In other words, how to connect methodological fear of the West from radical Islamism and Islam from and radical Christianity of the Western provenance and being absurd of fear that permeates, like radioactive waste, within its everyday activity of the ruling parties in Bosnia (and Herzegovina)

Because of the objectivity of the presumed content, my dear professor, at the outset I must quote Adam Curtis, author of the BBC documentary film series “The Power of nightmares” : “In the center of this story are two groups: the American neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists. They have led together the creation of today’s nightmare presented in the form of secret and organized evil force that threatens the entire world, and this nightmare makes possible for politicians to regain their power and authority. ”

Professor said nothing…

Indeed, it is only necessary to make certain letters that are wordly changes and it comes as following: “In the center of this story, there are three groups: Bosniak neo-fundamentalism, an All-Serbian conzensus directed towards Great Serbia idea and Croatia hypernational exclusivity. They all have together led to the creation of today’s fear presented in the form of a secret and organized domestic force which threatens my people, and that fear for politicians regained power and authority.

But why should the Serbs look at Bosniaks differently than just mere executioners of the will, Wahhabism minded, neo / old / young Muslim ideas? And why should Bosniaks look at Serbs and Croats in a different view than just mere executioners of the Greater Serbian and Greater Croatian fundamentalist idea aimed at final splitting and dividing of Bosnia (and Herzegovina).

Of course, there is also vice-versa relationship.

Professor was still quiet…

Always, and it is really always, just prior to the elections appears a spokespersons, with the lifetime thesis – usable only for this choice- that for the problem of my and for only my people the guilty ones are just the other people and / or peoples. Because it jeopardizes my ability of survival, stay on the ground and origin! And If you do not vote for me, then you vote for the one who yesterday burned your house, crashing your Church and/or Mosque and killed your dweller.

The question that inevitably arises is: How do you defeat the evil of the fear nightmare, that, for almost two decades, has governed in the areas of a heart-shaped state, and even wider?

The answer is really simple, painfully simple:

• Establishment of the system that will be equipped with powering the judiciary and of the executive power, which love and respect its citizens on the basis of a good conduction by mentioning power and not by the names of individuals that has been respected by their voters, within the nightmarish fear of anarchy that prevails in this country, but also wider – east and west from us;
• Establishment of verification proceedures of elected candidates every six months. More worthwhile is to establish one Agency that would take care of it than to appoint an authoritative Commission that exists for their own sake only;
• Through the establishment of the real Act/Bill which will create the pre-conditions for forfeiture of illegally gained property and for everyone and not just for those whom, being now in power, have abused the trust of voters and also of every young citizen who profited from the suffering of the people;
• Citizen Bosniak, citizen Croat and a citizen Serbs and the other citizens should be able to built their position in a society on the basis of knowledge and not on the basis of catastrophic eligibility;

And, finally, that the responsibility and knowledge become a de facto conditio sine qua non of progress in service rather than de jure adaptability of each of us.

And when will that be, my dear student? … Finally the old professor of mine spoke out.

Never, my dear professor, because this is a lost paradise of its own vanity. It will remain a letter to speak as until now. Just to speak …. because engaged intellectuals in this country are treated as a last Mohican of a country within disappearance. Yes, disappearance.

The post Bosnia And Herzegovina And XXI Century: The Power Of Fear Or Fear Of Power – Essay appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Jamal Kanj

I have read or heard countless of analysts in the last few weeks discussing the war on Islamic State (IS).

Unquestionably, putting an end to IS is a step in the right direction. But if anyone has the delusion that defeating IS militarily is the answer, I suggest they take a look at Afghanistan and Waziristan in Pakistan.

After more than a decade of war and bombardment, the “defeated” Taliban has expanded into Pakistan while Al Qaeda sprouted in Iraq, Libya and now in Syria. The killing of Bin Laden brought us Al Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed new Muslim Caliph.

The powers that helped the Taliban and Al Qaeda to fight the Soviets, and then used Israeli lies to destroy Iraq, are unqualified to put an end to IS.

Instead of air strikes, the international community must first consider drying the swamp that allows IS to flourish.

IS is the product of regional politics and foreign invasions combined with US and Western powers’ unchecked diplomatic and financial support for the “Jewish State” (JS). IS flourishes thanks to Western pandering of JS as an exceptionalist state beyond reproach, defying UN resolutions with complete impunity.

For the majority of people in the Arab and Muslim world, there is no difference between a dagger held to the neck of innocent Westerners by an IS member or a blown-up brain of a six-month-old baby by American-made JS planes.

The JS slaughter of innocents, the continued starvation diet imposed on women and children in Gaza, the appropriation of Muslim and Christian properties in the holy city of Jerusalem and land confiscation in the West Bank to benefit “Jewish only” colonies are lifelines for IS.

IS exploits peoples’ anger to recruit frustrated young men and women, aiming to establish a utopian religious state, just as the Zionists have done.

How could the West accept JS’s claim of a special covenant with a god to displace non-Jews from their homes, but deny IS the right to claim the same with their god? IS and JS are two states proclaiming monopoly over the absolute truth to justify the most abhorrent acts in the name of God.

Western support for JS while it condemns IS must stem from hypocrisy, racism or both.

While almost everyone knows about IS’s crimes and self-righteous interpretation of religion, JS’s crimes are sanitised and very few are exposed to its pretentious monopoly on God.

In the JS, the late chief rabbi Ovadi Yosef, founder of a major Israeli party, proclaimed once that Israel’s god created non-Jews for the sole purpose of serving “the People of Israel”. He went further in a religious sermon to explain that gentiles were like “one’s donkey”, they live to work and plough so a Jew can “sit like an effendi”.

About killing Palestinians, the Israeli chief rabbi said: “It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable.”

Explaining Hurricane Katrina in the US, Yosef blamed the disaster on African Americans’ lack of “enough Torah study”.

“Black people reside there… (God said) let’s bring a tsunami and drown them,” he said.

This is the philosophy of a highly decorated Jewish authority in JS, Talmudic scholar and a spiritual leader for the closed club of the “effendi” chosen race.

Muslim scholars have joined forces to unequivocally condemn IS acts. But where are the Jewish and Western voices to condemn JS excesses against Christian and Muslim Palestinians?

War might force IS to retreat, but the jihadists’ idea will grow for as long as the US continues supplying oxygen to regenerate bacteria in a cesspool replenished by Western double standards.

IS and JS share the same philosophy, the only difference is their point of reference.

– Jamal Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America. A version of this article was first published by the Gulf Daily News newspaper.

The post Islamic State Vs Jewish State – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Upcoming $630 million Louvre Abu Dhabi (LAD) museum will reportedly have Hindu Dancing Shiva statue in its permanent collection.

This tenth century lost-wax bronze from Tamil Nadu (India) of Chola period, 86 centimeters high, has been in the collection of National Gallery of Australia in Canberra till 2009. A video posted on the LAD website explains the meaning behind various parts of the statue.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, commended LAD for including Lord Shiva statue in its permanent collection and urged it to add more Hindu artifacts in its collections. Art had a long and rich tradition in Hinduism and ancient Sanskrit literature talked about religious paintings of deities on wood or cloth, Zed added.

Rajan Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, urged major art museums of the world, including Musee du Louvre and Musee d’Orsay of Paris, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Los Angeles Getty Center, Uffizi Gallery of Florence (Italy), Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Modern of London, Prado Museum of Madrid, National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, etc., to enrich their collections of Hindu artifacts and to frequently organize Hindu art focused exhibitions, thus sharing the rich Hindu art heritage with the rest of the world.

Claimed to be “a unique and universal museum”, LAD is Abu Dhabi’s collaboration with Musee du Louvre of Paris and “will present major objects from the fields of archaeology, fine arts and decorative arts”.

Built on Saadiyat Island, 700,000-square-foot LAD will loan 300 masterpieces from 13 French museums, including those of Vincent Van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci, Claude Monet, Andy Warhol and Henri Matisse for its opening in December 2015 and will feature paintings, sculptures, masks and vases from pre-Bronze Age to Pop Art, including 4,000-year-old statue of Mesopotamian ruler Gudea. It is claimed to be the largest global cultural project since New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which opened in 1870.

A superb example of Indian Chola-period bronze casting, this statue represents the Hindu deity Shiva in an iconographic form known as Nataraja, or Lord of the Dance. In Hinduism, Lord Shiva, along with Lord Brahma and Lord Vishnu, forms the great triad of Hindu deities.

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Turkey closed the border with Syria on Sunday leaving thousands of people who had fled Kobani stranded in a minefield in no-man’s-land on the border.

The assault on Kobani by IS has forced more than 200,000 to flee across the border into Turkey.

Syrian refugee Celal Weli left ahead of his family to find a safe place for them in Turkey. Now he is desperate to return and rescue them.

“This is not right. I am trying to bring this bread to my children. They are right over there. But it is prohibited to cross the border,” he said.

Another refugee, Samiha, described how her husband was stranded in no-man’s-land.

“My husband is old and needs help from his son to walk. I told the Turkish soldiers to help accompany him, but they refused,” she said.

A new refugee camp has been set up in Suruc in Turkey close to the border.

The United Nations has warned that hundreds of civilians who are still trapped in Kobani are likely to be “massacred” if it falls to IS.

Original article

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The head of Iran’s judiciary says media outlets that “exaggerate” corruption charges will be investigated for illegal activities. ISNA reports that Ayatollah Amoli Larijani announced on Sunday October 12: “It is not fair for newspapers to start publishing names and condemnatory allegations before the file even reaches court.”

In recent weeks, the papers have been publishing reports regarding the investigation of public officials in relation to corruption cases.

Despite the head of the judiciary’s statement, his first deputy Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei announced last Monday that three former ministers and the head of the Central Bank during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are under investigation for links to the Babak Zanjani case. Babak Zanjani is the Iranian tycoon who has been arrested for having billions of dollars in unpaid debt to the oil ministry.

The head of judiciary stressed that all such media violations and any overt focus on corruption cases will be monitored by Tehran Prosecutor and violators will face prosecution.
Tags: Ayatollah Larijani, corruption, Iranian journalists

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The armed group Islamic State is holding hundreds of Yezidi men, women, and children from Iraq captive in formal and makeshift detention facilities in Iraq and Syria.

The group has systematically separated young women and teenage girls from their families and has forced some of them to marry its fighters, according to dozens of relatives of the detainees, 16 Yezidis who escaped Islamic State detention, and two detained women interviewed by phone. They said the group has also taken away boys and forced captives to convert to Islam.

“The Islamic State’s litany of horrific crimes against the Yezidis in Iraq only keeps growing,” said Fred Abrahams, special adviser at Human Rights Watch. “We heard shocking stories of forced religious conversions, forced marriage, and even sexual assault and slavery – and some of the victims were children.”

None of the former or current female detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they had been raped, though four of them said that they had fought off violent sexual attacks and that other detained women and girls told them that Islamic State fighters had raped them. One woman said she saw Islamic State fighters buying girls, and a teenage girl said a fighter bought her for US$1,000.

The systematic abduction and abuse of Yezidi civilians may amount to crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said.

Interviewees said Islamic State fighters captured the Yezidis, members of a religious minority, during the group’s offensive in northwest Iraq on August 3, 2014. In the first days, the group held the men, women, and children together. Islamic State then separated its captives into three categories: older women and mothers with younger children, in some cases with older men or husbands; women in their early 20s and adolescent girls; and younger men and older boys.

Islamic State has also detained at least several dozen civilians from other religious and ethnic minorities, including Christians and Shia Shabaks and Turkmen, representatives of those groups and relatives of detainees said.

