Delhi's readiness to lend credence to the
idea of a Taliban loyalty to the ISI and to
Islamabad, despite all the post-9/11
developments. Officially briefed media,
especially television channels, went to town with
the first instance in the past five years of a
claimed Kabul-Taliban consensus. India's Defense
Minister Pranab Mukherjee has talked of "certain
indications," tantalizingly unspecified, of the
truth of the Taliban allegation.

      In the wake of Surya's killing, it was
recalled that both the Indian security personnel
and the US-headed International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan had
complained before about the porous border with
Pakistan making their task much tougher. Only
after the killing, however, has a direct charge
of Pakistan's complicity in Taliban terrorism
been made.

      The politics of the India-Afghanistan
insinuation may appear obvious, but this does not
take away all plausibility from the theory of a
Taliban-Pakistan pact - or one between sections
of the Taliban and the Pakistani establishment.
Two facts cited in favor of the theory are too
well known to be denied. The first is that the
Taliban are a force fostered on Pakistan's soil,
and that they continue to find an important base
there. The second is that Islamabad resents what
media under its influence calls India's
"hegemonic presence" in Afghanistan and would
like to see such presence significantly reduced.

      Afghanistan-Pakistan tensions and the part
played by the Pashtuns dominating the Taliban are
no creation of new history. The two neighbors
have never had good relations. And the nomadic
Pashtun tribes were always at the center of the
unending strife between the two Islamic nations.
Back in 1893, the British colonialists, in what
they glorified as their "great game" against the
Russian Czars, drew a Durand Line in the region,
- and divided the Pashtun people forever. This
led inexorably on to the Pashtunistan movement
aimed at unification of the Pashtuns in
Afghanistan and Pakistan aggravating the
relations between the two countries.

      The ties got strained further in 1973 when
Afghanistan's Daud regime deployed considerable
forces on the borders with Pakistan. The nadir in
the relations however, was yet to be reached.
That came with the installation of a left wing
government with the support of Soviet forces in
Kabul in 1981. It was then that Pakistan's rulers
adopted the Taliban as their protègè, with
Islamabad acting as a proxy for Washington and
the ISI for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
of the US.

      Islamabad abandoned the Taliban, officially,
only when the Americans (who had funded and armed
the fundamentalists and made them a
Frankenstein's monster) did so, too. There is
little doubt about the love lost between
Islamabad under Musharraf and the Pashtun
militants, especially after their attempts on the
general's life. The regime's encounters with
fierce opposition in the Pashtun-dominated
provinces of North Western Frontier Province
(NWFP), which has elected a pro-Taliban
provincial government, and Baluchistan have not
endeared the Afghan resistance to Pakistan's
establishment as a whole.

      Pakistan's information minister, Sheikh
Rashid, has certainly a point in saying that
Islamabad supported the Taliban "only in the
past." Not many, however, would put it past the
ISI, or at least sections of it, to try to employ
its surviving Taliban contacts in an anti-India
cause.

      President Karzai has never stopped, ever
since he came to power, trying to link Islamabad
with the Taliban and terrorism. His allegations
in this respect, obviously addressed to the
George Bush regime, include the one most
indignantly disputed by Islamabad: that al-Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan,
implying that Pakistan is harboring an "Islamic"
terrorist whom Washington has made a household
name worldwide.

      I have had occasion in the past to talk about
the coexistence of India and Pakistan in the
Bush-led alliance against "global terror" serving
no cause of peace in South Asia. Surya's killing
has now led to the spectacle of three
anti-"terrorist" allies of the US in the region
engaged in a further disservice to the cause held
dear by the common people they claim to represent.

      A freelance journalist and a peace activist
of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of
Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a
regular contributor to t r u t h o u t.

_____


6.

HALT, WHO IS SNEAKING IN?
by M B Naqvi
(The News International, May 17, 2006)

The writer is a veteran journalist and freelance columnist.

We now know what was implied in being a non-NATO
ally of America. It includes not only NATO troops
in Afghanistan, but also NATO offices inside
Pakistan. Pakistan is an active ally in NATO's
new role outside Europe. NATO has clarified: it
is not setting up an office but only an office
for liaison with the press. Does this explanation
render irrelevant the points one intends making?
When did Pakistanis debate the implications of
being an unsigned NATO member? There is however
no ambiguity about who took the decision,
national debates on crucial issues being thought
unnecessary.

One can be accused of straining at the gnat after
swallowing the camel. The FBI is all over the
place. Each Pakistani while leaving Pakistan or
coming back is photographed and the fact recorded
-- where? In FBI's database, of course.
Pakistanis are under watch just as Americans'
communications with outsiders are under a
microscope, collated and analysed by super
computers. George Orwell's Big Brother is here --
in the US and Pakistan.

NATO has reminded Pakistanis of its duties in,
vis-à-vis, Afghanistan. The Polish vice foreign
minister, Witold Waszezykowski, had informed of
the large role that 'expanded NATO' has in
fighting terrorism. Logically it would be hard to
restrict this role to Asia or anywhere. The
capabilities of NATO and the US would be the only
limiting factor, if indeed there are any limits
to them. Well, Pakistan is in it. The first
priority is to record one's own dissent from
accepting such a role. The readers can decide for
themselves whether they would love to be NATO's
foot soldiers.

The issue must be discussed on merit, although
being post factum, it would be futile. What is
being fought against is an ideology and political
conduct (terrorism). The Polish official
graciously conceded that a military option should
be the last resort; other options come first. But
NATO being NATO, its role is strictly military
and NATO is not concerned with political or
ideological remedies. What is being witnessed is
the spectacle of the strongest military powers
proclaiming their resolve to fight Islamic
extremism. This dangerously looks like a new
version of the Medieval Crusades and goes without
saying. How can the Bush administration and NATO
hide the fact that they are only fighting
terrorism by Islamicists? They must have chosen
the best means of achieving victory over them.
The rulers of Pakistan have to answer a question:
have you thought through what you are getting
into and what will Pakistan get out of it?

The problem also has a domestic dimension. The
rise of Taliban in the two Waziristans,
Balochistan and other areas of NWFP is a fact of
life. There are supporters of al-Qaeda and other
Islamic movements aiming at, in differing
versions of forming a uniquely Islamic
dispensation in, and of, Muslim countries. Some
call for a worldwide caliphate.

This is certainly a problem that Pakistan has to
face and face courageously. By courage one does
not imply being trigger-happy. What is intended
is free rational and democratic debate: no one's
ideas are, ab initio or per se, to be assumed
good or bad. Pakistanis have to rationally decide
whether they want a caliphate in Pakistan? A sort
of uniformed caliphate is already in place. Which
is not vastly different from Mulla Omar's
caliphate in Afghanistan: in both cases the
decision-making on important matters is, and was,
by one man. Only, President Musharraf does not
pretend to be the religious head of the country
or even of Muslims. But he regards himself as the
Sipah-e-Salar of an Islamic army.

Don't forget, calling anything Islamic does not
make it sacred or divine. A caliphate too will be
the result of political struggles by some
politicians; it can only be a human construct,
liable to be faulty. Look around.

The reality underneath Afghanistan's caliphate
was a one-man dictatorship, assisted by an
extremist and intolerant party, with mind-sets
steeped in ancient Afghan prejudices masquerading
as Islamic. What happened in Sudan was a
controversial mullah-general dictatorship. In
Iran a clerics' group rules, keeping commoners
out and some mullahs suppressed. Caliphate can
only be a dictatorship of this or that maulvi or
a Zia-like general.

The discussion should centre around whether
Pakistanis will be better off in a simple
democratic dispensation, devoting energies to
improving the material living conditions of
common people, or in organising a personal
dictatorship of some pious-seeming Muslim (male)
whose abilities may not include a grasp on world
affairs, economic matters or a deference to
democratic values. This debate has to be
organised with argumentation and if the majority
of Pakistanis do opt for a caliphate by a MMA
leader, so be it, though one would disapprove.

But consider the role the US required Pakistan to
play in Afghanistan, and by extension in most of
the regions around, as a non-NATO ad hoc ally.
Being a non-NATO ally means that while Pakistan
will strive to achieve US security objectives,
the US will have no reciprocal obligations. It
means Pakistan implementing American and NATO
designs. What are these designs? Superficially,
it is fighting terrorism, held up as an
international threat to western capitalist
democracies. But it will help promote what
America calls democracy. However, considering the
American conduct in areas around Afghanistan,
Iraq or what the US may do vis-à-vis Iran, it
would not be tackling terrorists as much as it
would be promoting American strategic interests.

America is not an obscure phenomenon. The
American system is quite open and everything is
discussed there -- to its credit. The
Neo-Conservatives have moulded American thought
to an extent that it is hard to see whether a
succeeding Democrat president would be able to
seriously depart from their script. A Democrat
president may emphasise a few social problems of
the American society while a Republican one would
still strive to make this an American Century. On
security matters both parties tend to share the
same overarching thinking -- the difference
between them on security matters is one of
Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

To repeat, what does the Pakistan government
expect from becoming a foot soldier for the
American cause? True, the regime fervently
believes in the American cause; it is convinced
that without American aid and support Pakistan
cannot be run; the Pakistan economy requires
constant aid from IFIs for which American support
is necessary. Even day-to-day running of the
state requires American support and aid. That
seems to be the reason why Islamabad prefers
being foot soldiers of America. But is there no
other option for Pakistan?

Can the 152 million Pakistanis not freely decide
to rebuild the country themselves in a
self-reliant way into a place where the people's
interests are supreme and where the hitherto
supreme elites can be sidelined, left to enjoy
their leisure and money. Only, they should be
driven out of the decision-making positions.
Aren't there people who favour such ideas?

_____


7.

BUSH-BACKERS WANT INTERVENTIONIST INDIA
by J. Sri Raman
(truthout.org, 7 June 2006)

      Must India have and act on a Monroe Doctrine
of its own? Or must the country go for a modified
version of the doctrine? Far from academic is the
debate on these questions that Indian foreign
policy and security experts of a certain
description have set in motion. The debate can
portend a danger that merits note by the
peace-preferring majority in the region.

      The questions are a natural corollary to
recent developments seen as the dawn of an
India-US "strategic partnership." The
developments - including a US-India nuclear deal
and President George Bush's mission to India that
promised even more in a common cause of
"democracy" - have raised hopes here of a greater
regional role for the leading and largest country
of South Asia. The debaters are, in fact,
discussing a role for India that is remarkably
similar to the one that its strategic partner
seeks to arrogate for itself in the international
arena.

      The Monroe Doctrine, propounded by US
President James Monroe in 1823, demanded a
discontinuation of all efforts by European powers
to colonize the Americas and offered US
non-intervention in European affairs in return.
The avowedly anti-colonial doctrine then rapidly
degenerated into one for an especially US form of
colonialism. Bush, as we know, has carried this
neo-colonialism far beyond the USA's own backyard.

      India's variant of the document, as peddled
by its votaries, gives the country the right of
interference and intervention, including the
military kind, in the internal affairs of its
immediate neighbors. The "strategic partnership,"
according to them, reinforces this right.

      There have been two major instances of such
intervention in the past. The first was India's
all-important role in the Bangladesh war of 1971,
which created a new state that has not become a
staunch ally of the country. The second was the
intervention in Sri Lanka by an Indian
Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) in the 80s, which
proved a costly mis-adventure and led (according
to the official version) to the assassination of
former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. The
experience has served to keep India away from
military embroilment in neighbors' affairs ever
since.

      There are two instances, again, where pundits
of the "strategic partnership" camp would like
India to intervene now - effectively, if not
militarily, in the immediate context. It is
Nepal, where the masses have just overthrown a
hated monarchy, to which these experts want India
to turn its attention first. They see an
opportunity in the current visit to India of new
Nepal prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala for
four-day talks on cooperation in many fields,
especially the economic.

      Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government is
under considerable pressure from these quarters
to try to conclude an India-Nepal Treaty to
replace the pact of 1950, which has no popular
support in the Himalayan nation all these years.
The counsel for a revised treaty, "more
representative of the times we live in" as one of
these experts puts it, is being proffered and
pressed despite the clear mandate to Koirala
against signing any new treaty now from two major
political blocs in Nepal - the Seven-Party
Alliance (SPA) in power in Kathmandu and the
Maoists, whom the SPA seeks to bring into the
political mainstream.

      Along with the treaty, the experts are also
selling the idea of pro-active New Delhi moves to
tame the Maoists. The subject deserves separate
treatment at the end of the Koirala mission, but
it is already clear that the Indian government
will be increasingly under pressure to
participate in Nepal's ceasefire process,
possibly under the auspices of the United Nations
(with the Maoists willing to accept UN monitoring
of the process). Such participation by India,
obviously, can come perilously close to military
intervention.

      Sri Lanka, according to the same experts,
provides the second opportunity for India to
spread its wings under the "strategic
partnership." With the "peace process" between
Colombo and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE) breaking down and armed conflict rocking
the island nation again, they argue, it is time
for New Delhi to think of options other than a
defense pact with the Sri Lankan regime under
President Mahinda Rajapakse. This subject, too,
merits a separate discussion, but the main point
of the security think-tank is that the Singh
regime should not let embarrassing memories of
the 80s stop it from intervening.

      Says C. Raja Mohan, an eminent member of this
elite club of experts: "India staying aloof from
the peace process in Sri Lanka has not helped in
any way. India now needs to prepare itself for a
more direct role as well as build an
international coalition to raise the pressure on
both parties to see reason." This course is
commended all the more for the failure of Norway
as a mediator in the conflict.

      The experts, ably aided by editorial writers,
insist upon the international dimension also as
an inevitable corollary to the newfound
"strategic partnership." The support of
Washington and its Western allies for an enlarged
regional role for India, it is argued, makes
eminently possible the country's intervention in
its neighborhood as part of a multilateral
initiative. This indeed will be the "smart
intervention," as some put it.

      Bangladesh may not figure as a case for
immediate or early intervention in the campaign,
but the far right in India has long projected the
country's eastern, Islamic neighbor as a source
of "demographic invasion." Not surprisingly, the
fervently patriotic calls for India to adopt an
interventionist role in its proximity raise fears
in the nation born of an Indian military
intervention over three decades ago. And it is a
Bangladeshi critic who has brought out best a
striking similarity between the Bush doctrine and
the interventionism that the Indian experts
advocate.

      Writing in Dhaka's Daily Star two years ago,
when a Maoist blockade of Kathmandu led to calls
for India's intervention in Nepal, former
Bangladeshi general Shahedul Anam Khan said that
these were based "on the now commonly touted
rationale of President Bush: the principle of
preemption. If India's interest is threatened,
and its predominance in South Asia diluted, it
would do well not to stick to soft options only
but go for the more direct (and the more
dangerous) option" The similarity between the two
doctrines has only become more striking.

      Advocates of a modified version of the Monroe
Doctrine for India, modified to provide for
multilateral interventionism, ignore a major fact
of history. The doctrine may have let the US stay
insular for a long period, but India will be
denied such a luxury under the "strategic
partnership." Can India hope to play the regional
role the campaigners envisage without becoming a
camp-follower in the Bush crusades elsewhere?

      A freelance journalist and a peace activist
of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of
Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a
regular contributor to t r u t h o u t.



_____


8. ARMS SALES TO THE REGION; ACQUISITIONS PLANS AND THE PLAYERS:

EDITORIAL: EYES IN THE SKY
(Daily Times, May 26, 2006)

The federal cabinet has finally approved the
proposed $1 billion acquisition from Sweden of an
AEW&C (airborne early warning and control
system). The AEW&C system, referred to as
"eyes-in-the-sky", is a force multiplier
platform. Force multiplication means the ability
of a system to integrate the capabilities of
various assets by gathering information and
communicating it to increase coordination and
operational effectiveness.

There are four manufacturers of AEW&C systems and
Sweden's SAAB, which Pakistan has opted for, is
one of them. The system consists of Ericsson's
Erieye radar fitted aboard a SAAB 2000 airframe.
Another manufacturer is Israel's Elta Industries.
India struck a deal in 2004 for an Israeli
Elta-manufactured Phalcon AEW&C system, which was
to be fitted on Russian-manufactured Ilyushin
Il-76 aircraft. The trilateral deal was delayed
because of Russia's objections to various clauses
in it. If the deal had gone through, however,
India would have become the only state in the
region to possess an AEW&C system. That prospect
has been upstaged by Pakistan's acquisition of
the Swedish system. The other two AEW&C systems
are both American: Lockheed Martin's AN/APS-145
radar installed primarily aboard Northrop
Grumman's Hawkeye platform and Northrop Grumman's
Multi-role Electronically Scanned Array (MESA)
sensor mounted on a Boeing 737 air-frame.
Pakistan did not opt for the US systems because
they were far more costly with just the
platform's price being about $60-70 million.

But why did Pakistan need an AEW&C system?

This is an important question because there has
been much opposition to the sale, especially in
the wake of the earthquake, which has
necessitated funds to rehabilitate hundreds of
thousands of survivors.

Pakistan is a nuclear power like its rival India.
Both states want reliable early warning systems
to avoid any surprises or even misunderstanding.
Even if there were no nuclear weapons involved in
the equation, they say an early warning
force-multiplier system has a deterrent value
against adventurism by the other side. In
Pakistan's case, Islamabad has made no major
weapons acquisitions in the last five years,
especially of force-multiplier platforms. So its
acquisition plan for the next five years stands
at $9 billion. This is a lot of money for a
lower-middle income country with low literacy and
high poverty levels. So there will be civilian
complaints, notwithstanding the military value of
these acquisitions.

AEW&C systems are multi-role. Modern aircraft fly
low to avoid radar detection. AEW&C aircraft
solve this problem of "radar horizon limitation"
by elevating the radar above the earth's surface
so it can scan flying objects from "directly
below out to a range of hundreds of kilometres".
This means that low-flying aircraft cannot "sneak
up" to the target. But this is just one aspect of
an AEW&C system. It "provides a platform that can
gather information from a wide variety of
sources, analyse it and distribute it to all
friendly air and surface assets". It can control
the tactical battle-space and provide direction
to not only airborne fighter aircraft, but also
naval and other surface-based air defence
elements. It is capable of doing so because of
its sensors, communications facilities and
operational experts.

The decision to purchase the system may plug into
a very important requirement. However, as with
all such acquisitions, the military should
involve the civilian government in such
decision-making from the evaluation of the
equipment to the final decision to acquire it.
Recent reports that some parts of the defence
budget will be placed before the parliament are
commendable but this falls short of the complete
monitoring and oversight required by parliament.
That is the objective towards which we need to
move. It will also solve the recurring problem of
criticism that every military purchase attracts
and much of which is based on speculation,
disinformation and lack of expertise.
Transparency is the only way to bridge the chasm
that has developed between the military and the
civilian side. The onus of responsibility in this
regard lies with the military. *

o o o

Pakistan to buy one-billion-dollar AWACS

Thu May 25, 2:33 AM ET

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistan's cabinet has given
the green light for the purchase of an Airborne
Warning and Control System (AWACS) from Sweden at
a cost of one billion dollars, officials said.

A cabinet meeting under Prime Minister Shaukat
Aziz approved the deal Wednesday following
negotiations with Saab and Ericsson, the joint
manufacturers of the aircraft-mounted radar.

"The Federal Cabinet accorded the go-ahead to the
Ministry of Defence Production of the proposed
purchase of AWACS aircraft from Sweden," an
official statement issued on Thursday after the
cabinet meeting said.

The statement did not say how many aircraft Pakistan would buy.

The AWACS purchase is seen as a bid to match a
deal by rival India in 2004 to buy three Phalcon
airborne early warning radar systems from
Israel and Russia worth 1.1 billion dollars.

The Pakistan Air Force desperately needs the
system to make up for the existing gap in air
surveillance capability, a military official
said. Pakistan currently relies on a ground-based
radar system.

Negotiations were initiated with Saab and
Ericsson in October 2005 and much of the
preparatory work has already been done, the
official said.

The deal shows that Pakistan has been able to
offset the heavy losses caused by last year's
South Asian earthquake, which had forced it to
temporarily postpone the long-awaited purchase of
around 25 US-built F-16 fighters.

Pakistan agreed in April to purchase a scaled-down package of F-16s.

Pakistan spends around a fifth of its budget on
defence despite at least a third of its more than
150 million people living in poverty.

o o o

AWACS PURCHASE OKAYED
(Dawn, May 25, 2006)
http://www.dawn.com/2006/05/25/top3.htm

____


PAKISTAN INCREASES ITS WARSHIP ARSENAL
(United Press International - May 17, 2006)
http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20060517-011030-32\
63r

FRIGATE DEAL WITH CHINA FINALIZED
(Dawn, May 23, 2006)
http://www.dawn.com/2006/05/23/top18.htm

_____


FMS PAKISTAN HARPOON BLOCK II ANTI-SHIP MISSILES

Staff Writers (Space Daily, June 5, 2006)
WASHINGTON, June 1
The Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of a possible
Foreign Military Sale to Pakistan of HARPOON Block II Anti-ship Missiles as
well as associated equipment and services. The total value, if all options
are exercised, could be as high as $370 million.

The Government of Pakistan has requested a possible sale of;

- 50 UGM-84L (submarine-launched),
- 50 RGM-84L (surface-launched),
- and 30 AGM-84L (air-launched) Block II HARPOON missiles;
- 5 Encapsulated HARPOON Command Launch Systems;
- 115 containers;
- missile modifications;
- training devices;
- spare and repair parts
- technical support;
- support equipment;
- personnel training and training equipment;
- technical data and publications;
- U.S. Government and contractor engineering and logistics support services;
- and other related elements of logistics support.
The estimated cost is $370 million.

This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national
security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a
friendly country that continues to be a key ally in the global war on
terrorism.

Pakistan intends to use the HARPOON systems on its P-3 aircraft, surface
ships, and submarines. The Pakistan Navy currently has AGM-84 Block I
air/surface/subsurface launch capability and recently accepted the Block II
air- and surface-launched HARPOON.

The AGM-84, HARPOON Block II upgraded targeting capability significantly
reduces the risk of hitting non-combatant targets thus improving Pakistan's
naval operational flexibility. Pakistan will have no difficulty absorbing
these additional missiles into its armed forces.

The HARPOON Block II system will provide a significant upgrade to Pakistan's
existing systems and allow for improved target acquisition. The system has
an increased number of waypoints associated with missile flight and
incorporates a Global Positioning System that allows for precision use.

The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not affect the basic
military balance in the region.

The prime contractor will be The Boeing Company of St. Louis, Missouri.
There are no known offset agreements proposed in connection with this
potential sale.

Implementation of this proposed sale will require several U.S. Government
and contractor representatives to travel to Pakistan on a temporary basis in
conjunction with program technical and management oversight and support
requirements.

There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness as a result of
this proposed sale.

This notice of a potential sale is required by law; it does not mean that
the sale has been concluded.

o o o

US PLANS MISSILE GIFT TO PAK
(The Telegraph, June 01, 2006)
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060601/asp/frontpage/story_6297189.asp

____

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=1840676&C=thisweek
Posted 06/05/06 11:42

France OKs Sub Talks With Pakistan
Islamabad Wants U.S. Harpoon Missiles To Arm Subs
By PIERRE TRAN, PARIS

France has cleared Armaris to offer three patrol
submarines to Pakistan, lifting a bureaucratic
barrier to the naval export company's efforts to
sell the planned Marlin SSK boat, a French
defense executive said.
But there is another snag on the horizon:
Pakistan wants its new subs to come with the
Boeing Harpoon antiship missile, not the Exocet
SM39 from European missile maker MBDA, the
executive said.
Acquiring the Harpoons won't be the problem.
White House officials notified Congress on May 31
that Boeing intends to sell 130 of the missiles,
including 30 submarine-launched versions and
related equipment, to Pakistan for $370 million.
But offering the U.S. missile over the European
one could draw opposition from the French
government and other local firms.
Armaris is vying to supply Pakistan with three
single-hulled, diesel-electric submarines
equipped with air-independent propulsion, a deal
likely to be worth $1 billion to $1.2 billion.
Pakistani officials have said they also would
consider the Class 214 submarine from Germany's
Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW) or a Chinese
sub. Italian and Russian bids also are expected.
"It will be a very, very tough competition," the French executive said.
India in October purchased six Scorpene boats
from Armaris, and construction of the first boat
began April 28 with the cutting of the first hull
plate in Cherbourg, France, which will be sent to
India, where Mazagon Docks will build and outfit
the six boats under Armaris' supervision as prime
contractor.
A victory in Pakistan would likely mean a launch
customer for the Marlin, which will be an upgrade
to state-owned shipbuilder DCN's 10-year-old
Scorpene submarine technology, and a new entry to
compete in a crowded market.
Just getting this far has been a protracted
process for Armaris, a marketing joint venture
between DCN and Thales.
Before a French arms maker can offer weapons to a
foreign customer, the company must receive the
approval of the high-level Commission
Interministérielle d'Etude et d'Exportation de
Matériel de Guerre (CIEEMG). If buyer and seller
then come to an agreement, the sale also must be
authorized by the CIEEMG.
In January, the CIEEMG withheld its approval,
reportedly so as not to upset Pakistan's regional
rival India. Nevertheless, Armaris officials made
an informal pitch to a Pakistani delegation
several weeks later.
In February, Indian officials signed contracts to
buy six Exocet-armed Scorpene subs and 43 Airbus
airliners worth $2.5 billion at list prices.
On May 10, Armaris received a formal invitation
from Pakistan to bid on the three subs, and
subsequently received the CIEEMG's approval to do
so, the defense executive said. A Pakistan
official confirmed that authorization had been
granted for the sale.
"It's good news," he said.
Officials from the French Defense Ministry and
the Délégation Générale pour l'Armament
procurement office were not immediately available
for comment
Obstacles
Coming up with a deal that satisfies all concerned will be challenging.
Among the difficult parts is "how to make an
offer that does not upset India," the executive
said. Among other considerations, New Delhi,
which plans to buy more than 100 jet fighters, is
currently deciding between France's Dassault
Rafale and other foreign aircraft, including the
F-16 built by Lockheed Martin, the F/A-18E/F by
Boeing, the JAS 39 Gripen by Sweden's Saab and
the MiG-29M, offered by Russia's Irkut.
Another potential stumbling block is Islamabad's
request for technology transfer as part of the
sub deal, which raises the spectre of Pakistani
defense firms soon competing against French ones.
Yet another sticky wicket is Pakistan's interest in the Harpoon missile.
Islamabad wants the Harpoon because it offers
longer range, more accuracy, and potentially
fewer export approval delays than the Exocet, the
Pakistani official said.
But French industry has been given to understand
its government's export committee will never
authorize the Marlin sale if it means putting a
U.S. weapon on a French platform, the executive
said.
A pick of the Harpoon would pose the question:
Who would pay for the weapon's integration, said
Robbin Laird, an analyst with ICSA, a consulting
firm based here and in Washington. It was
unlikely Pakistan had the money to pay for the
work and France would balk at paying to integrate
an American weapon on a French submarine, he
said. "We wouldn't," he added.
Even if Pakistan were to pay for the integration,
France would ask whether it was in DCN's interest
to do it, he said. An alternative would be a buy
of a German boat, he said. But the terms would
have to be right for German industry, which is
unlikely to sell at a loss.
As for whether the Harpoon was a better weapon,
much depended on the Pakistan Navy's mission
requirement, Laird said.
Pakistan already operates French subs, thanks to
a 1994 deal to buy and build three Agosta 90B
Khalid boats. The first was built by DCN at its
Cherbourg yard, the second was assembled in
Karachi Naval Dockyard, and the third boat is
being fitted with the Mesma air-independent
propulsion system, also in Pakistan.
These subs were sold with Exocets. They are
capable of firing the Harpoon, but this has not
been tested, the French executive said.
"They are fitted for, but no tests have been done," he said.
The schedule for the new sub program is tight.
Formal offers are due in July, and Pakistan wants
to pick a winner by the end of the year.
But the French executive said that preparing the
offer could take six months, thanks to Pakistan's
unusually detailed specifications - for example,
the number of propeller blades.
"That's the first time I have seen that," the executive said.
"The Indian Ocean is an ocean we're very
interested in and we want to continue engaging
with all the countries in the region, including
Pakistan," said Rear Adm. Joseph Walsh, the
director of the U.S. Navy's Submarine Warfare
Division. "It's in our interest that our friends
and allies have robust submarine and stronger
naval capabilities in general."
Indian defense ministry officials said they would
watch the development carefully and cautiously.
One Indian analyst said France's decision to
allow Armaris to pitch its submarine to Pakistan
seemed baffling, because it would intensify the
future debates when India considers buying a
French weapon. *
Vago Muradian in Washington and Vivek Raghuvanshi
in New Delhi contributed to this report.

_____




BATTLE FOR ARMS
Sandeep Unnithan, Prerana Thakurdesai
(India Today, May 1, 2006, Pg. 14)

DELHI The battle for a share of the Indian defence pie-the country is the
world's largest arms importer-has begun and some of the biggest US defence
firms are frontrunners for a slice. The Indian Air Force (IAF) wants 126
medium combat aircraft worth $6-8 billion (Rs 36,000 cr) and the Indian Navy
wants eight long-range maritime patrol aircraft worth $2 billion (Rs 9,000
cr).

Leading the pack is Boeing with its F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter-bomber and
its still-under-development P-8A maritime patrol aircraft for the Indian
Navy based on the widely used 737 civil jetliner. Boeing is offering to
develop a special variant called the P-8 'India', fitted with Indian
electronics and systems. Its nearest competitors in these two lucrative
contracts are not Russian firms, but a rival US firm. Lockheed Martin is
pitching its F-16 to the IAF and the P-3C Orion to the navy.

With the two contracts collectively said to be worth nearly a whopping $10
billion (Rs 45,000 crore), the gloves are off. Boeing representatives who
were in town recently for a high-level presentation to the mod for the P-8A
refused to talk about Russian firms ("we don't talk about the competition").
They have no qualms talking about rivals Lockheed Martin, in private, of
course.

The F-16 has a 30-year-old design and the P-3C Orion platform dates back to
the 1950s. Not surprisingly, it's the mod, the IAF and the navy which are
having the last laugh as they hope to squeeze out a better deal.

-By Sandeep Unnithan

_____

Financial Express
May 24, 2006

EADS GUNS FOR INDIA DEAL
Press Trust Of India
http://www.financialexpress.com/latest_full_story.php?content_id=128227

BERLIN, MAY 24:  In a bid to tap the Indian
market, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space
Consortium is in the race to provide hi-tech
early warning systems for helicopters and
armoured vehicles of the Indian Army besides
offering ground-based radars and unmanned aerial
vehicles.

"Early Warning (EW) systems are in increasing
demand worldwide with even terrorists possessing
shoulder-fired missiles to attack helicopters. We
have requests from India for these equipment and
we are in the bidding process to step into this
business in India," Bernhard Gerwert, CEO and
President of EADS Defence Electronics, told PTI
on the sidelines of an international air-show,
which concluded here on Sunday.

He said the EADS would tie up with Indian
companies to produce these highly sophisticated
equipments and also hold talks with Indian
research institutes to develop and evolve the
product pattern.

Gerwert, accompanied by company Vice President
Alexander Reinhardt, said the Army has been
asking EADS whether the system could be developed
further for protecting armoured vehicles.

"The land forces have been asking for the same
technology ... They want the same electronic
equipment to protect tanks and armoured vehicles.
We have developed this equipment for German land
forces," he said, adding that negotiations were
continuing with Indian companies on the issue.

Gerwert said that his firm was producing large
variety of equipment for COMINT (Communication
Intelligence), SIGINT (Signal Intelligence) and
ELINT (Electronic Intelligence). "We are
developing these in India through our South
African subsidiary, Green Tech Aviation," he
added without elaborating on the nature of such
devices.


____



The Indian military's gold mine
By Indrajit Basu
(Asia Times, May 23, 2006)

KOLKATA - Although India has planned for the past
five years to allow the private sector to
manufacture hardware for its defense needs and to
depend less on "outdated" government-owned
defense factories, little progress has been made.

Finally, with two Indian companies winning a
US$22-million order each to make an indigenously
developed multi-barrel rocket launcher, called
the Pinaka, the private sector seems to have
cracked the ice in the country's
multibillion-dollar defense supply industry.

On March 29, the army authorized Tata Power and
Larsen and Toubro, both engineering companies, to
make 40 Pinakas that the Defense Research and
Development Organization (DRDO)- responsible for
localizing and upgrading the country's military
hardware - has been developing for the past 20
years but was unable to produce "efficiently".

Although at $44 million the order could hardly be
termed as big in the global arms market, it is
significant because it is the first prime order
for a defense project awarded to the Indian
private sector. Until the Pinaka deal, the
private sector's contributions were limited to
acting as an outsourcer for either ordinance
factories or global arms majors.

Even though Tata Power and Larsen and Toubro had
been working with the DRDO in the development of
the Pinaka for almost two decades, they were not
allowed to produce earlier because procurement
policies did not allow Indian companies to
participate in the country's defense production.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HE23Df01.html


SAAB'S GRIPEN FIGHTER AIRCRAFT FACES CRUCIAL SALES TEST IN INDIA
MarketWatch - May 19, 2006
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?dist=newsfinder&siteid=google&g\
uid=%7BBF78E8A4-C648-40A6-B85A-29BC68A4BC80%7D&keyword=


Aviation: BELL HOVERS OVER $400 MN INDIA CHOPPER SALE
AP
(http://www.financialexpress.com/latest_full_story.php?content_id=128771&pn=0
Financial Express
May 29, 2006)

FORT WORTH (US), MAY 29 :  Looking at India as a
major market to drive global sales over the next
two decades, US aviation major Bell Helicopter is
in the race to sell 197 helicopters to the Army
in a deal estimated to be worth nearly 400
million dollars.

The company, which chalked up sales of 20 million
dollars in India last year, expects demand for
its helicopters will be largely from sectors like
emergency medical services, corporate
transportation and services for offshore oil
fields, said Bob Fitzpatrick, Senior Vice
President of marketing and sales.

"We expect the Indian market for helicopters to
grow to 4.3 billion dollars over the next 20
years, with 40 per cent of the demand from the
civilian sector," Fitzpatrick told a select group
of Indian journalists who toured Bell's
facilities in Texas.

"We are also looking at India as a regional hub
for training and product support," he said,
adding Bell was "more comfortable" about working
from India than other countries in South Asia.

Bell is competing with Eurocopter for the
contract to sell 197 helicopters to the Army
Aviation Corps, and its 407 model has
successfully completed hot and cold weather
trials in India. Though officials did not give
the price for the helicopter, sources said each
aircraft and its support equipment were worth
about 1.8 million dollars.

Fitzpatrick admitted Bell, which clocked
worldwide revenues of 2.1 billion dollars last
year, was hoping it would bag the Army contract
to provide "impetus to grow in India".

Having already signed a five million dollar
contract with state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics
Limited (HAL) to manufacture tail rotors for its
hugely successful 206 model, Bell has offered to
transfer 85 per cent of the technology related to
the 407 model so that it can be built in India if
it bags the Army contract.

According to the Army's proposal, 60 helicopters
will be bought off the shelf while HAL will
co-produce the remaining aircraft following the
transfer of technology.

"We see HAL as a key partner for a range of
things. As Bell expects to double its business in
five years, manufacturing capacity is an issue
and it's a smart thing to partner with firms like
HAL," said Jay Ortiz, Bell's campaign Director
for international military sales.

Bell currently has more than 50 per cent share of
the Indian market for rotary aircraft, having
sold 70 of the 120 helicopters flying in the
country. Its major customers in India include
Pawan Hans and Deccan Aviation.

"This figure will grow to 81 aircraft by the
first quarter of 2007, and we want to be
aggressive in India as it is going to be a big
market irrespective of whether we bag the Army
programme," said Fitzpatrick.

He said Bell was also looking at innovative means
like "fractional ownership" -- or sales to a
group of individuals who would collectively use a
helicopter -- to drive sales in India. This, he
said, would be done in collaboration with an
Indian partner who will be selected soon.

Fitzpatrick, however, pointed out that India's
civilian market for helicopters was being "held
back" by the lack of infrastructure and trained
pilots.

"There has to be more opening up of the Indian
skies as flying people in helicopters over some
metropolitan areas is still restricted,"
Fitzpatrick said.

Bell has an office in New Delhi to support its
Indian customers while Textron, its parent
organisation, has a global technology centre at
Bangalore that is involved in research in
innovative areas like establishing whether
airbags can be used to protect helicopters from
crashes.

The company is also working with researchers in
the Bangalore-based National Aerospace
Laboratories and the Indian Institutes of
Technology

(IITs) on various projects, including wind tunnel tests to validate designs.

