An Indian peace road map in Iraq

July 5, 2014

Updated: July 5, 2014 02:42 IST

Satyabrata Pal

India should be urging both the U.S. and Iran not to intervene militarily in Iraq.

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and its allies have made remarkable inroads into northern Iraq. The contingency plans announced by the government of India, including the dispatch of naval ships, assume that the ISIS advance will continue, leading to a collapse of state authority and an ensuing chaos from which our nationals will have to be extricated. This is the worst-case scenario, and it is always wise to be prepared for the worst, but it appears that the government believes this is the likeliest outcome, which India can do nothing to prevent. These assumptions need to be thought through.

ISIS, tribes and sectarianism

The central assumption, implicit in our planning, is that the ISIS charge will continue unchecked, but this is unlikely. The whirligig of time brings in its revenges; paradoxically, ISIS is the beneficiary of the U.S. “surge,” which was directed at its earlier avatars and deployed in the areas and towns that most Indians are now hearing of. The Petraeus strategy was to choke off local support to the Baath diehards and al-Qaeda imports he was hunting. Since in the U.S. view, Iraq was primarily a tribal society, the tribes were the water in which its enemies swam. The tribes of the Sunni triangle, where the uprising was concentrated, were therefore given a choice to join the U.S. against the rebels or be pulverised. Most chose to join, for reasons of compelling self-interest.

These Sunni tribes of the north and west, which prospered under Saddam Hussein, suffered from the rise of Shia militias in the south and east, and were excluded from power in Baghdad after his fall. They knew the surge was temporary, the precursor to a complete withdrawal of the U.S. forces that had afforded them partial protection from Shia retribution. They saw two advantages in working with the U.S. during the surge. First, they thought that if they helped the U.S. when it needed help the most, it would in gratitude ensure that their interests were protected by the government in Baghdad. If the U.S. failed them, the money and arms it was promising for their help would give them the means to defend themselves should things fall apart after it left.

Unfortunately for the Sunnis, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is rigidly sectarian. Sunnis have been sidelined and persecuted, with the U.S. either helpless or indifferent to the plight of the tribes with whose help it declared the victory which permitted its troops to leave. Sunni fears and anger have soared; their tribes were ripe for rebellion. ISIS, strengthened by its successes in Syria, came along at just the right moment. The provinces it has swept through are those where the principal Sunni tribes live. These tribes are making common cause with a group whose predecessor they first befriended and then fought on behalf of the U.S., but their target remains now, as it was then, a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad that treats them, they believe, as the enemy.

In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, Sheikh Ali Hatim Al-Suleimani, the head of the Dulaim, Iraq’s largest tribe, which lives in Anbar province, has described the latest events as a tribal revolt. He has claimed that tribal “military committees” have been formed in the provinces of Anbar, Nineveh, Salah Al-Din and Diyala, apart from Baghdad. The first four provinces were the ones through which what was assumed to be the ISIS advance passed like a knife through butter. They are the territories of the tribes that the U.S. assessed as the most important during its surge — the Dulaim and the Shammar in Anbar, the Al-Jubour in Nineveh and the Al-Douri in Salah Al-Din. When these tribes joined ISIS and let them through, the Shia Iraq Army had no chance, and no stomach for a fight, in what was for it entirely hostile territory.

As soon as ISIS moved out of these tribal territories, as it intruded on Kurd turf, for instance, it was repelled. Without the support of the tribes, it cannot make any further headway, and they cannot fight beyond their tribal purlieus. The Sunni tribes know that the closer they come to Baghdad, the greater the chances of the Shia tribes and militia attacking them on their flanks from Najaf and Karbala; they also know that the Army, on what is traditionally Shia heartland, will be much more resolute. It is most unlikely therefore that there will be a military collapse that will force us to evacuate our nationals, though there may be more fighting in the weeks ahead.