The precise number of people being held is unknown because of ongoing fighting in Iraq and because the vast majority of Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Shabaks and Turkmen fled to various areas across Iraq and neighboring countries when the group seized members of their communities. Dozens of captives have escaped but remain in hiding, Yezidi activists said.

In September and early October, Human Rights Watch interviewed 76 displaced Yezidis in the cities of Duhok, Zakho, and Erbil and surrounding areas in Iraqi Kurdistan. They reported that Islamic State was holding a total of 366 of their family members. The interviewees showed Human Rights Watch lists, identity cards, or photographs of relatives they said were imprisoned, or gave their names and other details. Many said they had sporadic phone contact with the prisoners, who had hidden their phones.

The two current detainees reached by phone, both women, and the 16 escapees – two men, seven women, and seven girls – said they had seen hundreds of other Yezidis in detention. Some said the number was more than 1,000.

One witness, Naveen, said she escaped in early September with her four children, ages 3, 4, 6, and 10, after a month in captivity. She said she saw Islamic State fighters taking Yezidi women and girls as “brides” from two buildings where she had been held – Badoush Prison near Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and a school in Tal Afar, a city to the west. Some fighters gave the women gold as a mahr, a dowry from a husband:

I saw them take all of them, about 10 young women and girls [on different days]. Some were as young as 12 or 13, and up to age 20. Some they had to pull away with force. Some of the young women were married but without children, so they [Islamic State] didn’t believe they were married.

Days later, Naveen said, the captors allowed the newly married women and girls to return to the prison briefly:

They said, “They married us; we had no choice.” They had gold they said they were given. Then they [the Islamic State] took them away again and they were crying.

One 17-year-old girl, Adlee, said a “big bearded man” had picked her from a group of young female detainees in Mosul and taken her and another captured girl to Fallujah in Anbar province:

I was cowering in a woman’s lap. She spoke to me as if I were her daughter, telling me, “Don’t be scared; I won’t let them take you.” But the man looked at me and said, “You are mine,” and he quickly took me to his big military vehicle.

The fighter took the two girls to a house in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, she said. “They were hitting us and slapping us to make us surrender,” she said. After two days there, the two girls managed to escape. “As much as we could, we didn’t let them touch our bodies,” she said. “Everything they did, they did by force.”

A 15-year-old girl, Rewshe, who escaped on September 7, told Human Rights Watch that in late August, after she had been held for about three weeks, Islamic State forces transported her in a convoy of four buses to Raqqa, Syria, with her sister and about 200 other young women and girls, and detained them in a large house in the southern part of the city. The following day, a group of armed men came and took away 20 of the captives. Rewshe said the guards told her that the men had bought the women and girls.

The next day, Rewshe said, an Islamic State leader whom others called “emir” (commander) sold her and her 14-year-old sister to a Palestinian fighter with Islamic State. Rewshe said she did not see the exchange of money but the fighter told her with pride that he had bought her for US $1,000. The fighter sold Rewshe’s sister that night to another fighter, Rewshe said, and took Rewshe to an apartment on the outskirts of Raqqa. There she said she fended off the man’s sexual attack and escaped through an unlocked door while he slept.

The statements of current and former female detainees raise serious concerns about rape and sexual slavery by Islamic State fighters, though the extent of these abuses remains unclear, Human Rights Watch said.

The stigma surrounding rape in the Yezidi community and the fear of reprisal against women and girls who disclose sexual violence could in part explain the low number of first-hand reports, Yezidi activists said. Even acknowledging capture by Islamic State can put women and girls in danger, they said. Scarce services for displaced Yezidis who have undergone trauma, including sexual assault, also may limit options for women and girls to report sexual violence, as well as their willingness to do so.

Islamic State fighters also took boys from their families, apparently for religious or military training, three escapees and a Yezidi human rights activist interviewing escapees said. One 28-year-old man who escaped, Khider, said he watched his captors separate 14 boys ages 8 to 12 at a military base Islamic State had seized in Sinjar:

The older brothers of those boys became so scared. They asked, “Where are you taking them?” They [Islamic State fighters] said, “Don’t worry, we will feed and take care of them. We will take them to a base to teach the Quran, how to fight, and how to be jihadis.”

Khider said the fighters forced him and other captives to convert to Islam, including in a mass ceremony in which he participated with more than 200 Yezidi men, women, and children whom the group had driven to Syria:

They made us recite the shahada [Islamic creed] three times. … Even the little children had to recite it, anyone who was old enough to speak. . … The Yezidi people were crying and scared. They asked us, “Is there anyone who does not want to convert to Islam?” Of course we all kept silent, because if anybody refused, he or she would be killed.

Human Rights Watch is withholding or changing the names of all interviewed captives, former captives and their relatives, and withholding the locations of most interviews and places of detention, for their protection.

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(Civil.Ge) — A new comprehensive cooperation treaty with Russia will enhance military alliance with Moscow and help to modernize Abkhaz army, Abkhaz leader, Raul Khajimba, said at an event marking 22nd anniversary of the breakaway region’s armed forces on October 11.

“We need to strengthen and enhance our military alliance with Russia. That is also an aim of new agreement, which we plan to sign before the end of this year. It will allow us to carry out a large-scale modernization of our army, bring to higher level its material-technical support and preparedness, and will significantly increase salaries and social protection of servicemen,” Khajimba said.

He also said that efforts should also be made to “increase prestige” of the military service among youth and to boost “military-patriotic” education.

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What can explain, let alone justify, Turkey sitting on its hands while conflict rages just over its border, and the forces of the self-styled Islamic State (IS) seem about to overwhelm the Kurdish fighters defending the much-reduced enclave of Kobani? After all, Turkey is a member of NATO and nominally part of the international coalition dedicated to destroying IS.

As the US continues to pressure Turkey’s newly-elected president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to do more, he is demanding two ridiculous preconditions before considering direct action. He is insisting that the US somehow impose both a buffer zone and a no-fly zone along its border with Syria.

Why are these demands so patently spurious? Because the Turkish army, one of the largest and best equipped in NATO, is perfectly capable of imposing its own buffer zone along its border without outside assistance. And since neither IS nor the Kurds are using aircraft, a no-fly zone is obviously superfluous to requirements.

Turkey’s stance today brings to mind one of the more shameful episodes of the Second World War – the story of the collapse of the Warsaw uprising of 1944.

Poland had been under Nazi occupation since 1939. The uprising by the Polish resistance was timed to coincide with the Soviet Union’s Red Army approaching the eastern suburbs of the city and the consequent retreat of German forces.  However, on the orders of Josef Stalin the Soviet advance stopped short on the east bank of the Vistula. Providing no assistance at all to the Polish fighters, the Red Army watched as they were slowly but surely annihilated.

Winston Churchill pleaded with Stalin to help Britain’s Polish allies, but to no avail. It was obvious that Stalin had halted his forces in order to allow the Polish resistance to be crushed.  The Polish resistance represented Polish independence, and was a major obstacle to his intention of bringing Poland directly within the Soviet sphere of influence. He had no desire to see an independent Poland triumph over the Nazis before the Soviet-backed Polish Committee of National Liberation could assume control of the country.

In the event the Nazis utterly crushed the uprising, and then took the most brutal revenge. Warsaw was virtually razed to the ground while, in addition to the death of some 16,000 members of the Polish resistance, between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish civilians were slaughtered, mostly in mass executions.

Arthur Koestler called the episode “one of the major infamies of this war.”

Today, Turkish tanks stand immoblle and inactive only yards away as the Kurds who are defending Kobani are being destroyed by the forces of IS. The historical analogy is alarmingly close. Erdogan clearly regards the Kurdish independence movement, long a pressing political problem for him, as a greater threat than IS – not a position likely to win much sympathy with Western powers.

Since 2002 Turkey has been ruled by the Justice and Development Party (AKP), an Islamic reaction to the tide of secularism that swept the country after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, abolished the Ottoman caliphate 90 years ago. AKP leader. Erdogan, with his own roots in the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, has now achieved a political dominance unparalleled since Ataturk but, as Oxford historian Mark Almond has recently pointed out, he is the antithesis of Turkey’s father-figure.

Ataturk wanted to distance the new Turkey from the Ottoman Empire’s involvement with Arabs and Muslims. “Europe is the future, forget the past” was his motto. But Erdogan has embraced a sort of “neo-Ottomanism” as his foreign policy. For years he has assiduously allied himself with extremist Muslim positions, including an visceral and intemperate opposition to Israel. Although AKP leaders have publicly remained loyal to Turkey’s application to join the EU, the lure of religious solidarity with extremist Sunni Arab movements from Hamas in Gaza to the Muslim Brothers of Egypt has had a stronger emotional pull – a pull which extends in some influential quarters to sympathy for IS.

It is quite understandable that the idea of the US establishing a buffer zone along the Turkish-Syrian border is proving deeply divisive in Washington. Turkey has presented the plan as a humanitarian gesture designed to protect refugees, but If Obama took the lead in establishing such a zone, it could lead to a direct confrontation between the US and the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. The area would probably turn into an anti-Assad power base, and setting it up would go far beyond President Obama’s original mission of degrading IS. Frederic Hof, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former American envoy to the Syrian opposition, has said: “It would mainly be a place where an alternate government structure would take root and for the training of rebels.”

If Turkey wants it, Turkey is perfectly capable of going ahead and establishing it. However Erdogan prefers to use it as a bargaining chip with the US, a quid pro quo for Turkey’s direct involvement in the anti-IS conflict. Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, admitted as much in a news conference on October 10, going go far as to say that Erdogan’s primary goal was to defeat the Assad government before thinking of tackling IS. “Tyranny and massacres will remain in the region as long as the Assad regime continues,” he said, discounting the ethnic cleansing and horrific mass-murder being perpetrated by IS across northern Syria and Iraq.

Turkey cannot emerge from this episode smelling of roses. Kurds enraged at Turkey’s unwillingness to help their embattled brethren in Kobani, are already erupting in violent protests, forcing Ankara to deploy the military, impose curfews and close schools. There have been protests and riots in every Turkish city where there are a significant number of Kurds. Twenty-two people have been killed in the past week in the fiercest street clashes that Turkey has seen for years, as Kurds battle it out with the police. If Kobani does indeed fall to IS there will be a real surge of violence across Turkey. The 15 million Turkish Kurds will blame the Turkish government for denying its defenders reinforcements, weapons and ammunition.

The Western powers can perfectly well see what game Turkey is playing – standing by while IS slowly but surely crushes its traditional Kurdish enemies, and using the humanitarian disaster thus created to pressure the US into helping remove Assad and his government. Now firmly ensconced within NATO, Turkey is able to act in this sort of way with comparative impunity – but it was in April 1987 that Turkey first knocked on the EU’s door and asked to be let in. Twenty-seven years later Turkey is still lingering on the threshold. Its behaviour during this international crisis should mean that the EU’s door remains firmly barred.

The post Some Ally, Turkey – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Terri Moon Cronk

The northern Syrian city of Kobani, which borders on Turkey, could fall to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in an interview broadcast today on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey told Martha Raddatz, the network’s chief global affairs correspondent, that despite continued U.S.-led airstrikes to keep ISIL forces at bay, he is concerned the key Kurdish city could fall into ISIL jihadists’ hands.

“I am fearful that Kobani will fall,” Dempsey said, adding that he has “no doubt” ISIL will conduct horrific atrocities if they have the opportunity to do so.

ISIL is putting pressure on the city’s outskirts, and into the city itself, the chairman said. ISIL forces are becoming more adept with the use of electronic devices, he added, and are making themselves harder to find and identify. “They don’t fly flags and move around in large convoys the way they did. … They don’t establish headquarters that are visible or identifiable,” he said.