"The global technology centre has about 150
people and we plan to increase this to 200 by the
yearend. Bell has also hired four people from the
IITs for research in aerodynamics," said
Fitzpatrick.

_____


9     MILITARISATION AND CIVIL SOCIETY:

PANEL CALLS FOR END TO SALWA JUDUM CAMPAIGN
(The Hindu, May 30, 2006)
http://www.hindu.com/2006/05/30/stories/2006053004141300.htm


CHHATTISGARH : REPRESSION GARBED AS SECURITY
(Editorial EPW May 27, 2006)
http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2006&leaf=05&filename=10119&filetype\
=pdf


PHYSIOGNOMY OF VIOLENCE
(The Economic and Political Weekly, June 3, 2006)
A cycle of violence and counter-violence is devastating the lives
of adivasis in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh, a Maoist
"liberated area". There is no official record of the number of
persons killed as a result of the brutal violence of the Salwa Judum.
While the Maoists had put an end to the severe harassment of the
adivasis by forest and police officials, successfully resisted
domination and oppression of the adivasis by the patel-patwari,
and raised the rate for picking the tendu leaf, there are certain
conflicts of interest in the present context of a counter-insurgency
that have created a divide within the tribal community, which
makes the present atmosphere tense.
K Balagopal
http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2006&leaf=06&filename=10152&filetype\
=pdf


PRESS RELEASE BY INDEPENDENT CITIZENS INITIATIVE,
NEW DELHI 29TH  MAY 2006

CITIZENS' PANEL WARNS OF CIVIL WAR IN CHHATTISGARH
Calls for end to 'Salwa Judum' campaign and judicial inquiry

An Independent Citizen's Initiative of writers,
senior journalists and former civil servants
visited Dantewara district of Chhattisgarh State
between 17 and 21 May 2006. It traveled through
the entire district talking to a wide
cross-section of people - displaced villagers in
camps, political leaders, government and police
officials, social workers, journalists, and other
citizens. It found that the situation in
Dantewara district is extremely serious. There is
an atmosphere of fear and a great deal of
violence in which ordinary villagers, and tribals
in particular, are the main sufferers. The
violence by Maoists guerillas continues. On the
other side, in several areas the Chhattisgarh
administration appears to have 'outsourced' law
and order to an unaccountable, undisciplined and
amorphous group which calls itself Salwa Judum.
The leadership of this group has passed into the
hands of criminal elements who are not in the
control of the administration. Violence is no
answer to violence.

Our investigations show that the civil
administration is on the point of collapse.
Despite carrying letters from the Additional
Chief Secretary and informing all officials of
our visit, our movement was strictly curbed. We
were prevented from visiting villages where
serious human rights violations were reported. We
were physically attacked three times by Salwa
Judum members, manhandled, and our possessions
stolen, with the police standing by.

We found that society has been deeply divided.
Villages and families have been set against each
other. Minors are being used as Special Police
Officers (SPOs), and armed with lathis and guns.
An entire section of society is being
criminalized by being made complicit in salwa
judum's violence, and also made vulnerable to
retaliatory attacks by Maoists and their village
level supporters. Instead of bringing in peace
and security, Salwa Judum has increased
insecurity all around.

The Independent Citizen's Initiative found
evidence of killings, the burning of homes, and
attacks on women, including gang-rape. Only the
killings by Maoists are recorded, while the
killings and other incidents of violence by Salwa
Judum have been ignored. Arrests appear
arbitrary, and several people seem to be missing.
All these incidents need to be thoroughly
investigated. The press is tightly controlled and
intimidated, and feels unable to report the
truth.

Thousands of villagers have been forced to come
and live in camps. Camp conditions are seriously
inadequate. Beyond building some roadside houses,
the government appears to have no long-term plans
for the rehabilitation or safe return of
villagers.
   We believe that for the violence to end, and for
the citizens of Dantewara to live peaceful and
normal lives, the Government of Chhattisgarh
needs to immediately take these corrective
measures:

1. The Salwa Judum must be stopped immediately,
its members disarmed, and control reasserted by
the state administration.
2. To restore governance, the government must
revamp all top level administration in the area
and position those known to have empathy for
adivasis.  The law-and-order machinery must be
repaired and restored so that it is fully
accountable and protects the lives, security and
dignity of the citizens of Dantewara.
3. The government must facilitate and enable the
return to their villages of those in camps. For
this, both Maoists and the government must come
to a ceasefire.
4. The Chhattisgarh Special Public Safety Act
2005 must be repealed since its provisions are
vague and vulnerable to misuse.

We appeal to the Government of India, jointly
with the Government of Chhattisgarh, to:

5. Institute a full, impartial, credible and
time-bound enquiry into the incidents of violence
by Maoists as well as Salwa Judum in Dantewara in
the last one year.
6. Since the Maoists are not confined to
Chhattisgarh, the Government of India must start
a national dialogue with the Maoists.

We appeal to the Maoists to stop violence, to
facilitate conditions of peace and normalcy, and
enable the return of displaced people to their
own homes and villages.

The members of the Independent Citizen's Initiative were:

Dr Ramachandra Guha (historian and columnist, Bangalore)
Mr Harivansh (editor, Prabhat Khabar, Ranchi),
Ms Farah Naqvi (writer and social activist, New Delhi),
Mr EAS Sarma (former Secretary, Government of India, Visakhapatnam),
Dr Nandini Sundar (Professor of Sociology, Delhi University),
Mr. B. G. Verghese (former editor, Hindustan Times, Indian Express, New Delhi).


o o o


The Praful Bidwai Column
June 5, 2006

WAGING WAR AGAINST THE PEOPLE
DANGEROUS ANTI-NAXAL STRATEGY

By Praful Bidwai

The Chhattisgarh Government is about to launch a
massive military operation against the Naxalites
with more than a dozen Central Reserve Police
Force battalions under the command of the
so-called "Supercop" and former Punjab
Director-General of Police KPS Gill. The
operation has been called the "ultimate" blow or
"knockout" punch against "the Red Menace" and
will reportedly involve the use of helicopters.
The CRPF will be assisted by special commandos
from Mizoram, who have been trained in
"counter-insurgency" operations by United States
troops at Vairangte for more than a decade.

Mr Gill's strategy, whose blueprint is with the
Union home ministry, involves gathering reliable
intelligence on the Maoists' hideouts and
movements, and hitting them hard "in a sudden and
well-coordinated attack".  According to a leak to
the media, "the thrust of the Gill [strategy] is
to launch a swift offensive, giving little time
to [the] Maoist guerrillas to regroup and
retaliate". The plan also involves evacuation of
large numbers of people from the forests of
southern Bastar and clearing them of mature trees.

It's a safe bet that this operation will further
brutalise the civilian population without being
particularly effective against the Naxalites. The
whole plan is thoroughly ill-conceived, and will
involve violations of the law of the land and the
human rights of vulnerable Adivasi tribals. The
Union and state governments should call off the
operation at once.

The operation is a sequel to a "people's
campaign" called Salwa Judum (peace hunt or
movement) launched a year ago by the state
government, which has all but triggered a civil
war in parts of Chhattisgarh. Salwa Judum (SJ)
targets the Naxalites for violent attacks.  Its
members generally comprise the local elite,
including wealthy Adivasis, traders and
contractors. Formally, SJ is the creation of
Congress legislature party chief Mahendra Karma,
politically known as "the 60th member of BJP CM
Raman Singh's cabinet". In truth, the SJ idea was
conceived by former BJP home minister Brij Mohan
Aggarwal.

A group called Independent Citizens' Initiative
(ICI), comprising former Union government
secretary EAS Sarma, Delhi sociology professor
Nandini Sundar, veteran journalist BG Verghese,
historian Ram Guha, Prabhat Khabar (Ranchi)
editor Harivansh, and social activist Farah
Naqvi, recently inquired into Salwa Judum's
activities. Its just-released fact-finding report
makes extremely disturbing reading. It shows that
SJ is not the "people's spontaneous resistance or
uprising" against the Naxalites that it's claimed
to be. It's a government-sponsored and -funded
organisation which has an armed wing consisting
of 3,200 Special Police Officers, widely seen as
the tribal face of the police.

In essence, says ICI, the Chhattisgarh government
has "outsourced" its law-and-order functions to
an "unaccountable, undisciplined and amorphous
group" not trained to use firearms properly.  The
SJ and the SPOs have no legitimate authority, but
have become a law unto themselves. SJ has been
forcing tribals to take up arms against the
Naxalites-on pain of being beaten up, illegally
fined, or have their homes burnt down. SPOs are
meant to work under the authority of the state
police. But in Chhattisgarh's Naxalite-affected
districts, the regular police has ceded all power
to SJ's lumpen elements.

SJ's violent operations have turned the tribal
belt of Bastar into a virtual war-zone, in which
Adivasis are pitted against Adivasis and forced
to fight the Maoists to whose retaliation they
become vulnerable. Scores of villages have been
evacuated. The Adivasis' social life has been
destroyed. Officially, as many as 46,000 people
have been compelled to move into so-called relief
camps near highways. According to interviews
conducted by ICI with local people, officials,
journalists and foresters, the number of
displaced people is as high as 70,000.

ICI found "evidence of killings, the burning of
homes, and attacks on women, including
gang-rape." There are arbitrary arrests and
"several people seem to be missing.  The press is
tightly controlled and intimidatedŠ" Local
villagers complain of harassment, extortion,
frequent beatings (to extract information about
Naxalites) and other human rights violations.

SJ is guilty of recruiting even minors as SPOs-a
breach of the Geneva Conventions and of several
covenants on child rights to which the government
is a signatory. Equally disturbingly, an attempt
is under way to break up tribal communities into
the equivalent of "Strategic Hamlets" which the
U.S. created in the 1960s in Vietnam in its
brutal. The "Strategic Hamlet" model is not as
far-fetched as might appear. Just last fortnight,
two officials of the U.S. Embassy met the
Chhattisgarh chief secretary (home) BKS Ray to
offer the state assistance in fighting the
"Naxalite threat". Although the government has
not accepted the offer, it's clearly following
the same militaristic approach that the U.S.
favours to deal with insurgents and guerrillas,
for instance, in Latin America.

Ostensibly, the UPA government advocates a
"two-pronged" strategy: deal sternly with
Naxalite violence; but simultaneously address the
socio-economic sources of discontent underlying
it through development programmes. In March,
Union home minister Shivraj Patil tabled a status
paper on the issue in which he spelt out a
14-point policy based on such a dual approach. In
reality, the government has concentrated much of
its effort on "modernisation" of state police
forces, long-term deployment of paramilitary
troops, and use of modern lethal weaponry.

The bulk of the financial assistance of Rs 2,475
crores committed to India's 55 worst
Naxalite-affected districts has been earmarked
for police-paramilitary operations. Very little
has translated into development funding.
According to ICI, relief camp conditions are
seriously inadequate. The government appears to
have no long-term plans for rehabilitation or
safe return of villagers.

The government has concentrated only one thing:
force. This approach springs from a "thanedar
mentality": coercion is the most effective way of
dealing with social dicontent. This approach is
fundamentally misbegotten. It fails to understand
that Naxalite activity has spread to some 160 of
India's 600 districts because of rising agrarian
distress, destruction of forests by the timber
mafia, uprooting of Adivasis due to predatory
mining, irrigation and metallurgical projects,
and rapidly growing income and regional
disparities. It's not a coincidence that more
than two-thirds of the 55 most severely
Naxalite-affected districts lie in the tribal
belt. In state after tribal state, the Adivasi
economy has been squeezed and marginalised to a
point where millions of Adivasis have ceased
being an agricultural people and lost the organic
historical links with land, forests and water.
Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand were created on the
explicit rationale of a tribal identity. But in
both, the influx of outsiders has reduced
Adivasis to a minority.

More generally, Naxalite activity has grown-year
after every single year-because of India's
jobless and destructive growth which benefits
only a tenth or so of the population. The growth
is extremely rapid in areas in which the state
has withdrawn from public services or colluded
with entrenched interests, and become predatory
on the people.

It's hard to defend the violent justice that many
Naxalite groups readily hand out to their
enemies. Some have even developed a stake in
extortion. However, the problem this poses cannot
be resolved, even mitigated, by coercion,
especially the lawless use of force without
accountability. That's precisely what Salwa Judum
has practised. This cannot but further alienate
Chhattisgarh's Adivasis and throw even the more
neutral of them into the Naxalites arms. Each
time an innocent tribal is brutalised, and
separated from his/her means of livelihood, a
Naxalite sympathiser is created. Social
discontent typically takes a violent turn when
all peaceful avenues are closed.

Mr Gill is a dogmatic votary of the coercive
approach. One of the greatest myths created about
him is that he effectively, yet lawfully, crushed
the Punjab insurgency. His methods were
egregiously lawless: torturing suspected
militants, harassing their families, deploying
unnumbered jeeps, and killing hundreds of those
merely suspected to have harboured Khalistani
guerrillas. The National Human Rights Commission
has just authenticated the judicial finding that
almost 2,000 people were cremated without
identification in a single year in Punjab. It has
ordered compensation for the victims' relatives.
Clearly, Mr Gill has a lot to answer for. In a
more just society, he would be tried for crimes
against humanity. The Khalistani movement died
not because of Mr Gill's brutal methods, but
because its militants antagonised the people and
lost support.

By relying on contingents trained in
"counter-insurgency", and more generally, on
brute force, Mr Gill will visit even more
violence than SJ on Chhattisgarh people. He must
be stopped in his tracks. Salwa Judum must be
disbanded. The Centre must radically revise its
Naxalite strategy and open a dialogue with Maoist
groups. If the Manmohan Singh government can hold
round after round of talks with separatists from
Jammu and Kashmir  and with the National
Socialist Council of Nagaland, there is no reason
why it cannot talk to non-secessionist groups
which voice the grievances of the people. The
Naxalites have a history of 39 years. If they
have flourished, it is because they represent
something in this society. It just won't do to
ignore them, or worse, to try to crush them.-end-

o o o o

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE !
BAJRANG DAL & LASHKAR-E-TOIBA
by Subhash Gatade
(Communalism Watch, June 2, 2006)
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2006/06/spot-difference-bajarang-dal-and.html
____


10.


IGNORING THE UNJUSTIFIABLE
IMPOVERISHED MAJORITY BELIES HOPES OF INDIA SHINING

(Kashmir Times June 12, 2006
Editorial)

Official pronouncements and a servile media are
daily dinning into our ears that India is
shining. We are told of our encouraging annual
rate of growth, the millions of people who now
own a car or a scooter and of many more who are
now going in for a mobile phone and a fridge at
home, how the glittering air-conditioned malls
stuffed with expensive -- usually foreign-made --
items are crowded with buyers in evenings and
that many more Indians go out every year as
tourists than foreigners coming here. All these
may be true and do indicate that we are doing
very well as a country. We have the fourth
largest army in the world, we are a nuclear power
and we speak the language of a regional
super-power. But, these are not all. Beneath all
the glamour of our upper and urban middle classes
are dark board patches that we usually choose to
ignore, but should better turn our attention to
soon.
Nearly 30% of our population are still below the
poverty line and another 25% are very poor living
on less than two dollars a day. Nearly 40% of our
brethren are still virtually illiterate. A
majority of our countrymen are neither aware of
the basic rules of hygiene, nor can they afford a
private toilet or clean potable water. No where
in the world are so many available at short
notice to jump into an underground drain for a
mere pittance. We claim to be the world's largest
democracy. But, as per a recent study by some
foreign observers, our record in human
trafficking is worse than of even Pakistan and
Bangladesh. We have also been repeatedly rebuked
by many international agencies for our poor
human-rights record. We may seek to rubbish those
criticisms, but the world does not take our
objections very seriously. True, many among us
have gone abroad and are doing well there as
doctors, engineers, scientists and software
experts, but many times more have gone abroad, or
try to sneak into foreign countries, just to work
as mechanics or menials. All over the world we
have the image of poor, unscrupulous job-seekers.
Only a few years ago, for a few posts of police
constables in Kerala, applications came from
hundreds of graduates, dozens of masters and a
couple of Ph.Ds. Even now nearly 93% of Indian
workers earn their living in the unorganised
sector, where they have no earned leave, no
medical leave and no PF, pension or insurance
benefit to fall back upon in old age or during
sickness. With the virtual collapse of the
government medicare system most of them either
die neglected or just sink into the morass of
debt from which they can seldom come out. By the
way, we have also the dubious distinction of
having the largest number of HIV patients. No
doubt, we are having mega projects, like the
Tehri Dam and the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the
Narmada and are setting up big factories in
forested tribal land but, unless forced by
activists, like Sunderlal Bahuguna or Medha
Patkar, we seldom take note of the thousands of
poor who are usually mercilessly dispossessed of
their homes and hearths for a compensation that
comes late and means little to them. The poor and
the tribals in most of India are still virtual
prisoners in the hands of developmental projects,
the moneylenders and the police. No wonder, large
numbers of them in increasing numbers are joining
the so-called Naxalites to challenge the existing
social order and developmental programmes.
Totally alienated, they view our development as
their disaster and are no longer going to be mute
observers of their own destruction. The
government too, in its turn, is responding to the
Naxalite challenge in a cruel and crude manner.
On 1 June 2005 the Chhattisgarh government has
launched the Salwa Judum scheme to recruit
(actually forcing) villagers to move to selected
sites away from their village home and to take up
arms against the Naxalites. Thereby the
government, in the last one year, has created a
virtual civil war-like situation in the districts
of Bastar and Dantewara by pressing one section
of the local population against another. The
Salwa Judum are being misused like the
surrendered ULFA (the dreaded SULFA) in Assam,
the Sarkari militants (the Ikhwanis) in J&K,
placing the average local on the firing line of
both the military and the Maoists. We complain of
a Christian conspiracy in the north-east and of a
Pak hand in J&K, but many more are annually
getting killed in the heart of India through
violence than in Jammu and Kashmir and the bloody
north-east put together.



_____

11.

Pakistan to sell arms to Sri Lanka
By UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL, May 3, 2006
http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20060503-105826-4149r

India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch
Compilation (January 12,  2006)
Year Seven, No 161
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/172

Contents:

1 Kashmir, India, Pakistan:  Time Guns Fall Silent (Edit, Kashmir Times)
2 Pakistan: Worrying words (M B Naqvi)
3 Pakistan: Landmines continue to kill and maim (Ghafar Ali)
4 Pakistan: PHCBA demands 50% cut in defence budget
5 Pakistan: Balochistan:
- Lack of information on Balochistan operation shocking
- Help Stop Massacre in Balochistan
- What, Balochistan again? (M B Naqvi)
- Out of time, out of place (Irfan Husain)
6 Pakistan: Spain offers military training to Pakistan
7 Pakistan: Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum Conference Disrupted
8 Budget deficit exceeds Rs37bn: Domestic borrowing rises (Khaleeq Kiani)
9 Pakistan: Earth Quake and Military expenditure
- Letters to the Editor Daily Times
10 India: Musharraf will not quit as army chief (Ahmed Rashid)
11 Pakistan: Hatemonger clerics lose arms licences
12 Nuclear Clouds Gather Over Asia (Praful Bidwai)
13 India's Hindu nationalist's @ Work: 150
portraits of India's martyrs drawn in blood
14 US eyes big Pakistan, India arms sales (Aman Sethi)
15 Book review: Subcontinental Nightmares (Robert M. Hathaway)
16 India: IDPD wants society sans nuke power
17 India: When "Security" Looms Larger Than Tsunami (J. Sri Raman)
18 India: What ails ordnance factories (Josy Joseph)
19 India: Assam's paths of violence (Subir Bhaumik)
20 India - Ballistic Missile: 'Dhanush' testfired
21 India: Military and Civilian Telecommunications
- Army won't give spectrum up easily (Joji Thomas Philip)
- Defence Spectrum Zone Mooted (Joji Thomas Philip)
22 India: Defence Establishment and Special Powers
   - No decision taken yet on AFSPA (The Hindu)
- AFSPA - Reddy Panel: Act was to be scrapped,
but Army opposed move (Sudhi Ranjan Sen)
23 Involving and Using Civilians for counter insurgency
- Facts about 'Salwa Judum' (Human rights groups)
24 Arms race in the sub-continent  Letters to the Editor to Indian Magazine
25 Science died in 1965  - Letter to the Editor to a Pakistani Newspaper
26 Book Announcement: Militarising State, Society
and Culture in Asia (ed.) J. Uyangoda & A. Abella
27 Nepal: Janatas and juntas - The Nagarkot
massacre was a reminder that reform in the
military is long overdue (CK Lal)
28 Bangladesh: India Celebrates an Illusory 'Victory' (J. Sri Raman)
29 Book Review: India-Pakistan nuclear deterrence
? : Tall Claim, Little Evidence (M V Ramana)
30 Sadhus hide guns under saffron cloaks (Manjari Mishra)
31 India: Involving the Defence establishment in Film Censorship ?
- Chiefs Say Yes (Edit, The Telegraph)
- IAF objects to some scenes in Aamir Khan's new film
- Indian Air Force clips three scenes from Aamir's movie (Shaikh Ayaz)
32 India: Centre to constitute 300 battalion strong para-military force
33 India: Report: Indian Products Defective (Vivek Raghuvanshi)
34 India: Kerala to monitor cybercafe users to combat online crime, terrorism
35 India: Navy leak and defence contractors -
Shadow On The Chief (Saikat Satta)
36 India: Official Secrets Act - Information
Limited: Why the RTI Act is not being allowed to
breathe free (Sankarshan Thakur)
37 On Phone tapping in India:
- Curb phone tapping (Rajindar Sachar)
- Bharat Sarkar, all ears (Inder Malhotra)
- The Spy who tracked me (Nikita Doval)
- Tips for a tap - on the how and why of telephonic surveillance (Ritu Sarin)
38 India Adding Troops on Bangladesh Border
39 Bangladesh: The Telecom law and Surveillance
-  Big Brother is taping you (Naeem Mohaiemen)
-  Your Last Phone Call (Naeem Mohaiemen)

_______

1.

Kashmir Times - January 10, 2005
    Editorial

    TIME GUNS FALL SILENT
    BELLIGERENT RHETORIC CAN BE COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE

There are some positive and negative signs emerging from all this
cacophony of voices in the sub-continent on demilitarizing Kashmir. Good
things first. Several Kashmiri separatist organizations including the
Mirwaiz Moulvi Farooq led Hurriyat, a delegation of which recently
returned from a tour of Pakistan and its administered Kashmir, have
finally showed some seriousness and consistency over the issue of
demilitarization of Jammu and Kashmir. On earlier occasions and during
its two rounds of talks with New Delhi, the Hurriyat had either not
taken up the plea of internal ceasefire or talked about it in very
feeble tones. Truce in the interiors of Jammu and Kashmir is imperative
for initiating a dialogue and paving way for the participation of people
in the negotiations process. Though de-militarisation cannot ensure
peace on its own, it is one of the most important steps towards it.
There can be no encouraging participation of people in any talks about
the political fate of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir on both sides of
the Line of Control amidst an atmosphere charged with violence,
bloodshed and fear psychosis. Guns from both sides - of the Indian
security forces as well as the militants need to fall silent to ensure
that a dialogue process gets into full gear. Though, amidst chaotic
conditions of insurgency and counter-insurgency operations,
de-militarising the entire Valley and other affected parts of the state
is no easy task. Guns cannot be expected to fall silent overnight. They
take time to vanish. But a beginning in this direction is imperative,
lest it is too late and the process becomes irreversible. For effecting
a ceasefire, the onus lies on both New Delhi and Islamabad. The role of
separatist leadership, too, is significant and that is where the recent
Hurriyat stand brings in fresh optimism. The separatist leaders can
influence militant groups to give up the gun once India takes the first
step towards de-militarization. Unfortunately, that is where the dismal
picture comes into being. While Pakistan president General Pervez
Musharraf has asked India to begin a process of de-militarization,
without giving adequate assurance from his side on reining in militant
groups operating from his territory, India has out-rightly rejected the
proposal, quoting security concerns, reflecting the endorsement of its
ritualistic belligerence. India would have done better to have responded
to Musharraf's proposals with a greater optimism and addressed its own
security concerns by asking Pakistan to give counter guarantees on
ensuring that militant groups respond to any call for ceasefire. New
Delhi needs to realize the significance of bringing in a ceasefire,
which it can start in a phased manner, if it does not feel comfortable
with withdrawal of forces in one go. More than a year back, the Indian
prime minister had offered this assurance. But it was never put into
practice. Now with New Delhi out-rightly rejecting the proposal of a
truce, it appears to have been a step backwards. Already, the next round
of talks with Hurriyat has been over-delayed. The involvement of other
separatist groups, which is equally imperative, is nowhere in the
picture. If peace has to be pursued, imaginative and flexible approach
is required. There can be no room for backtracking, which eventually
send down wrong signals to the masses and even the militant groups,
which too need to be convinced to drop the gun. The fears of Hurriyat
and other separatist organizations, supporting the call for an internal
truce, are not misplaced that India's rigidity would cost the
sub-continent and the Kashmir issue dearly, the onus of which will lie
on New Delhi, are not misplaced. Certainly, there can be no political
solutions hammered from the top and outside without an effort to ease
the situation and remove the fear psychosis inside the territory of the
conflict ridden state, which is likely to increase in the presence of
the gun. A beginning has to be made without getting lost in the rhetoric
and harsh debate over the subject.


2.

The News International
January 04, 2006

WORRYING WORDS

by M B Naqvi

The writer is a veteran journalist and freelance columnist

There are four unfortunate observations that
President Pervez Musharraf has made. These are:
(a) no government in Islamabad can survive if it
seriously displeases the Punjab; (b) if the
National Security Council is disbanded, another
martial law will become unavoidable; (c) there is
a foreign hand behind Balochistan's troubles; (d)
Sindh is committing suicide by opposing Kalabagh
Dam. Perhaps these statements should never have
been made. They may play havoc by resonating in
Pakistan politics for a long time to come.

The president's first proposition is purely
political, and in one sense plainly true: the
Punjab houses some 63 per cent of Pakistan's
population and if the Punjabis settled in the
NWFP, Balochistan and Sindh are added to the
tally, the Punjabis will constitute something
like 70 per cent or more of Pakistan's
population. Foolish will be the government that
ignores the Punjab's opinions or demands.

The categorical nature of the president's remark,
however, goes well beyond normal political
prudence. He has emphasised the Punjab's position
in a more profound and radically different
category than mere numbers. What is so
extraordinary about Punjabis? What one meets in
civilian life is a plethora of opinions among
Punjabis; there is a rich plural intellectual
life insofar as they concern themselves with
public affairs. Why then did he hold up Punjab as
the key to Islamabad's decision-making?

Is the Punjab some kind of a check on others over
and above its numerical strength that is
ordinarily decisive in day-to-day affairs? Are
other provinces being told to go to the Punjab
first and win it over before they can decide on
anything big in their areas? Well, one recognises
nothing special about Punjabis other than their
numbers. Indeed, there are few complaints against
Punjabis qua Punjabis. They are so warm-hearted
and friendly, normally well-intentioned. The only
complaint one has long entertained against
Punjabis is that they are politically so docile,
and most politically aware Punjabis one knows
have concurred in the view.

Why then is the president so overawed by the
Punjab and Punjabis? Didn't Punjabis in general
accept his rule in October 1999 without any
trouble even after he had overthrown a Punjabi
prime minister with a genuine base in the Punjab?
The president should know what he is talking
about, in which case one must look for reasons
for his extraordinary deference to the Punjab.
The only reason that can hold up in scrutiny is
the fact that the ruling establishment, not
counting himself, is dominated by Punjabis; don't
we all know that the Army is 70 per cent from the
Punjab and the civil bureaucracy too is mainly
Punjabi?

In short, he is in awe of the Punjab's share in
the ruling establishment. His public articulation
of this otherwise known fact means that other
provinces should not insist on propositions that
are unacceptable to the establishment. Does the
president realise that this is setting the Punjab
against the other three provinces? It can cost
Pakistan's national unity in a radical way: the
Punjab as a permanent check on all significant
issues will not be acceptable to any Pashtun,
Sindhi or Baloch; that will be destructive of
Pakistan's integrity.

As for the presidential obiter dicta on the NSC,
much of the aforesaid applies. He is warning all
future generation of Pakistanis that should they
try to disband, or rather degrade, the forces'
participation level -- it is inconceivable that a
civilian government will not want to know what
the three forces' chiefs think -- all hell will
break loose and the army chief of the day will
overthrow the Constitution and govern through
martial law. This is incendiary stuff. What Mr
Musharraf is saying is that no major decision
should be made without the concurrence of top
generals -- or else!

Well, democracy is all about civilian (citizens')
supremacy and rule in which the armed forces are
meant to obey the orders of the government. An
army's perpetual threat of imposition of martial
law makes it an unwanted army. No government can
take a major decision in national security
matters without knowing the professional
assessments and wishes of the three or four
chiefs of staff. All that is involved is what
happens when the civilian government refuses to
buy the hardware and other stuff according to the
wish list of the generals? Here, the generals
want to sit in on all decisions being made and
not only about military matters. Their demands
(or wishes) go well beyond mere autonomy in
making decisions about what is to happen inside
the army, air force or navy, including what
equipment to buy. They now want a share in power
as such -- perhaps a decisive share.

The nation, if it values the human freedoms of
its people, cannot subordinate itself to
generals. At this rate, senior police officers
will claim a share in provincial decision-making.
Which will result in chief ministers becoming
subordinate to their inspector generals of
police. These are days of devolution. In time,
chowkidars and security guards in every bank or
institution will want to sit in on
decision-making at the local level. A line has to
be drawn here. What is desired is democratic
decision-making at all levels so as to reflect
popular sovereignty: at the centre, in the
provinces and on the municipal and district
levels. The security services will have to be
kept in their place.

A 'foreign hand' was invoked during Balochistan's
military operations in the 1970s also. The Bhutto
government made much of it. At other times also
this rather ubiquitous 'foreign hand' has been
mentioned in especially bad cases of law and
order violations in the Punjab, Sindh and the
NWFP, as well as in Balochistan. The government
of the day scarcely ever stops to find out how
much credibility such invocations carry with the
people. In most cases, the security services,
despite being so many and so strong, never find
the culprits, often described as "miscreants."
People think that to blame outsiders is the best
way to cover up their own failures, or, in some
cases, their own designs.

Insofar as the "foreign hand" in Balochistan is
concerned, people are entitled to wonder what the
numerous security agencies were doing; why did
they wake up only now after two years of
low-level insurgency? Why did they not know
earlier and prosecute those found to be in league
with the "foreign hand"? Funds are a necessary
part of an insurgency, which can be traced. The
government ought to bring the cases to courts.
The least it can do is to take the people into
confidence and expose the foreigners' designs. If
there is one or more foreign powers causing the
insurgency-like actions, why not name them?

What the public knows is that nationalistically
inclined Baloch people are protesting, in the
only manner of protest they know, against the
Musharraf government's mega projects. They want a
share in decision-making and more autonomy in the
projects' execution. They do not want to be
outnumbered in their own province. They want more
autonomy for their provincial government. They
seek more benefits for themselves from their
mineral wealth, especially oil and gas. Most of
these demands are just. Why should foreigners be
needed to incite them to protest? ; they already
have enough reasons to protest.

As for the Kalabagh Dam and the Sindhi opposition
to it why should it be supposed that Sindhis are
out of their mind and are unable to see the
benefits that will flow to Sindh from the
Kalabagh Dam? Why are Sindhis not convinced about
what the president is so sure: i.e., the new
benefits that they are foregoing by not building
this dam? It does look as if the establishment
has actually decided to build the dam and Sindhis
are being browbeaten into accepting another fait
accompli.



3.

LANDMINES CONTINUE TO KILL AND MAIM
by Ghafar Ali (Daily Times - December 22, 2005)
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2005%5C12%5C22%5Cstory_22-12-2005_\
pg7_32

4.

PHCBA DEMANDS 50% CUT IN DEFENCE BUDGET
by Akhtar Amin (The Daily Times - December 23, 2005)
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2005%5C12%5C23%5Cstory_23-12-2005_\
pg7_34


5.

Human Rights commission of Pakistan - Press Release

Lahore, 20 December 2005

   LACK OF INFORMATION ON BALOCHISTAN OPERATION SHOCKING

LAHORE: HRCP is shocked that no information or
explanation has been provided by authorities to
the people of Pakistan regarding the military
operation in the Kohlu district of Balochistan.

While officially it is being denied that any
military action is taking place, the evidence
emerging from Balochistan is quite to the
contrary. HRCP is deeply disturbed by the reports
that at least 50 people have been killed and over
100 injured, including women and children, as a
result of the indiscriminate air strikes over the
area dominated by the Marri tribe. The
disproportionate use of force, mass arrests of
civilians and the lack of accountability of State
agencies amount to a grotesque violation of the
most basic rights of citizens.

It is alarming that authorities are repeating
exactly the same mistakes that have so greatly
contributed to the crisis in Balochistan in the
first place. It seems that the Pakistan military
has learnt nothing from history, and is set on
endangering the future stability of the
federation of Pakistan. The increased isolation
of Balochistan and the perception of people that
the centre is indifferent to their plight can
only aggravate these concerns. HRCP will be
sending a fact-finding mission to Balochistan in
the near future and urges all members of civil
society to make maximum efforts to interact with
people in the province so a better understanding
can be gained of the issues prevailing within it.

It is obvious that the only sane solution to the
problems of Balochistan lie in a negotiated
political settlement and long-term policies that
can address the deep-rooted feelings of injustice
and discrimination among the people of the
province. HRCP remains convinced violence can
resolve nothing. We urge the military authorities
and call on the Baloch leadership to move towards
dialogue, so that the prevailing situation does
not worsen any further in the days and weeks
ahead.

Asma Jahangir
Chairperson

o o o

- - - forwarded message - - -

>  From: "Sana Baloch" <balochbnp@...>
>  Date: 24 December 2005 10:07:19 GMT
   Subject: Urgent Appeal
>
>  Appeal to Human Rights Watch, international
>press and international  Human Rights commission
>and all piece loving individuals around the
>globe
>
>  Subject:  Please Help Stop Massacre in Balochistan
>
>  Balochistan is the riches part of world because
>of its natural  resources, gas and mineral
>wealth. Pakistan (Punjab's) every city is
>benefiting form Sui (a place in Balochistan) gas
>since 1952.  Unfortunately the people of
>Balochistan are still living in stone  ages.
>People living few yards away form Sui are using
>fire wood to  make a fire for their survivor in
>this cold season.
>
>  Kidnapping and torturing of Baloch youths have
>been routine of  Pakistani army and security
>forces. Hundreds of innocent Baloch youth  have
>been abducted by Army and F.C (frontier cops)
>from different  areas of Balochistan and their
>fate or whereabouts are still unknown.  They are
>not allowed seeing any lawyer or meet any family
>member.
>
>  Balochistan have been kept backward by
>Pakistani Army and federal  decision maker of
>Islamabad. Pakistani rulers have carried out
>four  grand army operations to capture the
>resources of Balochistan in 1950s  and 1970s.
>
>  Fifth carpet bombing against Baloch Nation had
>started this year 17th  March 2005 in which
>gunship helicopters, fighter jets and other army
>plans were used. All together 70 women and
>children were killed in  this inhuman operation
>against humanity and more then 30 innocent
>Baloch and unarmed civilians were injured in
>that Operation.
>
>  The recent full scale Army operation which has
>started on Sunday the  17th of December 20, 2005
>have claimed hundreds of innocent live of  all
>ages. 1000s of innocent Baloch women and
>children have been  injured and their houses
>have been demolished by cruel Pakistani Army
>and FC (frontier cops). Pakistani Army Using
>fighter jets and military  plans and Poisoned
>Gases against innocent Baloch people in Kolu and
>dera Bugti Area.  It's probably first time in
>Pakistan's history that  it has used fighter
>jets against innocent civilian. It would not be
>wrong if we call Musharaff the second Hitler of
>the world.
>
>  Director General Inter Services Public
>Relations Maj Gen Shaukat  Sultan has said that
>helicopters are being used in operation against
>Baloch fighters in Kohlu whereas para military
>troops carried out the  operation through land.
>When BRM contacted local people of the area
>they confirm the use of fighter jets, gunship
>helicopters and other  military plans.
>
>  Baloch Nation's fault is only that they have
>been demanding  self-control over their natural
>resources which a basic right of every  nation,
>they should have control over their national
>territory and  resources.
>
>  This government does not have any concrete
>base, "The notorious  Pakistani ISI and Army
>have created ghosts like Osama Bin Laden and
>other so called Jihadi organizations to terrify
>the West and secure  support for their military
>dictatorships.  The operation in  Balochistan is
>another ploy to appease the capitalist class of
>Punjab  to muster support in order to prolong
>his [president Musharraf's]  tenure in power.
>
>  We the Baloch have been writing to Human rights
>organizations from the  last one year to stop
>army of the terrorist state which is committing
>international crime against Baloch. It seems to
>us that Human rights  watch have closed their
>eyes.
>
>  The recent wave of Military operation which has
>started 15 days back  in different parts of
>Balochistan like: Noshki, Qalat and chagai and
>now spreaded to Kohlu, Kahan, Janat talli,
>Mawand and dera Bugti,  Talli proves that
>Pakistani military want to complete control of
>Balochistan's natural wealth.  The operation
>against Baloch nation has  entered to the fourth
>day of army but the Pakistani state run media
>have been hiding it.
>
>  That's why we appeal to international media;
>international Human  rights watch and United
>Nations Organizations to urge Pakistani Army  to
>stop massacre of Innocent Baloch civilians.
>
>  We also appeal the international community,
>media, United Nations and  international Human
>Rights organizations to send their fact finding
>teams to the area and witness the carpet bombing
>against Baloch  Nation.
>
>
>  We demand:
>
>  1:  Military operation must be halted
>immediately in order to prevent  further
>civilian casualties.
>
>  2:  The wounded civilian must be allowed to seek medical aids.
>
>  3:   An independent along with international
>fact finding body must be  sanctioned to find
>out the truth of ruthless military operation.
>
>  4:  The media should be allowed to visit the
>area and present a free,  impartial, objective
>and responsible report on current army carpet
>bombing in Balochistan.
>
>   5:  All political prisoners and others who
>have been abducted in  recent days by the ISI
>and other secret agencies of Pakistan must be
>released urgently
>
>  6:  The responsible persons must be brought in justice.
>
>
>  Sincerely,
>  Senator Sanaullah Baloch
>  Balochistan National Party
>  Balochistan Rights Movement
On Behalf of Baloch Nation
>
http://www.senate.gov.pk

o o o

WHAT, BALOCHISTAN AGAIN?
by M B Naqvi (The News International - December 28, 2005)
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/dec2005-daily/28-12-2005/oped/o5.htm


o o o

DAWN - December 24, 2005

OUT OF TIME, OUT OF PLACE
By Irfan Husain

WHEN is a state deemed to be a failed state? When
it is bankrupt, or when its laws are largely
ignored? Pakistan has been on the verge of
bankruptcy several times in its brief history,
but external aid has kept it out of debtors
prison.