Spillover into Syria

Even that should subside, because there are reports that ISIS has taken over to Syria the arms and equipment it captured in the advance in Iraq. Like the Taliban before it, it has now anointed its leader the caliph and promulgated a caliphate. This will be resisted by other groups, in Syria more quickly than in Iraq, because ISIS has already alienated its former allies there. If anything then, the fighting in eastern Syria may escalate, while Iraq relapses into a relative quietude.

What will continue is the daily violence in Iraq’s cities, which however has been endemic for over a year now. The final report to the U.S. Congress of its Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), delivered in September last year, noted that “Iraq has become significantly more dangerous … the last four months have been the most violent period in the country since the summer of 2008 …. Fighting in Syria has further complicated security in these areas … facilitated the cross-border movements of personnel from … the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham, or ISIS) …. The month of Ramadan saw more than 1,000 killed in attacks around the country … Baghdad sustained more than half of the casualties, and ISIS reportedly claimed responsibility for the attacks.”

Ramadan has just begun this year. If the past is any precedent, organised fighting may taper off in Iraq, though the government will try to retake the towns overrun by ISIS and the tribes, but terrorist violence will increase.

Arab politics

There is, however, one scenario that remains deeply disturbing. In this, Mr. al-Maliki’s cynical attempts to frighten the U.S. and coax Iran to help him militarily would bear fruit; the U.S. is presently unwilling but Iran will not need too much persuasion. That would be a nightmare for the Sunnis, a two-headed monster of the crusader and the Shias, against which they would unite. The Saudis, for whom Iran’s influence in Iraq is anathema, but who fear ISIS, will try to wean the Sunni tribes away from the “caliphate,” as the U.S. did, with more money and guns. The tactic has worked in Syria, where ISIS is isolated among the groups fighting Mr. Assad. This is a double-edged sword, because if Iran feels that the Sunni tribes are being armed and financed to overthrow the al-Maliki regime, rather than to drive out ISIS, it will step up its support to him and to the Shia militias, bringing about just the polarisation and fracture that must be averted.

Indian role

Iran and Saudi Arabia will be watching each other like hawks across Iraq. Each needs to be reassured about the other’s intentions; neither trusts the other, nor the only present interlocutor, the U.S. There is therefore a role for a country that might bridge the chasm of distrust that divides those who are jockeying for influence in Iraq.

Our primary interest in Iraq is in its oil, which is in areas controlled by the Kurds and the Shias. The present turmoil does not affect that interest, but a full-scale civil war would. ISIS cannot bring that about; a clever manipulation of the ISIS threat by the regime in Baghdad, sucking in the U.S. and Iran on its side, and the Saudis on the other, would. With Indians held hostage, and the regime apparently unable to rescue them, there is a natural anxiety in India to look for help where we can find it; the prospect of an intervention by the U.S. and/or Iran might appear appealing, but it would be disastrous for our long-term interests in Iraq as it would for the country.

We should be urging both the U.S. and Iran not to intervene militarily in Iraq; the regime will be able to turn back the ISIS tide on its own. Simultaneously, we should urge the Saudis not to ratchet up their support for the tribes to a point where either the Iraqi government or the Iranians see it as a threat. And, with all of Iraq’s friends, we should try to prevail upon Mr. al-Maliki to rise above sectarian differences and embrace the Sunnis and their leaders as fellow citizens. In its own interest, India has a role to play in Iraq now which extends well beyond sending warships which will not be needed if its advice works and which will be almost useless if it does not.

(Satyabrata Pal is a former diplomat.)

 

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/an-indian-peace-road-map-in-iraq/article6178088.ece

War in Iraq hurts every home in India

June 18, 2014

Updated: June 19, 2014 00:47 IST

 

The Islamist resurgence in the great arc from Syria to Pakistan is threatening India’s most vital interest — energy. New Delhi needs to start thinking about how it might respond

“Iraqi democracy will succeed,” President George Bush proclaimed days after United States forces had brushed aside President Saddam Hussein’s forces in just three weeks of concentrated attacks, in 2003, “and that success will send forth news, from Damascus to Tehran, that freedom can be the fate of every nation.” Faced with reports of large-scale looting that followed the fall of Baghdad on April 12 that year, his ideological mentor and Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was dismissive: “freedom’s untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes ….”