Dempsey said he spoke to his Turkish counterpart a couple of days ago about the conditions in Kobani, and he noted that Turkey has forces on the border that will prevent ISIL from making any incursions into their country. “But, of course, ISIL is smart enough not to do that,” the general added.

Coalition can do more in Syria

The coalition could do more inside Syria, Dempsey said. And while he has not been asked to set up a no-fly zone there, he added, such an action is a possibility.

“Do I anticipate that there could be circumstances in the future where that would be part of the campaign?” he asked. “Yes.”

ISIL forces have changed tactics since the United States began airstrikes, the chairman acknowledged, making targets harder to find and more difficult to hit. “They know how to maneuver and how to use populations and concealment, so when we get a target, we’ll take it,” he said.

Baghdad could take indirect fire

ISIL fighters have been trying to overtake Baghdad since they invaded Iraq, Dempsey said, and because the jihadist army is blending into parts of the Sunni population that was disenfranchised under former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government, the Iraqi capital could come under indirect fire.

“Heretofore, … mostly the Iraqis have been successful in keeping ISIL out of range, but I’ve no doubt there will be days when [ISIL uses] indirect fire into Baghdad,” he said.

The chairman said it is critical to keep the Baghdad airport out of ISIL’s hands, noting that in a recent and violent clash over Baghdad, the United States called in Apache helicopters to help Iraqi forces.

“The risk of operating in a hostile environment is there constantly,” Dempsey said. “This is a case where you’re not going to wait till they’re climbing over the wall.”

No boots on the ground

While President Barack Obama has vowed to the American people that no U.S. boots will be on the ground in the fight against ISIL, the chairman said he doesn’t rule out the possibility, as he recently testified on Capitol Hill.

“There will be circumstances when the answer to that question will likely be yes,” he said. “But I haven’t encountered one right now. When [the Iraqi forces] are ready to go back on the offensive, my instinct is that will require a different a kind of advising and assisting because of the complexity of that fight.”

Dempsey emphasized that it takes time to deliver a campaign objective.

“It wasn’t so long ago we were talking about the imminent fall of Irbil. It wasn’t so long ago when the U.S. Embassy was feeling threatened in Baghdad. None of those are part of the landscape right now,” he said.

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(RFE/RL) — Voting has ended in parliamentary and presidential elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina for more than 500 political posts.

The elections are seen as key to breaking a political stalemate in the country.

By the close of polls, just over half of Bosnia’s 3.3 million eligible voters had cast ballots.

Voters were casting their ballots to choose a three-member presidency and a national parliament, as well as lawmakers and leaders of Bosnia’s two entities — the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.

In the Muslim-Croat Federation, voters also are choosing lawmakers for parliaments of 10 self-administered cantons.

There are nearly 8,000 candidates standing for 65 parties, 24 coalitions, and independent lists in the country’s two autonomous entities.

The elections follow violent civil unrest in February, sparked by corruption and poverty, amid widespread discontent with the authorities’ reaction to catastrophic floods that hit the country in May, and as ethnic divisions stemming from the war continue to block reforms.

In Republika Srpska, the competition pits incumbent President Milorad Dodik and a coalition dominated by his Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) against a bloc led by the Serb Democratic Party (SDS).

Dodik said after casting his ballot that he expects the elections “to confirm the stability of Republika Srpska.”

Once a pro-Western reformer who has turned into a nationalist firebrand, Dodic keeps pushing the separatist agenda and boasts of his close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The SDS accuses Dodik’s administration of corruption and dismisses separatist talk.

The party, which was founded by war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic, led Bosnian Serbs during the war as they attempted to secede from newly independent Bosnia.

In the Muslim-Croat Federation, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) is expected to continue its dominance among the Croats, who still hope for the establishment of their own region.

Among the Muslim Bosniaks, who generally want stronger central government, the primary contest will be between the multiethnic Social Democrats (SDP) and the main Bosniak party, Democratic Action (SDA).

Bakir Izetbegovic, bidding for another term as the Bosniak member of Bosnia’s presidency, said on October 12 that it is “high time to end the standstill and I think that politicians have matured enough to come out of this vicious cycle.”

Ognjen Tadic, an opposition presidential candidate in Republika Srpska, said he expects “changes” and that a high turnout means “changes are coming.”

Dragan Covic, an ethnic Croatian candidate to Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, said he thinks “that finally we have to understand that we live next to each other and that Bosnia-Herzegovina cannot be partitioned, regardless of various speculations, just as the town of Mostar cannot be divided.”

The current governing system resulted from a constitutional arrangement that was part of the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the country’s 1992-95 war.

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What best predicts whether a very small business will thrive or not?

Here’s a hint: public funding does not seem to be the answer. At least not in Argentina. There, an entrepreneur’s level of education and dedication tended to be better predictors of business success, even as public funding flowed.

Pascual Berrone of IESE and co-authors from the National University of Cordoba in Argentina studied 300 microenterprises with five or fewer employees. They set out to identify the determinants of performance, and found some surprising results.

Published in the Journal of Small Business Management, the preliminary evidence from this study suggests that education, drive, commitment and the application of innovations are the factors that best predict business success.

In contrast, when an entrepreneur starts a business because he or she has no other job, the chances of that business succeeding tended to be lower than when an entrepreneur starts a business because he or she sees a product opportunity or a market niche to fill.

Microenterprises With Macro Importance

Microenterprises can be important players in a country’s economic growth and development. In Latin America, more than 80 percent of businesses are microenterprises, and they are often recipients of public money to spur growth and reduce unemployment. In fact, many believe that “all you need is funding” to make a go of a small enterprise.

However, using public money to finance microenterprises as a means to reduce unemployment and alleviate poverty may just be a short-term solution. Berrone and co-authors write: “Public funds may be better invested in aspects that have proved to be beneficial for the success of microbusinesses, such as education or innovation, in order to provide sustainable prosperity.”

Predictors of Success

Based on their surveys of a sample of 300 microenterprises in Cordoba, Argentina, the authors identified a number of factors as important to a small company’s performance.

• The level of formal education of the entrepreneur
• The level of dedication to the enterprise, which was determined by the number of hours invested in the venture
• The use of the entrepreneur’s own capital
• The application of innovations, resulting in improvements to the value chain and differentiation from the competition
• A voluntary decision to start the enterprise, perhaps motivated by a perceived niche in the market. (In contrast, ventures motivated by unemployment did not perform as well.)

There were other factors that the authors did not find to be significant.

• The gender of the entrepreneur
• Family participation in the venture
• Whether or not the business operated formally or informally

Potential to Alleviate Poverty

In Argentina, an unstable economy with a high unemployment rate, financing microenterprises is seen as a means of poverty alleviation. But that thinking may be too short-term.

The study indicates that involuntary entrepreneurs, motivated by unemployment, underperform those motivated by a wish to improve their circumstances or reach a new niche in the market (voluntary entrepreneurs). If the aim of financing microenterprises is to spur economic growth, financing “involuntary” entrepreneurs may not be the way to go. They may be better served by an unemployment subsidy.

Meanwhile, the positive relationship between formal education and business performance suggests that policymakers with the long view in mind might look to education and training as investments in the future.

The post Education, Not Funding, Key To Success Of Microenterprises appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By John D. Banusiewicz

Providing a preview to a key topic he’ll discuss during a security conference that begins tomorrow, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel yesterday described how climate change can affect the security environment.

Speaking at a news conference in Santiago, Chile, after a meeting with government leaders there, Hagel said climate change can have a significant effect on the security environment, noting that as sea levels rise, so can potential threats.

“When there is any natural disaster event that occurs, there always is some element of a security risk — law and order, individuals attempting to take advantage of those catastrophes, adjusting to shifts in security requirements,” he said.

Nations will compete for natural resources

The secretary cited the Arctic as an example. “We see an Arctic that is melting, meaning that most likely a new sea lane will emerge,” he said. “We know that there are significant minerals and natural deposits of oil and natural gas there. That means that nations will compete for those natural resources.”

That hasn’t been an issue before, Hagel said. “You couldn’t get up there and get anything out of there,” he added. “We have to manage through what those conditions and new realities are going to bring in the way of potential threats.”

Hagel, who is on a six-day, three-nation trip to South America, said he will discuss the relationship between climate change and security in more detail during the Conference of the Defense Ministers of the Americas, which begins tomorrow in Arequipa, Peru.

The post Climate Change Can Affect Security Environment, Hagel Says appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Col. R. Hariharan

The Northern Provincial Council has asked the Sri Lankan defence forces to vacate from their province. According to the TNA leaders the army occupies nearly 25 per cent of the total land area in the province. But according to the Sri Lankan ministry of defence the total area under the forces in NPC is less than five per cent. Isn’t the army justified in occupying a small portion of land in a former conflict zone? What are your comments?

This is a slightly complex question linked to the post war socio-political environment in Sri Lanka and Northern Province.

Right to station troops anywhere in the country

There is no doubt the Sri Lanka Government has every right to station troops in Northern Province or anywhere else in the country. Nobody would have questioned it in normal circumstances. Northern Province was involved in an armed conflict waged by the LTTE and the govt for over 25 years and together both sides have lost a total of over 100,000 lives in the serial wars. After the rout of the LTTE, the people of Northern Province who had lost their kith and kin, livelihood, properties and much more are yet to fully recover from the trauma of war.

During the last five years the government’s efforts have been mostly to revamp the public services and infrastructure. It has failed to attend to their political, social and survival problems As a result the government has failed to create climate of security and trust in its actions among the public. Had the government approached the problem of rehabilitation with greater sensitivity probably nobody would have objected to the continued presence of army in the midst of predominantly Tamil province.

Unkept promises on devolution

Ever since he came to power, President Rajapaksa had made repeated promises to India and the international community to devolve reasonable powers to Northern and Eastern provinces.

In a report in The Hindu of October 29, 2008 of an interview with the President said: “Asked about the contours of the political solution he had in mind, Mr. Rajapaksa explained his four ‘Ds’ approach – Demilitarisation, Democratisation, Development, and Devolution. When the 13th Amendment was introduced in the Sri Lankan Constitution at the instance of the Indian government, it could not be implemented in the North and the East because “there was no political will on either side to implement it.” But as a political leader, he had announced his government’s “intention of implementing this for the first time. We have given that assurance to the Tamil people of my country and to the international community. We are going to do it. This is not to satisfy anybody. It is my duty by the people of this country.” But he never kept up his promises; all that has happened since then was he stopped speaking about 4 Ds and 2 Ds – demilitarisation and devolution – have been forgotten.

India extended support to President Rajapaksa’s Eelam War despite severe domestic opposition from Tamil Nadu because Rajapaksa promised to implement not only the 13th Amendment to the Constitution (giving a level of autonomy to Tamils) but go beyond that (13+). He has not given what he can or cannot give when TNA presented its demands when they held 15 rounds of meetings. He has used the ploy of leaving the job of evolving a consensus solution to the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) in which no opposition party is participating as they suspect its credentials.

This PSC was a needless exercise as in the history of Sri Lanka as many as five commissions have examined in detail the different aspects of Tamil autonomy question. So clearly Rajapaksa is trying to buy time using PSC rather than resolve the issue. This has created a crisis of confidence not only among Tamils and opposition parties but in India as well as among international community about Rajapaksa’s credibility. This is affecting the perspectives of various stakeholders in viewing other related issues like the presence of army in Northern Province.