The last major fiscal crisis was averted by the
events of 9/11, and our promotion overnight to
frontline status in the war on terror. Indeed,
our exchequer has never been as healthy as today,
thanks to a steady stream of dollars from Western
allies concerned about Pakistans possible
insolvency and its effect on the campaign against
terrorism.

But our new friends would do well to consider the
destabilizing impact of Pakistans slide into
anarchy. Before I am accused of overstating the
problem, let me point towards the current ongoing
insurgencies in Balochistan and South Waziristan.
Both conflicts underline the fragility of the
Pakistani state even 58 years after its creation.

At Partition, the tribal areas of the NWFP and
Balochistan were some of the most backward parts
of the subcontinent. Nearly six decades later,
nothing much has changed. The ruling sardars may
be driving around in luxurious SUVs; the houses
may have sprouted TV dish antennas; and tribesmen
may be carrying automatic Kalashnikov assault
rifles instead of ancient Lee Enfield 303s. But
women are still not allowed to leave their homes
even to vote; girls are not sent to schools; and
the only law is laid down by the tribal chief.

As a result, these areas have not emerged from
the dark ages, and are a haven for drug
smugglers, gun runners, kidnappers, Taliban
fighters and Al Qaeda terrorists. Following
colonial policy established in the 19th century,
successive Pakistani governments have bribed
tribal chiefs to keep the peace without bringing
development to most of this benighted belt.

After all, if the law of the land does not extend
to these parts, how do you build roads, schools
and hospitals? More to the point, who will invest
in industry if capital is not protected by the
laws and institutions of the state? Without this
normal developmental and business activity, it is
no surprise that these are some of the poorest
areas in the country.

Of course, this wild and woolly frontier
mentality has produced many opportunities for
tribal chiefs to become very, very rich. Not only
do they get state subsidies, but the government
does not interfere with their wide range of
illegal operations. They shelter all kinds of
crooks, getting a percentage of the spoils:
whether it's a stolen car the police from
'settled areas' can't follow into the tribal
belt, to a kidnap victim who is housed until a
ransom is negotiated. Illegal narcotics and the
most sophisticated arms are transported freely,
winding up in the hands of killers and terrorists
across the country.

The argument against extending the writ of the
state to these chaotic badlands is that things
are not much better in the rest of the country.
This assertion is not supported by the facts on
the ground. The reality is that much of what
today constitutes Pakistan was the backwaters of
undivided India. And yet, schools, colleges,
universities, roads, dams and much else have been
built over the years. Industries have sprung up.
Business has grown steadily. And although the law
and order situation obviously leaves much to be
desired, there is still a minimal deterrence in
place.

Clearly, the existence of large pockets of
lawless lands whose autonomy is guaranteed by the
Constitution has helped in the spread of anarchy
in the country. Since the Afghan war, guns and
drugs have flooded the country from the tribal
belt. The current resistance to the government in
South Waziristan and parts of Balochistan
illustrates the point: the rebels have used
missiles, anti-aircraft weapons and an array of
modern and very lethal arms. In fact, the army
has suffered serious casualties in its
operations, and is now using helicopter gunships
to quell the rebellion.

Over the years, the perception that they are
being exploited has steadily grown among many
Baloch. There is no doubt that the province is
not adequately recompensed for its natural gas
that has been crucial to the country's
development. But the problem is that the present
tribal system does not allow money to go to the
people as most of it is siphoned off by the
tribal sardars. So even if a more equitable sum
is allocated, how do we ensure that it reaches
those who need it most?

Clearly, the time has come to review the
constitutional provisions that govern this
anachronistic arrangement. Any government has a
duty to ensure that the underprivileged are cared
for at a certain minimal level. In our tribal
areas, men have decreed that women cannot be
educated; cannot leave their homes; and cannot
vote. This repression is being carried out in the
name of 'tribal traditions' as well as religion.
But surely the same laws ought to protect women
all over the country. Granted, women are not
exactly emancipated in much of Pakistan. But at
least they have courts to appeal to, at least in
theory. No such legal protection exists for their
sisters in the tribal areas.

We Pakistanis are a very contentious lot: witness
the heated debate taking place over the issue of
the controversial Kalabagh. But oddly, there has
been virtually no discussion over the anomaly of
the whole sardari system that denies millions the
rights due to them as citizens of Pakistan. Some
see this as a romantic vestige of the past: brave
tribal figures resisting the encroachment of
modern influence. But this archaic set-up denies
millions access to education and basic health
facilities. It also blocks employment
opportunities, forcing young men to leave their
homes to find jobs far away from their villages.

So when Baloch nawabs demand a greater share of
national resources, we should remember that they
are demanding more for themselves, not their
people. The poor tribesmen fighting and dying in
the name of Baloch autonomy are not doing so to
make their families better off. They are acting
on the command of their tribal chiefs.

It is high time that we looked carefully at what
this entire system has done not just to the
tribesmen directly affected, but to the whole
country. Just because it suited the British to
have a buffer zone along the Afghan border does
not mean we must continue this outdated
arrangement.

6.

Dawn - December 28, 2005

SPAIN OFFERS MILITARY TRAINING TO PAKISTAN
http://www.dawn.com/2005/12/28/top8.htm

7.

From: People's Rights Movement
   PAKISTAN FISHERFOLK FORUM CONFERENCE DISRUPTED

· A seminar on 'Below Kotri water flows' was planned by the Pakistan
Fisherfolk Forum and Action Aid Pakistan in the Dreamland Motel on December
28th, the arrangements for which had been made many weeks in advance.
· On arrival in Islamabad, dozens of activists of the PFF arrived at
Dreamland Motel on the evening of December 27th as planned. They were told
that there were insufficient rooms for them and that they could not stay in
the motel as planned. While this severe inconvience was dealt with by the
organisers, they could not have foreseen what was to transpire next.
· On the morning of the 28th, the hotel management locked the rooms to
the hall in which the seminar was supposed to be held and told the organisers
that the intelligence agencies had prohibited the hotel from hosting the
event.
· A demonstration was subsequently held outside the hotel to protest
this arbitrary disruption. The protestors were addressed by PFF chairperson
Mohammad Ali Shah, Dr. Qadir Magsi, Hameed Asghar Shaheen, Aziz Narejo,
Khadim Hussain, Mushtaq Gadi, Aasim Sajjad, and numerous other activists.
· This action demonstrates the government's complete lack of tolerance
for democratic debate - papers were to be presented at the seminar in which
technical, social, economic, political and cultural perspectives were
expected to be raised.
· We firmly believe that this action is a reflection of the dictatorial
manner in which the government has bulldozed Water Vision 2025 on the people
of Pakistan.
· In this regard, we invite you to be part of a protest demonstration
to be held tomorrow (Thursday, 29 December) at 12pm in front of the offices
of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to demand withdrawal of funds
for mega water projects that are imposed upon the country by diktat.
· We believe that similar repressive measures may be employed by the
government during tomorrow's demonstration. Therefore it is imperative that
the demonstration be attended and supported by as wide a cross-section of
people as possible, particularly because dozens of fisherfolk will be present
and they are likely to be subject to severe harassment and intimidation.


People's Rights Movement (PRM)
PD-1154B Irum Plaza
Shahrah-e-Stadium
Rawalpindi, Pakistan


8.

BUDGET DEFICIT EXCEEDS RS37BN: DOMESTIC BORROWING RISES
By Khaleeq Kiani (DAWN - December 2, 2005)
http://www.dawn.com/2005/12/02/top3.htm


9.  Letter to the Editor Daily Times

Letters to the Editor - Daily Times
December 1, 2005
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2005%5C12%5C01%5Cstory_1-12-2005_p\
g3_7


Matching pledge

Sir: I give my word of honour and swear to God to
contribute to Edhi Relief Fund for the next 12
months five percent of my take-home salary
(nominal salary minus the mandatory deductions by
the employer) for every percentage cut in our
defence budget. I repeat: a two percent reduction
in the defence budget will result in the donation
of 10 percent of my take-home salary to relief
and so on. I am willing to submit to any audit
house or authority chosen by the government of
Pakistan my monthly salary slip, annual tax
report, a certificate from the taxation
department, remittance receipt from my bank ? in
short anything required to substantiate my
monthly income as well as transfers. Furthermore,
I can guarantee that, if my proposal is accepted,
I can persuade at least a dozen more countrymen
to contribute at the same rate. What I cannot do,
however, is donate to the President's Relief Fund.

Do we have a deal?
SHAZIA SALEEMI
Sweden


http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2005%5C12%5C22%5Cstory_22-12-2005_\
pg3_6
Letters to the Editor - Daily Times
December 22, 2005

Cupidity for clout

Sir: India is an emerging world power and the
largest functioning democracy with a population
of over one billion people. It is one of the
nuclear powers and has strong armed forces. It
also has a well-developed industrial base, a
growing economy, a vast consumer market and
extraordinary IT support. It already exerts much
influence on world affairs, but still wants more
power.

On December 2, the Indian government announced a
program for the acquisition and indigenous
manufacture of ships, submarines and aircraft.
The new hardware is intended to give India
greater 'clout' in the strategic corridors of the
Indian Ocean. The Indian Navy has also been asked
to strengthen its relations with regional navies
and to extend its blue water reach into their
waters.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has signed
an agreement with Russia for the joint
construction of India's first nuclear submarine,
a multi purposes transport plane and fifth
generation fighter jets. It has also signed a
10-year strategic defence pact with the USA
which, in addition to joint ventures in defence
production, offers cooperation in space and in
nuclear energy for civilian use subject to
separation of civilian and military nuclear
facilities. It is also planning to induct 126
F-16 Block 50/52 fighter jets in the Indian Air
force.

India is a sovereign nation and no one has the
right to question the size of its armed forces.
Yet it must appreciate that it is part of global
village and an arbitrary increase in its military
power upsets regional balance. The possible
motive behind such an action is for India to gain
greater clout in the Indian Ocean as well as the
control of regional waters. India's two declared
adversaries are Pakistan and China. It has of
late resolved its border dispute with china and
is rapidly building up its trade ties with it.
China has also unequivocally declared that it
wants to stay on the path of peaceful
development. This should allay India's fears if
any from China.

Pakistan thus appears to be the only country with
which India has unresolved problems, the most
serious being the Kashmir dispute. This raises
questions regarding India's sincerity and
intentions. India's new acquisitions will
initiate an arms race and end up hurting both
countries. The money allocated to defence can be
purposefully spent on poverty alleviation and
healthcare. This is only possible in an
atmosphere of mutual trust friendship, and both
Pakistan and India should move towards
cooperation on the Kashmir issue as well as a
relaxation of their armed forces.
SMH BOKHARI
Rawalpindi

10.

The Telegraph (UK)
   MUSHARRAF WILL NOT QUIT AS ARMY CHIEF
By Ahmed Rashid in Lahore
(Filed: 20/12/2004)

Pakistan's opposition parties have vowed to step
up their campaign against President Pervaiz
Musharraf after he announced that he would stay
on as both president and army chief, despite a
pledge to give up his military role by the end of
the year.

Leaders of religious and mainstream opposition
parties denounced Gen Musharraf yesterday at a
rally in Rawalpindi and threatened more protests
if he does not hang up his army uniform by Dec 31.

In a television broadcast at the weekend, Gen
Musharraf, who took power in a coup in 1999 and
is strongly supported by the West, said: "I will
remain in uniform even after Dec 31. I am telling
you this for the first time, "

He said his decision was taken in the national
interest, to ensure political stability and to
pursue the war on terrorism.

Parliament has passed legislation which allows
him to retain both roles for an indefinite period.

But the decision is bitterly opposed by two
separate opposition alliances which are staging a
series of rallies across the country and have
vowed to hold a sit-in, in the capital,
Islamabad, on New Year's Day.

Six religious parties allied in the United Action
Forum were joined by leaders from the Alliance
for the Restoration of Democracy, made up of
mainstream parties, in yesterday's rally.

Qazi Hussain Ahmad, a United Action Forum leader
said: "The Pakistani nation will not accept the
illegal government of Pervaiz Musharraf.

"Military dictatorship is the root cause of all evils in Pakistan".

This month Gen Musharraf received ringing
endorsements from Tony Blair, President George W
Bush and President Jacques Chirac after a tour of
western countries.

America and Europe have all but dropped demands
for greater democracy in Pakistan because of Gen
Musharraf's central role in the war against
al-Qa'eda.

In preparation for the Dec 31 deadline, Gen
Musharraf and his military intelligence are
trying hard to divide the opposition.

Already some religious leaders have said they
will not mount more protests against the general.

11.

HATEMONGER CLERICS LOSE ARMS LICENCES
Published: Thursday, 22 December, 2005, 08:43 AM Doha Time
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=65669&version=\
1&template_id=41&parent_id=23

12.

Inter Press Service
CHALLENGES 2005-2006:
NUCLEAR CLOUDS GATHER OVER ASIA
Analysis by Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI , Dec 26 (IPS) - The Asia-Pacific
region has not only emerged as one of the main
engines of the world economy but it has also
taken the global centre-stage in developments
pertaining to nuclear weapons and efforts to
acquire a capability to make them.

From Iran and Israel in West Asia, through India
and Pakistan in South Asia, to North Korea and
Japan in the East, the region exhibited, in 2005,
unprecedented activity in the nuclear field that
can only intensify in the coming years.

In each of these countries, the United States
plays a major role. Its policies of selectively
favouring or opposing their nuclear activities
will alter the strategic balance in some of the
world's most volatile regions.

"This is a marked shift from the cold war period,
where the global nuclear centre of gravity lay in
the all-out confrontation between the eastern and
western blocs, which was most intense in Europe,"
says Achin Vanaik, professor of international
relations and global politics at Delhi
University. He is also a member of the Coalition
for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace and an
independent nuclear expert. "Regrettably, Asia's
nuclear developments are dominated by a
superpower that has set its face firmly against
nuclear disarmament."

2005 witnessed two landmark nuclear
developments-- an attempt by the U.S. and its
allies to censure Iran and prevent it from
enriching uranium, either for military or
civilian purposes, and an Indo-U.S. agreement to
"normalise" India's nuclear weapons status and
resume civilian nuclear commerce with it.

Talks continued in 2005 between North Korea and
other nations led by the U.S., which included
China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and the
European Union, to dissuade Pyongyang from
pursuing its nuclear weapons programme. These did
not resolve the issue.

Meanwhile, Japan moved closer towards revising
its post-World War II commitment not to make or
acquire nuclear weapons and not to build a large
scale standing army. This acquires great
significance in the context of what has been
called a "new cold war" between Japan and China.

In September, the U.S. brought a motion in the
board of governors of the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) holding Iran "non-compliant"
with its obligations under the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and paving the way
for referring it to the United Nations Security
Council for possible sanctions. The resolution
could be passed because India broke ranks with
the non-aligned movement at the IAEA and voted
with Washington.

Iran rejected the resolution and reiterated its
right under the NPT to enrich uranium for
peaceful purposes. Russia has since proposed a
compromise, under which Iran can convert
yellowcake (oxides of uranium) into hexafluoride
gas to be sent to Russia for enrichment.

Under the compromise, Iran can burn the enriched
uranium in a power reactor, being built with
Russian help, but would send back the spent fuel
to Russia. Iran will thus, forswear reprocessing
to extract plutonium, which too, like highly
enriched uranium, is used to make nuclear bombs.

Iran has not formally rejected the proposal, but
its talks with the European Union-3 (Germany,
France and Britain) have not yielded results.

Tehran's nuclear posture and activities have
drawn a hostile response from Israel and the U.S.
President George W. Bush again returned to his
"Axis of Evil" characterisation. The U.S.
reportedly has drawn up plans for an armed attack
on Iran.

A war of words meanwhile broke out between Iran
and Israel. In October, Iran's newly elected
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel
to be "wiped off the world's map."

Israeli leaders have vowed to prevent Iran from
acquiring nuclear weapons. Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon said on Dec. 1 that Israel would not allow
Iran to do so. "Israel, and not only Israel,
cannot accept a situation in which Iran would be
in possession of nuclear weapons," Sharon said.

Former prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu has held
out a scarcely veiled threat to destroy Iran's
nuclear installations, approvingly citing
Israel's 1981 bombing of Iraq's "Osirak" research
reactor, then under construction.

On Dec. 16, Iran warned Israel that its response
to an Israeli attack would be "swift, firm and
destructive."

"What all this highlights is the potential for a
dangerous conflict in the Middle East," says
Vanaik. "The region has already become
explosively volatile because of the occupation of
Iraq, coming on top of the Palestinian crisis. If
the U.S. and Israel persist with a hardline
approach to Iran, they could create havoc. U.S.
double standards -- hostility to Iran, coupled
with its support to Israel's nuclear weapons
programme -- are a source of great popular
discontent in the region."

Washington's double standards are evident in
South Asia too. It agreed to make a one-time
exception in the international nuclear
non-proliferation regime for India by accepting
that India is a "responsible" nuclear weapons
state, although it has not signed the NPT. The
Bush administration offered to persuade the U.S.
congress to amend non-proliferation laws and to
plead for a similar exception for India in the
Nuclear Suppliers' Group.

India and the U.S. are developing a "strategic
partnership", including extensive military
cooperation. In March, Washington offered to help
India become a great world power in the 21st
century.

This has rankled Pakistan, which sees the
Indo-U.S. "partnership" as introducing regional
strategic asymmetry. Pakistan is likely to demand
similar treatment for itself in respect of
nuclear technology and equipment, and is drawing
up plans for new nuclear power stations.

The U.S. is doing little to defuse the
Indo-Pakistan nuclear rivalry. It is embarrassed
by disclosures about the clandestine activities
of the Abdul Qadeer Khan network which sold
uranium enrichment technology to Iran, North
Korea and Libya. But Washington needs Pakistan as
an ally in the "war against terrorism", in
particular, the Taliban and al-Qaeda. It has
resisted applying pressure on Pakistan to subject
Khan to thorough interrogation to detail his
nuclear transactions.

The hardline approach of the U.S. to Iran's
nuclear activities contrasts with its soft
approach to North Korea, despite Pyongyang's
claim that it already has a nuclear weapon. It is
offering inducements to North Korea, including a
civilian nuclear reactor, and economic aid,
although it rejects the demand that the reactor's
construction should precede the dismantling of
Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme.

"Washington's non-proliferation criteria are
selective, discriminatory and inconsistent," says
Vanaik. "It uses non proliferation as a weapon
when that suits its short-term interests. When it
doesn't, it allows nuclear weapons technologies
to proliferate."

A worrisome example of this may be Japan. The
country's constitution, dictated by the U.S.
during its post-war occupation, forbids the
acquisition, manufacture or "bringing in" of
nuclear weapons. Many conservative politicians in
Japan want the statute amended.

Japan has stockpiled huge amounts of plutonium,
reprocessed in western Europe, ostensibly to feed
its fast breeder reactors but with the potential
for quick diversion to military uses.

Should Japan acquire nuclear weapons and continue
its military build up, China will react. Already,
China feels threatened by Washington's ballistic
missile defence programme and by growing
Indo-U.S. military collaboration. If present
trends continue, Asia could witness two new arms
races -- one between Japan and China, and the
other between China and India.

These rivalries will not be driven entirely by
regional factors but will have a strong
extra-regional influence, that of the U.S. As the
Asia-Pacific region transits into 2006, it seems
headed for turmoil and instability. (END/2005)

13.
http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=345986
Press Trust of India

150 PORTRAITS OF INDIA'S MARTYRS DRAWN IN BLOOD
MATHURA (UP), JAN 3 (PTI)

A pair of artists here have drawn the story of
India's martyrs in their own blood.

They hope to take the 150-portrait "Shaheed"
exhibition across the country "since it is the
only way of creating awareness about the
sacrifice of the martyrs. Those born in the
post-Independence era cannot feel the struggle by
freedom fighters," Ravi Chandra Gupta, a retired
vice-principal says.

He came up with the idea of painting India's
story in blood in 1992 and, along with artist
Guru Darshan Singh Vinkal, the two have made
portraits of freedom fighters from Netaji Subash
Chandra Bose to the soldiers that fought the
Kargil war in 1999.

Gupta says he went to Vinkal for a portrait of
Netaji and "hardly had he begun work when I gave
him some of my own blood taken from a diagnostic
centre and requested him to make the portrait."
The problem of blood clotting was overcome as a
doctor at the centre added a powder to it, says
the 66-year-old Gupta.

Gradually, the paintings increased and vignettes
from the freedom struggle, Kargil war and other
events were sketched.

He says Vinkal added 50 portraits from his own blood to the collection.

"It is a rare work. The manner atrocities of past
rulers have been exposed through portraits
prepared in blood and it is praiseworthy. It is a
symbol of committed Patriotism," VHP leader
Sadhvi Ritambhara said inaugurating one such
exhibition at Vatsalya Gram Vrindaban yesterday.

The VHP leader told him that she will assist in
"setting up an international Museum in Vatsalya
Gram with my works and would later be extended to
other exibits".

14.

Washington Post - December 25, 2005

US EYES BIG PAKISTAN, INDIA ARMS SALES
By Jim Wolf / Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration is
maneuvering to balance possible big new U.S. arms
sales to archrivals India and Pakistan in the new
year.

In the past week, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney
and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have made
separate visits, not announced in advance, to
Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S.-declared war on
terrorism.

Islamabad will make up its mind in the coming
year on a U.S. offer to resume F-16 fighter
aircraft sales after a 16-year break, Foreign
Minister Khursheed Kasuri was quoted by the
Associated Press of Pakistan as saying after
Cheney left.

Earlier this month, Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey
Kohler, head of the Pentagon's Defense Security
Cooperation Agency, said he expected Pakistan to
modify buying plans because of the October 8
earthquake that killed more than 73,000 people.

"I think that what we were ready to do right
before the earthquake is probably going to have
to change," Kohler said in a December 7 interview
with Reuters in Washington.

"We'll get back with Pakistan early in the new
year and see what they want to do," he added.
Before the temblor, Pakistan had asked about
buying as many as 75 new F-16C/D models and 11
refurbished F-16s, Kohler said in May.

The single-engine multi-role F-16 is built by
Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin Corp..
New purchases would boost a fleet of about 32
F-16s acquired before Congress cut off sales in
1990 over Pakistan's nuclear program.

In May, the Pentagon told Congress it was
proposing to let Pakistan buy 300 AIM-9M-1/2
"Sidewinder" heat-seeking, air-to-air missiles
and 60 Harpoon missiles with a combined value of
up to $226 million.

INDIA AS CHINA HEDGE

Separately, the United States is poised to push
in the new year for major arms sales to India, a
hedge against China's growing regional military
clout and influence.

The Bush administration is weighing, among other
things, whether to let India buy a
state-of-the-art radar system as part of a U.S.
bid for a potential $5 billion contract to supply
126 multi-role fighters, Kohler said in the
interview.

The possible supply of Active Electronically
Scanned Array Radar, or AESA, would boost U.S.
prospects against expected competition from
Sweden, France and Russia. The technology is
meant to let U.S. fighters detect and destroy
enemy aircraft at significantly longer ranges.

An Indian purchase of either the F-16 or the
F/A-18E/F Super Hornet built by Boeing Co., the
other U.S. fighter on offer, would cement a sea
change in U.S.-Indian bilateral ties since the
end of the Cold War.

"Their pilots (would) come to our schools. We'll
train with them. We will work very closely with
their maintenance technicians," said Kohler, who
has visited India three times in the past year.
He said he may go back to New Delhi in March and
was planning to send his deputy, Richard Millies,
in late January or early February to coincide
with an arms bazaar.

New Delhi's ultimate choice of its next fighter
aircraft "will be a fairly significant political
statement," he said.

India is widely said to be interested also in a
range of U.S. arms, including P-3C Orion maritime
patrol aircraft, PAC-3 anti-missile systems and
electronic warfare systems.

Analysts fear U.S. sales could fuel an arms race
between India and Pakistan, which have fought
three wars since the 1947 partition of British
India.

If their rivalry flared anew, the United States
could be on the hook to deliver sophisticated
weaponry to a region on the brink of war, said
Matt Schroeder of the Federation of American
Scientists' arms sales monitoring project.


15.

   BOOK REVIEW: SUBCONTINENTAL NIGHTMARES

Robert M. Hathaway
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_12/Dec-BookReview.asp


16.

IDPD WANTS SOCIETY SANS NUKE POWER
http://newstodaynet.com/15dec/rf7.htm

17.

WHEN "SECURITY" LOOMS LARGER THAN TSUNAMI
      By J. Sri Raman (Truthout.org - 19 December 2005)

      To some, this may sound like just the kind of
drivel to be expected of a cranky peace activist.
But, believe me, I am not the one to be talking
of "security concerns" making it impossible for
India to cooperate in an essential disaster
prevention project for the Indian Ocean region.

      Come December 26, it will be a year since the
unforgettable tsunami disaster that hit India and
ten other countries of the region. On the eve of
the anniversary, India's rulers have announced
their resolve not to share seismic data with
other countries in order to facilitate the
installation of a tsunami warning system in the
Indian Ocean.

      The seismic data had "security implications,
as seabed terrain could be mapped, possibly
helping others learn about the nation's
submarines and warships." This was reportedly the
argument of Indian seismologists at a United
Nations tsunami conference on Friday in
Hyderabad, India.

      The statement, which caused unconcealed
resentment among other countries represented at
the conference, has gone almost unnoticed in the
Indian media. No one has asked whether this will
set back action on New Delhi's promise of
September to put a warning system in place in
less than a year at the remarkably low cost of
1.25 billion Indian rupees.

      "Security concerns," again, have apparently
prevented even official consideration of another
major issue raised by the tsunami. In these
columns, at that time, we had talked about the
double peril that India had survived - the tidal
havoc and a nuclear holocaust. The anti-nuclear
movement raised several uncomfortable questions
about the damage done to a nuclear complex in
Kalpakkam, close to Chennai (formerly Madras).
The main question posed was whether it was not
time to consider re-location of India's nuclear
plants in coastal areas vulnerable to such
calamities.

      The questions have been treated with contempt
that they did not deserve in a democracy. The
only token action taken to date was to raise the
raft of the under-construction fast breeder
reactor at the complex by a height of 1.4 meters,
so that the fast breeder plant has now been
elevated five meters "above the water level
encountered at site during the tsunami." As
though the giant waves, which varied from 15 to
40 meters in height last year, can never climb
higher!

      No "security concerns" have been cited as the
reason for the extreme official reluctance to act
on the most important environmental lesson from
the disaster. The country's "defense" would not
have been at stake in a program to undo the
serious damage done to India's coastline over the
years.

      Experts were quick to point out, in the wake
of the tsunami, the deep coastal erosion caused
by a political-corporate nexus of corruption and
a callous disregard for the lives and livelihoods
of the coastal communities. But for the
"development" of the coastline with a concrete
chain of posh residential colonies, star hotels
and holiday resorts, accompanied by a destruction
of natural barriers like mangroves and reefs, the
tsunami disaster would have acquired less dire
proportions.

      The inaction on this count, however,
illustrates a "development strategy" that has
very little place for people's concerns, such as
public health, but a prominent one for
cash-spinning coastal industries and shiny
nuclear reactors of hushed secrecy and holy
"strategic" importance.

      Neither would "security concerns" seem to be
linked to the major disasters that hit two
metropolitan cities in a calamity-filled year.
After unprecedented heavy rains, Mumbai (formerly
Bombay, India's financial capital) went under
floods in August. So did Chennai in November, and
it is yet to recover fully from the fury of the
waters. In both cases, the disasters would not
have acquired the dimensions they did, had the
cities been equipped with elementary civic
infrastructure, including drainage.

      Floods recede, but the fact remains that
damage they wreak is also related to a
"development strategy" that stints no money for
"defense" and "security" purposes, but gives a
very low priority to the living needs of
citizens, especially in the ghettos of India's
ever-growing cities.

      The country's defense budget for 2004-2005
amounted to 770 billion Indian rupees, or almost
15 per cent of the total budgetary outlay. Among
other major headings of expenditure, the share of
education for the whole country, in contrast,
hovered above two per cent. Not hard to imagine
is the insignificant place of basic amenities
like drainage in such a scheme of things.

      The latest of the disasters to visit India
and (Pakistan) was the terrible Kashmir
earthquake of October. "Security concerns," once
again, prevented the governments of both the
countries, supposed to be engaged in a "peace
process," from cooperating in relief and
rehabilitation efforts. The quake victims, as
noted in these columns before, also faced a hate
campaign aimed at preventing substantial Indian
assistance to them.

      It took a long time, and laborious
negotiations, for the two sides to allow a few
points on the 1,700-km Line of Control for
passage of Kashmiri people divided by a conflict
of political creation. Right now, the victims are
roughing it out through a cruel winter, with no
major joint-India-Pakistan initiative to mitigate
it.

      Nature may prove kinder to India and South
Asia in the coming year. There is no reason for
hope, however, that the rulers of the region
weighed down with "security concerns" will.

      A freelance journalist and a peace activist
of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of
Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a
regular contributor to t r u t h o u t.


18.

WHAT AILS ORDNANCE FACTORIES
Josy Joseph (December 22, 2005)
http://dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1003475


19.

ASSAM'S PATHS OF VIOLENCE
BY SUBIR BHAUMIK
BBC News, Guwahati (9 December 2005)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4511378.stm


20.

'DHANUSH' TESTFIRED

Chandipur-on-Sea (Orissa), Dec. 28 (PTI):
"Dhanush", India's indigenously developed short
range ballistic missile, was test fired
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/002200512281614.htm


21.

ARMY WON'T GIVE SPECTRUM UP EASILY
Joji Thomas Philip / New Delhi (Business Standard - December 27, 2005)
http://www.business-standard.com/search/storypage_new.php?leftnm=lmnu2&leftindx=\
2&lselect=1&autono=209746

Rediff.com
DEFENCE SPECTRUM ZONE MOOTED
Joji Thomas Philip in New Delhi | January 05, 2006 09:18 IST
http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2006/jan/05tele.htm



22.

No decision taken yet on AFSPA (The Hindu - Dec 28, 2005)
http://www.hindu.com/2005/12/28/stories/2005122807011400.htm

o o o

AFSPA to be watered down
Reddy Panel: Act was to be scrapped, but Army opposed move
Sudhi Ranjan Sen (Indian Express - Jan 4, 2005)
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=85243


23.

Economic and Political Weekly - December 17, 2005

Letters

FACTS ABOUT 'SALWA JUDUM'

An all-India team of PUCL, PUDR, APDR and IAPL
investigated the alleged violations of human
rights and its impact on peoples' lives in the
course of the Salwa Judum in Dantewada district
of Chhattisgarh between November 28 and December
1. The 14-member team met local people in camps
as well as in their villages, people arrested
during the operation, leaders of Salwa Judum,
police and civil administration officials (the
collector and sub-divisional magistrate).

The following are the main findings of the team.
(1) The Salwa Judum is far from the spontaneous
uprising of tribals against Maoists that it is
claimed to be. It is an organised, state-managed
enterprise that has precedents in the Jan Jagaran
Abhiyans that have occurred earlier under the
leadership of Mahendra Karma. The collector
himself has been at 75 per cent of the Salwa
Judum meetings and security forces have been
backing the Judum's meetings. The main cadre of
Salwa Judum are special police officers who are
being paid and armed by the state, at a rate that
is standard in counter-insurgency operations
across the country.
(2) The Salwa Judum has led to the forcible
displacement of people throughout Dantewada,
Geedam and Bijapur areas, under police and
administrative supervision. According to official
estimates, approximately 15,000 people from 420
villages are living as refugees in temporary
camps. People have left behind their cattle and
most of their household goods. The entire area is
being cleared of inhabitants even as new roads
are being built and more police and paramilitary
stations are being set up. The region is being
turned into one large cantonment. In many places,
regular economic activities like weekly 'haats'
have stopped.
(3) We observed a pattern in the dislocation:
when Salwa Judum meetings are called, people from
neighbouring villages are asked to be present.
The meetings are accompanied by heavy security
forces. Villages which refuse to participate face
repeated attacks by the combined forces of Salwa
Judum, the district force and the Naga battalion.
In addition, there are separate raids by the Naga
battalion. These raids result in looting, arson
and killings in many instances. In some villages,
the raids continue till the entire village is
cleared, while in other cases, only old people,
women and children are left. Many villagers are
coming to camps to avoid these attacks in the
first place.
(4) Once in camps, people have no choice but to
support the Salwa Judum. Some of them are forced
to work as informers against members of their own
and neighbouring villages and participate in
attacks against them. Individual families are
sometimes being split between Judum supporters
and those who wish to remain in their village. We
also came across instances where young people
were taken away from the village by the Salwa
Judum and their families are unaware of their
whereabouts.
(5) It is frightening to note the collapse of
civil administration in many parts of Dantewada
district. Salwa Judum members man check points on
roads, search people's belongings and control the
flow of traffic and buses. They enforce an
economic blockade on villages that resist coming
to camps.
(6) FIRs registering the looting, burning,
beatings/torture by Salwa Judum mobs and the
security forces are not recorded. We were told of
specific instances where security forces threw
dead bodies inside or near villages. These
killings are not reported, and therefore hard to
corroborate. Some reports suggest that 96 people
from 34 villages have been killed. However, the
only killings that are officially recorded are
those by Maoists. In the period since Salwa Judum
started, it is true that the killings by Maoists
have gone up substantially and the official
figure today stands at 70. Rather than being a
"peace mission" as is claimed, the Salwa Judum
has created a situation where violence has
escalated.
(7) The Salwa Judum is strongly supported by
certain sections of Bastar society. This section
comprises some non-adivasi immigrant settlers
from other parts of India, sarpanches and
traditional leaders (whose power has been
threatened by the Maoists), powerful local
politicians like Karma, and his network of
supporters. Both the local Congress and the BJP
are supporting the Salwa Judum together.
(8) Militarisation: We have heard from several
high ranking officials that there is an
undeclared war on in Bastar, and we fear that the
worst is yet to come. There is a heavy presence
of the paramilitary like the CRPF and the Naga
battalion. This creates a situation where forces
from other states are behaving like an occupation
army. We ourselves saw a number of cattle and
people being herded by the Naga battalion after a
raid. They slaughtered one cow on the main road
in full view of all present.

In addition, people are being encouraged to carry
arms. Village defence committees are being
created, special police officers are being
trained and armed, and the entire society is
becoming more militaristic.