Structural problems

Records of ownership documents of land of people affected by war are not readily available. So through process of inquiry to decide the rightful ownership of land is being carried out by administration. This is a slow process and has provided an opportunity for others including the army to delay the return of the land to the owners. Actually a case filed by over affected people is pending in the courts to speed up the return of the land seized by the LTTE and later by the army from the LTTE to the owners.

The chief minister of Northern Province can hardly fulfil the promises TNA made during the elections on restoration of land to the rightful owners. He can do little about it because he does not have a say even in the appointment of a chief secretary of the province let alone major issues. In this environment only mutual hostility between Colombo and Jaffna seem to be flourishing. Naturally the TNA is peeved.

TNA’s burden

The TNA had acted as the political proxy in parliament for LTTE before the war. Some of its members who are ardent supporters of the LTTE and independent Tamil Eelam have not been able to come to terms with the failure of LTTE’s war which cost at least 80,000 young lives to achieve the goal of separate Tamil Eelam. Their latent sympathies have been fanned by overseas remnants of the LTTE who are trying to stage a comeback in Tamil areas. Though they do not enjoy support from most of the people, even their failed attempts are enough to raise the suspicion of the army as they would never allow separatist insurgency to raise its head anywhere once again.

This has helped to create paranoia about the revival of Tamil militancy among Sinhala population. Politically it suits Rajapaksa to keep this paranoia alive to retain Southern Sinhala support intact. It also provides a justification for the army’s continued presence in strength in Northern Province. On the other hand TNA often speaks in two voices due to schism within the leadership in taking a more pragmatic approach to curb separatist and militant voices within the leadership. So the ethnic suspicions continue to remain in Sri Lanka colouring all political actions.

(Col R Hariharan, a retired MI officer, served as the head of intelligence with the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka from 1987 to 90. E-mail: haridirect@gmail.com Blog: http://col.hariharan.info)

The post Sri Lanka: Military Presence In Northern Province – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Dr Kumar David

Bright young faces, technically savvy, nimble of mind, polite and controlled in protest; 30 years of intimacy with Hong Kong, nearly 25 in universities in HK and China had not prepared me for this fortnight. I have not before seen the youthful flower of Hong Kong’s future bloom so bright; but not without its share of blunders costing it the public support it had initially garnered.

Thankfully, the control freaks in Beijing kept their tanks garaged and HK’s adults were shown-up as deficient of pluck and dim of wit; but the city will not be the same again. First in little ripples and then in waves, the debate about democracy will infiltrate the Mainland and the emerging economic superpower will change at its fabled glacial pace. “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air”. Unseen until this autumn blooming, naïve in strategy, and green in cunning, first flowers are always blown away. But they waste not their sweetness in Hong Kong’s ‘pragmatic’ air nor wither in Beijing’s Stalinist wilderness; in a globalised age, blossoming is quickened.

Strolling through Mong Kong and Admiralty, late on the evening of the sixth day (Saturday 4) of the Occupy Central protest, I estimated twenty thousand young idealists still there, much thinner than the 120,000 at the peak. The majority were students, but a companion of my stroll pointed out, a large number were not, they were just young people; the new working class ignorant sociologists still call middle-class. Occupying the main boulevards, pavements, and shopping arcades; sitting on the ground, happy in groups; speakers offering their encouragement here and there; it was three-quarters serious politics, one-quarter a carnival of youthful exuberance. Later in the night the crowd swelled, TV stations estimate to 100,000. Throughout five days they drifted in and out, went to university for a lecture and returned, dropped in at home for well earned sleep and popped back; some joined in the evening, after work. The cumulative number involved at some point in what is called the Umbrella Revolution was very much in excess of 200,000.

The reason for youth activism on this scale is not only romantic attachment to democracy; there are practical reasons as well. As HK’s filthy rich amass ever greater wealth, the income gap is widening and anger rising. Mainland graduates, some extraordinarily bright, are moving into HK middle level jobs and university postings in larger numbers, putting pressure on locals. Corruption in the Mainland is grotesque and palpable thanks to easy cross-border travel. Totalitarianism in China has cooled HK’s love affair with the motherland. But a green youth movement is fickle as fluctuations in participation, and naive as interpolation of trivial demands (Chief Executive resign! Occupy government offices!) with crucial ones about universal suffrage, show. The refusal to suspend sit-ins when the peak was past (tens of thousands dwindled to a few hundreds) and after public annoyance at protracted blocking of major roads came to a boil, is a consequence of stubborn student elements hijacking the action in the final stages. Now not the authorities, but the public is being punished.

Beijing and its satraps in HK have conceded nothing; no concessions from the control freaks crouching in terror that democracy in Hong Kong will spark counter-revolution in all China. We in South Asia remember the Salt March when Gandhiji broke unjust laws in 1930 and sparked mass civil disobedience against the Raj changing world attitudes to Indian independence – the Swaraj struggle drew millions. Batons on the heads of non-violent protesters was global news and demonstrated the effective use of satyagraha against injustice. Indian democracy is exasperating and it is gauche in economic management and decision making but it survives by muddling through. In the long run it is more stable than brittle Stalinism and would have absorbed an Indian version of Tiananmen 1989 or Hong Kong 2014 without a possible defeat of the authorities endangering the existence of the state.

Hong Kong’s ‘pragmatists’

HK’s silent majority describes itself as ‘pragmatic’ and there are grounds for its complacency. The resounding economic success of China and HK’s position as a financial metropolis prove an old and banal materialist adage about human motivation. Economic conditions to lubricate demands for change in political status quo are missing in HK; who wants democracy if your wallet is well-lined! Of course mega-rich tycoons, a few dozen, are the great beneficiaries, but for reasons reaching back to the turmoil in China in the 1930s and 1940s and consequent large migrations into HK, a society facilitating rapid social mobility has emerged. Hundreds of thousands have moved up to a comfortable middle class. A property owning, stock-market invested, well-heeled upper middle-class tops it. Sheer effort, aided by thriving capitalism, helped these classes prosper in the last fifty years.

One significant side that I cannot explore here is that people under 30 grew up and schooled in post-British HK. The older generation cherishes memories of liberalism, fair play and lawfulness. HK’s ICAC is an exemplary bastion against corruption; the police force is appreciated, balanced in action and not corrupted by political misuse. Chris Patton the last Governor was much loved by HK Chinese, but it is not possible to say that the three post-1997 Chief Executives are well respected. The past has fed complacency in the adult generation, but HK’s young see a different home town and have grown up beside a strange giant. This generation is not in awe of sclerotic state and status quo.

Adults don’t want the apple cart to tumble. The working class below them is reasonably paid and housed, children schooled and social mobility in the last three decades has been astonishing – more brisk than in the US. Many, maybe most of my colleagues on the university staff are from working class backgrounds. However, continuity has snapped and the next generation, the 15 to 30 year olds, have turned away. I am bewildered by the sharpness of the generation gap; 80% of protesters are young people; maybe 80% of the older generation are ‘pragmatists’.

The ‘pragmatists’ say, sincerely, that the Communist Party’s control of China (not their Hong Kong) ensures stability, and fear that if it loses its grip the country will slide into chaos and anarchy. The mega-rich on the other hand are cynical tycoons; their bond with Beijing a passport to amass wealth. They are not a vibrant class of creative capitalists, not entrepreneurs, original innovators and inspired captains of finance; this is a class of leeches grabbing state lands at auctions, putting up conurbations of flats and malls and making billions in sales. This is not progressive capitalism; Hong Kong’s tycoons are a class of parasitic property retainers. The Hong Kong miracle is a unique mix of circumstances; a motivated and educated middle class, an industrious working class, the rule of law bequeathed by the British Raj, and a fortuitous location snuggled beside Napoleon’s waking giant.

I am persuaded that over the coming years the achievement of the Occupy movement will not be any concessions it wins from Beijing (it will win nothing, nor did the Salt March from the British), but the debate it will spark off about HK’s constitutional future. The ‘pragmatist’ majority says: “The powers in Beijing have made a decision; they will not budge or bend, they will rather send in tanks and shoot the city’s youth”. Dictators do not relinquish power; they pull the trigger on unarmed protesters; they showed their hand in Tiananmen Square on June 4 1989. Still not one person have I met, heard on TV, or read in the media, defends the National People’s Convention’s “universal suffrage” scam for electing the Chief Executive in 2017. ‘Pragmatists’ agree that the youth-student movement is morally right, but criticise its ‘suicidal idealism, hitting its head on a stone wall’. I have heard distraught mothers moan to protestor offspring; “what’s the point of being morally right and then mowed down by grapeshot”.

The crux of the constitutional issue

Why do I call Beijing’s plan a deception? China repeatedly, verbally and in treaties promised the people of Hong Kong wide autonomy, a one-country two-system formula, progress to democracy and universal suffrage. This was said in Sino-British negotiations and in the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law (Hong Kong’s mini constitution), Article 45 of which reads as follows.

“The method for selecting the Chief Executive shall be specified in the light of the actual situation in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and in accordance with the principle of gradual and orderly progress. The ultimate aim is the selection of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures”.

The CCP’s version of universal suffrage is this: We will nominate (through a handpicked electoral college) two persons for Chief Executive and HK compatriots can, by “universal suffrage”, elect one of them. Eureka! China has by and large kept promises (it is punctilious about international treaties) but is now rolling back its pledges to Hong Kong. Surely wide autonomy means that except for defence and foreign affairs HK will make its decisions and run its own affairs. According to Chris Patton there was no thought of Beijing, instead of the local Government and Legislative Council, designing the electoral system within, of course, the provisions of the Basic Law. Beijing has short changed the territory and many are justifiably outraged, even ‘pragmatists’ are disappointed.

The Occupy Central movement and the student groups have forced Hong Kong society to face reality. Now on will be a hard grind; the first task is to win over a majority in HK itself; till then Beijing will concede nothing. The movement now needs unity, a federated structure, a leadership that has vision and is respected and accepted by all; it must push thick-skulled student extremists out of decision making; above all it needs a strategy and realistic medium term goals.

The post Letter From Hong Kong: Youthful Naiveté Versus Sclerotic State – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ajai Sahni and Anurag Tripathi

Since October 3, 2014, the India-Pakistan border in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has witnessed the worst kind of Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) violations since November 2003, when the CFA was signed between the two sides. There is a complete pandemonium at the India-Pakistan border in J&K– 190 kilometers long International Border (IB) and 776 kilometers long Line of Control (LoC). A hysterical media and many security pundits have described the situation as a virtual state of war between India and Pakistan, citing the apparently massive ordnance that the two sides have thrown at each other. Thus, Director General Pakistan Rangers Major General Tahir Javaid Khan claimed, “India is not just violating ceasefire but fighting a small-scale war with Pakistan. On 6 October, alone, 51,000 small arms were fired across the boundary, while on October 7, more than 4,000 mortar shells were fired.” Media reports also claim that Pakistani Rangers have used 82mm mortars, automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns, and air defense artillery. There has been tremendous international concern and commentary at the ‘dramatic escalation’ of tensions and violence in the ‘sensitive’ J&K region, and fears that the current contretemps may inadvertently slide into a full-scale war.