The human rights groups demand: (i) An end to
militarisation of society in Bastar/Dantewada,
which is pitting adivasis against each other as
part of an anti-Naxal operation, using people as
a shield; (ii) a judicial enquiry into all
killings committed by the Salwa Judum/security
forces combine, which have gone unrecorded; and
(iii) that the CPI (Maoist) provide details of
all persons killed by them.

PUCL (Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand),
PUDR, APDR and IAPL
Raipur


24.

The Milli Gazette Online - 16-30 Apr 2005

REJOINDERS

Arms race in the sub-continent

Arms race in the sub-continent
USA's ulterior motive is now open secret. It
wants to escalate tension between India and
Pakistan by offering F-16 and F-18 to both the
countries. It is NO.1 enemy of peace and
humanism. Everything for money. It wants to
destroy both the countries by giving them
weapons. USA should be isolated by the world for
arms race in the world and in making the world a
dangerous place to live. America was never a
peace-lover and it always spread hatred and
suspicion in the world. Think of Japan, Vietnam,
Think of Afghanistan, Think of Iraq.
Aboobakar Thwahir, Mumbai
aboobakarthwahir@...

II
US offers defence sops to India Logically our
PM's concern should increase many folds. The
United States is supplying F-16 fighters to
Pakistan as well as India. Albeit they are not at
all useful to Pakistan to curb terrorism of
Alquaida. The same fighter planes are of no use
to curb terrorist activities in Jammu & Kashmir.
It is only to a upgrade and broaden global
character for further strengthening of bilateral
strategic relations between India and US.
Miss Condoleezza Rice said the US was trying to
solidify relations with both India and Pakistan
even as they improve their ties with each other.
The question arise how they can improve the ties
by aspiring for F-16 fighters worth several
billoin dollars. Now I can say that to become
friendly only cricket is not enough they should
purchase F-16 and F-18 fighters from US then only
their friendship is strengthened

The whole thing is that " Ke bhaiya Amreica wants
Rupaih" from Pakistan and India. It was our great
folly to allow the cricket matches at the cost of
our students' precious time. The poor diplomats
of Pakistan and democratic Secular Republic of
India are sailing in the same boat.
Dr Suriya Hameed, Gulbarga
suriyahameed@...

25.

http://www.dawn.com/2006/01/02/letted.htm#11
Dawn - January 2, 2006
Letters to the Editor

SCIENCE DIED IN 1965

The article "Death of Science" by Ms Zubeida
Mustafa needs elaboration. Actually science died
in Pakistan on September 5, 1965. It so happened
that the government of Ayub Khan set up various
commissions on education, science etc. The
science commision consisted of eminent scientists
Professor Abdus Salam, Dr Salimuzzaman Siddiqui
and Dr I.H. Usmani.

It submitted its report to President Ayub on
Sept. 5, 1965 at a meeting held in Swat. It
recommended setting up of laboratories and
training of science teachers from the primary to
university level and recommended increased
funding.

The next day, war broke out between India and
Pakistan and all the funding recommended was
diverted to the war effort. The biggest victim of
the 1965 war was science in Pakistan.

DR S.M. ISMAIL
Karachi


26.

MILITARISING STATE, SOCIETY AND CULTURE IN ASIA
Contributed by J. Uyangoda & A. Abella (ed.)
Monday, 07 February 2005
Announcing a special issue of 'Asian Exchange'

The war on terror that began in Afghanistan after
9/11 and then extended to Iraq has an enduring
impact on the countries in Asia with the
simultaneous awakening of popular protests and
movements against the war and excesses committed
by the US. In this project, ARENA focuses on a
critical, alternative understanding of 'security'
by searching for a people-friendly paradigm of
security that is committed to people's rights,
livelihoods and values of democracy, peace and
social justice."

Jayadeva Uyangoda -Editorial Team

As global events are clearly becoming more and
more shaped and framed by the US-led 'war on
terror', the world is witness to a resurgence of
militarism in Asia where state, inter-state
relations and almost every aspect of everyday
life is increasingly becoming militarised.
"Militarising, State, Society and Culture in
Asia: Critical Perspectives," documents and
analyses the extent and impact of these processes
on ten countries in Asia: India, Pakistan, Sri
Lanka, Nepal, Philippines, South Korea, Malaysia,
Indonesia, Japan and Thailand. The writers
suggest that militarisation in Asia has entered a
qualitatively new phase which has penetrated
societies and cultures and impacted most strongly
on the marginalized sectors of society,
particularly women and children.  They further
argue that there is an urgent need to
'de-securitise' the state, develop a strong human
security framework, and pursue a comprehensive
political reform programme that can effectively
address the challenges of de-militarisation.

The chapters in this special issue of the Asian
Exchange are written from a perspective that
promotes political interventions for
democratisation, peace-building and humane
governance, and with the interest of
re-conceptualising the idea of security.
"Militarising State, Society and Culture in Asia:
Critical Perspectives" is a valuable resource for
understanding Asia and its people's search for
peace and security.

      * Scholars, researchers, policymakers and
social activists will find the analytical
writings in this volume a useful and inspiring
source of knowledge about Asia.
      *  Published by ARENA, a network of concerned
scholars and activists in Asia, this volume is
edited by Jayadeva Uyangoda, one of Sri Lanka's
prominent scholars known for his contributions in
the field of knowledge and the pursuit of peace.
      * Printed in paperback, 308 pages, this book
is available in limited copies only.  Order your
copy now!
-------------------------------
Contents
Forward
Introduction

Militarism in National Security, Inter-State, and State-Society Relations
      -INDIA: National Security, Multiple
Insurgencies, Inter-State relations and Societal
Militarisation
      -PAKISTAN: Ntional Security, Demorcacy
Failure and Continuing Militarisation of State
and Society

Militarisation in the Context of Protracted Civil War
      -Sri Lanka: Ethnic Conflict, Post-Colonial
National Building and Militarisation
      -Nepal: Democratic failure, National
Insurgency and the Rise of a Bellicist Culture
      -PHILIPPINES: Militarisation, Moro Insurgency
and the Challenges for Peace and Democracy

Militarisation by Other Means
      -MALAYSIA: National Security, the Police and
the Rule by Law:Militarisation By other means
      -JAPAN: Militarisation of a Pacifist State
      -SOUTH KOREA: Social Militarisation and Gender

Militarisation as National Ideology
     -INDONESIA: The failure of Reformasi and Remilitarisation
     -THAILAND: Hidden Dimensions of "Thainess":
Violence and Militarism in the Culture and
Politics

ISSV 0256-7520
Vol. 20  No.2 2004 / Vol. 21  No.1 2005

Total 316p+Cover
For further inquieries, please write to
arena@...


27.

Nepali Times - 23-29 December 2005

STATE OF THE STATE
by CK LAL

JANATAS AND JUNTAS
THE NAGARKOT MASSACRE WAS A REMINDER THAT REFORM
IN THE MILITARY IS LONG OVERDUE

Basudev Thapa

It is now nearly certain that Basudeb Thapa, the
soldier who snuffed out 12 innocent lives in
Nagarkot, didn't commit suicide. The length of an
SLR's barrel rules it out. Another gun
'discovered' by the army from a buffalo wallow
nearby was probably wielded by a fellow-soldier.

Reports of two parallel investigation commissions
set up by the Royal Nepali Army (RNA) and the
Home Ministry are unlikely to resolve the
mystery. Whatever really happened, freak cases
are easier to explain than deviant behaviour
triggered by inherent weaknesses of a group. So
if the socio-political reasons for soldiers
running amok aren't properly understood and
addressed, tragedies like this will keep
happening.

The RNA has always remained outside the ambit of
public inquiry. The myth that it is not just an
instrument of the state but an independent
institution has been carefully nurtured by
successive rulers. Despite changes in 1990
popularly elected governments also continued to
treat the RNA as a holy cow.

Structurally, the army is still rooted in 18th
century monarchical traditions and run like an
extension of the royal household. Loyalty to the
king and royal family rather than commitment to
the constitution has been its mission statement
all along.

Its recruitment procedures still predominantly
follow the historical practice of selection
through familial links. In influential families
it is customary to bring lads from the hills to
work as domestics with the promise that they will
join the force when they grow up. A
patron-protégé relationship therefore dominates.
Even from the so-called martial races, what the
RNA gets are rejects of the British and Indian
recruitments.

Despite its proud origins during the nation's
unification, the RNA is yet to emerge as a
rule-bound modern fighting force. The value
system of soldiery in Nepal is the traditional
loyalty of a royalist army.

Nepali sipahis have excelled whenever there was
no ambiguity about their role. During the sack of
Lucknow in 1857, in various theatres of the two
world wars or in the course of peacekeeping
missions all over the world Nepali soldiers have
conducted themselves with exemplary
professionalism and valour because their beliefs
didn't clash with the duties assigned.

But the army's inherent weaknesses surfaced after
its mobilisation to fight insurgency in November
2001. Despite reports of 'breaking the backbone'
of Maoists, the sad reality is that the army has
just not conducted any major counterinsurgency
offensives. That cases like Nagarkot aren't more
common is a tribute to the spiritual strength
that binds the fabric of Nepali society. To
emerge as a competent force capable of handling
the complexities of a modern state, the RNA must
urgently re-define itself as a Rastriya Nepali
Army-a national army which is an instrument of
the state and functions under the control of a
legitimate civilian authority.

Since there seems to be an emerging consensus
that the insurgency needs a political solution a
future civilian leadership must be prepared to
cut military flab, knock off some top-heavy
brass, restructure command and control and turn
the RNA into a professional fighting force.

No two countries are exactly alike but lessons
from Burma, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand and
Philippines show this is the only way to go. A
militarised polity fails to deliver and prevents
countries from realising their full potential.
Janatas and juntas never did get along.

It would be a mistake to ignore the Nagarkot
tragedy as an isolated incident. It was a timely
reminder of the risks involved in maintaining an
insular royalist force at this point in our
history.


28.

www.truthout.org
26 December 2005

BANGLADESH: INDIA CELEBRATES AN ILLUSORY 'VICTORY'
By J. Sri Raman

      India's tourist literature may talk of
Mahatma Gandhi, Gautam Buddha and their messages
of peace. Neither of the country's two main
political parties, however, prides itself on any
contribution to the cause of peace. Quite to the
contrary.

      The leaders of the far-right Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) have left no one in doubt about this.
The primary and proudest achievement of the
BJP-led government under former-Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, according to them, lay in
the Pokharan nuclear-weapon tests. They are
convinced that they can silence any critic
questioning the party's commitment to the
country's cause by citing the tests, and the
status these are supposed to have conferred on
India.

      The Congress Party, heading the current
coalition government in New Delhi, finds their
counter in the Bangladesh war of 1971. They hail
the liberation of Bangladesh, achieved largely by
India under former-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi,
as a feat of the kind the party's political foes
can never boast of.

      What is more, each of the parties
acknowledges the "achievement" of the other.
Stray voices from within the Congress might have
mildly protested Pokharan, but the party as a
whole and their government today only proclaim
their resolve to pursue the path of nuclear
armament. The BJP and their associates have been
even more effusive in acknowledging their worthy
adversary's role in the war of three decades ago.

      Vajpayee himself, at that time, famously
hailed Indira as "Durga" (the demon-slaying deity
of the Hindu pantheon), though he has since been
denying the statement in vain. The Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), patriarch of the
far-right "parivar" ("family"), with the BJP as
its political front, has been even less
restrained and more rapturous in its praise of
the former prime minister on this count.

      The left and liberal sections of opinion in
India, too, supported the war then as a
"liberation struggle." All the more so because
the Richard Nixon regime of the US at the time
was tilting toward Pakistan and against India and
Bangladesh as a continuation of its cold war in
the region. Many here saw the revolt of then-East
Pakistan as a welcome rejection of religion-based
nationhood.

      Ironically today, it is religious-communal
fascism in India that pays the most fervent
tributes to Indira for "breaking Pakistan," as
the RSS puts it. And it is religious
fundamentalism that is increasingly on the
rampage in Bangladesh.

      On December 16, the government of India
celebrated the "Vijay Divas" (Victory Day) in
commemoration of the conclusion of the Bangladesh
war with the Pakistani forces' surrender to the
triumphant Indian army. The BJP registered a
token protest against the government for not
celebrating with equal pomp the July 26
anniversary of the Kargil victory, achieved under
Vajpayee against Pakistani intruders in the
Himalayan region; and Defense Minister Pranab
Mukherjee proffered the technical explanation
that Bangladesh was a "declared war" while Kargil
was not. The matter ended there with the BJP
preferring not to press their point.

      The more noteworthy point, however, was the
absence of any public enthusiasm over the
Bangladesh anniversary. The political evolution
of India's eastern neighbor has done nothing to
enthuse the people, especially as they have been
exposed to far-right propaganda about the dire
threat from Bangladeshi "infiltrators" to the
country's security and demography.

      Developments in Bangladesh over the last
decade, and more particularly in the recent past,
have only helped to strengthen the propagandists'
divisive politics. The growth of "jehadi"
fundamentalism, by all accounts, has been
phenomenal in that country ever since President
George Bush embarked on a war against it in
Afghanistan and elsewhere.

      We have talked, in these columns before, of
the several incidents of terrorism to shake
Bangladesh over the past two years. These include
the series of grenade blasts in Dhaka on August
21, 2004, and the 400 explosions in 63 district
centers across the country almost a year later.
This month alone, killings of several judges and
lawyers, indicted by terrorists on charges of not
implementing the Islamic law, have been reported
along with an open extremist threat to eliminate
women - even non-Muslim ones - not wearing veils.

      The terrorist politics have led to an
anti-India tirade as well, which sections of
Bangladeshi media deplore as a "diversionary
tactic." The government of India and its security
and intelligence agencies, however, cannot claim
to have given no cause for complaints. They could
have certainly avoided the 100-round exchange of
fire on August between Indian and Bangladeshi
forces across a fenced border, which triggered
grave apprehensions all over the region.

      Involved in all of this are more than
India-Bangladesh relations. The far-right
campaign against Bangladeshi "infiltrators,"
strengthened anew by every successive terrorist
strike across India's eastern border, is easily
convertible into one against "Islam." It can thus
serve to scuttle as well the India-Pakistan peace
process, which the BJP cannot otherwise oppose,
having initiated it during the Vajpayee days as a
post-Pokharan ploy to prove their peaceable
intentions.
      A freelance journalist and a peace activist
of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of
Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a
regular contributor to t r u t h o u t.

29.

The Economic and Political Weekly
December 10, 2005
Reviews

TALL CLAIM, LITTLE EVIDENCE

Fearful Symmetry: India-Pakistan Crises in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons
by Sumit Ganguly and Devin Hagerty;
Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2005;
pp 223, Rs 495.

M V Ramana

In the 1921 film, The Kid, Charlie Chaplin plays a window repairman with
a partner in business - Jackie Coogan, who plays the Kid. Their modus
operandi is that Coogan goes around breaking windows and Chaplin comes
by a few minutes later with a selection of window glass, as if by
accident, and gets hired to fix them. To those who do not catch on to
what is happening, it would seem that Chaplin is indeed a saviour.
According to Sumit Ganguly and Devin Hagerty in Fearful Symmetry:
India-Pakistan Crises in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons, nuclear weapons
play a role in south Asia that is, in many ways, similar to Chaplin's
role. What is left out, however, is an examination of how the same
nuclear weapons also play the role essayed by Coogan.

Before one examines why this is the case, a brief summary of the book is
in order. Ganguly and Hagerty attempt to come up with a "comprehensive
analysis of Indo-Pakistani crisis behaviour in south Asia's nuclear
eraŠcomprehensive in the sense of covering all of the crises, major and
minor". The authors consider six crises between 1984 and 2002. All but
one of these were resolved without war; the exception is Kargil, 1999.
The authors then go on to ask: why have these six crises been resolved
short of major war? The answer sought to this question is purely within
the ambit of their chosen theoretical perspective on international
relations: realism. Realism, by and large, leaves out domestic factors
in its explanations. According to realists, states are obsessed with
maximising their "security", defined almost exclusively in military
terms. Within this narrow perspective, the authors examine three
possible strands of explanation: unipolarity theory, nuclear deterrence
theory and conventional deterrence theory. The authors conclude that
"the nuclear-deterrence proposition provides the strongest explanation
for the absence of major war in the region over the last two decades,
especially in the four crises beginning with that of 1990. US
intervention in the form of crisis management sometimes played a
secondary, but important, role" (p 11).

For a book that promises so much, Fearful Symmetry falls very short. The
problems with it start early - as soon as the authors state their three
propositions to be tested (pp 8-10), each of which starts with the
fundamental but flawed assumption, that the Indian and Pakistani
governments had "compelling incentives to attack one another during the
crises under examination". If one were to examine each of these crises,
in practically all cases the argument for not going to war is obvious
(unless going to war is assumed to be sort of the natural and default
inclination). In none of the cases were there any compelling incentives
to attack. Indeed the overwhelming incentives were to not attack. That
most of these so-called crises are dismissed as insignificant by many
senior political leaders underscores the point that an attack was not
actively contemplated at the highest levels.

The lack of incentive to attack is especially true of India, whose
actions bear a certain resemblance to what historian Paul Kennedy said
of Britain during the years between the first and second world war,
"these were the actions of a country with nothing to gain, and much to
lose, by being involved in war. Peace, in such circumstances, was the
greatest of national interests" (P Kennedy (1981), The Realities behind
Diplomacy, Allen and Unwin, London).

No Evidence

Even if one were to go along with the authors and assume that there were
compelling incentives to attack, then what is needed to substantiate the
contention that nuclear deterrence was the primary if not sole
preventive factor is evidence of senior policy makers and military
explicitly pointing to the possibility of nuclear retaliation as the
reason to call off their attack plans. This kind of evidence is just not
provided in the book. One might argue that this is setting the bar too
high - but with an issue as grave as nuclear weaponry, with the likely
consequences being so catastrophic, less will simply not do. The burden
of proof rests upon those who make claims about nuclear weapons and
their capacity to deter war, and the authors do not shoulder this burden
adequately.

Take the 2001-02 crisis for example. Was India really planning to go to
full-scale war in 2002? It would seem that such a course would be akin
to burning the house to kill the mice. Burning the neighbour's house, in
this case. What one does know about mice and burnt houses is that the
mice do not go away. Similarly, it would be foolish to assume that an
assault on Pakistan would actually end the problem of militancy in
Kashmir. This is clear to many senior military personnel. In the words
of major general (retd) Ashok K Mehta, "the paramount reason for India's
"restraint" was the knowledge that any military action would not achieve
the political objective of stopping cross border terrorism. It would
inflict punishment but not extract total compliance within the threshold
of limited war, the gains from which were estimated to be of doubtful
utility. The cardinal principle of war (which is the failure of
diplomacy) is that you don't start it unless you are sure you can end it
by being better off" (Ashok K Mehta (2003), 'India was on Brink of War
Twice', Rediff on the Net, January 2, also available at
http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/jan/02ashok.htm).

More important for the purposes of examining the thesis of Ganguly and
Hagerty, he also goes on to state, "India chose not to cross the Rubicon
for other reasons. Pakistan's military and nuclear deterrence was not
one of them". Mehta is not the only military leader to make this point.
Another example is general V P Malik, former chief of army staff, who
stated that nuclear weapons were largely irrelevant for conventional
warfare and played no deterrent role during the Kargil war or in the
2002 crisis.

It is also worth pointing out the contradictory nature of the claims
made about the efficacy of nuclear deterrence in south Asia (Achin
Vanaik (2002), 'Deterrence or a Deadly Game? Nuclear Propaganda and
Reality in South Asia', Disarmament Diplomacy, September, (66). On the
one hand, prime minister Vajpayee claimed that the 2002 crisis showed
that India had, in effect, successfully called Pakistan's nuclear bluff.
On the other hand, Abdul Kalam claimed that nuclear weapons had averted
any kind of war. (Embarrassingly, this was in essence the same claim as
that made by Pakistani president Musharraf and contrary to what prime
minister Vajpayee was saying). Military leaders like V P Malik, as
mentioned, felt nuclear weapons played no role.

There is a corollary to all this counter-evidence about the irrelevance
of nuclear deterrence. Despite knowing fully well that the other side is
armed with nuclear weapons, capable of inflicting immense damage, the
fact that senior military personnel and political leaders do and did
contemplate war suggests that nuclear arsenals do not come with some
objective property called deterrence. (Aside: Those who speak of a
"deterrent" are guilty of reification, treating an abstraction as if it
substantially existed as a concrete material object.)

Raising the Ante

Realists try to get around this problem by asserting that wars in the
presence of nuclear weapons will only be limited ones, with clear
thresholds that are not crossed. Again the weight of evidence is against
them: if circumstances demanded it, each and every threshold will be
crossed. Within the south Asian context, senior military officers have
sought to "up the ante" on many occasions, and succeeded in the task on
some of those occasions. For example, on p 154, the authors describe the
events between May 18 and 24, 1999, during the Kargil war, when the
Indian army sought the help of the air force. On May 18, the cabinet
committee on security (CCS) recommended against the use of airpower,
since it constituted an escalation and an enlargement of the scope of
the conflict, and refused permission. A few days later on May 24, after
visits to army headquarters in Kashmir, the army chief tried again and
this time was successful in persuading the CCS to escalate the conflict.
The air force carried out the first air strikes on May 26. While
Pakistan did not respond in kind, partly because it was anxious to keep
up the deception that the attackers were Mujahideen, under other
circumstances it may well order air strikes of its own.

Though nuclear weapons cannot be credited with preventing war, they are
certainly responsible for destabilising the region and provoking crises.
India and Pakistan have had more military crises over the last 20 years
than any other 20 year period. This propensity for crises among nuclear
weapon states is what was alluded to when discussing Jackie Coogan's
role in 'The Kid'. Even realists sometimes admit to this property; the
best known formulation is Glenn Snyder's Stability Instability Paradox
(a paradox only if nuclear weapons are assumed to induce stability).
What realists are generally loath to admit is that some of these crises
may develop into a major war, either because events spin out of control
or because of accidents, which are especially prone to be misinterpreted
as acts of war at times of crises.

In south Asia, nuclear weapons can take credit for more than causing
crises - their presence was responsible for the Kargil war, estimated to
have cost at least 1,714 Indian lives and 772 Pakistani ones. Plans for
a Kargil-style operation had been hatched by the Pakistani military much
earlier; in 1996, military officers were confident enough of these plans
that they presented it to Benazir Bhutto, the prime minister of
Pakistan. But she vetoed the idea. With the 1998 tests and the presence
of a nuclear arsenal in Pakistan demonstrated beyond doubt, the
operation could not be vetoed, even by Nawaz Sharif, who was politically
much stronger than Benazir Bhutto when it came to dealing with the army.

Fearful Symmetry shows what shaky and flimsy foundations underlie the
theory of nuclear deterrence, the nearest word to gospel truth in the
minds of realists. One can be sure that among the converted, this book
will be cited as having demonstrated that it is nuclear deterrence that
keeps India and Pakistan from going to war, when the book offers little
concrete evidence of that claim. Already, some of the high priests of
the church of realism, including Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer,
have given the book their blessings, praising it highly. It is therefore
important that books like this are adequately and widely criticised. If
not, such ideas will quickly become common sense (not to be confused
with good sense).


30.

SADHUS HIDE GUNS UNDER SAFFRON CLOAKS
by Manjari Mishra
[ Saturday, December 10, 2005 02:04:31 am TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1326263.cms


31.

CHIEFS SAY YES (Editorial - The Telegraph - January 12, 2006)
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060112/asp/opinion/story_5708943.asp
Confused notions of censorship could result in
measures that look outrageous in a modern
democracy. Ms Sharmila Tagore inviting the chiefs
of the army, navy and air force, together with
the defence minister, to watch a feature film
touching on the MiG 21 controversy, before the
censors clear the film, does set a seriously
lopsided precedent. Ms Tagore apparently "just
thought that they all should see it" because it
is a "good film". And this too is a rather dodgy
thing to do. Providing publicity for the film is
not really her job, especially before the censor
board has certified it. Besides, why get together
such an audience and make it look like a casual
preview when the obvious sighs of relief after it
was 'passed' by the powerful points to a
different sort of situation. The full military
and political panoply around this screening, and
the "no objection" given by the air force seem to
suggest the censor board's, and its chief's,
nervousness about the controversial content of
the film. The board had previously tried to push
for "self-regulation" by television channels, in
order to cut down on violence and sex in their
programmes, and at a more political level, a
recent documentary on Jayaprakash Narayan had
been asked to soften its critical perspective on
the Emergency.

Ms Tagore has publicly expressed her views on the
problematic, indeed redundant, role of a censor
board in a mature democracy. But India, she
believes, is not as mature as Britain in this
matter, and less "homogeneous", with its
urban-rural divide. This calls for judicious
censorship, something that her predecessor was
deemed not to have been able to dispense in the
previous political regime. Such an argument is
nebulous, condescending and undemocratic. But
getting Rang De Basanti 'passed' by the military
chiefs and Central minister is more ominous, even
sinister. The critical independence of the arts,
the importance of the freedom of expression in
civil society, is held in jeopardy here. And this
is just as bad as getting religious films okayed
by religious leaders, as suggested by the
national commission for minorities after the
controversy over Jo Bole So Nihaal. The
Maharashtra government's banning of a historical
critique of Shivaji, and all the shameful palaver
around it, is only a few degrees worse. Power, at
its most insecure, is fundamentally inimical to
adult freedoms.

IAF OBJECTS TO SOME SCENES IN AAMIR KHAN'S NEW FILM
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/009200601101321.htm

see also:
INDIAN AIR FORCE CLIPS THREE SCENES FROM AAMIR'S MOVIE
Shaikh Ayaz
http://dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1006827&CatID=2

32.

CENTRE TO CONSTITUTE 300 BATTALION STRONG PARA-MILITARY FORCE
http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=347547

33.

REPORT: INDIAN PRODUCTS DEFECTIVE
AGENCY FINDS FAULT WITH 40% OF DEFENSE GEAR MADE AT HOME
By VIVEK RAGHUVANSHI, NEW DELHI (Defence News - Posted 01/09/06 12:17)
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=1444085&C=asiapac

34.
KERALA TO MONITOR CYBERCAFE USERS TO COMBAT ONLINE CRIME, TERRORISM
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200601101533.htm

35.

SHADOW ON THE CHIEF
There is evidence to link Admiral Arun Prakash
with companies implicated in the war room leak
by Saikat Satta (Outlook Magazine, January 16, 2005)
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20060116&fname=Navy+%28F%29&sid=1

36.

INFORMATION LIMITED
WHY THE RTI ACT IS NOT BEING ALLOWED TO BREATHE FREE

By Sankarshan Thakur (Tehelka - Dec 17 , 2005)

The Right to Information (RTI) Act, as the name
plainly suggests, is meant to make access to
information easier and more broadbased.
Transparency is essential to democratic societies
because it is closely connected to the conduct of
two other key functions of democracy - power and
responsibility. Governments that abuse the former
and disregard the latter want to run away from
transparency. Which is not to say that
governments that make transparency a legislated
right of citizens are necessarily in proper
exercise of power and responsibility.

Probably the most quoted legislation on the right
to information is the US Constitution's First
Amendment, which has been widely used in America,
especially by the media. That has not meant,
though, that American administrations have been
all above board in the exercise of power. Far
from it. But the right to information,
effectively and honestly operated, can act as a
check on governments that act in excess of their
powers. Like most of its governing principles,
India inherited its values on public information
from the British. It was a colonial legacy biased
in favour of the State. It afforded governments,
under cover of such laws as the Official Secrets
Act, ample powers to conceal and control
information. To the extent that it thwarts
democracy. The RTI has come to Indians after
decades of often quiet, often vociferous
struggling. But it appears that fight has only
borne bitten fruit. The Official Secrets Act -
and of course governments need to keep secrets
but often these secrets are secrets of individual
or collective guilt rather than secrets of
national interest or importance - remains a
formidable block. The RTI itself has been rather
severely depleted by its authors - no file notes
concerning "individuals, groups of individuals,
organisations, appointments or matters relating
to enquiries and departmental proceedings" may be
accessed by its exercise. So while we may hope to
know the process leading to a certain decision,
we may never be able to use the RTI to know, for
example, who was responsible for a decision that
might have proved inimical to the public
interest. Bureaucrats, typically, have succeeded
in covering their tracks and probably they have
been backed in it by political masters. The Army,
already protected by all manner of insulation on
information, too had moved to keep itself off the
purview of the RTI. The government has put the
Army waiver on hold. The prime minister's
clarification that all file notings will not
necessarily be exempt is also indication that
there is a keenness to make the RTI do what it is
meant to. But mere declaration of intent will not
serve; vested bureaucratic and political interest
will have to be outflanked. If getting
information gets lodged in the red-tape circuit,
the RTI will begin to chafe before it breathes.


37.  On Phone tapping in India:

CURB PHONE TAPPING
Rajindar Sachar (The Times of India, January 10, 2006)
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1366391,curpg-1.cms

BHARAT SARKAR, ALL EARS
by Inder Malhotra (Indian Express, January 10, 2005)
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=85668

THE SPY WHO TRACKED ME
Nikita Doval (The Times of India, January 5, 2006)
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1360448.cms

TIPS FOR A TAP
Ritu Sarin on the how and why of telephonic surveillance
(Indian Express, January 4, 2005)
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=85224

38

INDIA ADDING TROOPS ON BANGLADESH BORDER
By REUTERS (December 17, 2005)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/DEL19621.htm


39.  Bangladesh, the Telecom law and surveillance

BIG BROTHER IS TAPING YOU
Naeem Mohaiemen (DAILY STAR December 22, 2005)

"[In] the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under
constant surveillance. [Now] every citizen, or at least every citizen
important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twenty-four
hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official
propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed. The
possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of
the State, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now
existed for the first time." -- George Orwell, "1984"
http://www.thedailystar.net/2005/12/22/d51222020328.htm

o o o

YOUR LAST PHONE CALL
Naeem Mohaiemen (DAILY STAR December 12, 2006)
http://www.thedailystar.net/2005/12/12/d512121503112.htm

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

INDIA PAKISTAN ARMS RACE & MILITARISATION WATCH
A joint project of South Asia Citizens Web
(www.sacw.net) and South Asians Against Nukes
(www.s-asians-against-nukes.org) since November
1999.

Send Information via e-mail for IPARMW series to:
<aiindex (at) mnet (dot) fr> for
inclusion in the Emailings.]

The complete IPARMW archive is available at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/messages

India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch Compilation # 160
(21 Dec,  2005)
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/171

Contents:

1 Pakistan Navy Set To Receive American Spruance Class Destroyer
+ Text of Naval Vessels Transfer Act of 2005
(Considered and Passed by US Senate Oct 2005)
2 Pakistan: 'Spend funds from sale of military
land on quake victims' -- say senators
3 Pakistan: State, Military and Social Transition (S. Akbar Zaidi)
4 Pakistan: Aid, not weapons  -- Long exchange in letters to Editor - DAWN
5 Pakistan: Land of the army (Kamran Shafi)
6 Pakistan: US to Sell  M109A5 155mm Self-propelled Howitzers
7 Pakistan-Saudi naval exercise concludes
8 Pakistan - France reiterate desire for strengthening defense cooperation
9 Pakistan: More cricket, more security! (Nusrat Nasarullah)
10 India: Make NATO compatible arms: House panel recommendation
11 India-US defence cooperation is now on a take-off course (Josy Joseph)
12 Indian Navy strives for regional dominance (Rahul Bedi)
13 Indo-Israel defence ties get a boost (Rajat Pandit)
14 India's national ID scheme is 'on schedule' (Aman Sethi)
15 India to set up new missile base in Haldia
16 India Buys $400M Worth of Russia Missile Systems
17 Kashmir - India, Pakistan: Fidayeen - meeting
a would-be suicide bomber (Muzamil Jaleel)
+ Ferocious father of the fidayeen  (Muzamil Jaleel)
18 Indo-US Nuclear Deal: Myths and Realities (Sukla Sen)

_______

1.

PakistaniDefence.com

PAKISTAN NAVY SET TO RECEIVE AMERICAN SPRUANCE CLASS DESTROYER

      December 8, 2005: In a good news for Pakistan
Navy United States House of Representatives has
given its final approval for providing USS
Fletcher to Pakistan and other ships to Turkey,
Egypt, India and Greece. This bill has been sent
to President George Bush for signing after the
parliamentary approval. The US senate has earlier
passed the bill that will become a law after the
president's signs. United States will provide a
Spruance class destroyer USS Fletcher in military
aid to Pakistan after President Bush's approval.

      USS Fletcher is currently docked on Pearl
Harbor. Ship can carry a crew of 382 including 30
officers. One of the unique features of Spruance
Class Destroyer is its ability to launch cruse
missiles. PakistaniDefence.com analysis show that
Pakistan navy will upgrade some of the systems to
its requirements specially reconfiguring of
existing onboard missile systems to carry ship
based Babur cruse missile. In addition to wide
array of armament ship can also carry two
helicopters.

      Egypt will be given USS Raven and USS
Cardinal while Greece will be provided a ship of
the same category. United States will give Turkey
a Spruance class destroyer ship USS Fletcher,
while four countries including India will
purchase warships from United States. Austin
class amphibious warfare ship Trenton will be
sold to India. It should be noted the USS Trenton
was ordered by US navy on 17 May 1965 and is set
to be decommissioned by 2007-08

o o o

Naval Vessels Transfer Act of 2005
(Considered and Passed by US Senate)
S 1886 CPS
109th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. 1886
To authorize the transfer of naval vessels to certain foreign recipients.
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
October 18, 2005
Mr. LUGAR (for himself and Mr. BIDEN) introduced
the following bill; which was read twice,
considered, read the third time, and passed
A BILL
To authorize the transfer of naval vessels to certain foreign recipients.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of
Representatives of the United States of America
in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Naval Vessels Transfer Act of 2005'.
SEC. 2. TRANSFERS BY GRANT.
The President is authorized to transfer vessels
to foreign recipients on a grant basis under
section 516 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
(22 U.S.C. 2321j), as follows:
(1) GREECE- To the Government of Greece, the
OSPREY class minehunter coastal ship PELICAN
(MHC-53).
(2) EGYPT- To the Government of Egypt, the OSPREY
class minehunter coastal ships CARDINAL (MHC-60)
and RAVEN (MHC-61).
(3) PAKISTAN - To the Government of Pakistan ,
the SPRUANCE class destroyer ship FLETCHER (DD-
992).
(4) TURKEY- To the Government of Turkey, the
SPRUANCE class destroyer ship CUSHING (DD-985).
SEC. 3. TRANSFERS BY SALE.
The President is authorized to transfer vessels
to foreign recipients on a sale basis under
section 21 of the Arms Export Control Act (22
U.S.C. 2761), as follows:
(1) INDIA- To the Government of India, the AUSTIN
class amphibious transport dock ship TRENTON
(LPD-14)
(2) GREECE- To the Government of Greece, the
OSPREY class minehunter coastal ship HERON (MHC-
52).
(3) TURKEY- To the Government of Turkey, the
SPRUANCE class destroyer ship O'BANNON (DD-987).
SEC. 4. GRANTS NOT COUNTED IN ANNUAL TOTAL OF TRANSFERRED EXCESS
DEFENSE ARTICLES.
The value of a vessel transferred to another
country on a grant basis pursuant to authority
provided by section 2 shall not be counted
against the aggregate value of excess defense
articles transferred to countries in any fiscal
year under section 516 of the Foreign Assistance
Act of 1961.
SEC. 5. COSTS OF CERTAIN TRANSFERS.
Notwithstanding section 516(e)(1) of the Foreign
Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2321j(e)(1)),
any expense incurred by the United States in
connection with a transfer authorized under
section 2 shall be charged to the recipient.
SEC. 6. REPAIR AND REFURBISHMENT IN UNITED STATES SHIPYARDS.
To the maximum extent practicable, the President
shall require, as a condition of the transfer of
a vessel under this section, that the country to
which the vessel is transferred have such repair
or refurbishment of the vessel as is needed
before the vessel joins the naval forces of that
country be performed at a shipyard located in the
United States, including a United States Navy
shipyard.
SEC. 7. EXPIRATION OF AUTHORITY.
The authority to transfer a vessel under this
section shall expire at the end of the 2-year
period beginning on the date of the enactment of
this Act.

2

Daily Times
November 25, 2005

'SPEND FUNDS FROM SALE OF MILITARY LAND ON QUAKE VICTIMS'

By Shahzad Raza

ISLAMABAD: The money generated by the sale of
military land and privatisation of public assets
should be spent on the rehabilitation and
reconstruction of quake-hit areas, the opposition
in the Senate demanded on Thursday.