It is, however, not clear what strategic purpose the apparently massive use of firepower has served, or what material damage it has inflicted on military or vital infrastructure. According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), the Pakistani side has violated the CFA on at least 19 occasions since October 3, 2014, resulting in a total of nine civilian fatalities. The number of injured persons stands at 81 – 75 civilians and six Security Force (SF) personnel. In addition, another three SF personnel and two civilians had earlier been killed in CFA violations in 2014, bringing total fatalities in 2014 (till October 12) to 14. Significantly, incidents of CFA violation by Pakistan resulted in 11 SF fatalities in 2013 and seven total fatalities in 2012, including four SF personnel and three civilians. The CFA has, in fact, been violated by Pakistan on at least 443 occasions since 2009, resulting in at least 46 fatalities (16 civilian and 30 SF). It was after a relatively long hiatus while President General Pervez Musharraf was in power, that the cycle of CFA violations and retaliatory fire by Indian Forces resumed in 2009, with a total of 35 incidents recorded that year, resulting in five SF fatalities.

While no reliable data on casualties on the Pakistani side as a result of retaliatory fire by Indian Forces is available, one Pakistani claim has indicated that at least 15 persons have been killed and another 30 injured in firing from the Indian side during the current standoff.

The current crisis commenced on October 3, 2014. The Pakistan Army had resorted to unprovoked firing along the IB in Arnia and Pargwal Sectors of Jammu District. No casualty was reported. After a day’s break, the Pakistani Rangers violated the CFA in the Arnia Sector, injuring two civilians.

Along the LoC, on October 3, 2014, the Pakistan Army fired in the Sabjian Sector of Poonch District, killing a teen-aged girl and injuring four others. At least 40 houses suffered minor damage in six villages in the Pakistani shelling. For the following two days, the Pakistani Rangers violated the CFA on at least four occasions in the Poonch District.

From October 6, the shelling from the Pakistani side started intentionally targeting the civilian population. On October 6, 2014, five civilians were killed and another 26 were injured at Mashan-de-Kothe village in the Arnia Sector of Jammu District. This was the first time since the 1971 War that five civilians were killed in a single incident of Pakistan shelling and firing at one location on the IB.

Again, on October 8, 2014, three women, were killed at Challyari village in the Samba Sector of Samba District. 14 civilians and two Border Security Force (BSF) personnel were also injured, when Pakistani Rangers targeted 60 BSF posts and civilian population centres at several places across the IB.

Nearly 33,000 people on the Indian side have been forced out of their homes in the forward areas and have taken shelter at safer locations identified by the Administration. Authorities are in the process of identifying other safe areas to accommodate another wave of anticipated migration from the border villages in case of further escalation from the Pakistani side. Sources disclosed that there was no forward village left across the 190 kilometers IB area, which was unaffected by shelling and migration. The crops in most of the border areas have been damaged due to regular mortar shelling.

Significantly, according to media reports, Islamabad had started evacuating civilians from forward areas on the Pakistani side before launching the present barrage against civilian populations on the Indian side.

There has been tremendous speculation regarding Islamabad’s motives for the present escalation. While it is impossible to enter the minds of Pakistan’s military and political leadership, it is useful to notice that, through all phases of such cross border interventions, both before and after the signing of the CFA in 2003, the prelude to the onset of winter has been the ‘season’ for such escalation, as terrorist handlers on the Pakistani side provide fire cover for the last batches of infiltrators before the snows shut down the mountain passes. Such a motive would be stronger at present, as Indian Forces have been remarkably successful in interdicting recent attempts at infiltration. According to the SATP database, the current year has, thus far, recorded a total of 29 infiltration bids – 25 along the LoC and four along the IB. At least nine terrorists have been killed in retaliatory action by the SFs (data till October 12, 2014). The same period in year 2013 had recorded 39 infiltration bids – 35 along the LoC and another four at the IB, and at least 50 terrorists were killed in the response by SFs.

Nevertheless, an unnamed official at the Department of Internal Security and J&K Affairs at the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (UMHA), disclosed, on August 31, 2014, that about 60 terrorists had succeeded in entering J&K in 2014: “The first successful infiltration bid has taken place in May this year in Keran Sector of Kupwara District in which 14 terrorists entered the Valley. There have been eight more successful infiltration bids so far in 2014… Of 60 infiltrated terrorists, the forces have killed 14 in different encounters so far.” According to the official data, the number of successful infiltrations stood at 100 in 2013; 121 in 2012; and 52 in 2011.

Pakistan’s interest in destabilizing the environment in J&K before the Assembly Elections may also partially explain the current escalation. The Election process would already have begun, had massive floods not ravaged the State last month. Around 300 people died in the floods, which left hundreds of thousands homeless. The Pakistan Army would have a strong interest in pushing in a large number of terrorists into the Indian side, under cover of heavy firing, in an attempt to disrupt the electoral process. Crucially, Islamabad and its terrorist and separatist proxies in J&K have repeatedly failed to thwart the electoral process for a long time. Thus, during the last General Elections (2014), the Sate recorded a 49.52 per cent voter turnout; and the Assembly Elections of 2008 saw polling by 61.42 per cent of the electorate.

Domestic turmoil may also be a contributory factor in Pakistan’s present malfeasance, with the leadership attempting, as it often has done in the past, to divert public attention from internal crises by shifting focus to the ‘Kashmir issue’. Significantly, beginning August 16, 2014, thousands of demonstrators belonging to the Imran Khan led-Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and cleric Tahir-ul-Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) have thronged the Red Zone in Islamabad – the seat of Governance and the elite zone in Islamabad. Demonstrations against the Government have repeatedly spiraled into violence. Both Imran Khan and Tahir-ul-Qadri appear hell bent on the removal of the civilian Government, and there are strong perceptions that the campaign has the tacit support of the Army. Conspicuously, the relationship between the civilian Government and the Military has deteriorated sharply over the past year. Worse, on September 18, 2014, a murder case was registered against Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his brother and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, three Federal Ministers and top Police officials, over the alleged killing of two persons during the August 30, 2014, clashes between the Police and anti-Government protesters in Islamabad.

Not surprisingly, Prime Minister Sharif, while addressing the 69th UN General Assembly session at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, on September 26, 2014, chose to stridently focus on the ‘Kashmir issue’,

“…..Our support and advocacy of the right to self- determination of the people of Jammu and Kashmir is our historic commitment and a duty, as a party to the Kashmir dispute….more than six decades ago, the UN had passed resolutions to hold a plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir….The people of Jammu and Kashmir are still waiting for the fulfillment of that promise…..Many generations of Kashmiris have lived their lives under occupation, accompanied by violence and abuse of their fundamental rights. Kashmiri women, in particular, have undergone immense suffering and humiliation…..The core issue of Jammu and Kashmir has to be resolved. This is the responsibility of the international community. We cannot draw a veil on the issue of Kashmir, until it is addressed in accordance with the wishes of the people of Jammu and Kashmir….”

In a breathtaking act of brazen deceit, moreover, projecting itself as the injured party in a lethal confrontation that it had initiated, Pakistan lodged a formal protest at the UN, against the ‘civilian killings’ as a result of Indian firing during the current cross border crisis. Pakistan’s Adviser to the Prime Minister on National Security and Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz, addressing a letter dispatched on October 11 to the Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, sought to draw attention to

…the deteriorating security situation along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, as well as along the working boundary between Pakistan and India, owing to deliberate and unprovoked violations of the ceasefire agreement and cross-border firing by the Indian forces over the past weeks… India has now escalated the situation along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir and the Working Boundary. Persistent shelling and firing by Indian forces has resulted in heavy civilian casualties on the Pakistan side… Pakistan believes that the United Nations has an important role to play in promoting this objective, including through your good offices, which we have always welcomed, and the crucial role of the UNMOGIP on ground, which needs to be strengthened and facilitated under the current circumstances…

India has dismissed the charges as ‘frivolous’ and unworthy of response. Earlier, on October 7, Pakistan had lodged a protest with the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) office in Islamabad on the LoC situation. India has long maintained that UNMOGIP has “outlived its relevance” and has “no role to play whatsoever”. UNMOGIP, established under a UN Security Council resolution, was meant to supervise the ceasefire line established under the Karachi Agreement of July 1949.

The Indian stand on the issue was articulated by the Union Defence Minister Arun Jaitley on October 9, 2014, ruling out talks with Pakistan until the firing stopped completely. Jaitley warned Pakistan that it would have to bear an “unaffordable” cost if it continued with its “adventurism”.

Unfortunately, such threats have been the standard response to Pakistani provocation for decades now, and there is little reason to believe that any ‘unaffordable costs’ are imminently going to be inflicted on Pakistan. Indeed, as has repeatedly been noted in SAIR, policy is a function of capacity, and unless India’s capacities are dramatically augmented (or Pakistan’s, dramatically eroded) the pendulum of New Delhi’s ‘strategic responses’ will continue to swing between ‘talks and no talks’ – and one such cycle has already been recorded by the incumbent Narendra Modi Government within the first quarter of its existence. There appears to be little real comprehension, moreover, of the instrumentalities through, and manner in, which such ‘costs’ can be inflicted within the context of a coherent strategy of protracted conflict. The Modi Government, indeed, continues to announce fairly minimalist preconditions for a resumption of talks and ‘cooperation’ on a wide range of issues with Islamabad, even as the ‘strong line’ articulated by Modi, that terrorism and talks could not go together, lies forgotten among the remains of pre-election oratory.

Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, ICM & SATP
Anurag Tripathi
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

The post India-Pakistan: Mindless Adventurism – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By M. A. Athul

On October 9, 2014, Security Forces (SFs) killed an unidentified militant of the IK Songbijit faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB-IKS) at Tarajuli in the Sonitpur District of Assam. One pistol, a grenade and some ammunition were recovered from the slain militant.

A day earlier, on October 8, 2014, four militants of the NDFB-IKS, including a ‘section commander’ were killed in Kokrajhar District after a fierce encounter with a joint team of the Police and the Army. The SFs recovered a cache of arms and ammunition, including one AK-56 rifle, one AK-56 magazine, 20 live rounds of ammunition and three pistols.

On September 28, 2014, four militants of the NDFB-IKS, including one ‘second in command’, were killed in an encounter with a joint team of the Police and the Army at Mwinaguri under Serfanguri Police Station in Kokrajhar District. All the deceased militants were from the Mwinaguri section of NDFB-IKS. An AK-56 and a magazine with 20 rounds, two 7.65 mm pistols, one 9mm pistol, three grenades and incriminating documents were recovered from them.

These recent setbacks notwithstanding, the NDFB-IKS appears to be consolidating its position as the most active insurgent group in Assam. The group was responsible for the May 1-3, 2014, killings of 46 Bodo Muslims in Baksa and Kokrajhar Districts of the Bodo Territorial Autonomous District (BTAD) area. It subsequently emerged that senior leaders of the NDFB-IKS, including ‘chairman’ I. K. Songbijit, ‘general secretary’ Swarangra and ‘commander’ B. Bidai had orchestrated the attacks.

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), Assam has recorded 193 insurgency-linked fatalities, including 95 civilians, five SF personnel and 93 militants, in the current year, as of October 10. Significantly, NDFB-IKS has been responsible for 65 of the 95 civilians killed this year. Some other major incidents of civilian killing by NDFB-IKS include:

July 11: NDFB-IKS militants abducted four traders. The dead body of one of the abducted traders was recovered from Kamargaon in Barpeta District on July 12, while the bodies of the other three were recovered from the banks of the Manas River in Baksa District on July 13.

January 17: Six persons were killed when suspected NDFB-IKS militants pulled out about a dozen persons from a bus and opened fire at them at Serfanguri in Kokrajhar District.

In an extraordinarily barbaric incident, the NDFB-IKS, on August 22, 2014, released the video of the execution of a Class10 student identified as Priya Basumatary, at Dwimuguri in Chirag District on August 20, 2014, whom they suspected to be a ‘Police informer’ and whose ‘information’ allegedly led to the killing of five of its cadres on August 20.