The opposition also criticised the appointment of
generals to the head of relief bodies as the
upper house of parliament concluded debate on the
earthquake and relief and rehabilitation efforts.

Senator Ishaq Dar, the parliamentary leader of
the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), said
there was no need to construct a General
Headquarters (GHQ) in Islamabad with money made
by selling or readjusting military lands. He said
the country did not need "lavishness" at this
time and the government should abandon the GHQ
project and divert the money allocated to that
project to relief and rehabilitation. The PML-N
senator said that national assets were public
property and must be used for the people of
Pakistan. He demanded the government set a
timeframe for how long NATO troops and other
foreign relief personnel will stay in Pakistan.
He said Pakistan needed only equipment and
resources, not foreign troops.

Dar said the government should not have accepted
soft loans to reconstruct the quake-devastated
areas, as it would add to the country's debt
burden. He said a huge additional amount would
need to be repaid subject to the devaluation of
the rupee over the next 40 years.

He said the Geneva Conference and International
Donors Conference - which he referred to as the
'lenders conference' - were a failure in terms of
generating donations for the quake victims. Dar
said the government's claim to have broken the
begging bowl was incorrect. In June 1999, before
Gen Pervez Musharraf took power, Pakistan's total
external debt was $35.26 billion, while currently
it was $35.83 billion. Senator Pari Gul Aga, a
treasury member, praised the Pakistan Army for
its rescue efforts. Senators Kamran Murtaza and
Azam Sawati said government agencies and the army
handling of the situation had been ineffective.




3

Economic and Political Weekly
December 3, 2005

STATE, MILITARY AND SOCIAL TRANSITION :
IMPROBABLE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY IN PAKISTAN

It is because social groups and classes, who have the most to gain from
establishing democratic institutions in Pakistan, already have access to the
state and to the nexus of power, that they have little need for "messy"
democracy, participation and accountability. Pakistan may be increasingly
dominated by urban middle class factions and groups and has an "urban,
modern, feel to it". Unlike other countries where the rising urban middle
classes have struggled for collective social emancipation and democracy,
Pakistan's middle classes, as this paper argues, have preferred to become
partners of authoritarian and military governments. Moreover, Pakistan's
experiment with democracy in the 1990s was one that was controlled and
dominated by the military; thus, the idea of democracy itself has found few
enthusiasts in Pakistan.

by S Akbar Zaidi

I
Introduction

A few days following the largely unexpected defeat of the BJP government in
the April-May 2004 elections in India, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen gave the
2003-04 Leslie Stephen Lecture at the University of Cambridge. His lecture
was entitled 'The Argumentative Indian'.1  The lecture, which must have been
prepared days or even weeks before the election results, dealt with what Sen
called the spirit of the Indian who, he felt, given India's syncretic
traditions, was inherently democratic. He spoke about the Sufis and about
Akbar, and about the numerous traditions which India had inherited building
a discursive environment, where issues were raised, discussed and
accommodated, which made it a natural candidate for the establishment of
democracy. Amartya Sen's argument was based on evidence that he found from
centuries of an undivided India and where numerous cultures and religions
had incorporated the best of all worlds, one of which was the ability to
argue, debate and accept. The core argument which came through in Sen's
lecture, was that there is almost something natural and historical about
democracy and the democratic tradition in India as it exists today, and
based upon his reading of India prior to the 20th century, in south Asia,
more generally.

When the floor was opened up to a question-and-answer session, a young
student stood up and said that each year they (the students) were given a
Tripos question which asks: "Why has democracy failed in Pakistan?" This
student then asked Amartya Sen, that if his argumentative Indian thesis was
correct, why then was Pakistan not a democracy? Sen's reply: "That is a very
interesting question, indeed", which was followed up by "that is a difficult
question to answer", and then by some partial, though highly unconvincing,
attempts at an explanation. Clearly, this is a difficult question to answer
and has numerous, partial, explanations, some of which Amartya Sen also
touched upon.2

Amongst the few most general and partial explanations given for the lack of
the establishment of democracy in Pakistan, especially in the first decade
after independence, the following stand out: (i) Jinnah, who many scholars
consider to be part of a modern, secular and liberal tradition, as opposed
to an Islamic and authoritarian tradition, died very soon after Pakistan's
independence and so was unable to fulfil and give what many expected to be a
democratic and secular vision for Pakistan; in particular, the contrast is
made with India's first few years of independence, where Nehru was able to
impose his vision for India and rule India till 1964, by when democratic and
secular norms had been moulded in a Nehruvian frame; (ii) a view is held
that the elite who played the most active part in creating Pakistan had
migrated from Muslim minority areas in undivided India and had moved to the
newly created West Pakistan and established their base there. This political
and economic elite had no indigenous roots in the newly created country and
so was reluctant to initiate a democratic process since it would have lost
out in any electoral contest; (iii) democracy in Pakistan in 1947 and soon
after, would have meant that East Pakistan, which had more than half the
population of independent Pakistan, would dominate any elected legislature,
taking away the power that the leaders in West Pakistan felt was their
right, since it was these leaders - most of whom came from north India - who
felt that it was they who had helped create an independent Pakistan, both
East and West; (iv) because of the low level of capitalist development and
industrialisation, there were not many social groups who could have played
an active role in establishing democracy, as the large landowners who had
political and economic power were averse to the idea of democratising
politics; and (v) the most well-organised institutions in newly created
Pakistan were the bureaucracy - large numbers of whom had migrated from the
regions which were part of undivided India - and Pakistan's military. It was
the civilian and military bureaucracies which felt that they could best take
Pakistan forward, developing it economically and defending its frontiers.
This view was especially felt since politicians were thought to be unable to
come to terms with their partisanal differences and were disunited regarding
their views and visions. The civilian and military bureaucracies felt that
there was a need to unite the newly formed nation and lead it forward
towards economic progress. Moreover, the January 1948 war with India over
Kashmir, only strengthened the hand and resolve of the civilian and military
bureaucracies in claiming the control of power in Pakistan.3

It very likely that all these five partial explanations explain why
democracy never took root in Pakistan in its early days. And once the early
tradition of civilian, and particularly, military authoritarianism had taken
hold, it was improbable that democracy could have subsequently dislodged
that hold. While these explanations are true, this particular paper does not
go into why democracy has not existed in Pakistan in the past, but tries to
examine the possible future of democracy in the country. While there is no
denying the fact that the experience of the past does have a very strong
bearing on the future trajectory of democracy in Pakistan, our focus is
limited to largely structural explanations as to why democracy has an
improbable future in Pakistan.

A key argument made in this paper is that, while there always has been and
will continue to be, a great tradition of active politics, even electoral
politics, in Pakistan, there has not been and is unlikely to be, a process
of the democratisation of politics. This distinction between politics
(and/or electioneering) and democracy is crucial to the arguments presented
in this paper. We do argue, however, that Pakistan's society and its
structures have been considerably democratised - in terms of greater access
by lower social classes - but not Pakistan's polity. Moreover, while mere
formal democracy is necessary though not sufficient to build a more
substantive and real democracy in Pakistan, we will also argue that given
the historical developments resulting in the military emerging as the most
powerful and dominant institution of the state and in the nexus of power in
Pakistan, even the possibility of having a working formal democracy, without
the intervention and manipulation by the military, seems improbable. At
best, Pakistan's democratic form will be a praetorian democracy, which will
continue to be controlled, ruled, manipulated and determined by the
military, its institutions and their interests.4  The military has become
incorporated and woven into the fabric of the state, society, economy and
structure of Pakistan, as the most dominant of all forms of the country's
institutions and increasingly, the possibility of a Pakistan without the
pervasive and intrusive role of the military, seems mere wishful thinking.5

The most important argument to be made in this paper, however, is that given
Pakistan's social and economic transition and its impact on social and class
structures, we argue that the social groups most likely to demand and
struggle for democracy, in order to impose their will on the state, already
have access to the state (and its power) through partial state capture, and
hence the most likely and "natural" vanguard for democracy has no need to
struggle for democracy in Pakistan. We argue, that while there are numerous
contenders who want to seize (or share) political power in Pakistan and who
actively "do" politics, given the social and economic structure and the
social groups and classes that exist, at the moment there is no real
constituency for democracy in Pakistan.

II
Transition, Class Formation and Politics 1947-20056

1947-77

Pakistan's first decade 1947-58 was one where bureaucracy-led and assisted
industrialisation took place. The bureaucracy seemed to be the leading
unequal partner in the political settlement that existed between the key
players, and determined the outcome of policy and its application. Industry
was the junior partner in this formation, and other political groups, many
of which were nascent at that time, had little role to play in the political
economy of the country. While the landlords and nawabs may have had some
political clout, clearly economic policy was not focused towards increasing
or improving their economic well-being. Much of the bureaucracy was composed
of urban migrants from India, and had little knowledge of or interest in
agriculture, and felt that manufacturing should receive far greater state
patronage. Industrialists, while gaining economic clout through very high
profits made in the early years, were never a political force and depended
greatly on the benevolence of the licence-raj of the civil servants.

Between 1958 and 1971, the period of civil and military bureaucratic
capitalism, the military emerged as the stabilising shell under which
industrialisation, with the help of the bureaucracy and the emerging
industrialists, could develop further. The very high growth rates in the
economy and in large-scale manufacturing would not have been possible
without a central command, and the only institution capable of providing
that sense of order at the time was the military.

Following the 1959 land reforms, the 1960s witnessed the emergence and
consolidation of many political groups and economic classes. In agriculture,
the hold of the large landowners may not have been broken, but it was
certainly shaken enough to allow other economic categories to emerge. Many
of the large landowners had the foresight to read the writing on the wall,
and accepted the green revolution technology package introduced by the
government as a consequence of which, middle and kulak farmers, along with
many other farmers at both ends of the spectrum, emerged as capitalist
farmers, who were soon to become a dominant economic and political force, in
agriculture and in the country.

In the rural areas, alongside this emerging capitalist farmer we also see
the genesis of the small-scale manufacturers, and the skilled and technical
workers, the growth of an ancillary service sector in order to service the
new economy, and a disenfranchised, landless agricultural wage-labour class.
On the industrial side, with excessive profits in industry and an industrial
class protected by government policies, we see a great consolidation of the
economic power of this class. Interestingly, despite emerging excessive
wealth, the industrial capitalist class did not emerge as a political class
in terms of seeking political office. Its relationship was that of a partner
with the bureaucracy, through which it sought economic gain and wealth.

Hence the political nature of the regime, or the political settlement in
Ayub Khan's Decade of Development, was one where the military and the
bureaucracy governed Pakistan, assisted by allies in the industrial and
agricultural sectors. Economic power lay essentially with industrialists,
but with the capitalist agriculturists swiftly emerging to stake their
claim.7  Moreover, this period also saw the rise of an aspiring, but small,
educated middle class that wanted to impart a vision on the political scene,
but which lacked the economic power to do so. In Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, it
found a leader on whom it could pin its hopes of fulfilling a social and
socialist agenda.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (1971-77) emerged from the numerous contradictions of
the Decade of Development. His constituency, which varied at different times
of his political career, shows how all those social groups and classes which
had not been direct beneficiaries in either political or economic terms
rallied behind Bhutto. Hence, other than the large industrialists, the
military, and the bureaucracy, Bhutto at different times reflected the
aspirations of all classes. In the beginning, leading up to the general
elections of 1970, and in the first two years of his rule, organised labour,
peasants, middle farmers, the urban and rural middle class, and the educated
professional urban middle class all supported Bhutto's left-leaning economic
policies. The bureaucracy and industrialists were the key "enemies" of the
new social programme of the early 1970s, while the discredited military,
although not such a direct target as the other two, was marginalised and
sidelined. The large landowning lobby, too, suffered the anger of the
establishment, and the 1972 land reforms were meant to break their (dormant
though aspiring) political ambitions.

However, the political settlement that emerged in the early years of the
Bhutto regime soon changed, and the same classes which had been targeted,
regained their prominence. The 1972 land reforms did not really break the
hold of the large landowners and were more a showpiece political ploy,
despite the avowed political programme of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP).
Having abused and insulted the "feudal" landowners, Bhutto brought them back
into his fold. The educated left-leaning urban middle class was in disfavour
in the Bhutto ranks, although Bhutto persisted with much of his social
reform agenda. With massive nationalisation, the bureaucracy was back in
favour and began to consolidate its hold over the means of production. The
military, too, found favour when Bhutto had to quell the armed rebellion in
Balochistan. Hence, the political groups which had been discredited in the
early Bhutto period re-emerged as Bhutto needed their assistance, and were
ready to take revenge for the show trials of the earlier period.

The industrialists, however, were never welcomed back. The nationalisation
of banks broke the critical link between finance and industrial capital, and
much of the capital held by industrialists fled overseas. While this class
of industrialists was discriminated against and hounded out, not just from
the economy, but also from the country, Bhutto's reforms helped to
consolidate the small-scale manufacturing process started by the green
revolution. Small-scale industry and the informal sector became the backbone
of industry, replacing the 22 families of Ayub's era. This urban middle
class, which consolidated itself under Bhutto, eventually allied itself with
other sections of the urban middle class, backed by the bureaucracy and
probably the military, and was instrumental in removing Bhutto in 1977.
Thus, the beneficiaries of Bhutto's economic programme led the movement to
remove him from power, just as the results of Ayub Khan's programme caused
the latter's downfall.

Hence, between 1947 and 1977 the following picture of Pakistan's political
economy emerges. Large-scale economic development had taken place, in both
urban and rural areas, giving rise to a middle class that was still young
and economically prosperous, but was essentially non-existent in political
terms. Industrialists, having made great inroads and achieved extraordinary
economic gains in the first 25 years, were nowhere on the scene, even in
economic terms, in 1970; many had lost their fortunes, while others had fled
the country. The "feudals" had increasingly been losing economic power as
mechanisation took hold in agriculture, and as capitalist agriculture began
to dominate production. Those large landowners who could see the changes
taking place and were able to adapt managed to survive financially, while
others were forced to sell or rent out their land to the aggressive middle
farmers. As a political entity, however, especially under a democratic
order, the large landowners did control a number of seats, particularly in
Sindh, southern Punjab and parts of Balochistan, where tribal lords held
power. The civilian and military bureaucrats were the only political
grouping which, despite a small period in quarantine, continued their
influence on the political structure of the country. The heyday of the civil
and military bureaucracy, however, was still to come.

1977-88

The takeover by general Zia ul Haq (1977-88) crystallised the hegemony of
the civil and military bureaucracy, not just on the political map of
Pakistan, where they had existed previously, but also, for the first time,
in the generation and distribution of economic resources and wealth. With
political and administrative roles and interests, the civil and military
bureaucracy emerged as a key and entrenched entity in the economy. It
established and consolidated its role in economics and politics throughout
the Zia period, going from strength to strength. Many lucrative positions in
the huge public sector were made available to retired and serving military
personnel, and it became far easier for private companies to curry favour
and make economic progress if they had close ties with members of the
military establishment. Military personnel were invited to serve on the
boards of companies to assist in negotiating the controls and regulations
involved in investment decisions.

This networking paid great dividends both for industrialists and the private
sector, and for individuals from the military. From the Zia period right up
to today, the personal wealth of a very large number of military personnel
has grown in a way that could not have originated from their official
salaries. Today, many large businesses and enterprises are owned by retired
military officials and they have joined the ranks of the industrialists,
thanks to the links established under the rule of general Zia. Moreover, the
armed forces also emerged as a collective economic institution, where the
different welfare foundations of the army, navy, and air force became more
involved in economic activities and even in direct economic production. In
economic terms and by amassing huge fortunes, the military was a major
beneficiary of the rule of general Zia ul Haq. The image of soldiers
fighting to defend the motherland changed to one of serving military
generals who were acting as corporate bosses, soldiering over tonnes of
sugar, cement and steel.

If the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan prolonged Zia's political career, the
Gulf boom resulted in unheard-of prosperity in most of Pakistan's far-flung
regions. While the amount remitted was itself very large, the geographical
and locational dispersion of migrants, and hence remittances, was probably
more important. Because this money was sent to numerous urban, peri-urban,
and rural settlements of the country, it gave rise to economic development
which was not concentrated in the more traditional regions of Karachi and
central Punjab. The remittance economy permitted millions of individuals in
thousands of villages to improve their standard of living by a considerable
margin. It also gave rise to previously unskilled workers becoming
shopkeepers, setting up small-scale industrial units, becoming transporters,
etc. It allowed them considerable upward mobility and resulted in the
broadening and strengthening of the middle class that had begun to emerge in
the previous decade.

The main beneficiaries of the Zia regime were, then, members of the urban
and rural middle classes, and members of the civil and, particularly,
military bureaucracy. The large industrialists of the Ayub era also returned
to Pakistan, although the nature of the entrepreneur under Zia was
considerably different from that under Ayub. Rather than 22 families
dominating Pakistan, there were perhaps a few hundred or a thousand under
Zia. The industrialists under Ayub may have been richer than those under
Zia, but there was probably less concentration at the top under Zia than
under Ayub. However, despite this emergence of the middle class and of the
new entrepreneur under Zia, political power was clearly retained in the
hands of the military with a subservient bureaucracy alongside. Large
landowners, too, had made a comeback under Zia, hovering around the
political establishment and being allowed some room in the 1985 elections.
Nevertheless, the power of the military was endorsed by the summary end to
Mohammad Khan Junejo's tenure as prime minister in May 1988. The somewhat
unique concept of a praetorian democracy worked rather well for many months,
but once elements of the democratic forces began to impinge upon the terrain
of the military, the military demonstrated that it was well in control. The
period after Zia marks the first real demonstration and formal consolidation
of the middle classes on Pakistan's economic and political map.

1988-99

In the democratic interregnum of 1988-99 four elections were held, of which
with the possible exception of the first, all were highly rigged and
manipulated. The intrusive and secret arms of the state and of the military,
set about creating political parties and alliances and supporting specific
candidates. Moreover, they had a key interest and hand in dismissing both
the prime ministers who emerged in this 11-year period. In 1991, these
organisations, largely the ISI of the Pakistan military, helped create an
alliance of political parties called the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI),
which led to Nawaz Sharif being elected prime minister. Nawaz Sharif and the
group of people he cobbled together into his political party, were amongst
the main beneficiaries of the economic policies of Zia ul Haq and several
among of the economic and industrial elite now joined politics. Local,
provincial and national level economic actors were now forging themselves
into political actors supporting different contesting political parties. The
1990s were the moment where the economic interests of middle and elite
Pakistan came to be articulated into politics, and into a desire to use
politics for economic gain and for political power.

It is important to state, that this fusion of economic and political power
amongst these groups, does not have anything to do with democratic politics.
In fact as we argue in a section below, that once this fusion took place,
and the middle classes acquired political power, they did not have any need
for democracy; democracy and politics need not be coterminous.

Throughout the 1990s, and increasingly so as democracy "failed" in Pakistan,
the ISI and other bureaucratic and hierarchical non-democratic organisations
and institutions began to interfere in and influence Pakistan's democratic
transition. Evidence now about the 1990s shows that what was called
"democracy" in Pakistan was more a manipulation of political actors,
processes and results, by such agencies, and less any sort of reflection of
the "will of the people" or about what people really wanted or opted for.
While the new economic groups were staking their claim in the political
arena, their participation - as it was of everyone else - was dependent on
the space allowed to them by the more powerful and organised institutions in
the country. The economic transformation of Pakistan with the rise of the
middle class continued, but their ability to participate in the political
process was constrained and compromised by far greater and powerful
institutional interests.

Economic power increasingly rested with a middle class, but with regard to
political power, they had to be junior partners with the military. There
were 11 governments in office - and while they were in office one can't
really say that they were ever in "power" - during the 1988-99 period, with
some governments consisting of technocrats from international financial
institutions imported into Pakistan for just a few weeks. Clearly, the power
to decide who was worthy of being in government throughout the 1990s, rested
with groups and forces who had no tradition, experience or interest with
democracy. This charade of who held real power in Pakistan, came to an
unambiguous end on October 12, 1999.

1999-2005

Under the leadership of general Pervez Musharraf, the military claimed its
central position in Pakistan's state structure and political scene, as it
had in the past, but far more decisively and unashamedly. The naiveté, which
led many of us to believe throughout the 1990s, that the military had
removed itself from power and had allowed the democratic transition to
continue unhindered - as it has in some countries - received a rude shock
with Pakistan's third military coup and its fourth military head of
government. In the six years that the military government of Musharraf has
been around, major world and regional events have taken place which have had
a significant political and economic bearing on Musharraf himself, on
Pakistan's economy and politics, and on the process of democracy.

Six years into Pervez Musharraf's rule some trends are emerging which are
different to those of earlier years.8  The most important difference seems
to be the almost formal cementing of the role of the military in Pakistan's
constitutional set up, with the National Security Council having a critical
role to play in the political process. The issue of whether a serving
general, the chief of the army staff, can hold the office of the president,
has also opened up a debate about formalising the role of the military. With
hundreds of serving and retired military personnel in public positions, the
individual and corporate interests of the military have also been further
entrenched and consolidated in the Pakistani state set-up. Perhaps, because
of the US' war on terror in Pakistan's backyard, one also sees far greater
presence and influence of US foreign policy in determining domestic and
regional policies. While Pakistan's numerous governments have always towed
the US line, Musharraf's government, since it is the main beneficiary of
this tacit submission, has taken this appeasement to new heights.9

Perhaps one of the more significant features of the Musharraf regime, unlike
that of previous military governments, has been its ability to carry with it
numerous differing social groups and factions. Pervez Musharraf's regime has
been supported by large sections of the middle classes (of differing
guises - see below); by political actors, most of whom belong to these
middle classes, who have had no qualms of shifting alliances, where their
politics has been based on opportunism and not principle; by a section of
civil society, which considers itself to be "liberal" and democratic, which
misled itself into believing that Musharraf represented some form of
enlightened moderation in terms of religious sentiment; by the military and
the beneficiaries of military rule; and by a small, though powerful,
economic elite which considers the policies of the Musharraf regime "forward
looking". Unlike Zia ul Haq, for the most part, religious sections of
society have distanced themselves from the Musharraf government on account
of his government supporting US foreign policy so blatantly, although they
too have had an ambivalent relationship with the military, supporting it at
times, and opposing it at others.

III
Social Groups and their Location to Democracy

Pakistani Military's Economic Interests and their Consequences10

One of the facets of Pakistan's political economy and especially with regard
to Pakistan's military, has been the military's growing corporatisation and
intervention and involvement as an economic, rather than simply a political,
actor. With the growth of Military Inc, we see new vested interests and
stakes being created by the military in the socio-political and economic
structure that is Pakistan. In the past, with little direct involvement in
the economy, the military was merely a protector of Pakistan's geographical
borders. As time went on and as the military got further involved in the
political sphere, it claimed itself to be the protector of Pakistan's state,
nation and domestic political arrangements as well. Along with this, it then
moved on to become the sole guardian of Pakistan's ideological frontiers,
defining what was permissible under its own interpretation of what Pakistan
meant - "Pakistan ka matlab kya?"

Since the military has been in government for many decades in the past, it
has also been a key player in the management of the economy, and has been
the sole arbitrator and controller of issues regarding the defence budget.
It has expanded its role to economic and political development as well, and
considers itself "an appropriate actor to enhance political and economic
development, especially to fill the gap in these fields due to the absence
of any other potent player with the capacity to do the same".11  However, it
is only in more recent times that it has become an actor, a key one at that,
within the economic structure of Pakistan. As Ayesha Siddiqa argues:

      the Pakistan military as a major stakeholder in the economy has
gradually moved from the traditional paradigm of claiming (the) state's
resources from the national budget to a situation where it has built stakes
in all segments of the economy such as agriculture, service and
manufacturing industries.12

Ayesha Siddiqa continues, that "the military has arrived at the point where
its business today control about 23 per cent assets of the corporate sector
with two foundations, the Fauji Foundation and the Army Welfare Trust
representing two of the largest conglomerates in the country".13  The
political clout that the military has in Pakistan and the fact that it is
more frequently a key part of the government itself, gives the military a
dominating and overbearing advantage, which creates a very unfair, unequal,
unlevel, playing field to its advantage. Because of the military's supremacy
in Pakistan's political settlement and in the state, it has far greater
power to influence economic decisions, both at a macro level related to the
economy more generally, and also with regard to its own specific, micro
level, interests.

While political reasons and interests are bad enough for militaries to
interfere and intervene in a country's political process, when the military
has substantial economic and financial interests and claims, it is less
likely to give up control of the state or of its dominating position. Along
with excessive allocations of the defence budget for its own interests - to
which citizens of Pakistan have no right to information - the military can
claim large resources for its own needs, especially when it is itself the
government. It appropriates civilian positions and a large chunk of the
administrative budget meant for non-military personnel is funnelled through
to serving and retired military officers. The newspaper Dawn reported that
there were "as many as 104 serving and retired Lieutenant Generals, Major
Generals or equivalent ranks from other services (who were) among the 1,027
military officers inducted on civilian posts in different ministries,
divisions and Pakistani missions abroad after the October 12, 1999 military
takeover".14

Clearly, the civil-military divide is becoming increasingly divided and
formalised in a manner that benefits the military far more than it does
Pakistan's non-military citizens. As Ayesha Siddiqa argues, the military's
economic interests create "a vested interest that would discourage the armed
forces from allowing democratic institutions to function", and since its
economic empire has been constructed on the basis of the military's
dominating political and institutional power, further encouragement for the
military to enhance its economic power would lead to it increasing its
entrenchment in politics.15  This link between its political and economic
role and interests "runs the risk of creating an environment where the
military finds it more beneficial to stay in politics".16  Clearly,
democratic forces in Pakistan now have to contend not only with the military
's political ambitions and agenda, but as much with its economic programme
and interests.

Pakistan's State and Society

Groups, Fractions and Influence

This discussion above shows very clearly that Pakistan's military is the
most powerful and influential institution in the country. It dictates
politics, foreign policy and now increasingly has a deep interest in the
economy, making it Pakistan's most important interest group. The fact that
the military - specifically, the army - dominates the state and its
institutions, does not mean that there are no other contending institutions
and social groups who have a bearing on state and society in Pakistan. In
the 1960s, the analysis of the state in Pakistan suggested that along with
the military, it was the bureaucracy and the large landlords - often called
"feudals" - who controlled the state. In the 1980s, the military was back in
power and was the most important component of the state once again, this
time in partnership with Islamic groups and a rising industrial and service
sector bourgeoisie. The middle class, which is institution-specific and cuts
across different, often contradictory, ideological divides, has numerous
factions as part of it. Rather than a single or some unified class, it is
perhaps more useful to talk about social forces as "fractions and factions".

In the Zia period, what one can call the socially conservative and religious
sections of the middle class, supported the military government, while the
liberal and "progressive" elements of this class were against him. With the
military back in government (it has always been in power, however) in 1999,
it once again began to dominate the institutions of the state. But with
Pakistan's social structure and group formation having undergone
considerable change, this time it dominated with the support of a different
set of actors and social groups.

If one were to identify the main social groups and actors in Pakistan today,
one would probably include the following: the military, Islamic political
groups, members of Pakistan's civil and political society and of NGOs,
international powers and donors, and segments of the middle class who are to
be found in all institutional and ideological moorings. The military as an
institution, has representatives from very poor social and economic
backgrounds, as well as from the very well-to-do elite, a position to which
many serving and retired senior officers rise; it also has members of
Pakistan's conservative middle classes safely entrenched in the military's
political world view.

While there have been failures of democracy in Pakistan, as well as failures
of the state and of governance, and despite the dominance of the military in
Pakistan's state and society, there has also been the noticeable failure of
Pakistan's civil society. Social groups and institutions located outside of
government and not working purely for profit in the private sector; groups
of academics, intellectuals and journalists; political groups and parties;
non-governmental organisations and community and neighbourhood
organisations; and other groups which in some way are perceived to be of a
liberal bent, working to change/improve society, with some notion of
justice, all tend to constitute what is commonly called "civil society".17

Civil society, or at least important sections of it, are perceived to be
groups which keep a check on government, and keep niggling the government
regarding its policies and positions. The notion of civil society is not
static and is a dynamic concept across time and region. What constitutes
civil society in one era, may change form. The social and political groups
which constituted civil society in eastern Europe in the Soviet era, were
transformed into statist and government organisations, often becoming
oppressive and as authoritarian as the statist institutions they replaced.
Now, new social groups, often in opposition to the first in these countries,
constitute civil society. Also, in stable democracies, the notion of civil
society is very different and changing, from that found in undemocratic
regimes. Although there is a tendency to use the term "civil society" rather
unscientifically and loosely, it is not always an easy concept to understand
or locate.

In Pakistan, the tendency has been to restrict the notion of civil society
to NGOs and other groups, because they are seen to be working for change.
Advocacy NGOs and groups, often criticising government and ostensibly
working for democracy, have been active components of civil society, as have
writers and intellectuals. Yet, when these same groups have become
apologists for government, particularly military rule, and have joined and
become partners in military governments, their credentials to be part of
"civil" society have to be questioned. In fact one would argue, that once
civil society actors join the "other side", they are no longer part of civil
society.

One major reason why the military tends to dominate state, society and
politics in Pakistan, is because of the failure of civil society in
Pakistan. Like other social actors in Pakistan, members of civil society are
eager to be co-opted and "serve" military governments, as has most recently
been seen after Musharraf's coup in 1999. Like technocrats, who perhaps make
no qualms of their distaste and distrust of democrats, civil society groups
and actors, many of whom had at least joined the chorus in favour of
democracy in the past, also eagerly embraced Musharraf and his government
and endorsed the military coup in 1999. Important, well-respected and
articulate members of Pakistan's civil society became ministers in the
Musharraf government and justified their support for military government at
the cost of democracy, by arguing that a liberal and efficient non-elected,
undemocratic, authoritarian government, was preferable to an illiberal,
inefficient and increasingly authoritarian democracy. For these actors,
democracy as it was practised in Pakistan, had failed and was secondary, and
what mattered was not a civilian/military distinction, but apparently,
liberal values emanating from the person of one general, were preferable to
illiberal policies being pursued by elected representatives.

Pakistan's civil society has had a key role in strengthening and supporting
military government in Pakistan at the cost of democracy. Members of the
intelligentsia and academics in Pakistan, have done no better and have had
no qualms in supporting military rule in preference to Pakistani style
disfunctioning democracy. Unlike many other countries, in Pakistan, civil
society actors and groups have been collaborationists, not
confrontationalists, working with military governments, not against them.

IV
Urbanism as a Way of Life

In recent years, a number of social scientists and urban planners in
Pakistan have been critically examining demographic, political and social
issues and the nature and question of transition in Pakistan. Much of their
work and analysis has been on the growing urbanisation of Pakistan, on
Pakistan's middle classes and on what Lewis Wirth has called "urbanism as a
way of life". Their basic argument is that Pakistan is now largely urban and
social and cultural, and most certainly economic, relations are
predominantly urban.18  This perspective also gives rise to discussion on
Pakistan's middle class and its impact on society. This section of this
paper, raises some of the issues that have been articulated by the idea that
Pakistan is now increasingly urban, and we try to assess how this urban
phenomenon has an impact on state, society and transition in Pakistan.

The main argument that these scholars make, is that Pakistan no longer has
isolated "rural" communities or settlements, that there are strong cultural,
economic and social linkages which tie in urban and so-called rural areas.
Rural populations and lifestyles are now perceived to be part of a continuum
which is predominantly urban in complexion and integrated with the urban and
even with the global. Rural areas now have "ribbon like settlements" that
are intertwined with the urban.19 Those areas which still have agrarian
economies, have been so densified that they are now being called
"ruralopolises". Mohammad Qadeer calls the process of spatial organisation
taking place in Pakistan and elsewhere, where rural areas have lost their
traditional form, "ruralopolises". Ruralopolises are settlements of urban
level population densities with an agrarian economy, and is not simply the
periphery of an urban settlement, but extends far beyond a city's region.
Urban level densities in rural areas have transformative force, where they
"change spatial organisation, the settlement pattern, the form and structure
of villages and the land economy, including the provision of housing lots";
one outcome of this process is the "changing economic and functional bases
of all levels of settlement hierarchy".20  As Qadeer argues, "it is becoming
difficult to differentiate urban from rural areas. The homogenising
influences of the nation state, the industrial mode of production and the
communication revolution have almost eliminated conventional differences".21
In northern and central Punjab as well as in the heartland of the NWFP and
in Sindh, there are contiguous districts which comprise major cities, medium
sized towns and peri-urban settlements, and have formed into a large and
significant urban system, with ribbons of urban settlements fusing into one
another. Mohammad Qadeer shows that

      from Sialkot to Multan, an area 55,738 sq km ... is a densely settled
region dotted with cities, towns and sprawled villages and hamlets ... From
Gujrat to Lahore and then onward to Multan, one is always in urban presence.
Spatially this area is one extended urbanising region, one ruralopolis. The
second ruralopolis is centred around Peshawar and extends across Peshawar
Valley and beyond into lower reaches of Swat Valley. Karachi to Hyderabad is
already a corridor of urban settlements.22

For Qadeer, as much as 56.5 per cent of Pakistan's population is "urbanised
by one or the other process of urbanisation". For him, "villages are being
infiltrated by motorcycles, videos, tea shops, snooker clubs, telephones and
workshops, namely, the cultural artefacts forged in urban areas... The sum
total of this argument is that purely rural population is a minority in
Pakistan and even it is coming under urban influences".23  Urbanisation
emerges as a catalyst for social and economic change and lays the bases "for
the realignment of social organisation and the redefinition of social
relations as well as cultural norms". Urban and rural areas are being
brought together resulting in the "urbanisation of everybody" and of
everyday life, as rural areas assume urban characteristics.

Ali Cheema's work on social classes on Pakistan over time, shows the
location of the urban intermediate class which is an important part of the
dominant coalition of classes in countries like Pakistan, and includes the
urban lower middle classes, the educated and professional groups, and
traders and medium and small industrialists, many of whom have evolved from
rural backgrounds.24  The rapid growth of urban towns and cities in the
1960s in the Punjab came about as a consequence of social, economic and
political changes that took place following the green revolution. The
political bargaining power of this urban intermediate class had increased
substantially by the late 1960s. In the late 1970s, the absence of political
stalwarts in local bodies elections "resulted in intermediate class-led
factions capturing urban local bodies under the Zia regime, with large
developmental funds at its disposal".25  Also, "medium-sized capitalists and
traders who emerged as an essential part of the core of urban political
factions were able to capture chamber of commerce politics at the Punjab and
the federal level. This became an important mechanism to enter national
politics for small and medium sized capitalists and traders, who emerged as
key members of these fragmented factions".26  As a result, many urban local
bodies councillors and businessmen and traders, graduated from the local
level politics of the 1970s to the national and provincial assemblies of the
late-1980s.27 As a consequence and through this process, the state was
increasingly captured by these urban groups, many of whom were in
partnership with the rural dynamic capitalist groups and the rural middle
class, backed by traders. Along with substantial remittances from west Asia
which helped consolidate the economic, social and political position of many
rural intermediate classes, and with demographic changes, an urban Pakistan
had been formed and consolidated.28

For Cheema, this demographic, economic and social transition taking place,
resulted in creating "fragmented and decentralised cross-class factions",
and that there was "significant upward mobility into the ranks of the
industrial class, by allowing members of the urban intermediate class easy
access to state 'transfers' and especially state credit".29  There was also
a change in the overall social profile of entrepreneurs from non-capitalists
to capitalists. New social groups were being formed which were very
different from the earlier "established" industrial houses. Many of the new
breed of industrialists had links with the heartland of urban Punjab and had
become politically integrated with the system. Arif Hasan argues that the
increasing importance of urban middle classes in Punjab's politics in the
1970s and 1980s, was underpinned by the socio-economic changes that the
agriculturalists confronted, who were dependent on "mandi arhtis" and their
transporters who controlled credit as well as the access to mandis with the
connivance of the bureaucracy.30  A new nexus of middleman-bureaucrat-local
politcian-transporter, emerged in mid-level and small towns in the Punjab.31

Politics of Patronage

Whereas the earlier industrial groups in Pakistan kept their considerable
distance from popular politics (although they had close links with the state
and its institutions), this new breed of trader and industrialist, was also
a political and politicised actor and continued to have strong links with
the state as well, although the nature and form of the state had changed
markedly since the 1960s and 1970s. In many ways, as a consequence of the
social and economic changes that had taken place in Pakistan since the 1960s
and 1970s, the state in Pakistan by the time of the mid-1980s, has become a
far more participatory and inclusive state, reflecting the changed social
and economic relations and modes of production. Perhaps because of these
changes, it is also a much weaker state than it was in the 1960s.32

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, urban political parties consolidated their
presence and hold on the political map of Pakistan largely through the
process of local level elections. Cheema et al, argue that "the
accommodation of urban middle class interests continued after the revival of
elected federal and provincial governments as there was a steady
consolidation of Punjab's urban middle class vote in favour of Nawaz Sharif'
s Muslim League. The political and economic consolidation of Punjabi urban
middle class groups was facilitated by increased remittances from migrant
workers in the Gulf and due to fast rates of urbanisation".33  Politics
also, in many ways, throughout the 1980s under Zia ul Haq and the military,
became localised, and patronage, personalised. In some ways, the culture of
the politics of the local level was elevated and transplanted to the
chambers of the national and provincial assemblies.34 What is interesting,
and as pointed out by Ali Cheema and his colleagues, is that while local
government (decentralisation) reform has been enacted in Pakistan by the
military to centralise its control over the state, it has led to a
fragmentation of political issues, localising them, leading "to the reversal
of a more universalistic basis of political organisation",35  making
politics simply a game of patronage.

V
Conclusion

The core argument of this paper on the future of democracy in Pakistan, is
that since the social groups and classes who have the most to gain from
establishing democratic institutions in the country, in order to access the
state and its actors, already have access to the state and to the nexus of
power. Thus they do not have the need for either messy democracy,
participation or even, accountability. We argue that Pakistan's social
structure is one where the urban and rural middle classes are already part
of the nexus of power in Pakistan, and so they have all the benefits which
accrue to groups which would thrive for such access through legitimate
means, including the recourse to popular participation and democracy.

There have been two attempts at real democratisation in Pakistan, at
precisely those junctures where the democratising forces had much to gain
from capturing a share in the state's power. In the late 1960s, as we show
above, capitalist development created new classes and new contradictions in
the urban and rural structures of society. These new emerging social classes
had not been part of the older political settlement. The movement for
democracy under Bhutto at the end of the 1960s, took place (and
successfully) precisely because the middle class vanguard of the democratic
revolution was not part of the nexus of power of the state. The second
moment came about under Zia ul Haq, when women and liberal sections of
society were active in the movement to oust the military dictatorship since
they had been excluded from access to the state and its resources and power,
to the extent that they felt it necessary to raise the democratic flag. As
long as the state - even a military state - allows multiple groups and
classes access to the nexus of power, particularly those groups which can be
mobilised and vocal, a movement for democracy in Pakistan seems improbable.

One of the wild cards in the political and social scene at the moment, is
the Islamic movement. Ironically at the moment, the Islamic parties seem to
be playing a pro-democratic (and in a sense, an anti-imperialist) role since
they have taken it upon themselves to confront the Musharraf government,
both on account of its domestic non-democratic agenda, and for its pro-US
policies. However, the Islamic parties are in parliament largely because of
the particular conditions and specific circumstances which existed at the
time of the 2002 elections - the US role in the region and Musharraf's
support for it, the exile of the three main political leaders, etc. This
electoral presence of the Islamic parties should not be seen as a
manifestation of the desire by Pakistanis for an Islamic theocratic state;
these parties have been resoundingly routed in elections in the past. And
while there is a noticeable drift towards conservatism and even towards
appropriating Islamic symbols and following rituals, this need not translate
into the electoral triumph of Islamic parties. Leaders from these parties
have been part of the oddest of alliances in the past with mainstream
parties as well as with the military; these groups are just the same as
other actors on the Pakistani political scene. It must also be emphasised,
that Islam is very much part of the cultural and social milieu of Pakistan
and Pakistan will not move towards becoming a secularised state for years to
come, if ever. Yet, Islam is neither a problem nor a constraint towards any
move towards a possible democracy; it has only been used as an excuse to
abort democracy, an excuse which has been swept away every time there has
been space created for people to register their genuine opinions. Our
argument in this paper has been that it is largely structural factors, and a
politics of opportunism - to which the Islamic parties are also a party -
that hinders democracy. Islam is not a constraint.

This paper has also been arguing about the dominance of an urban Pakistan,
one that is increasingly non-rural, non-agricultural, and certainly not
"feudal". One, where social, economic, political and cultural trends and
development are urban rather than rural. We have also argued that Pakistan
is now dominated by urban middle class factions and social groups, and has
an urban, modern, feel to it. Urbanisation has laid the "bases for the
realignment for social organisations and the redefinition of social
relations as well as cultural norms".36 Yet, while this demographic,
cultural and social account is real, it has not brought about a progressive
political movement which is modern or democratic. Unlike other countries
where the rising urban middle classes have struggled for collective social
emancipation and democracy, Pakistan's middle classes have preferred to
become partners of authoritarian and military governments. These groups have
not been a "natural" ally for democrats and have displayed opportunistic
(though perhaps, rational) behaviour, compromising at each historical
juncture. Moreover, the experience that Pakistani citizens have had with
democracy during the 1990s, a democracy which was controlled and manipulated
by the military, has found few enthusiasts for the idea and practice of
democracy in Pakistan.

Perhaps it would be no exaggeration to state, that based on experience and
example from recent years, there is no substantial real and concerted
constituency in Pakistan for democracy, and people in general, and the urban
middle classes in particular, are largely interested in fulfilling their
narrow economistic goals and interests, as well as those related to the
acquisition of power through whatever means possible. Or, as we also argue,
perhaps these classes have partly captured the state and find representation
more manageable through alliances and jore-tore, rather than through the
cumbersome and less certain path of participation. Whichever way one looks
at it, with regard to their antagonistic disposition towards democracy,
Pakistan's urban middle classes reflect trends which seem to be against the
norm found in other countries and also across time, and are perhaps unique
to Pakistan. While there will always be a politics in Pakistan - of the
politicians, of the military, of the mullahs and of the common man - there
is no reason to expect that there will necessarily be any move towards a
democracy. Amartya Sen's "Argumentative Indian", in the context of Pakistan,
is a political actor, probably an authoritarian one, but certainly not a
democratic one.


Notes

[This is a considerably shortened version of a paper originally commissioned
by and written for the Lokniti, Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies, New Delhi, India, State of Democracy in South Asia Project and
was part of the Qualitative Assessment of Democracy in Pakistan module. The
paper was written in response to the specific framework developed by the
project and was subsequently reviewed by an independent reviewer and
revised. After being accepted by Lokniti/CSDS, I sent it for comments to a
number of Pakistani scholars and have received numerous comments, many
supporting the arguments made here, and some critiquing the views expressed
here. I am very grateful to Kamran Asdar Ali, Arif Hasan, Nadeem ul Haque,
Nadeem Khalid, Aqil Shah, Faisal Siddiqui and Hasan Zaidi for their numerous
comments. I hope that they will, as promised, join the debate and contribute
their arguments for a better understanding of the issues discussed here.]

   1 This lecture finds itself represented in many of the articles in Amartya
Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and
Identity, Allen Lane, London, 2005.
   2 Perhaps the main problem with Sen's formulation about the argumentative
Indian is, that he sidesteps, if not ignores fully, the essence of power in
the context of argumentation and discourse, a crucial concept which just
cannot be ignored in that other south Asian country, Pakistan. As Sunil
Khilnani in a review of the book puts it succinctly: "The arena of politics
is shaped by power (a concept that figures lightly in his work), in ways
that can all too often leave reason disarmed" in FT Magazine, June 25-26,
2005, London. Also see the excellent review by Ramachandra Guha, 'Arguments
with Sen: Arguments about India', Economic and Political Weekly, October 8,
2005.
   3 Many of these themes are discussed in the following texts: Khalid B
Sayeed, Politics in Pakistan: The Nature and Direction of Change, Praeger
Publishers, New York, 1980; Ayesha Jalal, The State of Martial Rule: The
Origins of Pakistan's Political Economy of Defence, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1990; Mohammed Waseem, Politics and the State in Pakistan,
National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research, Islamabad, 1994;
Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative
and Historical Perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995;
Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political
Economy, second edition, Oxford University Press, 2004; and S Akbar Zaidi,
Issues in Pakistan's Economy, second edition, revised and expanded, Oxford
University Press, 2005.
   4 Perhaps the term "praetorian democracy" ought to be replaced by
"praetorian electoral process", for democracy under the control and rules of
the military seems to be oxymoronic.
   5 The general elections (no pun here) of 2002 and the local government
elections of as recently as August-September 2005, only emphasise this
truth. Political discourse in Pakistan revolves around how one can "work
with the military" rather than contest its supremacy, a politics of
compromise - on the military's terms, of course - rather than one of protest
and confrontation.
   6 Much of the material for this section has been drawn from chapter 22 of
my Issues in Pakistan's Economy, second edition, revised and expanded,
Oxford University Press, 2005, where arguments related to social transition
and class formation in Pakistan have been elaborated upon at great length.
Anyone interested in examining these issues in greater detail is requested
to look at this chapter.
   7 An important mechanism of the Ayub regime, as it was of generals Zia ul
Haq and Pervez Musharraf much later, was the setting up of a
patronage-oriented elected local government system which created
constituencies which benefited participants through patronage and handouts
and became an important political constituency supporting the military
regimes. For greater details, see S Akbar Zaidi, The Political Economy of
Decentralisation in Pakistan, Transversal Theme 'Decentralisation and Social
Movements', Working Paper No 1, University of Zurich, Switzerland, and
Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad, Pakistan 2005. A
downloadable pdf version is available at www.nccrnorth-south.unibe.ch (then:
Publications).
   8 For a comparison of the three military regimes, see chapter 22 in S Akbar
Zaidi, op cit, 2005.
   9 See Ashley Tellis, 'US Strategy: Assisting Pakistan's Transformation',
The Washington Quarterly, Vol 28, No 1, 2004; and Teresita Schaffer,
Pakistan's Future and US Policy Options, Centre for Strategic and
International Studies, Washington DC, 2004.
10 See the extensive work of Ayesha Siddiqa on this and her forthcoming
book, provisionally titled Military Inc: The Political Economy of Generals
in Business. See: Ayesha Siddiqa-Agha, 'Power, Perks, Prestige and
Privileges: Military's Economic Activities in Pakistan', paper presented at
the Soldiers in Business: Military as an Economic Actor Conference, Jakarta,
October 17-19, 2000; 'The Political Economy of National Security' in S Akbar
Zaidi (ed), Continuity and Change: Socio-Political and Institutional
Dynamics in Pakistan, City Press, Karachi, 2003; 'The Politics of Military's
Economic Interests', unpublished paper written for DFID, 2004.
11 Ayesha Siddiqa, op cit, 2004.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Dawn, Karachi, October 3, 2003. Emphasis added; also see Ayaz Amir's
article: 'How Many Generals Can a Country Afford?', Dawn, Karachi, March 1,
2002.
15 Ayesha Siddiqa, op cit, 2004.
16 Ibid.
17 For an excellent discussion on the idea, theory, existence and practice
of civil society, see Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani (eds), Civil
Society: History and Possibilities, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
2001.
18 The social scientists and scholars who have been studying social change
in Pakistan and have been talking about an urban Pakistan, are: Ali Reza Ali
Cheema, Arif Hasan, Mohammad A Qadeer and S Akbar Zaidi.
19 Reza Ali, 'Underestimating Urbanisation?' in S Akbar Zaidi (ed),
Continuity and Change: Socio-Political and Institutional Dynamics in
Pakistan, City Press, Karachi, 2003.
20 Mohammad Qadeer, 'Ruralopolises: The Spatial Organisation and Residential
Land Economy of High-density Rural Regions in South Asia', Urban Studies,
Vol 37, No 9, 2000, and 'Urbanisation of Everybody: Institutional
Imperatives and Social Transformation in Pakistan', paper presented at the
15th Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Pakistan Society of
Development Economists, November 1999.
21 Qadeer, op cit, 2000, p 1590.
22 Qadeer, op cit, 1999, p 9.
23 Ibid, p 10.
24 Ali Cheema, 'State and Capital in Pakistan: The Changing Politics of
Accumulation', in A M Reed, Corporate Capitalism in Contemporary South Asia:
Conventional Wisdoms and South Asian Realities, Palgrave, London, 2003. This
and the next paragraphs draw on Cheema's work.
25 Ibid, p 156.
26 Ibid.
27 Ali Cheema shows that by the 1985 election, the proportion of
industrialists in the national parliament had increased considerably, and
this was a "very different" industrial class, not like that of the 1960s.
Ali Cheema, op cit, p 165.
28 For the process of social change triggered off by remittances, see the
excellent book by Jonathan Addelton, Undermining the Centre: The Gulf
Migration and Pakistan, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1992.
29 Ali Cheema, op cit, p 158.
30 Cited in Ali Cheema, et al, 'Decentralisation in Pakistan: Context,
Contents and Causes', draft, forthcoming in Pranab Bardhan and D Mookherjee'
, 'Decentralisation in Developing Countries: A Comparative Perspective,
forthcoming. Also see, Ali Cheema and Shandana Khan Mohmmand, 'Local
Government Reforms in Pakistan: Legitimising Centralisation or a Driver for
Pro-poor Change?', unpublished mimeo, Lahore University of Management
Sciences, Lahore, October 2003.
31 See Arif Hasan, The Unplanned Revolution, City Press, Karachi, 2002.
32 Ali Cheema argues that in the 1960s there was a small, centralised,
bureaucracy and a small and politically weak capitalist class, and a
consequence of this interaction resulted in "efficient accumulation". This
structure unravelled in the 1970s and the state weakened and was fragmented,
and there was also "fragmented growth of politically mobilised
'transfer-seeking' coalitions that were bidding for state "transfers". The
structure of decentralised corruption was institutionalised by Zia-ul-Haq,
who incorporated these fragmented factions in the state structure and
further unravelled the rule-based nature of the state" - Ali Cheema, op cit,
p 162.
33 Ali Cheema, et al, op cit.
34 See the excellent work by Andrew Wilder on Pakistan's elections: The
Pakistani Voter: Electoral Politics and Voting Behaviour in the Punjab,
Oxford University Press, Karachi 1999.
35 Ali Cheema, et al, op cit.
36 M Qadeer, op cit, 1999, p 18.


4. (AN EXTENDED EXCHANGE OF LETTERS IN PAKISTANI
PRESS ON ARMS vs HUMANITARIAN AID)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR - DAWN
14 December 2005

Aid, not weapons

THIS refers to a letter (Dec 12) by three Swede humanists who have urged
their government through these columns to convert the export of weapons to
Pakistan into humanitarian aid so desperately needed for millions of
earthquake victims now bracing themselves for a harsh, sub-zero winter. It
is very touching to note that people around the world are more concerned
about us than our own rulers. What was the initial response of our
decision-makers to international and local objectors to the anomaly in
Islamabad spending?

We were told that aid for the victims and defence procurement were two
entirely different things. The deal with Sweden for reconnaissance planes
was signed the very next day the tragedy struck. When the press and media
criticized the explanation, the purchase of F-16 fighters was put off, not
cancelled.

Now that peace with India is on the cards and a solution to the Kashmir
problem is being sought through negotiations, why do we have to spend so
much needlessly?

I think our government is being forced into the deal.

A few years ago, the US asked Poland to buy about a dozen F-16s costing a
few billion dollars. As we know, Poland is smack in the middle of Europe
under the Nato umbrella.

Poland has no hot borders, there were no funds and it had absolutely no use
for those fighters. To facilitate the deal, a loan was provided through
international financial institutions and Poland now has a mighty air force.

ASLAM MINHAS
Karachi

Letter to the Editor
DAWN
December 11, 2005

AWACs deal


THIS is with reference Khadisa Khashe's letter of Nov 30 on the AWAC's deal.
I agree hundred per cent with her views. A country can be economically
powerful if it is self-sufficient internally.

We can not even cope with a disaster and have to go round begging for
financial assistance and we want to buy planes worth over a billion dollars.

The 9/11 attacks proved to be a boon for Pakistan, saving it from financial
bankruptcy. Pakistan should revaluate its foreign policy of supporting
jihadis and develop its infrastructure for the betterment of its people by
spending more on fields like education.

M. A. ANSARI
Toronto, Canada

o o o o

Letter to the Editor
DAWN
November 30, 2005

AWACs deal

IQTEDAR A. Khan in his letter (Nov 23) has defended the AWACs deal finalized
by the government with Sweden. Giving various reasons, he says: "A
well-equipped and armed country is always in a stronger position." I ask
him, at what cost should a country become armed and made stronger? Most of
our population is illiterate, and has little or no access to adequate health
facilities, poverty is on the rise, law and order is dismal, and prices are
soaring. What benefit has all the fancy weaponry, purchased at enormous cost
(with even bigger kickbacks) given us ordinary citizens, the wretched
"civilians" as we are called?

When the earthquake hit us, did the nuclear arsenal help, or the F-16s, or
the bullet-proof cars bought for our VIP's, or the mansions that they live
in? No it was the volunteers, the wretched "civilians" who made the
difference.

If only our so-called leaders(who in fact are the servants of the public,
because we pay for them just as we pay for our domestic help), start
thinking logically. We don't want war with anyone, not even India, because
there are also human beings living on the other side of the border. We need
to sign peace treaties with our neighbours, we need to stop interfering in
the affairs of other countries, and divert the resources thus saved to
provide health and education to our own people. That is the only way we can
truly become strong.

People who hold such views only try to fool others into believing their
misconceived ideas of how Pakistan can become strong. The fact is that
Pakistan's strength lies in its people, not in weapons.

KHADIJA KHASHE
Karachi


o o o o


Dawn
Letter to the Editor
November 23, 2005

AWACs deal

MANY letters have appeared in your newspaper criticizing the AWACs deal by
the Pakistan government. Please allow me to say a few words on this subject
in an effort to respond to the general scepticism in the minds of readers.

To state briefly, it has almost taken five years to evaluate this product,
its technical reliability and to get the financial resources. The need for
an AWAC system is inescapable in view of the acquisition by the Indian Air
Force of similar equipment from Israel. An AWAC system of radar is like an
electronic eye in the sky. It is in operation with the IAF and they are able
to observe every movement of the Pakistan Army and the deployment of the
Pakistan Air Force and hence can take any action needed in any emergent
situation.

At present, the IAF has three types of latest version of fighter aircraft
and is about to integrate F-18s into its fleet whereas the PAF is flying
aircraft that is 20 years old. By acquiring the AWAC system the PAF would be
at least in a position to get early warning which would allow it to take
counter measures. A well-equiped and armed country is always in a stronger
position.

Lastly , I would like to clarify that it is a contractual obligation on both
the parties to honour the date to sign the agreement, otherwise the buyer
has to pay almost 10 per cent more as late/delay fee.

IQTEDAR A.KHAN
Ex-director of supply & logistics, PAF
Islamabad

ooo

Letters to the Editor - DAWN
December 12, 2005

Aid, not weapons

IT is over two months since Pakistan was hit by the biggest natural disaster
on Aug 8. At least 73,000 people have died, 69,000 injured and 3.5 million
rendered homeless.

Winter is now tightening its grip on the mountainous area and temperatures
are falling. Many people face death from the winter cold. Relief efforts
comprise a race against the clock.

The relief effort is a long-term affair and will demand major financial
resources for an extended period of time. We welcome the fact that the
Swedish government is contributing 20 millions euros in aid assistance.

We are, however, deeply concerned that Sweden at the same time has approved
the export of large quantities of military equipment to Pakistan.

Just one week after the earthquake, initial contracts were with Pakistan by
Swedish firms for the export of a radar monitoring system. If the deal goes
through, it will be Sweden's biggest weapons export ever and will cost
Pakistan 880 million euros.

As representatives of Swedish NGOs and other organizations, we are deeply
concerned that Sweden has approved the export of large quantities of weapons
to Pakistan at such a crucial time. That is clearly inconsistent with Sweden
's global development policy.

We, therefore, appeal to Carin Jdmtin, Swedish minister for development
assistance, and Laila Freivalds, minister for foreign affairs, that what
Pakistan needs right now is our assistance, not our weapons.

FRIDA BLOM

(president, Swedish Peace & Arbitration Society),

INGER BJVRK

(general secretary, Forum Syd),

BO FORSBERG

(director, Swedish Diakonia) and

ALEKSANDER GABELIC
(president, UN Association of Sweden) Via email


5

Daily Times
December 01, 2005

'LAND OF THE ARMY'
by Kamran Shafi

On my long walks through the cantonment that I
once served in and loved I have seen the complete
abandon with which this once beautiful part of
Lahore is being treated. The barracks are being
razed at an alarming rate, and in their place are
coming up - you guessed it, the bungalows of the
generals and the air marshals and the admirals

The Big General and his advisors and spokesmen
have stated loud plans to build a new General
Headquarters despite appeals from all over the
country to cancel the project, specially now, in
light of the great catastrophe that has befallen
our country, and to divert the money saved to the
massive reconstruction that will be required in
the Frontier and Azad Kashmir.

But no, the Army High Command is hell-bent on
going ahead, citing an incredible reason for
doing so: that because the air force and the navy
are headquartered in Islamabad the Beautiful, so
must the army be headquartered there for better
liaison between the three services. Makes one
laugh when one considers the short shrift the
army has always given the other two, and to
wonder how close must headquarters be to have
better liaison even if the army is now serious
about sharing ideas with the navy and the air
force? Mayhap all the three services chiefs
sitting in one open-plan office like most
business corporations these days? It is obviously
a silly reason.

Also, is the army even half right about the
funding it has arranged for the new GHQ? Since
the construction costs of the new made-to-order
headquarters are to be borne by selling, in the
words of the Big General himself, 'land of the
army', I have made some enquiries to see if what
I remember of this 'land' from my days in the
army is right i.e., that no land belongs to the
army, it is lent to it by the government of
Pakistan through the Defence Ministry, with the
now decimated, decapitated, and 'armyised'
Military Lands and Cantonment Service as its
custodian.

However, I am told that a Presidential Ordinance
(or 'Shahi Farmaan') was issued quite recently
allowing the army to sell the land, use a large
portion of the proceeds for whatever, and deposit
some little percentage in the Federal
Government's treasury.

The entire proceeding of the government
'allowing' the army to sell the land was
conducted through the Shahi Farmaan; the
much-vaunted 'prime minister' and his so-called
cabinet were left out of the loop completely. In
stark terms, we had the head of the army which
wants to spend billions of the nation's money on
a completely useless project put on his
presidential hat and issue an Ordinance giving
his organisation complete authority to do what it
wants, in other words to please itself, with not
even a by-your-leave or a nod to his own
appointee, the personal banker.

This is not good. Nor does the precedent of the
country's family silver being disposed of without
proper government control bode well for the
future.

Why am I writing about this matter yet again my
reader might well ask? Because I am visiting
Lahore and on my long walks through the
cantonment that I once served in and loved I have
seen the complete abandon with which this once
beautiful part of Lahore is being treated. The
barracks are being razed at an alarming rate, and
in their place are coming up - you guessed it,
the bungalows of the generals and the air
marshals and the admirals.

Many years ago I had written about a house being
built within feet of an Artillery Regiment's
Quarter-guard, a downright sin in my book, hoping
to kindle a gunner's heart in the Big General's
breast. But no, I have just this morning seen
even more spanking new houses, even nearer the
sentries.

It is said that the units are being moved to new
lines outside the city. Obviously because the
price of land in the present cantonment has
skyrocketed the land is too delicious to leave
well alone. But what happens when the price of
land in the new cantonment too goes up, fuelled
by Pakistan's massive informal economy? Will the
units be pushed further out and further out and
further out still? Till when?

Because we compare ourselves with India at the
drop of a hat, and want to keep up with it even
at the risk of doing grave damage to ourselves
e.g., if the Indians buy X number of fighter jets
we must too, and so on, let us see how they have
conducted themselves vis a vis their cantonments.
Well, sirs, from what I know not one inch of
'land of the army' has been allowed by the Indian
government to be fiddled with.

I don't know about the other army installations
in Delhi where the price of land should be at
least eight times that of Lahore and more, but I
do know that, for example, the Rajputana Rifles
Regimental Centre is still in Delhi; its
wonderful Officers' Mess with acres upon acres of
beautifully kept lawns is still where it was 200
years ago. As an aside, this rather large mess
does not have a room marked 'Reception' (as if it
was a third-class hotel) that most of ours have
recently acquired. The Mess Havildar is still
there; no civilian clerks lounging about.

That is not all. The Indian Army, too, provides
housing for its officers and, please note, for
its JCOs and ORs. The good Colonel Harbhajan
Singh, formerly of Rawalpindi, who delighted in
speaking with me in the Potohari dialect,
formerly Commandant Raj Rif Centre took me to see
the army housing in NOIDA in Gurgaon district
adjoining Greater Delhi. Please sirs, sit up and
listen here.

On the very street on which Colonel Harbhajan
Singh lived in a row house, there also lived
officers of the rank of lieutenant general! And
major general! And major! All in identical row
houses, except one lieutenant general, a
Rao-something-Singh who had two of the houses
which he had joined. The colonel told me he was
the second son of a Maharaja who had bought the
second house with his own money.

All the houses were built on plots which were 8
metres by 20 metres, a total of 160 square
metres! That is all. Just behind this settlement,
was a colony for JCOs and ORs, made up of
two-story flats, nicely wooded and clean. There
was a CSD-type shop and an MI Room for all the
residents of the housing colony regardless of
rank. The MI Room looked after non-critical
emergencies and had an integral ambulance of its
own to move seriously ill cases to the army
hospital not too far away.

I am sorry I have digressed, but I did so with a
purpose: to say that the Indians who come from
exactly the same military background as ourselves
have managed their affairs so much better, and
with far more propriety and grace. Incidentally,
there were no tikka joints and snack bars and
bakeries attached to the Officers' Messes that I
saw.

But back to 'land of the army'. Alright, it is
now a given whether anyone likes it or not, that
the army will do what it wills in the Land of the
Pure. The question I should like to ask is when
will the senior commanders in Lahore move their
Flag-Staff Houses and Army Guest Houses and Guest
Rooms and so on to where they are sending their
troops to be quartered? That will be the acid
test: will the great big residences be sold too
to fund the new GHQ? For they, too, are built on
'land of the army'.

Kamran Shafi is a freelance columnist. His
writings can be accessed at
http://www.kamranshafi.blogspot.com

6

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/cgi-bin/client/modele.pl?prod=65294&session=dae\
.16960185.1135052014.Q6eE7sOa9dUAAEOfgXk&modele=jdc_1

PAKISTAN - M109A5 155MM SELF-PROPELLED HOWITZERS

(Source: US Defense Security Cooperation Agency; issued Dec. 16, 2005)

On 16 December 2005, the Defense Security
Cooperation Agency notified Congress of a
possible Foreign Military Sale to Pakistan of 115
M109A5 155mm self-propelled howitzers as well as
associated equipment and services. The total
value, if all options are exercised, could be as
high as $56 million.

The Government of Pakistan has requested a
possible sale of 115 M109A5 155mm self-propelled
howitzers, spare and repair parts, support and
test equipment, publications and technical
documentation, personnel training and training
equipment, Quality Assurance Team, U. S.
Government logistics personnel services, and
other related elements of logistics support. The
estimated cost is $56 million.

This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign
policy and national security of the United States
by helping to improve the security of a friendly
country that continues to be a key ally in the
global war on terrorism.

Pakistan currently operates M109A2 self-propelled
howitzers and will use this new procurement to
re-equip existing units and retire older
artillery pieces, modernizing the Army's fire
support capability. Pakistan will use these
howitzers to improve its current fleet of ground
defense equipment. The proposed equipment will
assist Pakistan in improving its internal command
and control of the mountain range bordering its
country. Pakistan will have no difficulty
absorbing the howitzers into its armed forces.

The proposed sale of this equipment and support
will not affect the basic military balance in the
region.

No contractor is involved for this purchase of
the howitzers. Equipment is considered long
supply and is no longer utilized by the U.S.
Government.

There will be a Technical Assistance Field Team
(TAFT) and U.S. Government Quality Assurance Team
for one year to check out the equipment. A TAFT
will participate for two-week intervals twice
annually to participate in program management and
technical reviews.

There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense
readiness as a result of this proposed sale.

This notice of a potential sale is required by
law; it does not mean that the sale has been
concluded.

-ends-

7

IANS  - 16 Dec 2005

PAKISTAN-SAUDI NAVAL EXERCISE CONCLUDES

Karachi: The Pakistani and Saudi Arabian navies
have concluded a joint exercise in the Arabian
Sea that was aimed at enhancing their
inter-operability, Online news agency reported.

The vice chief of the Pakistan Navy, Vice Admiral
Mohammad Haroon, said with the focus shifting in
favour of coalition and joint maritime
operations, Pakistan was engaging friendly navies
for ensuring a stable maritime scenario.

He said the exercises, held off the Karachi
coast, focused on overcoming problem areas and
preparing for real operations.

"The successful accomplishment of the exercise is
not the end (but) rather a modest step on the
long road to excellence, which should be our
goal," he remarked.

The commander of the Saudi task force, Rear
Admiral Sami Bin Mansoor Al Rafae, said the joint
exercise encompassed all major facets of maritime
warfare. The exercises proved to be of great
tactical gain.

The exercise, codenamed Naseem-al-Bahr, began Nov
28 and ended Thursday. Destroyers, frigates,
missile corvettes, tankers, minesweepers and
naval aircraft took part in the manoeuvres.

Last month, the Pakistani and Chinese navies had
held joint exercises in the Arabian Sea.


8

PAK-FRANCE REITERATE DESIRE FOR STRENGTHENING DEFENSE COOPERATION

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and France have reiterated
their mutual desire to further strengthen Defense
Cooperation between the two countries
particularly in the naval field.

The was discussed during a meeting between the
visiting French Joint Commander-in-Chief, French
forces in the Indian ocean theatre, Real Admiral
De Gaullier Des Bordes, and senior Federal
Minister for Defense Rao Sinkander Iqbal and
minister of state for Defense Zahid Iqbal Hamid
here on Tuesday.

Both sides underlined the need for establishment
of a long term and sustainable defense
cooperation between the two countries.

The Minister highlighted the existing defense
ties between Pakistan and France and appreciated
the assistance being provided by the France in
the construction of Agosta Submarine.

The meeting also emphasized the need for
enhancement of cooperation in the field of
military training. The possibility of holding
joint naval exercise next year by the two
countries was also discussed.


9.

DAWN
December 18, 2005
Features

MORE CRICKET, MORE SECURITY!
by Nusrat Nasarullah

What is the message that goes out both to the
citizens and to the visitors (any tourists?) in
the face of the growing levels of security alerts
and security measures that are being introduced
in Karachi?

We had that One-Day international between
Pakistan and England on Thursday providing good
cricket for an excellent crowd. But wait. Does it
mean that each time there is cricket of this
level to be played in town, we will end up
closing down about half the city? Does it mean
that really? I like cricket, but I have to think
whether this cost is to high, laughed a zealot
who watched the game on the telly.     We'll get
to the security that cricket needs in this day
and age in a while. As one writes this column on
Friday evening, and keeping in mind the context
that the Prime Minister is in town, there has
come another traffic  police  communiqué which
advises (or is it warns) the citizens to stay off
Sharea Faisal (once again) on Saturday and Sunday
so as not to get inconvenienced because of the
VVIP movement. And because it is a security need.
Timings and duration are obviously undisclosed.
So wait, and suffer and bear, indefinitely. These
communiqués don't mention alternative routes.
Given Karachi's congestion and town-planning
there aren't any real options. Take it or leave
it, that is the best option.     I can imagine
what kind of Saturday it could be for poor
Karachiites. But what about emergencies. Bear in
mind that the JPMC, the NICVD, the Kidney Centre,
and the Children's hospital are all off the
Sharea Faisal. Trapped ambulances? Pray that does
not happen.    There was a time when newspapers
carried regularly newsitems about the arrival and
departure of the President and the Prime
Minister. Now security needs warrant that this
information be held back. Fine. But then security
measures are growing at the grassroots level in
such a manner, and extent, that one feels that
the Karachiites are being taken hostage, remarked
one pedestrian who was stopped from crossing the
road in the vicinity of five star hotels on Club
Road. Another person who works at Dr Ziauddin
Ahmed Road area has begun describing it as a
"kind of war zone". I am unable to resist the
temptation of mentioning the days (or times?)
when one of the smaller pleasures in Karachi was
to go to PIDC house for a "meetha pan". With the
current ban on car parking in the PIDC area, we
can imagine the downslide in meetha pan sales!!
We are turning modern, and trying to be secure
too.     It is relevant to mention here the
heightened degree of security steps that were in
place on Friday afternoon when the Prime
Minister, Mr Shaukat Aziz, inaugurated the 17th
Biennial Cardiac Conference at the Pearl
Continental. These security measures were not
just clamped outside the hotel, and in the
neighbourhood, but also inside the hotel. For
those who need to be updated on what these
measures can include here is a list. An
invitation card cleared by the authorities can
remind him to bring his national identity card or
passport, along with the invitation card and the
envelope. Then it is also stamped (politely with
thanks!) that mobile phones, and cameras will not
be allowed. Sometimes even handbags are
prohibited. After that when the guests enter they
walk through a metal detector and then go through
a body search as well. Even shoes are "scanned".
Let me remind that this security clearance is
required after one has gone through the hotel
security check.

I can understand how citizens keep wondering what
is happening to our lives in the name of
security. VVIP security cannot and should not
mean a nuisance and harassment for the common
man. The Prime Minister in his address to the
heart doctors on Friday, at one point remarked
that Karachi was a big city, and, therefore, had
tension as well. Which is to imply that
Karachiites had tense lives. Here I may add that
this tension aggravates not just when the
security measures are experienced by citizens,
but also at the thought that there is VVIP
presence in town. Nevertheless it is a very
challenging assignment to provide security and
ensure that the people are not "held hostage". A
redeeming aspect of the traffic jams that are
caused by these security measures is that
December is not as suffocating, weather-wise, as
our summer days. Count this as a blessing?

There were reports about traffic jams on
University Road despite publication of a traffic
management map.     Now cricket has its
enthusiasts, and while they are happy at the
success of the one day game, they were somewhat
surprised at the extent of security that was put
into place for it. Tariq who spent a day at the
National Stadium believes that given the
discipline and excitement that the crowd
demonstrated security measures could have been
moderate and reasonable.   Such opinions and
comments have a reflective impact in most cases.
For the security cover that was in evidence for
the match, or for VVIP movement, are we then to
ask whether, without these measures Karachi is an
insecure city. And that is it the way to attract
tourists.   Of course, Karachi is looking for
tourists, not just for the money they bring in,
but also the good they do to the image: soft and
hard image. But it is perhaps a moot point
whether the sight of a variety of weapons, in
ready to shoot position, held by armed uniformed
men, puts off a person, or lends to the visitor
the comfort of security and convenience.    But
as we have talked of cricket and VVIP security,
thoughts turn nostalgic. The young would find it
inconceivable to know that there was a time when
Presidents and Prime Ministers in this country
did not need so much security, and neither did
cricketers, for that matter. Neither did we eat
our bun kababs and chicken-tikkas under the
watchful eyes of private armed guards. Or go to
mosques guarded by loaded guns, for that matter.


10

http://www.centralchronicle.com/20051219/1912158.htm

MAKE NATO COMPATIBLE ARMS: HOUSE PANEL RECOMMENDATION

Agencies

New Delhi, Dec 18 Concerned over the country's
failure to make a breakthrough in arms exports, a
Parliamentary Committee has recommended that
ordnance factories should manufacture NATO
compatible weapons.

Noting that failure to manufacture weapons upto
NATO standards, specially small calibre items,
has badly hit the country's efforts to boost arms
sales, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on
Defence said specification of indigenous arms
should be changed to make them NATO compatible.

Expressing concern that arms exports plunged to
mere Rs 41 crores this year against Rs 93 crores
in 2003-04, the committee in its report, tabled
in Parliament, said India should become a major
player by offering indigenous missiles,
helicopters and major weapons systems for sale
abroad.

The committee noted that Indian export market was
at present confined to neighbouring nations like
Nepal, Myanmmar and Maldives, besides catering to
the replenishment market.

The committee said the Government should create
an Export Promotion Board for ordnance factories.
The factories should be restructured and experts
involved in these in order to launch a
modernisation drive, it added.

"The Export Promotion Board should have experts
from international trade and marketing fields who
can evolve an effective strategy and drive to tap
the vast export markets for armaments,
ammunitions and other defence products," the
committee said.

11

http://dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1001450

INDIA-US DEFENCE COOPERATION IS NOW ON A TAKE-OFF COURSE
Josy Joseph
Saturday, December 10, 2005  01:18 IST

NEW DELHI: Thirty joint exercises in just four
years, regular bilateral visits, a new framework
for defence cooperation, expanding cooperation on
missile defence. All that is just a prelude to an
explosive growth in the presence of American
equipment and intensification of bilateral
defence cooperation between the two forces,
believe American officials involved in the effort
to step up the Indo-US military relations.