NDFB-IKS was also involved in one of the most significant of five SF fatalities in Assam in 2014 (as of October 10). The militants killed Sonitpur Additional Superintendent of Police Gulzar Hussain and an alleged Police informer when they ambushed a patrol at Thalola in the Batachipur area in Sonitpur District on January 28. Five constables were also wounded in the ambush. NDFB-IKS was also involved in at least another three attacks on the SFs in 2014.

Further, out of the 93 militants who have been killed in Assam in 2014 (as of October 10) in 53 incidents, 38 militants belonged to NDFB-IKS, and were killed in 23 incidents. In 2013, a total of 60 militants were killed in 43 incidents in Assam, of which 20 militants were from NDFB-IKS, and were killed in 14 engagements with the SFs. The other major incidents of 2014 in which NDFB-IKS suffered at the hands of the SFs include:

August 20: Five NDFB-IKS militants, identified as ‘military secretary section commander’ C. Rwikha, alias Rajib Sumpramary , ‘section commander’ M. Rojong, alias Roslin Mushahary, B. Raidwng, alias Raju Basumatary, ‘personal security officer’ of C. Rwikha Debanand Islary, were killed in an encounter with a joint Police and Army team in the jungles of Raimati Chirang District. SFs recovered An AK series rifle, five pistols, six magazines, five grenades, 226 live rounds of ammunition, 10 empty cartridges and INR 551,000. The NDFB-IKS later accused the Ranjan Daimary faction of NDFB (NDFB-RD) of being involved in the killings, but the RD faction denied this.

April 30: Three suspected NDFB-IKS militants were killed in an encounter with the Police in the Naojan Tinkhuti area under Gingia Police Station in Sonitpur District.

The NDFB-IKS was formed on November 20, 2012, after an announcement by the then NDFB-RD’s Myanmar based ‘army chief’ I.K. Songbijit, about the formation of a nine member ‘interim national council’, following a November 13-14, 2012, meeting where a vow to ‘liberate Bodoland and Western South East Asia (North East India)’ was taken. Since the split, the IKS faction has become the most violent insurgent group in Assam, engaging in multiple incidents of killing, abduction and extortion across the BTAD areas.

According to partial data compiled by SATP, there have been 31 incidents of arrest from January to October 8, 2014, in which 61 militants of NDFB-IKS were arrested. In 2013, there were a total of 29 incidents of arrest, in which 72 NDFB-IKS militants were arrested.

Since the tightening of Counter Insurgency (CI) operations against the group, NDFB-IKS has also changed its tactics, progressively ‘outsourcing’ criminal activities, such as extortion and abduction to other organizations. One such ‘franchise’ is a new Nepali group, the United Gorkha People’s Organization (UGPO), as was discovered after five members of UGPO – Bashu Chetry, Nabraj Koirala, Netra Bahadur Ghaley and Dhiraj Majhi and Bhagat Sarki – were arrested at Matijhora in Kokrajhar District on September 13, 2014. A Defence Spokesman disclosed that NDFB-IKS was outsourcing activities such as kidnapping and extortion to these individuals.

It is significant that, in mid-August this year, the NDFB-IKS cadres had moved north from the Parbatjhora sub–division towards the Indo–Bhutan border, due to heightened combing operations and the neutralisation of self-styled ‘section commander’ B. Geremsha on July 21. UGPO militants might have been used by NDFB-IKS to fill the void, to continue their activities without attracting the attention of SFs, as inhabitants of Matijhora and adjoining villages are Nepalese. The Kokrajhar Police further stated that around 26 Nepali boys were trained at a camp in Myanmar by NSCN-IM about two years ago and joined NDFB-IKS after returning.

The success of the CI strategy employed by the SFs is further evidenced by the trend in surrenders. 29 NDFB-IKS cadres (out of a total of 50 surrendered militants in Assam) surrendered in the year 2014 (till October 10).

Crucially, according to the SATP database, Assam has been the most violent State in the North East this year, with a total of 193 fatalities [95 civilians, 5 SFs, and 93 militants] in 2014 (till October 8).

Although the SFs have been able to exert pressure on NDFB-IKS, severely denting its operational capabilities, the group persists with violence at a significant scale. Operational pressure by the SFs is unlikely to be sustained indefinitely, particularly against the backdrop of myopic political settlements with various insurgent factions that have lead to a fissionary process across the Northeast, creating a multiplicity of splinter groups. Worse, as long as poor political management, the abiding neglect of the basic needs of large segments of the population, unchecked illegal migration, and the polarisation of various ethnic and religious communities continue to mar Governance in the region, the cycle of militancy will not end, though it may suffer periodic reverses. Moreover, as long as the insurgent groups have safe havens across the border in countries such as Myanmar and Bangladesh, and the flow of weapons is not stopped, the insurgent problem cannot be expected to wither away.

M. A. Athul
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

The post India: A Threat Crystallizes In Assam – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Soumaya Ghannoushi

A collective sigh of relief was almost audible across Washington and other western capitals when Abdel Fattah el-Sisi accomplished the mission and successfully staged his blood-drenched military coup. They could all go back to business as usual with the Arabs. No need for the newly devised strategy of containment. No need to sing the praises of freedom, or pay lip service to the emancipation of nations or the popular will. Sisi’s US-furnished tanks and Gulf Sheikhdom petrodollars took care of tarnishing and demolishing the unwelcome Arab Spring. Time to rewind to pre-January 2011 and reconnect with old friends and companions. They have been sorely missed, indeed!

Ditch the new rhetoric of “change”, “transition”, “democratisation”, “the popular will” and “mutual respect”, and pull the worn out familiar dictionary in constant use since World War II out of the drawer. It’s now back to “stability”, “security”, “our interests”, and all the other euphemisms for forced political stagnation, active obstruction of change, and the coercively imposed status quo.

Voices which had been muted since the toppling of dictators in Egypt and Tunisia are reverberating once more. Take Dennis Ross who, writing in the New York Times recently, urged the US administration to go back to supporting its “friends and partners” in the region. Lest there should be confusion over who these may be, Ross does not hesitate in his article entitled “Islamists are not our friends” to define them in explicit terms. They are “the traditional monarchies, authoritarian governments, and secular reformers who may be small in number but have not disappeared.” They offer the only glimmer of light in an otherwise dark Arab ocean. They populate the tiny island that should serve as America’s sole gateway to the region and unique foothold therein. Forget the one and a half billion Muslims around the globe: “our” interests lie exclusively with these chosen few and the policies “we” pursue should wholly depend on them.

Everyone else is banished into a vast and vague category labelled “Islamism.” In this gigantic pot, the moderates of Tunisia’s Ennhadha, Malaysia’s Abim, and reformists of Iran suddenly find themselves thrown alongside the lunatics of al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) on the opposite end of the Islamic spectrum. The enormous intellectual and political differences that set them apart no longer matter. Sunnis, Shias, democrats, moderates, Salafis, extremists, and violent anarchists are bundled together and forced into a single monolithic block in a flagrant example of reductionism, oversimplification and colour-blindness.

Like many pseudo-liberals, Ross’s discourse is replete with contradictions. While calling for the support of hardened autocrats and ruthless dictators, they still feign an unwavering commitment to “our values” and “democratic pluralist traditions”. Democracy, rights and liberties thus turn into a thin veneer conveniently deployed to disguise the ugliness of egoistic strategies and policies pursued on the ground, a fig leaf behind which narrow myopic self-interest hides its nakedness.

Dismissing the Muslim scene as a homogenous entity outside history, these either ignore or willfully turn a blind eye to the intellectual and theological movements and conflicts unfolding there. For alongside thunderous political and military encounters, a more significant, though less visible confrontation is under way on Islam’s battleground. Three divergent strategies of interpretation are actively competing for Muslims’ allegiance.

The first, which traces its origins to the 19th century reform school, both in its Sunni and Shiite manifestations, sees no contradiction between Islam, democracy, human rights, women’s emancipation, and civil and public liberties. This is the brand of Islam endorsed by the likes of Tunisia’s Ennahdha party, Morocco’s Justice and Development Party and Turkey’s AKP. They are Islamists, but they are also democrats. Islam is their frame of reference, the same function performed by Christianity in the case of the Christian democrats and socialism for the Social democrats.

Against this competes an Islam espoused by autocracies and Gulf sheikhdoms, with their official clergy, government preachers, and ruthless religious police, tasked with legitimising the status quo, authoritarianism and repression in the name of religion and the protection of public mores. Their religion is a state ideology at the service of despotic rulers. This would appear to be the brand of Islam which friends of the Arab world’s autocrats and dictators, such as Ross, favour and would like to see the American administration support.

Sharing much with this form of Islam, particularly its orthodoxy, literalism and absolutism, proponents of the third interpretation endorse a different type of politics, however. They are Wahhabi anarchists. Their most vocal representatives are al-Qaeda and IS, who are determined to propel the Muslim world into senseless and endless wars with infidels, both within and without. Like “autocratic Islam”, this is virulently opposed to democracy, human rights, and individual freedoms and openly hostile to democratic Islam.

This is the current intellectual map of the Muslim world. The American administration needs to ponder which direction it would rather the region take. It must decide which Islam it wants: a peaceful, democratic Islam, crucial to any pursuit of real long term stability, or the anarchical and destructive Islam of al-Qaeda and IS, with its roots in the absolutism of Saudi Wahhabism.

At the apex of the neocon project, Condoleezza Rice had admitted that “For six decades…, a basic bargain defined the United States’ engagement in the broader Middle East: we supported authoritarian regimes, and they supported our shared interest in regional stability” confessing that “this old bargain had produced false stability.” It is astonishing that over a decade later, after two American military defeats and consecutive hasty retreats, as well as numerous popular revolts across the region, the American administration is being dragged back to the same disastrous strategy – which Obama had come to power on the pledge of revising and relinquishing.

The first wave of the “Arab Spring” may have receded under the crushing weight of “our” Gulf allies’ conspiracies to destroy political life – with petro-dollars and manufactured anarchy – wherever an Arab will to change has registered itself. But the demands at its core show no sign of ebbing away. Ross’s friends, who danced and cheered when Egypt descended into the bloody abyss of military coups, may succeed in delaying change. But that would only be for a while. They and their patrons in Washington and Europe may soon realize that the Arab masses’ demands for self-determination through democratic constitutions, freely elected parliaments and representative accountable governments may prove too difficult to bury, for the simple reason that they are genuine and entirely legitimate.

- Soumaya Ghannoushi is a British Tunisian writer and expert in Middle East politics. (This article was first published in Middle East Eye.)

The post Dennis Ross’s Recipe For Disaster In Middle East – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By N Sathiya Moorthy

If someone in Sri Lanka thought that the jail-term handed down to Jayalalithaa, until then the Chief Minister of the south Indian State of Tamil Nadu, would ease avoidable political tensions across the Palk Strait, they should be sadly mistaken. If they thought that pre-occupation with pending bail petition(s) and appeals against the Special Trial Court’s order in Bangalore, capital of the neighbouring State of Karnataka, would digress her attention away from major issues involving Sri Lanka, again they could be proved wrong.

At the end of the day, it’s about issues, and not just personalities. Or, it’s about perceptions on issues. In this case, it’s about perceptions of issues pertaining to Sri Lanka in sections of the polity and the people in Tamil Nadu. Whether right or wrong, those perceptions would not go away just because an incumbent Chief Minister is not around, or has been imprisoned in a corruption case, pertaining to her earlier term in office.