Among the recent contracts that reflect the
intensification of the bilateral cooperation is
the American readiness to supply self-protection
suit that would protect Boeing Business Jets for
Indian VIPs from incoming missiles, a US embassy
official said.

The intensification in the bilateral relations
would also be evident in the next few months when
a high level US defence delegation would provide
India an exclusive briefing on its ongoing Joint
Strike Fighter project. The briefing is expected
in March when Lt General Jeffrey B Kohler, head
of Pentagon's Defence Cooperation Security Agency
visits India.

Kohler and his team would also provide detailed
proposals to develop India into a hub for joint
production of military aircraft for South East
Asian markets, if Indian Air Force buys either
F-16s or F-18s of the US for the upcoming
contract for the 125 multi-role fighters.

The effort is to push the Indo-US defence
relations from a mere buyer-seller relationship
to that of joint partnership and
inter-operability across the board, the official
said.

Since the mid-'90s, India has bought $287 million
worth of American military equipment through the
Foreign Military Sales route, where the equipment
is supplied through the US government at the same
rate at which the American military buys them.
And over a $1 billion worth of licences have been
issued to American companies to sell military
equipment directly to India, the US embassy
official said.

But, he says, all that is probably only a prelude
to the huge explosion in India's future purchase
of American military equipment. The delivery of
Firefinder radars for the Army, biggest FMS sale
in recent times to India, is underway according
to time schedule, he said. Three of the radars
are ready in a Raytheon complex in California for
India to take delivery, and four of them have
been delivered.

An Army team recently visited America to look up
equipment for Special Forces including light arms.

The Indian Navy is expected to receive a detailed
proposal on lease of two and sale of eight
American P3C Orion long-range maritime aircraft.
And it is also looking at the possibility of
buying Hawkeye 2000 airborne early warning system.

Navy has also shown interest in American mine
hunter ships and is also on course to buy an old
Landing Platform Dock USS Trenton, and is also
exploring the possibility of buying multi-mission
helicopters from America. IAF is looking at
buying 80 medium size helicopters, and US is
making an aggressive push to bag the IAF's
contract for the 125 multi-role fighter.


12.

Janes Defence Weekly
16 December 2005

INDIAN NAVY STRIVES FOR REGIONAL DOMINANCE

By Rahul Bedi JDW Correspondent
New Delhi

The Indian Navy has key plans for network-centric
platforms, sensors and weapon systems to give it
added "endurance, punch and capability",
principally to secure sea lines of communication
to ensure trouble-free energy imports for India's
burgeoning requirements that are expected to
double by 2010.

Over the next decade, the navy plans for a force
structure of 140-145 vessels, of which more than
half would be ocean-going and the remainder
assigned coastal duties.

The fighting force of missile destroyers and
frigates would be built around two carrier battle
groups, supplemented by submarine and aviation
assets and amphibious, mine countermeasure ships
and auxiliary forces.

INS Vikramaditya (formerly Admiral Gorshkov), the
44,570 ton Kiev-class aircraft carrier undergoing
a refit at Russia's Sevmash shipyard, is due to
enter service by 2008. Twenty MiG-29K multirole
fighters - including four trainers and six to
eight Ka-28 anti-submarine/ Ka-31 multipurpose
helicopters - will make up the carrier's air
group.

Beyond this, the navy began constructing a
37,500-ton carrier at Cochin Shipyard in April,
for which INR32.61 billion (USD725 million) has
so far been sanctioned. Known as the air-defence
ship (ADS) it will be India's biggest
indigenously built warship and will also operate
12 MiG-29K fighters.

Besides the ADS, the Indian Navy has 17 ships on
order at its various dockyards. These include
three Project 17 (P17) frigates being built at
MDL, the first of which, INS Shivalik, is due for
commissioning in March 2007, followed by INS
Satpura, six months later and INS Sahyadri around
mid-2008.


13.

Times of India
December 17, 2005

INDO-ISRAEL DEFENCE TIES GET A BOOST
Rajat Pandit
[ Friday, December 16, 2005 02:06:27 amTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: India and Israel have agreed to take
their already flourishing military ties a few
notches higher by collaborating on R&D projects
in high-tech areas ranging from sensor,
electronic warfare systems, long-endurance and
combat UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) to even
missiles, say sources.

This came after the fourth meeting of the
Indo-Israeli joint working group on defence
cooperation, co-chaired by defence secretary
Shekhar Dutt and Israeli defence ministry
director-general Jacob Toren, here on Thursday.

Defence ministry officials refused to say
anything. But sources said cooperation in missile
defence, the prospect of joint exercises, ways to
tackle terrorism and intelligence-sharing figured
in the parleys.

Toren, incidentally, met defence minister Pranab
Mukherjee on Wednesday. This comes barely a few
days after Israel conducted yet another
successful test of its Arrow-II anti-ballistic
missile defence system.

India, faced as it is with Pakistan's arsenal of
Chinese and North Korean Shaheen and Ghauri
missiles, is deeply interested in missile defence
systems.

While the US have only given a "technical
presentation" on its Patriot Advanced
Capability-3 system to India, Israel supplied two
Green Pine early-warning and fire-control radars
to India in 2001-02.

14

Himal South Asian
November / December 2005

Analysis

PEEKING OUT OF YOUR POCKET

INDIA'S NATIONAL ID SCHEME IS 'ON SCHEDULE'

by | Aman Sethi

Simulated National ID Card of Shri Rahul Gandhi

In a quiet office off of Mansingh Road in New
Delhi, a small team is working on a secret
project. If successful, this plan will transform
India from a 'soft state', open to all sorts of
Subcontinental contamination, into a hard,
impenetrable fortress - safe, sure and secure.
The mild-mannered men seated behind large, untidy
tables at the Office of the Registrar General of
India patiently explain that the project is not
exactly secret - it's just that only the Home
Secretary is authorised to speak on the subject,
and he rarely does. They can only confirm what is
already in the public domain: the Multipurpose
National Identity Card (MNIC) project is on
schedule; the pilot project has been initiated;
and the first cards are to be issued by April
2006. The entire system is state-of-the-art - a
symbol of India's prowess in information
technology and the perfect weapon to battle
corruption, inefficiency, infiltration,
terrorism, treason and sedition.

The first time anyone spoke about a national
identification system was in 1992, when the
right-wing Sangh Parivar and its allied
organisations staged protests against the influx
of Bangladeshi immigrants into the states of
Assam, Bengal, Delhi and Maharashtra. Arguing
that the migration of the primarily Muslim
Bangladeshis was altering the demographic profile
of the country as a whole, they took every
opportunity to air their xenophobic slogan,
Infiltrators, Quit India. In response, the
Central Government launched Operation Pushback,
with the expressed purpose of deporting
Bangladeshi immigrants from the capital region.
At the time, a major practical problem was the
identification and enumeration of the immigrants.
A meeting was called between the chief ministers
of the states on India's eastern frontier, which
passed a resolution to issue identity cards to
all citizens in border districts. The government,
however, failed to execute the proposal.

In 1998, when the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)
came to power, with Atal Bihari Vajpayee as prime
minister and L K Advani in charge of the Ministry
of Home Affairs, the party had not forgotten its
obsession with 'aliens' and 'anti-nationals'. A
report titled "Reforming the National Security
System" observed that illegal migration had
assumed serious proportions. "There should be
compulsory registration of citizens and
non-citizens living in India," was its stark
recommendation.

To quote Home Minister Advani, the MNIC project
was setup to assist in "checking illegal
immigration and infiltration and in tracing of
criminals and subversives, especially in the
border areas of the country." These cards were
also to be used for the issuing of passports,
driving licenses and ration cards; as well as to
receive health care, admission in educational
institutions, employment in both the public and
private sectors; to access life and general
insurance; and to maintain land and property
records. The ministry envisaged a massive
information superstructure that would maintain
records on every Indian resident. The task of
carrying out a feasibility study for the project
was awarded to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS),
and the MNIC was on its way.

Category anxieties
A modern nation state consists of a clearly
demarcated physical boundary, as well as a
clearly defined body of citizens. The compulsive
needs to demarcate physical space and to identify
people as 'citizens' are essential for the
processes of state creation and maintenance. The
MNIC project is interesting, among other things,
because it gives us an insight into the anxieties
and insecurities of modern-day India as a nation
state.

The well-regarded sociologist Rogers Brubaker
defines citizenship as "a powerful instrument of
social closure" that establishes "a conceptual,
legal and ideological boundary between citizens
and foreigners." But how is such a boundary
created in the case of an avowedly multicultural
and secular state like India? Attempting to
balance a strong and centralising state on the
one hand, with the demands of a federal,
multicultural, secular Constitution on the other,
creates severe category anxieties. What does it
mean to be Indian? How is it different from what
it means to be Pakistani, Nepali or Sri Lankan?

Given that the bulk of the Subcontinent has gone
from being one administrative entity (undivided
India) in 1946 to three separate, sovereign
states (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) in 1971,
this identity crisis is understandable. We
therefore see in India an almost paranoid urge to
conclusively identify the outsider and the
infiltrator, simply to make the category of
citizen more meaningful. Currently, if the
government and the stateist media are to be
believed, the nation of India is under threat
from Pakistani terrorists, Bangladeshi Muslim
immigrants, Nepali criminals and LTTE rebels.
What makes these 'infiltrators' so particularly
dangerous is that they look like 'us', talk like
'us', and think like 'us'; in fact, they are 'us'.

The process of categorising populations helps to
create the conceptual boundaries between citizen
and foreigner of which Brubaker speaks.
Gradually, differences begin to emerge that
reinforce these boundaries. Reams of paper,
ration cards, licenses, passports, voter ID cards
- all of these give us a uniquely 'Indian'
identity with respect to state and public
institutions; indeed, they are the glue that
holds the nation together. The identity card is
simply the newest way to differentiate between a
mass of people who look the same, speak the same
language, and used to have ancestral properties
'across the border'. The outsider is now easily
identified as the one without the national
identity card and can subsequently be dealt with
as seen fit.

Theft of identity
While the identification of a 'normal' citizen
may prove useful for a state engaged in nation
building, the process of arriving at that
recognition is fraught with complexity. By
definition, the process of 'counting in' implies
a parallel process of 'leaving out'. Indeed, the
biggest danger of the MNIC project is that it
could create a vast body of individuals that
exist outside of the national socio-legal
framework. Critics of a national identification
system usually make two points. First, that the
system will cause more harm than good if it
works. Second, that it won't work. MNIC
supporters, on the other hand, take it as a given
that the card will be foolproof and secure. Their
assumptions collapse, however, the moment that we
begin to study the process of issuance of the ID
cards themselves.

Unlike the United States and other developed
countries, where most citizens have a social
security number and, thus, a fair amount of
authentic information in government databases,
the MNIC project aims to start the verification
process from scratch. The government will first
carry out a census-type survey to create a
National Population Register, based on which the
cards will be issued. But how will identity be
verified or authenticated? What sort of proof
will be required to obtain a card?

Issuance will obviously require verifiable
documents such as ration cards, voter identity
cards, proof of residence documents, and so on.
Given that, in the eyes of the authorities, the
present system of identification is insufficient,
how will the MNIC work when it relies on these
same suspect documents? The problem could
actually be accentuated by the introduction of
such a card, because the MNIC will now bear a
legitimacy that the other documents lack. It can
also work the other way. While a misspelling on a
ration card would have simply been an error, it
could now imply that the cardholder is a
dangerous subversive using a falsified identity
card.

The larger problem the census authorities will
face is the absence of documentation,
particularly in the hands of the landless poor.
This category constitutes a large percentage of
population in the rural areas, who have no real
means of identification and have never needed
any. The same will hold true for a large number
of the urban poor, who will lack property, fixed
residence, and birth and death records. In many
cases, the rural and urban poor will also be
without ration cards. The poorest and most
vulnerable would thus run the risk of being
labelled aliens, harassed by police, and stripped
of the few rights and assets that they possess. A
similar hysteria can be seen in the current case
of Bangladeshi immigrants in India.

The MNIC project is supposed to be valuable in
the fight against terrorism. Supposedly, keeping
a massive citizenry register would allow security
agencies to maintain tabs on 'potential
terrorists' and to catch them well before they
strike. A report by the Office of the Privacy
Commissioner of Canada, however, makes the
obvious point that "there is no database
containing the names of each and every 'bad
guy.'" First-time or unknown terrorists using
legitimate identification documents will not be
in law enforcement databanks. It is difficult to
see, therefore, how a national identity system,
now matter how sophisticated, could compensate
for such shortcomings. An obvious, recent example
was the March 2004 bombings in Madrid, which
killed at least 190 people. That terror could not
be prevented, even though it is mandatory for all
Spanish citizens to carry identity cards.

While its supporters claim that the MNIC project
will eliminate identity theft, the concentration
of large amounts of sensitive information in one
databank, and the emphasis on making the MNIC the
gold standard for all identification purposes,
would only make identity theft more lucrative.
The first signs of growing identity theft are
visible in countries that already rely on
personal information stored in databanks.
According to the US Federal Trade Commission,
identity theft has been the top consumer
complaint in the US for the five years in a row.

Programming pogroms
Any system that ensures the rights of individuals
based on whether or not papers are in the right
order puts too much power into the hands of
authorities. An examination of the track record
of supposedly secure databanks in Western
countries reveals a history of abuse. In 1994,
Business Week magazine revealed that the US state
of Ohio had sold its driver's license and car
registration lists to a private company for USD
375,000. In early 1995, more than 500 US Internal
Revenue Service agents were caught prying into
the tax records of American citizens.

Some of the most horrifying instances of the
misuse of census information were observed during
the Holocaust - which was, after all, based on an
elaborate system that required all German Jews to
carry identification papers by the end of 1938.
The authorities of the Reich hired IBM's German
subsidiary, Dehomag, to track entire populations
of Jews across the German empire using unique
5-digit numbers assigned to each individual. The
infamous Auschwitz tattoo is said to have begun
as one of these numbers - a system of
identification that was made possible with a
machine less sophisticated than a modern-day
programmable calculator.

It does not take a great leap of imagination to
see how governments controlled by fundamentalist
forces could misuse the demographics information
so easily available in the MNIC database. Indeed,
it is important to consider two factors: whether
an identification system is desirable just
because it is technically feasible; and whether
the many instances of prejudiced action against
defined communities by state and central
governments in India's modern history should not
make us a little more wary of the MNIC project.
The communal riots in Gujarat in 2002 and the
wholesale targeting of Muslims in the state by a
complicit BJP-run Ahmedabad government are enough
of a reminder of how supposedly 'classified'
information can be misused. The ruling party
members - who were systematically drawing up the
demographic compositions of residential
neighbourhoods months before the 2004 riots -
managed to supplement their information with the
records of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation.

MNIC proponents like to point out that most of
the information that will be collected for the
cards is already in the public domain. A
collation of the information on ration cards,
voter identification cards, insurance schemes and
passports would furnish much of the information
that would eventually find its way onto the MNIC,
they claim. What this argument fails to address
is the fact that, in all of the other schemes
referred to, the citizen provides information on
a voluntary basis. Should an individual so
choose, he can refrain from signing up for any of
these schemes, thereby retaining complete control
over his privacy and personal information. On the
contrary, the government has made changes to the
Indian Constitution that would make it mandatory
for every citizen to subscribe to the MNIC
project.

Human intelligence
Richard Sobel, a Harvard political scientist
specialising in privacy issues, believes that a
national identification system runs contrary to
the principle of 'fair information' - that
information required for one purpose should not
be used for another. For example, personal
medical information should not be accessible to
potential employers, if one is to protect people
from workplace discrimination. By putting all of
the information about an individual onto a single
card, the MNIC severely compromises privacy,
making the individual vulnerable to potential
discrimination, social targeting and humiliation.

Identity cards are not simply the 'proof' of our
identities. They represent an elaborate series of
institutions and processes put in place by both
the society and the state. They also help the
state to establish itself as the sole agent of
social control. While state interventions in
society are not inherently negative, moves to
map, categorise and monitor citizens prove
problematic for the rights of members of a free
society. After the events of 11 September 2001,
the Western world is gripped by an anxiety that
seeks to gather as much 'human intelligence' as
possible. States are sacrificing citizens' rights
of freedom and privacy for reasons of national
security. With the MNIC project, spearheaded by
the previous BJP government, Indian authorities
are now rushing headlong into extremely
problematic terrain. It is anyone's guess how,
when and where citizens' rights could be trampled
on a massive scale when the MNIC database becomes
available to prejudiced authorities.

The MNIC push is part of a proclivity that seeks
technological fixes to deal with vast and complex
socio-political and economic realities and
challenges. A solution to terrorism, crime and
corruption would require a comprehensive
reshuffling of existing hierarchies of power. On
the other hand, surveillance and enforcement
simply ensure that the status quo can continue.
The Multipurpose National Identity Card is a
project that could create extensive upheavals in
an unprepared society. India is not ready for it.
No country is.


15

Rediff.com
INDIA TO SET UP NEW MISSILE BASE IN HALDIA

December 07, 2005 13:53 IST

The Defence Ministry is planning to set up a
naval battery with missile firing capabilities in
Haldia, a senior official said in Kolkata on
Wednesday.

The official told UNI that a survey in and around
Haldia in East Midnapore district had already
been carried out and the Ministry was holding
talks with the West Bengal government for the
proposed Naval battery.

He said the Navy had been considering a second
battery with missile capabilities in Haldia in
view of the growing importance of the Port, which
could be an easy target of the enemy or the
terrorists.

He, however, said that the Diamond Harbour
battery would be in operation even after the
setting up of a new battery in Haldia since
Diamond Harbour was the entry point of the
Kolkata port.

He said a missile firing system would be more
effective in repulsing an attack or preventing an
economic blockade.

"Till now, there is no naval presence in Haldia
and matters are handled by the Coastal Guards
alone. However, the Haldia port is gaining
importance and deserves closer attention as the
navigation channel towards Kolkata begins in
Haldia," he said.


16

MosNews
20 December 2005

INDIA BUYS $400M WORTH OF RUSSIA MISSILE SYSTEMS

MosNews

Russia has signed a contract to deliver a batch
of Tunguska-M1 missile weapon systems to India, a
source in the military-industrial complex told
Interfax agency on Tuesday, Dec. 20.

"In accordance with the recently signed contract
India will receive four batteries of Tunguska-M1
systems. The total cost of the project amounted
to about $400 million," the source said.

He noted that this is not the first contract for
deliveries of Tunguska-M1 systems to India.
According to Indian sources, today the Indian
Army employs more than 60 Tunguska systems,
including two batteries (12 units) of Tunguska-M1
missile systems.

Tunguska-M1 is a gun/missile system for low-level
air defense. The system was designed by the KBP
Instrument Design Bureau in Tula, Russia and is
manufactured by the Ulyanovsk Mechanical Plant,
Ulyanovsk, Russia. It can engage targets while
stationary and on the move, using missiles for
long-range targets and guns for close-in defense.
It is designed for defense against both
fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters and can also
fire on ground targets.

The Tunguska-M1 vehicle carries eight 9M311-M1
surface-to-air missiles. Range is from 15 to
6,000 meters for ground targets and 15 to 10,000
meters for air targets. The system has target
acquisition radar and target tracking radar,
optical sight, a digital computing system, tilt
angle measuring system and navigation equipment.
Radar detection range is 18 kilometers and
tracking range is 16 kilometers.


17

The Sunday Express
December 18, 2005

FIDAYEEN
Muzamil Jaleel goes to meet a would-be suicide
bomber. And encounters a scared, almost simple
lad who yearns for home and an ordinary life.
Photos by Javeed Shah


THEIR first image is sketched by an
incomprehensible passion for death. Mystery
shrouds their days and nights and the veil of
anonymity does not always lift off their faces
even when they lie motionless and dead. Surrender
does not exist in their lexicon. In fact, their
living body becomes their most lethal weapon.

In the elusive world of the fidayeen, where young
men shun their names, their past lives, even the
urge to live, death is not uncertain; it is
planned. But not for Ajaz Ahmad Bhat.

The naive boy does not remotely fit the
definition of this deadly cult. A 20-year-old
orphan from Mansoorabad, Faisalabad, Pakistan,
Bhat says he did not even know he was a fidayeen.
In fact, the policemen who captured him while he
was trying to flee in the middle of a major
standoff between militants and security forces at
Srinagar's Lal Chowk too didn't expect a
frightened boy to be a member of the suicide
squad.

And that is why he remained alive to tell his story.

IT was the cloudy afternoon of November 14. Lal
Chowk - Srinagar's business nerve centre - was
packed with shoppers and students, waiting for
buses to return home. At 3.05 pm, there was a
sudden commotion. Militants appeared and lobbed a
grenade at a security picket. Then, as the square
resonated with gunfire, militants jumped inside a
hotel.

The attack was in accordance with a standard
fidayeen script in Srinagar. And so was the
response. Within minutes, hundreds of heavily-
armed policemen encircled Lal Chowk and
bulletproof bunker vehicles were ready for an
assualt.

Sketchy details started pouring in only when
policemen took out the first casualties. Five
securitymen and two civilians were hit by the
bullets.

''There are a few bodies lying there and we are
unable to pull them out,'' a police officer said.
The firing would pause for few minutes, only to
start again. A Japanese photographer, caught in a
narrow alley, tried to run across the square for
safety but was hit in the neck.

As the evening cast its shadows, policemen
plugged all escape routes, withdrawing to their
cordon ring. They had to wait for the first light
to resume their operation. But unlike other
similar attacks, this time the police had done
the unthinkable: one among the two attackers had
been captured alive.

AND weeks later, when the policemen allowed The
Sunday Express to talk to Ajaz in a dimly-lit
room, he was engrossed watching a cricket match
on television. Occasionally, he murmured in
Punjabi. A metal shackle tied to his left cuff,
his chin resting on his palms, he glanced when
the police officers introduced him.

Ajaz's dangerous journey started from his home -
a single room shack in Mansoorabad. ''One day
during Ramzan, there was knock at the door. It
was my friend and neighbour Hubaib. He wanted to
talk to me and invited me to join Lashkar,'' Ajaz
recalled. ''He told me that I needed to go for
arms training to Muzaffarabad and then I would be
sent to Kashmir for a few months.''

Hubaib left. And Ajaz said he thought about it
for a few days. ''I was bored of work at the
bakery. I was paid Rs 1,500 a month and I had to
go at midnight and then work all day. Then once I
returned, I had to cook,'' he said. ''I knew they
would give me some money as well. So I decided to
give it a try.''

At 20, Ajaz was head of a family of orphans. His
barber father, Riyaz Ahmad Bhat, and mother had
died two years earlier. ''I had been taking care
of my two younger siblings,'' he said. ''My
brother Nazir is three years younger and works at
a sweets shop. My sister Nabeela is studying in
class II.''

HUBAIB returned after a few days. ''This time he
met me at the bakery. He said they (militants)
would give me some money as well so I didn't need
to worry. He had said Rs 35,000,'' Ajaz recalled.
''I agreed.''

Ajaz said he had no idea about the dangers in his
path: ''He (Hubaiab) didn't say anything.''
Another few days and Hubaiab ''asked me to be
ready to leave''. Ajaz remembered the day of
departure: ''I left the bakery early. I had
already put a few clothes in a bag. I picked it
up and, without saying anything to my sister, I
left.''

They took a bus to Muzaffarabad and drove all
night. ''We went straight to the training camp.
There were 60 of us,'' he said. ''We would do
exercises and run early in the morning and then
they (instructors) would train us in different
weapons, especially Kalashan (the AK-47).''

The training was completed in three months. ''I
was told to return home,'' he said. ''All of us
were told to wait at home till our turn came.''
Ajaz took a bus back. ''My brother and sister had
moved to our uncle's house and were happy to see
me. They had heard I had gone to become a
militant,'' he said. ''They (his siblings) didn't
say anything.''

FOR eight months he stayed home. ''I was roaming
around like a vagabond,'' he said. ''It was fun.
I didn't have to work.'' Then the day came. ''A
neighbour told me Abdul Rehman was looking for
me. Lashkar has a mosque in Mansoorabad and I met
him there. He told me I had to leave for
Muzaffarabad immediately,'' Ajaz said. ''And I
left. I wanted to tell my closest friend, Mohsin
... But I didn't tell anybody.''

On arriving in Muzaffarabad, Ajaz was immediately
sent to the Doodniyal sector as part of a group
of 12. ''At 11 pm, our commander, Abu Walid,
asked six of us to go with the guide,'' he said.
''We were given a sack full of dates and
biscuits. The commander also gave each one of us
a gun with five magazines and five grenades, a
wireless set and Rs 35,000.''

They walked for five days to reach the Rashanpora
jungle in Rajwar (Kupwara district). ''Every one
of us was extremely tired. I had never climbed
mountains and it was very difficult,'' he said.
''Two militants met us there. We stayed in the
forest for another month and then we were taken
to Rangpath in Rafiabad. We stayed in the
jungles.''

He constantly referred to ''01'' - who had taken
over as their guide in the Valley. A police
officer later said that they had already arrested
01 - a local Lashkar man.

Ajaz said he had no idea what their plan was when
he accompanied 01 to Sopore. ''Two of us were
asked to hand over our weapons and accompany 01.
We walked down from the forest and sat in a
passenger bus. Then took a Sumo from Sopore,'' he
said. ''Nobody knew us and we were silent. We
didn't even talk to each other.''

HE finally arrived in Srinagar on November 12.
''I was put in a hotel while Khalid (the other
militant) was taken by 01 to his home,'' he said.
''The next day I too joined them. We walked
around Lal Chowk all day. Nobody stopped us or
asked us anything.''

Recalling the day of the attack, Ajaz said he was
taken to a mosque. ''I was given a bag with a gun
and grenades and asked to walk to Lal Chowk and
attack fauj (army). 01 told me to return to the
mosque after the attack,'' he said. ''I knew
Khalid too was there but had no idea where he had
gone.''

He said he had just reached Lal Chowk when Khalid
threw a grenade. ''I ran to Punjab Hotel and
locked everybody in a room. And then I waited. I
heard gunfire too,'' he said. ''After a while,
when I heard some movement, I threw a grenade
onto the road.''

AJAZ was getting jittery, especially as the
cricket match between Pakistan and England was
taking an interesting turn. He moved his chair
close to the television and kept talking: ''I sat
there for an hour or so and when the firing
started, I got scared. I wanted to flee. So I
left the gun and walked out from the rear side of
the hotel. A policeman stopped me. I told him I
was from Kralkhud (in downtown Srinagar) ... But
I had spoken in Punjabi. They searched me and
called the officers ...''

Why was he scared? ''Kounsa unhoun nay bola tha
marnay ke liyay jana hai (Nobody had told me I
had to go to get killed),'' he said and suddenly
moved away from the television. ''And three among
us (six militants) are already dead.''

He cried and felt scared of death, he confessed.
''But now I feel fine. I want to go back. I want
to work again. I want to get married and have
children,'' he said. And as the policemen asked
him to get ready to return to the lock-up, he
played with his handcuffs. ''I know I am lucky to
be alive,'' he signed off, ''but please don't
tell my brother and sister that I am here in
jail. They'll cry.''

(Related 2nd story)

FEROCIOUS FATHER OF THE FIDAYEEN

Nurtured by the likes of Maulana Masood Azhar, to
these jihadis suicide is not an act; it is an
ideology

Muzamil Jaleel

THEY celebrate death and when they go out for an
attack, they know they will never return.
Surrender is impossible and even security
agencies admit it is rare to trap such militants
alive. Unlike indigenous outfits, their agenda
transcends the demand for right to
self-determination or the creation of an
independent Kashmir. The pan-Islamic militants
seem to have changed the course of insurgency in
Kashmir.

First came the foreigners - the Pakistani and
Afghan recruits - but the complexion of these
groups is fast changing. Both the main outfits,
Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, are
emphasising local recruitments. Since the July
13, 1999, fidayeen attack on a BSF camp in
Bandipore, the involvement of local recruits in
suicide attacks has increased.

Fidayeen attacks were at their peak just before
September 2001. The frequency came down
substantially after the December 13, 2001, attack
on Parliament. The situation actually changed
after President Pervez Musharraf's January 2002
speech and the subsequent ban on Islamic
militants in Pakistan.

But soon these militant groups went out of the
control of the Pakistani establishment and even
attempted the assassination of Musharraf himself.

Although the number of suicide attacks dropped in
the Valley, the militants still used these
sensational strikes at regular intervals. There
was, however, a sudden spurt in fidayeen attacks,
especially in Srinagar, after the October 8
earthquake.

THE fidayeen groups were introduced by
Lashkar-e-Toiba (Army of the Pious) as a
post-Kargil strategy. In a statement issued
during a three-day congregation of LeT at
Murdike, 30 km from Lahore, soon after the war,
Lashkar chief Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi said: ''These
fidayeen missions have been initiated to teach
India, which is celebrating after the Kargil war,
a lesson.''

The fidayeen are a special squad of the Lashkar,
kept for the most dangerous missions. However,
they are not like the suicide squads of, say, the
Tamil Tigers. The fidayeen do not go on missions
where death is certain, like ramming a truck
filled with explosives or where the riders are
fated to consume cyanide.

As Islam clearly forbids suicide, the fidayeen
typically select missions where they do have a
chance, however slim, of returning alive.

THE parent outfit of the fidayeen, the LeT, has
emerged as the most powerful pan-Islamic group,
especially after the sneak-in attack at the Red
Fort in Delhi, which killed three armymen. Though
security forces in Srinagar believe LeT has been
active since 1993, there was little information
of its organisation and ideology for years.

The group operates discreetly. According to a
senior security officer, it is difficult to keep
track of Lashkar militants as they ''use a set of
code names. And when a militant dies, he is
replaced by a new recruit with the same code
name''.

LeT is the militant wing of the pan-Islamic
Markaz-e-Dawat-ul-Irshad, which has its
headquarters at Murdike and runs around 2,200
madrassas and training centres across the
country. The Markaz has a clear agenda. Starting
with the complete Islamisation of Pakistan and
Kashmir, it hopes Islam will finally dominate the
world.

For this, the organisation established the Jamia
Dawat-ul-Islam, or University of Dawat-ul-Islam,
in 1989. Located on a four-acre campus, it
imparts religious education and military
training. According to a 2004 essay in the
Lashkar mouthpiece Jihad Times, around ''50 of
the students of this University had died fighting
in Kashmir''.

The basic ideology of the group states that
religion is not the private affair of Muslims and
politics cannot be separated from religion.
Launched in 1985, Markaz rejects democracy as a
western concept full of flaws.

In 1987, Lashkar-e-Toiba was launched by Markaz
with an aim to take part in the Afghan war. Its
militants fought the Russians in the Haji area of
Paknea province along with the Afghan mujahideen
outfit Itihad-e-Islami. Then they turned their
attention to Kashmir.

Jaish-e-Mohammad was formally launched from
Masjid-e-Falah, Karachi, on February 3, 2000.
Founded by Maulana Masood Azhar - freed thanks to
the IC-814 hijacking in December 1999 - the
Jaish's first attack on the Valley was the
suicide car bombing outside the 15 Corps
headquarters. A few days later, a 24-year-old
British national, also a militant, blew up an
explosive-laden vehicle.

Azhar created the Jaish by bringing together
supporters from the two factions of
Harkat-ul-Ansar, put on the list of terrorist
organisations by the US State Department in 1995.
The group managed to gather 300 Afghan commandos.

Azhar, an ideologue, motivator and fund-raiser of
the pan-Islamic Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, had been
arrested with another Harkat commander, Sajjad
Afghani, in Anantnag in 1994.

After several unsuccessful attempts to free
Azhar, the Harkat was able to get him and two
others - Mushtaq Latrum, a commander of Al-Umar
Mujahideen, and Omar Sayeed Sheikh, a British
national jailed for kidnapping three tourists -
in Kandahar.

Terror after tremor

Frenzy of fidayeen strikes in post-earthquake Srinagar

October 18: Minister of State for Education
Ghulam Nabi Lone, two CRPF men and a police
constable are killed after two fidayeen sneak
into a fortified VVIP residential colony in
Srinagar's Tulsibagh.

One fidayeen is shot by a constable, while the
other flees, leaving his AK-47 behind, after
killing the minister. Two militant groups, Al
Mansoorian and Islamic Jihad Front, claim
responsibility.

November 2: Seven persons, including two
policemen and four civilians, are killed when a
car-borne militant triggers a massive blast. The
explosion takes place hours before the
swearing-in of Ghulam Nabi Azad as chief
minister. A fidayeen, driving an Alto packed with
explosives, detonates it after a traffic
constable asks him to stop near a checkpoint at
Nowgam.

Jaish-e-Mohammad claims responsibility and
identifies the fidayeen as Mubashir Hussain of
Abaspora, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

November 14: Two fidayeen throw a grenade at a
CRPF bunker, open fire and then enter an adjacent
hotel in Srinagar's Lal Chowk. Four persons,
including two CRPF men, are killed and seven
others injured. To flush out the militants,
security forces cordon the hotel. The 25-hour
encounter ends after the security forces kill one
fidayeen and capture the other. Al-Mansoorian and
Islamic Front claim responsibility.

November 17: Militants detonate a powerful car
bomb outside the corporate headquarters of the
Jammu and Kashmir Bank. The explosion leaves four
dead and 40 injured, including former minister
Usman Majeed. Seconds before the blast, a
fidayeen disembarks from the explosive-laden car
and escapes. No group has so far owned up for the
attack.

November 23: Security forces foil a fidayeen
strike by killing two militants outside a cinema
hall. The fidayeen had tried to storm the CRPF
camp housed in a closed cinema hall at Khanyar.
Three CRPF men are also killed.

November 30: The arrest of a bank robber leads
the police to the network behind eight major
militant strikes. These include the assassination
of Ghulam Nabi Lone, the attack on Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh's public rally and several suicide
attacks in Srinagar.

During questioning, the bank robber leads the
police to three Pakistani militants. The police
also traps the chief of the fidayeen - Rehman
bhai.

18.

Indo-US Nuclear Deal: Myths and Realities


The July 18 joint statement by Manmohan Singh and
George Bush etching out the Indo-US nuclear deal faces
opposition from three major quarters: India, US and
the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).  Apart
from these the global anti-nuke peace movement has
also condemned the deal.

     Within the US establishment, there are individuals
and sections, who view the deal too cheap for India
and an assault on the NPT, and thereby the
non-proliferation regime, by making an exception in
case of India, an aberrant nation. In fact, just
before the issue of the declaration, no less than
Condoleezza Rice herself had opined against any such
possibility. The US Congress is yet to give its assent
necessary to operationalise the deal.

     Within the NSG, there are countries keen to do
nuclear business with India. But there are many
others, including those who had voluntarily given up
their nuclear weapon options in the interest of global
nuclear disarmament, who oppose this deal as an
assault on the NPT, being clearly violative of its
provisions, which debar nuclear commerce with any
non-signatory.
Incidentally, of the total 191 members of the UN, all
but three - India, Pakistan and Israel, put their
signature to the NPT. North Korea, however, withdrew
in 2003. But they have indicated their willingness to
give up their weapons and weapon-making capability,
developed clandestinely, in return for certain other
concessions and rejoin the NPT. The question of the
NSG approving the deal will arise only when the
proposal formally comes before it after having been
cleared by the USA.

     The anti-nuke peace movement considers this deal
yet another act of gross unilateralism on the part of
the Bush administration and an assault on the NPT, and
thereby the prospects of global nuclear disarmament,
by making an impermissible exception in case of India
- a non-signatory and a brazen  'proliferator'.

     Within India, while the government and much of the
nuclear establishment and its apologists have welcomed
the deal with great gusto, the opposition came mainly
from the rightwing  "nationalists", the extreme
nuclear hawks and also major sections of the Left,
albeit in a fairly muted tone.
     The support has been justified on mainly two
grounds. The deal, if comes into force, will confer a
sort of quasi-recognition as a nuclear weapon power on
India by the international community, which it has
been denied all along.  This will also de-hyphenate
India from Pakistan. A dream for the Indian elite. At
a more mundane level, this would be a lifeline for
India's nuclear power plants, given the paucity of
fuel - naturally occurring uranium, available
indigenously. Currently uranium is being mined only
from Jadugoda in Jharkhand. Attempts at exploration in
Nalgonda in AP and Arunachal Pradesh have been foiled
by massive popular resistance.
      The opposition, as was articulated by Vajpayee -
the former Prime Minister who had been unseated in the
last parliamentary election, on the floor of the
Indian parliament during the debate on this issue,
claims that it will restrict its India's sovereign
option to keep on endlessly piling up the weapon of
deliberate mass murder and also upgrade from the
present level of fissile weapon to fusion weapon, or
Hydrogen Bomb.