It did not go away when the rival DMK parent replaced Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK in office in 2006. It did not go away when Jayalalithaa in turn replaced DMK’s M Karunanidhi as Chief Minister in 2011. If anything, the intervening Eelam War IV only hardened political positions in Tamil Nadu viz the Sri Lankan Government on the two major issues concerning the south Indian State, the fishermen’s problem and the ethnic issue. The former is bilateral in nature, and the latter, in effect, a domestic issue in and of Sri Lanka but has acquired international relevance and consequent reference in the UNHRC and the like.

The competitive Dravidian politics in Tamil Nadu is known to whip up issues and positions, not to mention sentiments and emotions, more in proportion to local political competition than what the situation on the ground in Sri Lanka might even demand. It does not pertain exclusively to issues relating to Sri Lanka. On domestic issues, be it on language (anti-Hindi), or river water disputes (with the neighbouring States of Karnataka and Kerala, respectively on the Cauvery and Mullaperiyar dam storage-height), the DMK and the AIADMK, the PMK and the MDMK have individually and competitively upped the ante viz the rest of ‘em all.

There is a perceptible difference in the case of Sri Lanka-related issues, though. It’s no more such mainline Dravidian parties that are that initiators of the cause, or the assigned propagators of the same. Post-war, the mainline parties, one after the other, has been replaced by new and varied groups, some of them faceless to date. Whether it’s the more vocalised ethnic issue, or the even more immediate fishermen’s problems, the larger Dravidian parties have come to eat out of their hands, one way or the other.

If Karunanidhi and the DMK failed, and someone else like Jayalalithaa and her AIADMK regained prominence after a break, it seemed to have been possibly built into the scheme. Rather, too eager not to let go of that limited electoral constituency but a larger political possibility, the party in Government has to either co-opt the new and smaller groups after a time, and also seek to drown them in the short-lived popularity of their own even faster.

Hijacking the cause

As is known, smaller and more recent outfits like actor-politician Seeman’s’Naam Tamizhar Katchi’ (“We the Tamil Party”), faceless students organisations that are difficult to track and a host of other self-styled civil rights groups and individuals with unexplained deep pockets are at the forefront of the Tamil Nadu protests against Sri Lanka on the ethnic concerns in the island-nation and more particularly, accountability issues flowing from Eelam War IV. Mainline Dravidian/pan-Tamil parties have to take off from where these smaller entities have left, or hijack the cause and effect from them, without batting an eyelid.

It owes to perceptions, particularly among the hard-line sections of the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora, that the mainline Dravidian parties had mostly used the ethnic issue as an electoral cause for their own benefit nearer home in India than address what they thought were the real concerns. If anything, it’s the new-found, post-war Diaspora love for new groups and leaderships to carry their message across Tamil Nadu and to whichever Government in Delhi.

In a way, at least these sections of the Diaspora seem to believe that the orchestrated competitive pressure exerted by this smaller groups that’s behind the Tamil Nadu Assembly, with Jayalalithaa as Chief Minister, having to pass a unanimous resolution for a referendum in the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka on the future political and administrative set-up. The Diaspora hand got revealed even more than usual when the resolution said that they too should have the right to vote in such a referendum.

That it’s against the official position of the elected Tamil National Alliance (TNA) administration in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province goes without saying. The TNA still sticks to the early post-war position of a negotiated settlement within a united Sri Lanka.

It remains to be seen what message the resolutions passed by the dominant ITAK leader of the TNA at its 15th national conference at Vavuniya in early September has on the Tamil cause and for the Tamil masses, both inside and outside Sri Lanka. Tamil Nadu cannot be left out.

Entering the fray directly

On the fishing issue, for instance, gone are the days when political parties like the CPI and MDMK in particular used to highlight the mid-sea plight of southern Tamil Nadu’s fisher-folk. While the DMK, AIADMK and the likes of ‘Naam Thamizhar Katchi’ are all there, lending a voice of sympathy and support as always, lately, fisher-folk and their organisations along the southern coast have entered the fray more directly.

It owes to their not wanting competitive politics of the other kind neutralising their collective position, and at the same time be able to negotiate directly with the Governments in India and Sri Lanka, over the head of the polity of whatever kind.

Yet, with the recurrence of mid-sea episodes, mainly arrest of Tamil Nadu fishermen by the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) and their detention in local prisons on court orders, the fisher-folk in the State do acknowledge the political support that they require.

To raise their concerns in the State Assembly and the national Parliament, they need the political parties. With Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK having a substantial number of seats in the State Assembly and swept the Lok Sabha polls in May 2014, the party and the leader have become their mascot. It could not have been otherwise or the other way round, either.

Suffice thus is to point out that within days of becoming Chief Minister in Jayalalithaa’s place after her conviction and imprisonment, AIADMK’s O Panneerselvam shot off a missive to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in true Jaya style, on the plight and fate of TN fishermen arrested by the Sri Lanka Navy only the previous day. He has since followed it up with another missive, too, after yet another episode of the kind.

This one, like an occasional alternate from Jayalalithaa when in power, too has underlined the State’s demand for the Centre’s funding to rehabilitate the TN fishermen. Under the circumstances, the reference seems to be to deep-sea fishing, an alternate to the troubled and controversial trawler-fishing by TN fishermen, across the Palk Strait and close to the Sri Lankan Tamil provincial coastline.

If there were no missives of the kind in between, it might have owed also to the Sri Lankan Government freeing more Tamil Nadu fishermen, arrested on earlier occasions.

Whether or not those releases had to do with the earlier New York meeting between President Mahinda Rajapaksa and PM Modi, they did serve an immediate purpose. But that too seems to be giving way, with the ruling AIADMK returning to the missive-war with the Centre, as always in these months after the party’s return to power after the 2011 Assembly elections in the State.

Shared concerns

There has remained a perception in Sri Lanka, particularly in government and certain sections of the majority Sinhala, polity that those of the Governments and polity in Tamil Nadu and those at the national-level in India, on these two issues, are dissimilar.

Nothing can be farther from the truth. Successive Governments in Tamil Nadu and at the Centre have shared similar concerns over the fate of Indian fishermen and of the ethnic issue in Sri Lanka.

They have most definitely differed on the diplomatic initiatives and options available to India on these fronts – and the kind of solutions that could be considered.

To jump to the conclusion that the Government of India would lower its guard on the fishermen problems or wish away the ethnic issue in the absence of Jayalalithaa as Chief Minister should be a revived exhibition of continued Sri Lankan ignorance of the ground situation. Such hopes had been held in the past, branding then Chief Minister Karunanidhi as pan-Tamil or pro-LTTE.

Such hopes, also involving expectations for Jayalalithaa to return to power in the 2011 Assembly elections produced exactly opposite results. It cannot be different now.

At the end of the day, a weakened voice from Tamil Nadu on either or both these issues would add to the responsibilities of the Government of India. It could but not necessarily would provide the required space for manoeuvrability. Be it the 13-A or the IPKF induction in the Eighties, or the Katchchativu agreements of 1974 and 1976, the Tamil Nadu polity and whichever government that has been in power have claimed that they were neither consulted, nor their concurrence taken in the matter(s).

On the political side, too, under pressure to expand the electoral base between now and the next Lok Sabha polls five years hence, the ruling BJP at the Centre cannot be seen as being insensitive to Tamil Nadu’s concerns on these two issues, now or later.

With the State Assembly polls anyway scheduled for May 2016, the TN BJP leadership has been taking a hard-line stand on both, particularly after Modi became Prime Minister in May. If nothing else, the party needs to retain its DMDK, PMK and MDMK allies from the Lok Sabha polls for 2016, all of whom have a definitive position and posturing on Sri Lanka-related issues. In the absence of a ‘Modi wave’ of the Lok Sabha polls kind, the BJP would have to play accommodation than assertion in 2016 and even beyond – and not the other way round.

Yet, there is no denying the window of opportunity that the current political situation in Tamil Nadu may have provided the Sri Lankan Government and President Mahinda Rajapaksa, to address the larger and genuine concerns involving the ethnic issue on the one hand and the fishermen’ problem on the other.

Sure enough, the Indian Centre is more approachable, both in terms of form and content, than the Tamil Nadu Government and polity they are shy of being caught in the act by political competitors nearer home than any genuine concern for resolving both problems without involving the Sri Lankan Government. It cannot afford to lose (out on) the opportunity.

The Sri Lankan Government may also be advantageously-placed viz Diaspora influence than over the recent months and years, just now.

Having identified in Jayalalithaa a strong and popular leader talking their language on the ethnic issue and at the same time, a Chief Minister, who reflected their moods and sentiments of these sections of the Diaspora have been caught-off-guard. The systematic media black-out of the Bangalore court proceedings across India until the Judgment Day meant that the Diaspora too had lost sight of the possibilities.

The Diaspora thus needs to rethink their strategy for Tamil Nadu, and regroup a second-line, which may now be shy of batting for them beyond a point, they having understood the Diaspora’s LTTE-linked philosophy and strategy.

That strategy has always put the message far ahead of the messenger.

Their ultimate goal of a separate State has been the philosophy.

The messenger, whoever is politically dependable and electorally attractive – whether in Sri Lanka or India, Norway or Canada has only been the tactic. Worse still, they have always remained only a part of the tactic.

(The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter)

Courtesy: The Sunday Leader, Colombo, October 11, 2014.

The post Sri Lanka: Jaya Judgment And After – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

How have India’s intelligence agencies evolved since 1947 and how might they respond to al Qaeda’s recent call for an Islamic revival within the country? Find out in today’s Questions and Answers session with the CSS’s Prem Mahadevan.

By Prem Mahadevan

ISN: Could you briefly outline how India’s intelligence apparatus has evolved since 1947.

PMA: India’s premier civilian intelligence agencies are the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW): the former deals with domestic intelligence, the latter with foreign intelligence. In addition, there are the intelligence directorates of the Armed Forces. Upon independence in 1947, the IB was the only real intelligence organization that India possessed. Set up in 1887, this agency had been responsible for political surveillance during the British Raj. After India achieved independence, it was entrusted with additional responsibility for foreign intelligence. Between 1951 and 1968, the agency struggled to meet a very broad mandate in a deteriorating regional security environment, as India’s relations with its neighbors plummeted. China and Pakistan launched unexpectedly audacious attacks in 1962 and 1965 respectively, prompting a realization among the Indian political leadership that a specialized agency was needed for foreign intelligence. Thus, in 1968, the R&AW was created. Both agencies have had impressive successes and some rather nasty intelligence failures. The IB in particular is considered as one of the most professional intelligence agencies anywhere in the world, and has achieved a remarkable measure of success in counterterrorism.

India’s intelligence agencies have long been concerned with detecting and responding to the security threats generated from Pakistan. Did this make them an instant ‘partner of choice’ in the West’s  so-called war on terror?

Logically it would. In practice, however, the West wishes to retain a modicum of goodwill from the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which alongside the Pakistani army, is the main sponsor of terrorist groups in South Asia. This is to be expected, since the ISI is rationing out counterterrorism cooperation to those states that avoid criticizing Pakistan too harshly for its Janus-faced policy of supporting some terrorists while fighting others. With its large and restive Pakistani-origin population the United Kingdom in particular, is vulnerable to Islamabad’s blackmail in maintaining homeland security. British security officials privately admit this. Even so, the West’s intelligence partnership with Pakistan is a tactical affair borne not of mutual trust and goodwill, but out of the negative leverage that Islamabad retains through its dalliance with radical Islamist groups. As such, Indian intelligence agencies share a strategic interest with their Western counterparts in dealing with the threat of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism that transcends the divide-and-conquer games that the ISI tries to play. There is already an informal intelligence-sharing network where security agencies compare notes on the kind of dissimulation efforts that Pakistan engages in. Also, India’s intelligence services make reliable long-term partners for the West since they operate under full civilian control and within a democratic framework.

Al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri recently called for an Islamist resurgence among India’s Muslim community. What’s the status of radical Islam inside the country? Will al-Zawahiri’s message have the desired effect?

The general consensus in India is that Zawahiri’s call is part of an effort by the ISI to regain plausible deniability for its sponsorship of terrorist attacks, which was partially lost after the Mumbai 2008 attack. Knowing that Indian political and public opinion would push for strong retaliation in the event of a future terrorist onslaught from Pakistani territory, the ISI is trying to preemptively deny responsibility by floating the idea that ‘non-state actors’ are responsible. It has used the same tactic in the past, when in 2007 it created the so-called ‘Indian Mujahideen’ group, using a small number of jihadists locally recruited from within India to carry out urban bombings. Even if one assumes, however, that Zawahiri’s call for jihad against India was made independently of ISI prompting, the fact remains that the core leadership of Al Qaeda is increasingly dominated by Pakistani nationals. A decade-plus of Western counterterrorist operations has badly weakened the Al Qaeda command structure in Pakistan, making it vulnerable to a creeping takeover by local jihadists. So there is no way that Pakistani involvement in a future terrorist attack on India cannot be traced back to that country’s borders. What remains an open question is whether the ISI itself can escape international condemnation, which it is hoping to do.

It’s obvious that India’s intelligence agencies will be cautious in how they deal with Islamist extremists operating inside the country. Is there anything you can tell us about their basic modus operandi and how effective it has been in tackling extremism thus far?

The Indian security establishment has a well-developed doctrine to combat political subversion, and counterinsurgency and counterterrorism are subsets of a larger effort to preserve the democratic framework of the country. This means that working together with communities that are potentially marginalized or disaffected is essential. India’s most powerful defense against terrorism has been the consistent patriotism of its Muslim population, which largely recognizes that the ISI is keen to falsely implicate them in cross-border attacks so as to provoke a larger conflict within the country. During the 2008 Mumbai attack for instance, the farcical manner in which Pakistani terrorists tried to masquerade as locals under the moniker of ‘Deccan Mujahideen’ showed how amateurish the ISI’s false-flag operations can be. Indian Muslims are wary of the larger design behind such antics.

Human intelligence from deep-penetration agents, mostly operated by the IB, has been one of the reasons why foreign jihadist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba have been unable to make any headway in Kashmir over two decades, despite the terrain favoring guerrilla warfare. Likewise, resistance from mainstream Islamic seminaries in India has been a barrier to Pakistani subversion. A classic example was the May 2008 fatwa against terrorism issued by the Dar-ul Uloom seminary in Deoband, the most prestigious in South Asia. Pakistani Islamists were greatly upset by this development, and also by the manner in which the seminary called upon Indian Muslims to show complete solidarity with their Hindu countrymen after the terrorist attack on Mumbai.

To what extent do the intelligence agencies coordinate their activities with India’s police forces? Are some regions and cities prioritized over others?

Neither the IB nor the R&AW is a law enforcement agency. They need to cooperate with Indian police forces as a matter of routine. This is helped by the fact that both agencies are dominated by career police officials. In particular, the IB draws its senior cadres exclusively from the Indian Police Service (IPS) which makes for a strong sense of camaraderie. Even so, competition between various state police forces, or within a police force, is an unfortunate reality and this has in the past, led to some counterterrorist operations being bungled by the implementing agency. Generally, the focus is on preventing terrorist attacks in large cities, where the police have extensive local intelligence networks based on human sources. The IB and R&AW possess significant technical interception capabilities which can be used to generate strategic intelligence on Pakistani and other foreign threats. However, while coverage might be higher in some regions rather than others, this has to do with the inevitable need to optimize resource allocation towards the most pressing concerns. The fact that numerous Pakistani spies and terrorists have been arrested in remote rural areas, often close to international borders, demonstrates that coverage can be quite extensive.

In “National Security and Intelligence Management: A New Paradigm,” Vappala Balachandran suggests that the effectiveness of India’s national security apparatus is being compromised by the competing interests of several key ministries. To what extent is this true and how does it complicate intelligence gathering?

That there are competing priorities among different ministries is only to be expected in a country with a unique policy problem: how to ensure equitable and sustained economic growth by integrating with the global economy, while at the same time acquiring the structural integrity that strong Western states have in policing their borders. Indian intelligence agencies have been badly hit by economizing trends in the past, and this has usually resulted in information gaps. Projects to streamline data collation and storage have been stymied by the reluctance of some agencies to share information which their counterparts do not need for operational purposes. While I would agree that bureaucratic rivalries are unhelpful, it is also worth remembering that even supposedly efficient intelligence services such as those in Israel have suffered from turf warfare (known colloquially as ‘The War of the Jews’). In Northern Ireland, British intelligence agencies have competed for local sources, going to the extent of undermining national counterterrorist efforts in the pursuit of narrow organizational interests. And prior to 9/11, the US intelligence community was no different – counterterrorism coordination meetings were intended for show rather than substance.

Prem Mahadevan is a senior researcher with the Global Security Team at the Center for Security Studies (CSS). He specializes in the study of intelligence systems and sub-state conflict, and is responsible at the CSS for tracking geopolitical trends and jihadist terrorism in the Indo-Pacific region.

The post Unpacking India’s Intelligence Agencies – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Michael Lelyveld

As China struggles through a slowdown in economic growth, the government is trying to shift attention to other measures of success.

On Sept. 12, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced that it would start issuing a variety of new reports in an effort to end the country’s preoccupation with its gross domestic product (GDP).

Ten days later, the official Xinhua news agency said the decision to publish over 40 new economic indicators on subjects ranging from urbanization to the environment “signals the end of the era of ‘GDP supremacy.'”

For decades, officials at all levels have pursued high GDP growth rates, reflecting the broadest index of economic expansion and their own worthiness for promotion.

But in recent years, as pollution has worsened, the central government has repeatedly urged provincial and local authorities to take other factors into account.

Last November, the Third Plenum of the ruling Chinese Communist Party Central Committee pledged to “reform the evaluation and promotion system for party officials,” which has been linked to wasteful development, environmental damage and societal ills.

“We should no longer judge leaders solely by GDP growth,” President Xi Jinping said in a speech last year.

“Instead, we should look at welfare improvements, social development and environmental indicators to evaluate leaders,” Xi said.

The NBS effort to release more reports on dry subjects like “structural optimization” and the debt-to-fiscal revenue ratio may be seen as furthering the government’s reform program by measuring performance in terms other than unsustainable growth.

On Oct. 2, the NBS issued the first of the new reports, estimating that spending on research and development rose to 2.08 percent of GDP last year, compared with 1.98 percent in 2012, according to Xinhua.

Diversionary tactic

But the attempt to set new benchmarks for success at a time when GDP growth rates are dropping may also be a diversionary tactic to draw attention from the country’s economic difficulties.

Arguably, the NBS initiative would have been less susceptible to suspicions of political manipulation when GDP growth rates were on the rise rather than on the decline.

“They’re stopping the focus when the numbers aren’t so great,” said Gary Hufbauer, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

This year, the government has defied expectations that it would return to the massive investment-led economic stimulus programs of the past as GDP growth has slipped from 7.7 percent in 2013 to 7.4 percent in the first half of this year.

Last month, Wang Tao, an economist at UBS AG in Hong Kong, lowered her third-quarter growth forecast from 7.3 to 7.1 percent, reflecting continued weakness. Wang’s forecast for the year is 7.2 percent, the official English-language China Daily said.

Premier Li Keqiang’s official target for 2014 is 7.5 percent. Although he has recently suggested flexibility for small deviations, the government’s resistance to stimulus policy is likely to be tested if growth nears 7 percent.

Last month, Reuters reported that a five-year low in factory output growth in August had raised fears that the economy “may be at risk of a sharp slowdown unless Beijing takes fresh stimulus measures.”

By offering the market new forms of data, the NBS appears to be mounting a defense of the government’s policies in case GDP growth continues to fade.

On Sept. 13, The Wall Street Journal suggested that the NBS might also change GDP calculations to emphasize intellectual property investment and spending on research and development, making growth look better, although year-to-year comparisons could become more opaque.

Missing targets

The question is whether the government is only seeking to dress up the GDP numbers because it knows they are unlikely to improve soon.

“If it means that China is giving up on 7.5-percent growth as a meaningful target, that’s pretty significant in terms of the longer-term projections that we’ve all made,” Hufbauer said.

In recent weeks, China’s official press has been laying the groundwork for missing the government targets or lowering them.

On Oct. 3, Xinhua published a commentary citing slower growth as the “new normal,” citing economists’ expectations that rates would soon drop to 7 percent.

While analysts’ comments have turned increasingly glum, international reaction to the cooling economy and government policy may be mixed since multilateral institutions and non-governmental organizations have urged China for years to curb the pursuit of blind growth and GDP.

The GDP juggernaut created growth rates as high as 14.1 percent in 2007, according to one measure used by the International Monetary Fund. The binge gave birth to new wealth but also resource destruction and environmental degradation that may take generations to reverse.

If Li continues to defy calls for broad stimulus steps, it could mark a turning point for both economic and environmental policies.

But the NBS plan to release a raft of new data raises concerns, in part because its old data has been frequently challenged as unreliable in the past.

Reporting discrepancies

China’s government has pursued campaigns to clean up NBS economic reporting for well over a decade, but the results have been largely lacking, especially with regard to GDP.

Despite new collection procedures and penalties for data inflation at the local level, falsification has persisted as officials continue to seek advancement through pumped-up reports.

In 2005, for example, the NBS disclosed that GDP data from local governments for the previous year exceeded national totals by 3.9 percentage points, or nearly 2.66 trillion yuan (U.S. $321 billion at 2004 rate), Xinhua reported at the time.

In 2009, the central government enacted a revised Law on Statistics, providing stiff penalties for falsification.

But in the first half of this year, the GDP reports from China’s provinces again topped national figures by 3.4 trillion yuan (U.S. $554 billion at current rate), a 12.6-percent margin, China Youth Daily reported.

The discrepancies give little confidence that accuracy has improved, a problem that may only be duplicated in the new reports, particularly if they are used by officials to spur their careers.

“The only way to deal with that is to have a totally independent statistical office,” said Hufbauer. “That’s not exactly the Chinese way.”

Derek Scissors, resident scholar on Asian economics at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said the new initiative “probably means very little.”

“Most likely, they’ll just highlight whatever series makes government policy choices look better,” said Scissors.

“Because GDP is flawed as an indicator everywhere, de-emphasizing GDP is a small step forward. But the problem of Chinese statistics as propaganda would be unchanged,” he said.

Earlier attempts

This is far from the first time that China has tried to downgrade GDP growth as a goal.

“GDP will no longer be the major index to decide local officials’ career and promotion prospects,” said an official of the State Information Center, quoted by party flagship paper People’s Daily in 2003.

“Instead, the employment and social welfare services will also be taken into consideration in judging officials’ achievements,” the official said.

The NBS may have signaled that it will try to put disappointing GDP numbers in a more favorable historical context with a Sept. 28 report, covered by Xinhua.

According to the agency, China’s GDP last year reached 56.9 trillion yuan (U.S. $9.32 trillion), which accounted for 12.3 percent of the world’s economy.

The figures represent “remarkable progress” since 1952, when China’s GDP was only 67.9 billion yuan, the NBS said. Over the period, per capita GDP has grown from 119 yuan to 41,908 yuan, the bureau said.

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