      The deal as and when - and if at all, comes into
force will obligate India to open its 'civilian'
plants to IAEA inspection. As per the deal, it's for
India to designate, at its own pace, which are the
'civilian' plants, notwithstanding an element of tug
of war on this score. India will be entitled to
nuclear commerce - in terms of fuel, technology,
plants and machineries etc., only as regards its
'civilian' plants. So even without being a signatory
of the NPT, it will enjoy the status of a non-nuclear
weapon state under the NPT as regards its 'civilian'
plants, which, as on date, it is not entitled to. As
regards the balance, or military, plants its status
will remain unchanged. Neither any inspection, nor any
commerce. And for this India will not have to give up
either its existing nuclear arsenal or its future
programme. The future programme will, however, be
somewhat curtailed in as much some of the plants will
go out of its purview having been designated as
'civilian'. But this notion of 'curtailment' applies
only if we assume India would have been able to carry
on with its programme unhindered - unrestrained by
non-access to fuel, technology and hardware from
external sources - evidently a very questionable
assumption.

      Moreover, one must also remember the deal is yet
to be cleared by the US itself, despite full support
from Bush himself. After that will come the turn of
the NSG. Of course, Bush may ignore even the NSG, but
not the US Congress by any means, as it had ignored
the UN Security Council while launching the war on
Iraq.

From the Indian side the main driver is its elite's
mindless obsession with attaining a full-scale nuclear
status - recognising its nuclear weapon capability and
continuing programme and also safeguard and promote
its nuclear industry. From its point of view, a closer
relation with the US, even as a sub-junior partner,
will also serve the other major 'strategic goals' viz.
emerging as a mini-hegemon in Asia / South Asia,
firmly establish its clear superiority over Pakistan,
the traditional rival and neighbour - one-sixth of its
size, and neutralise (much stronger) China - to
whatever extent possible. India will, however, not
like to completely surrender its autonomy of options
within this broader framework, in so far as these are
perceived to be in alignment with these 'strategic
goals', and engage with other regional/global powers -
including Russia, France and even China, who pose
varying degrees of challenge to the global hegemon.
Indian Prime Minister's recent sojourn to Russia goes
to further underscore this aspect and the complex
nature of the game it is out to play in the global
arena.
It goes without saying that from the perspective of
the peace movement this is a very worrying
development. On the one hand, it aids, abets and
further encourages the neocon coterie-led US drive for
an unfettered global Empire and, on the other,
signifies India's transmutation from a champion of the
global underdogs and consequent emergence as a
continually growing threat, as exemplified through its
earlier rejection of the CTBT in 96 culminating in the
May 98 nuclear explosions, to the prospects of global
peace and nuclear disarmament in its own right - US,
or no US.

We have appended below a very brief analysis of the
deal representing the critical voice from within the
US and another from India applauding its huge likely
benefits, typical of the large majority of the
pro-nuclear lobby sans its most extreme fringe. We're
also attaching a news item indicating the Norwegian
view on the nuke deal, which appears typical of the
vast majority of the NSG members sans the US, of
course, and Russia, France, Canada and in all
likelihood the UK. In fact some of the members,
including China, are expected to take even tougher
postures.

Sukla Sen

I.
Carnegie Proliferation Brief 7 December 2005

Vol. 8, No. Vol. 8, No. 10

Experts' Advice on India Nuclear Deal

by Caterina Dutto

On November 18, a bipartisan group of proliferation
experts and former government officials sent a letter
to the U.S. House of Representatives voicing serious
concern over the "long-term unintentional damage" that
the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal poses to the
international nonproliferation regime. The deal,
outlined by a July 18 joint proposal to increase
civilian nuclear cooperation between the two nations,
requires "significant changes to U.S. nonproliferation
laws and longstanding international nonproliferation
policy that have been supported and advanced by past
Republican and Democratic administrations."

The letter noted that the deal could cause the
"erosion" of Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines
because India has not agreed to full-scope safeguards,
an established precondition for nuclear trade with
non-nuclear weapon states. India's current voluntary
safeguards, they say, "are purely symbolic and do
nothing to prevent the continued production of fissile
material for weapons by India" or "constrain India's
nuclear arsenal."

The group cited the danger that the deal could
persuade states who "have for decades remained true to
the original NPT bargain and forsworn nuclear weapons"
to "make a different choice in the future if non-NPT
members receive civil nuclear assistance under less
rigorous terms." Moreover, the U.S.-Indian nuclear
cooperation could "undermine our ability to win
necessary international support for persuading Iran to
abandon its fuel cycle plans." Below, we have provided
the full text of the letter. [Not provided here for
reasons of space.]

II.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1567720,0012.htm
[Editorial]
Chain reaction

December 7, 2005

The outcome of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit
to Russia is the best proof that the India-US nuclear
agreement of July 18 is the key that will unlock the
many bolts clamped on India's civil and military
nuclear programmes. You don't even have to read
between the lines to see that the Russian position on
nuclear cooperation, or for that matter that of the
French or the British, is identical to that of the US.
Russian President Vladimir Putin made this clear on
Tuesday when he premised nuclear cooperation with
India on its dialogue with the Nuclear Suppliers Group
and on "separating its military and peaceful nuclear
programmes".

In 2001, the Russians supplied 50 tonnes of enriched
uranium to keep the Tarapur nuclear power plant going.
But during Mr Putin's visit to Delhi, in December
2004, Moscow categorically ruled out providing more,
citing NSG rules. They also refused India's request
for an additional two 1,000 MW reactors for the
Koodankulam nuclear power project. Now there is
complete agreement between New Delhi, Moscow and
Washington, and Paris and London, on the next steps.
The bargain clearly, favours India, no matter what
nitpicking domestic critics say.

Parallel to this is the decision in Jeju, South Korea,
to include India as a member of the International
Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project.
There should be no doubt in any mind that the decision
by the seven-member group - US, EU, Russia, South
Korea, China and Japan - is the result of a little
nudge from Washington. The July 18 agreement clearly
stated that the US would do all it can to push for
India's membership. The ITER, a truly international
enterprise, is aimed at building a reactor that can
use nuclear fusion as a source of energy.

And in all this, heed also the sound of another bolt
unfastening - the Russian decision to move on the
lease of two Akula-class nuclear-propelled submarines
which was blocked, again, because of Russia's
unwillingness to annoy its NSG partners. Those who
launched an artillery barrage on the government for
signing the agreement with the US in July need to do a
little bit of introspection, and, perhaps some
expiation.


III.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/051208/43/61g4c.html

Thursday December 8, 10:48 PM

Norway talks tough on NPT

By Indo Asian News Service

New Delhi, Dec 8 (IANS) India Thursday sought Norway's
cooperation for its civilian nuclear energy programme
even as Oslo insisted on New Delhi signing the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stressed India's
impeccable record in non-proliferation during his
meeting with his Norwegian counterpart Jens
Stoltenberg here, and discussed the country's need for
nuclear energy to meet its growing requirements and
referred to efforts by the US to help India access
civil nuclear energy technology.

Manmohan Singh sought Norway's help to persuade the
influential Nuclear Supplier's Group (NSG) to make an
exception for India to enable it to get required
technology for generating nuclear energy.

Stoltenberg appreciated India's need for civil nuclear
energy, but insisted that India sign the NPT if it
wanted the NSG to modify its rules in favour of New
Delhi.

'We are very much in favour of the NPT and, according
to the treaty, you can be a member of the NSG only if
you have signed the treaty,' Stoltenberg told
reporters.

A Norwegian diplomat, however, later clarified: 'We
did not make India joining the NPT a pre-condition for
it to join the NSG. The Norwegian prime minister's
remarks were misinterpreted.'

Oslo's response came as a bit of a dampener for New
Delhi, which has been lobbying the influential NSG to
amend its rules to allow civil nuclear energy trade
with India.



++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

INDIA PAKISTAN ARMS RACE & MILITARISATION WATCH
A joint project of South Asia Citizens Web
(www.sacw.net) and South Asians Against Nukes
(www.s-asians-against-nukes.org) since November
1999.

Send Information via e-mail for IPARMW series to:
<aiindex (at) mnet (dot) fr> for
inclusion in the Emailings.]

The complete IPARMW archive is available at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/messages

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch Compilation # 159
(04 December,  2005)
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/170

Contents:

1  Pakistan Peace Coalition wants military sales to be scraped
2  Pakistan-Saudi naval exercise
3   Disaster relief and development aid (Ishtiaq Ahmed)
4  Saadat calls for immediate purchase of F-16s
5  Pakistan and China hold naval exercise
6  Hurrahs somewhat premature (Ayaz Amir)
7  CSI systems implementation at ports Pakistan
to sign declaration with United States soon
8  Budget deficit exceeds Rs37bn: Domestic borrowing rises (Khaleeq Kiani)
9  Two F-16s reaching this week (Anwar Iqbal)
10  Repression is no answer - Ominous signs of
reversing the healing-touch policy (Edit, Kashmir
Times)
11 Why India-US War Games Cause Wide Concern (J. Sri Raman)
12 The tit for tat arrests of Pakistani and Indian fishermen continues
     (i) 17 Indian fishermen held in Pakistan - 25 November 2005
     (ii) Indian Coast Guard arrests 12 Pakistani fishermen - 25 November 2005
13 US, Moscow eye buyer India (Shiv Aroor)
14 IAF contract: Top officials of US firms to receive key document
15  India holds major war games at Pakistan's uneasy borders
16  The Pentagon approves the lease of two P-3C
reconnaissance aircraft to India
17 Navy for posting officer at U.S. Central Command (Sandeep Dikshit)
18 India to buy 50 drones from Israel (Iftikhar Gilani)
19  Film Review: Under the Shadow of Guns
20 Security operations and forced disappearances in Kashmir:
    (i) Appeal for Solidarity With Victims of
Enforced Disappearances (Gautam Navlakha)
    (ii) Grim mystery slowly unfolds in Indian Kashmir (Paul Watson)
21 Behaving as an Occupant Army (Editorial, Sentinel)
22 India Right to Information and the Armed Forces:
(i) Chief takes Army out of right to information law
(ii) Forces hitch in info law
23  India - Assam: The orphans of conflict (Suhas Chakma)
24   India: Ministry of Defence Release:
Acquisition of barak missiles / Induction of nag
missile /  Producion of T-72 Tanks
25 India test fires Brahmos cruise missile
26 Governments, Guns Cannot Prevent Another Gujarat (J. Sri Raman)
27 India to get over 60 warships + More ships for
navy (Defence Budget to be hiked if growth is
higher)
28 US should scrap plane deal with Pakistan  (Selig S. Harrison)
29. 2 sentenced in case tied to India's nuclear missiles (Raja Mishra)
30 Foreign Artillery Trials To Guide Indian Choice (Vivek Raghuvanshi)
31 Target locked: IAF aims for Mirage 4000
32 Switzerland: Ventes d'armes: la neutralité en question
33 Sri Lanka Offers Tax Cuts as Defense Spending Rises

_______

1.


Pakistan Peace Coalition
P.O. Box 2342, Islamabad
Tel: 227-8134, Fax: 227-8135

7 November 2005

PRESS RELEASE

PAKISTAN PEACE COALITION WANTS MILITARY SALES TO BE SCRAPED

Pakistan Peace Coalition has welcomed the government announcement that,
in view of the gigantic task of reconstruction and rehabilitation of the
unfortunate quake victims of Kashmir and Hazara, it is going to revise
the F-16 fighter aircraft purchase deal. It said that at a time when the
task of reconstruction and rehabilitation was going to cost several
billion dollars, it would be mindless and obscene to continue to spend
billions of the people's hard earned money on defence purchases and yet
shamelessly extend the begging bowl before the world for more aid for
earthquake relief.
The Coalition has, however, expressed its dismay at General Musharraf's
statement that the deal would only be postponed, not cancelled. It was
also dismayed that even in the face of this calamity, the government had
chosen to finalize a deal to buy early warning SAAB aircraft from
Sweden. The Coalition urged that in the interest of alleviating the
suffering of the people of the country, the entire plan of purchasing
expensive defence equipment be scratched, and the earmarked money be
spent solely on the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the earthquake
affected people. "With our own money thus available, the government
should stop shamelessly begging for international assistance. The people
of Pakistan have already opened their hearts and pockets to aid the
quake victims. If the nation can do this, it can live without a
worthless shining armour. The government's begging is a serious affront
to the noble spirit of the people, the Coalition said. PPC has demanded
that the plan to buy F-16s be cancelled, and the deal to buy SAAB
aircraft be revoked. It has also demanded from India to revoke its
purchase of F-18 from the USA. PPC has informed that in collaboration
with its sister peace organizations in India, it will jointly start to
lobby with the leading arms manufacturing countries of the world to stop
selling arms to the poverty stricken South Asia so that the hard earned
resources of the region could be used to improve the quality of life of
the peoples of the region.
The Peace Coalition has welcomed General Musharraf's offer to India to
demilitarize Kashmir. However, it believed that the offer would work and
would look credible only when it is accompanied by Islamabad seriously
reigning in the groups in Pakistan engaged in militancy in Kashmir. It
urged the Government of Pakistan to persuade Hizbul Mujahideen,
Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, and other groups and their
reincarnates to announce that they would respond positively to a
possible Indian offer of demilitarization by abandoning their militancy.
PPC underscored that demilitarization should naturally include non-state
actors also.

The Peace Coalition has also urged India to reciprocate by announcing
the release of all political prisoners in Kashmir, an end to impunity
for perpetrators of torture and rape, and a credible effort to account
for the people who have disappeared during the period of military
crackdown and insurgency. But even if India does not do this, PPC has
urged Pakistan to go ahead and do what is in its own interest and in the
interest of the people of Kashmir.


Dr. A.H. Nayyar, President PPC
B.M. Kutty, Secretary General PPC
Karamat Ali, Member Executive Committee PPC


2

DAWN
November 29, 2005

PAKISTAN-SAUDI NAVAL EXERCISE BEGINS

KARACHI, Nov 28: North Arabian Sea will become
venue of a joint Pakistan-Saudi naval exercise,
Naseem Al Bahr-VIII, for which a task group of
Seven Royal Saudi Naval Forces Ships arrived on
Monday morning at the Karachi Port. The exercise
to be conducted from Nov 28 will continue till
Dec 15 in various phases.

Commander Task Force Rear Admiral Sammi bin
Mansoor Al Rafi is leading the royal contingent.

The aim of this exercise is to enhance level of
interoperability between the two navies.

A large number of royal force and Pakistan Navy
units, including most modern destroyers,
frigates, missile corvettes, tankers, mine
hunters, aviation personnel, special services
group will participate in multi-dimensional
activities.

The opening brief of Naseem Al Bahr-VIII was held
at the Pakistan Navy Tactical School, PN
dockyard.-APP


3

Daily Times
November 29, 2005

DISASTER RELIEF AND DEVELOPMENT AID
by Ishtiaq Ahmed

Unlike most other developing countries, Pakistan
has the unenviable distinction of having a
declining standard of literacy since the 1980s.
We scored high in a recent study of countries
perceived to be the most corrupt and were placed
at No 144 - the most corrupt was placed at 158.
India has improved its image

The news that Pakistan had been hit by a major
earthquake was flashed immediately by all
international and national television channels in
the world. In Stockholm a Swedish journalist
complained that the government of Pakistan was
spending billions on acquiring military hardware
instead of directing resources to improving the
quality of life of its people. Aid to such a
country, he argued, was not justified.

The F-16 purchase from the USA has been delayed
for the moment, but only recently Pakistan has
negotiated a deal worth more than eight billion
Swedish kronas (Rs 48 billion) with Swedish SAAB
which manufactures an airborne early warning
system. Without doubt such deals not only bring
fat profits to the manufacturers but also
lucrative kickbacks and fabulous holiday trips to
Pakistani dealers connected to the military
establishment.

However convincing the Swedish journalist may
sound, there is a major flaw in such reasoning.
It presumes that if Sweden does not sell the
airborne defence system to Pakistan its leaders
will become good and caring rulers.

What is more likely is that some other country
will replace Sweden; or else, Pakistan will go
for more sophisticated nuclear weapons or try to
produce its own arsenal of conventional weapons.
On August 11 Pakistan fired the Babur cruise
missile that our military engineers had produced
(by studying a Tomahawk missile that did not
explode on landing in Balochistan some years ago).

President Pervez Musharraf boasted then that it
was superior to its Indian counterpart.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed
(incidentally my student at Gordon College during
1972-73, who rarely came to the classes and was
nearly my age, not having passed the BA
examination to continue with professional student
politics) declared the successful test-firing a
'birthday gift' to General Musharraf. Given the
attitude, we can be sure that disaster relief
given by the world will be essential for helping
the Pakistani people in their hour of need.

In a country where the armed forces, or rather
the army, gets the major share of the national
developmental budget and the generals and the top
brass live a life of abundance perhaps unmatched
anywhere else in the Third World it is really
time to take stock of what is happening in
Pakistan.

Unlike most other developing countries, Pakistan
has the unenviable distinction of having a
declining standard of literacy since the 1980s.
We scored high in a recent study of countries
perceived to be the most corrupt and were placed
at No 144 - the most corrupt was placed at 158.
India has improved its image and is now ranked as
No 88.

If we now move away from the exceptional
situation of a major natural disaster and review
the overall development situation the same logic
would apply. For many years I taught a course on
development aid at the International Graduate
School at Stockholm University. Among other
things, a central concern of the course was
whether development aid played a positive or a
negative role in the development process. I used
to encourage students to prepare a case for or
against development aid and then debate it in the
class.

The case for development aid was that Third World
societies were deficient in capital, technology
and human expertise and therefore inputs from
outside were necessary to help the development
process take shape and at some stage take off on
its own. Additionally, it was felt that the
colonial plunder in the past had left Asian and
African countries in a state of poverty and
backwardness so that there was a moral obligation
for helping ex-colonies out of their poverty and
paucity of resources.

The case against development aid was that much of
the aid either returned to the donor countries,
who insisted that the recipient countries should
buy materials and technology from the donor; or
squandered away by the corrupt bureaucracies in
the recipient countries; and little or nothing
ever reached the people it was meant to help.

It was further argued that governments in the
Third World spent their own funds on buying arms
or luxury items for the power elite while
development was left to the foreign donors to
take care off. Thus aid actually hindered the
development process by taking the pressure for
fixing their priorities correctly off the
governments of the recipient countries.

The debate always ended with me as the moderator
giving my own opinion. My own inclination was to
support the idea of development aid when it was
directed at raising literacy and alleviating
poverty among the abject poor. My own experience
of Pakistan told me that it was a fallacy to
believe that the elite would care much for the
poor if such aid was stopped.

I particularly welcomed aid that helped Pakistan
develop its technological capacity and
capabilities. I knew that the polytechnic
institutes opened by the Swedes in Gujrat and
elsewhere produced many talented technicians who
later played an important role in pushing forward
the growth of industry. I agreed, of course, that
tied aid was bad, because much of it was kept
back by the donors; and that it was necessary to
develop mechanisms to disallow bureaucrats in the
receiving countries to siphon off the aid into
their own coffers.

In the 1990s there was a definite shift in
development aid policy. Sweden abandoned tied aid
making it possible for the recipients to buy
cheap machinery from anywhere. There were similar
changes elsewhere. Also, Western donors began to
prefer giving aid to Non-Governmental
Organisations (NGOs) and that too has been
largely a positive development. Many of the NGOs
acted immediately after the earthquake struck
Pakistan. They are doing admirable work in the
field.

For a long time to come countries like Pakistan
would need both disaster relief and development
aid but both external control and internal
vigilance are needed to ensure that such
dependence does not become permanent. In the long
run only regional peace and economic prosperity
through more trade and production will create
conditions for Pakistan to develop into a
self-propelling economy and welfare society.

4

The Daily Times
November 25, 2005

SAADAT CALLS FOR IMMEDIATE PURCHASE OF F-16S

DUBAI: Chief of Air Staff Air Marshall Kaleem
Saadat has called for the immediate purchase of
F-16 aircraft from the US.

Talking to a private television channel on
Thursday after participating in the Dubai Air
Show, he said that the advanced aircraft were
essential for the country's defence and delaying
the purchase would further burden the national
exchequer. He said that Pakistan had paid $13
million for these aircraft in 1983, while their
price had now gone up to $45 million. Putting off
the F-16 purchase will only cause a larger
expenditure in the future, he said.

He dismissed claims that the purchase would
affect the quake rehabilitation and
reconstruction programme. The air chief
criticised the press for calling the F-16s
"costly toys", saying that they possess the
ability to track and survey large parts of enemy
territory without violating its airspace, which
is a decisive edge over an adversary.

He said that the Indian Air Force had a massive
$5 billion annual budget, while the Pakistan Air
Force (PAF) received a paltry $0.8 billion.
Saadat said that almost all transport aircraft
and helicopter sorties to provide relief to the
quake-hit areas were being conducted by the PAF.

On the performance of the Pakistan Aeronautical
Complex at Kamra, he said that the
state-of-the-art technology and services of the
complex have played an important part in
enhancing the PAF's efficiency, besides
minimising expenditure by reducing the need for
foreign services. He said the PAF is now
self-sufficient in over-hauling, retrofitting and
manufacturing aircraft spare parts. The air chief
said that Pakistan has also begun the Area Series
Programme to hold defence exhibitions, and will
soon start air shows. online


5

United Press International, Inc.
Nov. 25, 2005

PAKISTAN AND CHINA HOLD NAVAL EXERCISE

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 25 (UPI) -- Both
Pakistan and India are expanding maritime
operations by conducting joint exercises with
foreign navies.

On Tuesday Pakistan and China began joint naval
maneuvers with operations in Karachi. The
three-day exercise marks the second time that the
Chinese navy has held joint naval exercises with
Pakistan. The first took place in the East China
Sea on October 2003. The Shanghai exercises were
the first time Chinese naval forces held a joint
exercise with a foreign fleet since the founding
of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

The exercises are divided into harbor and
blue-water components. The Chinese contingent
includes the Russian-built guided missile
destroyer Shenzen, a second warship, the tanker
Weishanu and helicopters. The Shenzen is equipped
with 16 guided missile launchers.

Pakistan is rapidly acquiring Chinese-built
warships and in July signed a contract for four
F-22P state-of-the-art frigates to be delivered
by 2013. Three of the warships will be built in
China and the fourth in Pakistan. Islamabad hopes
that the first frigate will be available within a
period of three and half years. China will also
provide six Z-9C helicopters for the Pakistan
Navy.

As Pakistan grows closer to China, India is
deepening its maritime relations with Russia. In
October Indian and Russian warships held joint
maneuvers off India's Visakhapatnam port during
the INDRA-05 exercise.


6

DAWN - the Internet Edition
November 25, 2005

HURRAHS SOMEWHAT PREMATURE

By Ayaz Amir

WHAT are we crowing about? That the donors'
conference was a huge success? Well, money has
been in plenty but, if we care to remember, 1.9
billion dollars of it is in the form of grants
while the rest would be in the form of loans.

Whichever way we want to dress up this awkward
fact, these loans will have to be paid back some
time. Our debt burden is already huge and when
economic times are rough, as they often are with
us, or when the American connection loosens, as
often happens when our utility as a frontline
ally or whatever diminishes, we have a problem
servicing it. Do we want to add to this mountain?

How much better if we had starved ourselves a
bit, tightened that proverbial belt which most of
us do not wear, and found the money for
relief/reconstruction from our own resources. God
knows we suffer from no excess of resources and
despite all the hoopla about fantastic growth
rates in recent years we remain a
resource-strapped country. But it doesn't take
40/40 vision to see how foolishly extravagant we
are in so many things. If we were to cut this fat
we would be less beholden to others and more
self-reliant.

Enough has been written about F-16s, Swedish
airborne early warning systems and a new army
General Headquarters in Islamabad but while
General Musharraf has momentarily taken a step
back - saying the F-16 deal is on hold and no
final decision has been taken on the Swedish
early-warning birds - we can be sure we'll get
these deals in the end. So, even while scrounging
for loans, we will be spending huge sums of money
on these white elephants.

None is whiter than the new GHQ in Islamabad but
it is mind-boggling how the army remains
committed to cherished fetishes even when common
sense, if nothing else, dictates a different
course of action.

Our defence mandarins - collectively an
invitation to depression - while waxing eloquent
about national security, somehow seem to miss the
connection between desire and affordability. We
need adequate defence but at a cost we can afford.

Stung by all the criticism about F-16s and SAABs,
some retired air force officers have been giving
the PAF's side of the story. But to hear them
talk, or write, is to get the impression that war
with India is not just a distinct but an imminent
possibility, that unless armed to the teeth we
will be naked to Indian diktat and aggression.
They can't seem to figure out how small they make
Pakistan look when they hold forth in this
manner. Pakistan's is nobody's plaything and it's
too big to be pushed around.

Moreover, what on earth is our nuke capability
for? Doesn't that give us all the deterrence we
need? If it doesn't, why are we holding on to it?

China is so much huger than Vietnam. But when it
attacked Vietnam in 1979, to teach it a lesson,
it got a 'bloody nose' and suffered heavy
casualties. We are not about to attack India, are
we? So what are we talking about? Unless of
course, giving rein to our wildest fancies, we
think India is interested in attacking us.

What we need against India is not aggressive
capability - enough of wars to 'liberate' Kashmir
- but 'bloody-nose' capability. That we have and
if we don't why are we keeping such a large
military force? So let's get over this
foolishness which decrees that while Pakistan is
hard-pressed for money to spend on education and
health, it must spend money it can't afford on
expensive aircraft, airborne early warning
systems and, the biggest white duck of them all,
new GHQ in Islamabad.

Let us count our blessings, however. We can talk
about such matters today. As recently as the Zia
years, talk of cutting defence expenditure was
considered one of the higher forms of treason.
Thank God, we are out of those woods at least.

We have had a donors' conference, fine. We should
now have a common sense conference in which we
figure out how to do away with megalomania and
shortsightedness in the sacred name of national
defence.

Take a look, however, at our wonderful sense of
timing and public relations. The echoes from the
donors' conference are yet to die down when word
comes in the press (the journalist in question
deserving praise for this) about the government
wanting to buy two expensive executive jets for
prime minister travelling.

The defence ministry, in the lamest of all
possible excuses, says that the two existing jets
meant for high-level commuting have become old
and were due to be replaced and that, in any
case, the new ones will not be for the
"exclusive" use of the prime minister. Good
heavens, the mountains struck by the wrath of the
gods and the defence ministry at pains to provide
a rationale for VVIP travelling.

This is no longer a joke. VVIP perks and other
related shenanigans have assumed the status of a
major national problem, inducing a darkening of
the national mood when the subject comes up for
discussion and inspiring visions of Stalinist
firing squads.

And it is not exactly as if our VVIP lot is made
up of a collection of Einsteins whose safety and
comfort should be such a national priority. You
have to see them and the cabinet, and indeed
officialdom in its various colours, for the
thought to cross your mind how much better off
the nation would be if these clowns were swept
away by a tidal wave.

Pakistan is a poor country needing to build up
its resources. But it can do with some urgent
weed-clearing and clutter-removing. Remove some
of the clutter, cut some of the waste, and see
how things improve.

The size of Pakistani government is too big,
Islamabad awash with ministries and organizations
with nothing much to do, or which simply
duplicate the work of the provinces. The cabinet
is over-sized, parliament, frankly, is overpaid
and it's a wonder why Senate and National
Assembly post-earthquake did not go in for
permanent cuts in salary, daily allowances and
medical benefits. If we can't afford a bloated
military - and ours is bloated - we certainly
can't afford a bloated and over-expensive
parliament. Running a knife through Islamabad and
drawing some blood will improve government
working.

Just look at non-development expenditure, money
spent on defence and administration: it far
outstrips revenue earned. To quote Kaisar Bengali
(from an article in this paper): "An analysis of
Pakistan's federal public finances for the past
five years - from 2000-1 to 2004-5 - shows that
while the government collected a total of Rs
2,368 billion in tax revenues, it spent Rs 3,395
billion on non-development heads."

Another telling point he makes: "Pakistan is not
a basket case among the developing economies of
the world; rather it possesses the resources to
stand on its own feet to a large extent...the
stage for petitioning for foreign assistance (for
quake reconstruction) (should) be preceded by
first reducing (wasteful expenditure)."

We could do with raising the level of public
discourse. Instead, there is no shortage of
ministerial statements declaiming that the
success of the donors conference is a vindication
of the far-sighted policies of General Musharraf,
etc. When will that happy day arrive when
something is done about these enduring monuments
to ministerial volubility?

After the quake, the choice lay between hard
political and economic decisions (which would
have done the nation good in the long run) and
petitioning the international community for
donations, grants and loans. We took the easy way
out and are hailing it as a triumph of
statesmanship.

7

Daily Times
November 30, 2005

CSI SYSTEMS IMPLEMENTATION AT PORTS PAKISTAN TO
SIGN DECLARATION WITH UNITED STATES SOON

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will sign the Declaration of
Principles with the United States to implement
the latter's proposed container security
initiative (CSI) system at all the important
ports of the country, a government official told
Daily Times on Tuesday.

The US government has also proposed the
implementation of "Nuclear Emergency Response
Systems" at Pakistani ports, which is also part
of the declaration. The declaration will be
signed on the US initiative to prevent any
possible shipment of nuclear material or
equipment. A joint team of Pakistan Customs,
Anti-Narcotics Force and Drug Enforcement Cell
would examine the containers carrying commercial
cargoes to the US ports so that the transport of
arms, explosives and drugs to US ports could be
blocked completely.

The US Bureau of Customs and Border Protection
Department and Central Board of Revenue (CBR)
will finalise the modalities in this regard.
Later, the CBR will seek the approval of the
federal cabinet for the enforcement of the
declaration after seeking clarifications from the
concerned US department. These decisions were
taken at a recent meeting, which was presided
over by the commerce secretary to finalise the
"Time Bound Action Plan" for the implementation
of CSI at Pakistani ports.

The ANF representatives told the meeting that the
CSI system would be fully supported but existing
scanners were incapable of detecting narcotics
and explosives. Moreover, the container, after
passing through the scanner, remains on the berth
for 24 hours. The National Logistic Cell (NLC)
representative informed the meeting that the main
consideration for selecting this scanner system
was that it had been approved and registered by
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The CBR member (Customs) clarifying the position
said that Port Qasim had been selected as a pilot
project in view of the sufficient area available
at the port and as nearly 70% of Pakistan's
exports were sent from Port Qasim. He mentioned
that the CSI would be implemented at other ports
after the satisfactory working of the system at
Port Qasim.

The KPT representative endorsed the introduction
of the CSI system but sought clarification on the
terms mentioned in the US proposal on CSI,
including "Smart Box Protocol", "Compliance
Measurement Programme", and "Nuclear Emergency
Response System". The meeting decided to contact
US authorities for clarification of these terms.
The CBR representative clarified that the
deployment of US Customs personnel will not be
required under the CSI Programme. The Commerce
secretary informed the meeting that he would hold
a final meeting with the CBR chairman on the
subject before moving a summary to the cabinet to
seek its approval regarding signing of the
Declaration of Principles. sajid chaudhry


8


DAWN
December 2, 2005

BUDGET DEFICIT EXCEEDS RS37BN: DOMESTIC BORROWING RISES

By Khaleeq Kiani

ISLAMABAD, Dec 1: Pakistan's budget deficit has
widened to 0.5 per cent of GDP, up by 0.1 per
cent, in the first three months (July-September)
of the current fiscal year, forcing the
government to increase its domestic borrowing by
more than 500 per cent to bridge the deficit. The
quarterly data released by the finance ministry
suggest that the budget deficit reached nearly
Rs37.77 billion as compared to Rs24.88 billion in
the same period last year.

Total financing to bridge this deficit thus
increased to Rs37.69 billion as compared to
Rs24.88 billion in the same period last year.
Similarly, domestic financing for the purpose
reached Rs32.67 billion as compared to Rs5.33
billion last year. External financing, however,
declined to Rs5.02 billion against Rs19.55
billion last year.

The most worrying aspect of the quarterly
budgetary operation is the significant fall in
revenue collection as the share of overall GDP,
notwithstanding higher revenue collection in real
terms.

Total revenue in the period under review amounted
to Rs236.6 billion against Rs202.3 billion last
year, but as the share of GDP it dropped to 3.17
per cent as compared to 3.28 per cent of GDP in
the same quarter last year.

Similarly, tax revenue as share of GDP declined
to 2.21 per cent this year against 2.31 per cent
of GDP last year, although tax revenue increased
to Rs164.9 billion compared with Rs142.5 billion
last year.

Tax collected by the Central Board of Revenue
declined to 1.98 per cent of GDP compared with
2.02 per cent in the first quarter last year,
although CBR revenue collection increased to
Rs147.9 billion against Rs124.7 billion.

The collection of surcharges also declined to
0.09 per cent of GDP compared to 0.13 per cent.
The surcharge collection also declined in real
terms to Rs6.4 billion compared with Rs8.3
billion last year.

Defence spending increased by 21.4 per cent to
Rs55.9 billion compared with Rs46.051 billion in
the same period last year. Defence expenditure
was, however, more or less on target when seen in
the context of annual allocations.

Interest payments amounted to Rs48 billion, about
Rs3.4 billion less than the last year's Rs51.45
billion.

However, Public Sector Development Programme
(PSDP) expenditure increased to Rs50.7 billion
against Rs32 billion in the same period last
year. The PSDP utilization also improved to 0.68
per cent of GDP compared with 0.5 per cent of the
same period last year.

Total expenditure in the first three months of
the current year increased by 20 per cent to
Rs274.3 billion compared with Rs227.2 billion in
the same period last year. Total expenditure as
percentage of GDP, however, slightly declined to
3.67 per cent against 3.68 per cent last year.



9

DAWN
November 28, 2005

TWO F-16S REACHING THIS WEEK
By Anwar Iqbal

WASHINGTON, Nov 27: Two F-16 fighter jets will be
flown to Pakistan this week as part of a deal
between Washington and Islamabad while a P-3C
Orion aircraft has already been delivered to the
Pakistan Navy, US sources told Dawn.

A senior staffer at the Congressional Arms
Committee said the US Congress has already
finalized the deal and the planes are ready to be
flown to Pakistan.

In July, the US agreed to deliver at least two
F-16s to Pakistan by November while the rest of
the planes were to be delivered in small batches.

Pakistan was expected to buy 75 F-16s from the US
at a cost of $3-4 billion. Of these, 50 were new
F-16C/D Falcon while 25 were old but upgraded
versions of the aircraft. The deal included
upgrading of the 30 F-16s Pakistan received in
the 1980s.

But earlier this month, Pakistan and the United
States reached an understanding, allowing
Islamabad to temporarily delay the deal at least
until April next year. The Bush Administration
also delayed an earlier decision to seek
Congressional approval for the proposed deal till
at least the next session.

The two planes, now being flown to Islamabad, are
upgraded versions of the old aircraft that
Pakistan had originally received in the 1980s and
will be added to the existing fleet of more than
30 F-16s.

The decision to delay the larger F-16 deal was
finalized at a meeting between Ambassador
Jehangir Karamat and US Assistant Secretary of
State Christina Rocca in Washington on Nov 7.

Ambassador Karamat later told Dawn the deal was
going to cost Pakistan as much as $4 billion and
"we felt that at this stage we need that money
for the earthquake victims".

P-3C ORION: The US also has delivered the first
of eight P-3C Orion aircraft to the Pakistan
Navy, ahead of its scheduled 2006 delivery date.

The jets will improve command-and-control capabilities of the Pakistani Navy.

10

Kashmir Times  - November 25, 2005
Editorial

REPRESSION IS NO ANSWER
OMINOUS SIGNS OF REVERSING THE HEALING-TOUCH POLICY

Some of the recent events in Kashmir raise alarm
bell about the reversal of the policy of
healing-touch and derailing of the peace process.
At a time when there was urgent need for taking
more confidence building measures to build a
climate of trust for carrying forward the peace
process any talk of using strong-arm methods to
deal with militancy will only contribute in
vitiating the atmosphere. There has been sudden
spurt in the acts of militancy in the Valley,
particularly in the capital city of Srinagar,
which defies an easy explanation. On the one hand
there is growing bon homie between India and
Pakistan the like of which none has seen so far.
The peace process endorsed by the common people
on both sides of the border and Line of Control
in Jammu and Kashmir is fast sweeping the
unnatural obstacles that had so long kept the two
peoples separated by barriers of hatred, fear and
suspicion. The tragic earthquake of October 8
virtually forced India and Pakistan