Fate authored tragedy, classical writers held, through a cycle of hubris, atë, and nemesis: overweening ambition, followed by impetuous actions, leading on, inexorably, to destruction.

Last week, the epic wars unleashed by Mr. Bush in the wake of 9/11 took a step closer toward their tragic climax. Islamist armies, more powerful than ever before, have swept aside Iraq’s military in Mosul, Tikrit and Bayji; in Syria, too, they control large swathes of territory. Yemen has all but disintegrated; Pakistan is in apparently terminal meltdown. Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two largest regional powers, have been eyeing each other warily — each wondering when the ethnic-religious fires raging across the region will ignite a full-blown war between them.

Hubris, powered by oil
Indians ought to be paying close attention, for this war will hit homes from Kupwara to Kanyakumari. Fifty-seven per cent of India’s crude oil imports come from states directly threatened by the looming chaos in West Asia — Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq itself. Long wars in the region could disrupt supplies and raise prices, undermining India’s hopes of an economic revival.

For New Delhi’s strategic establishment, this war will prove a moment of decision about India’s place in the world — and just what it is prepared to do to protect it.

“Persian oil,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt told a British diplomat in 1944, “is yours. We share the oil of Iraq and Kuwait. As for Saudi Arabian oil, it’s ours.” Following the end of the Second World War, the U.S. set up a string of military bases, stretching from Turkey to the Persian Gulf, guarding the world’s most crucial resource, and the regimes that sat on it. From 1946 to the eve of 9/11, the U.S.’ military investment more than paid off: prices stood steady at about $20 a barrel, measured at 2012 prices, bar for a short period after 1973.

Last year though, President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. was no longer interested in “being the world’s policeman.” In a speech delivered earlier this summer, he expanded on that vision, saying that military force would only be used to protect American lives against direct threats.

The economic rationale behind Mr. Obama’s thinking is simple: by 2025, the shale oil and gas revolution in the U.S. will have long freed it of dependence on imported hydrocarbons. “Every year,” he recently said, “we are becoming more energy independent.”

Energy-thirsty emerging economies in Asia will, in that year, be importing a record 33.6 million barrels per day.

To understand how the world got here, we must go back to President Bush’s great moment of hubris: to the world order he sought to build after 9/11. “America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge,” he said, “thereby making the destabilising arms races of the other eras pointless, and limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace.”

In a thoughtful 2008 paper, the scholars, Brian Schmidt and Michael Williams, noted that a wild-eyed idealism underpinned these notions: American power represented “a force of democratisation that all people desire and will support if only they are given the opportunity.” Put another way, once various despots were displaced, New Edens would erect themselves, as if by divine will.

Atë at work
Mr. Rumsfeld believed technology-driven warfare could deliver the limitless military power the U.S. sought — the beginning of the atë, or irrational decisions, which would lead on to nemesis. Mr. Rumsfeld’s new weapons did indeed work against conventional forces, decimating the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and Hussein’s army in Iraq. Technology-led warfare was, however, found wanting when it was tested by insurgents. Precision air strikes were not, for example, of great use against roadside explosives or car bombs.

Furthermore, the U.S. found that it simply didn’t have the numbers of troops to fight the wars it faced. Pentagon military planners had said they would need some 500,000 troops in Iraq — but the assault was executed with just 1,40,000, of whom just 78,000 were ground forces. That meant there were inadequate numbers of personnel for policing operations, like sealing off borders against infiltration.

Later, Mr. Obama listened to his generals and did send more troops in — but only after public opinion had tired of war, and the coffers were empty. Mr. Bush’s doctrinaire opposition to raising taxes meant that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were waged with borrowed cash. In 2009, as Mr. Obama took office, the U.S.’ budget deficit stood at $1.4 trillion, or 10 per cent of Gross Domestic Product — the largest, relative to the economy, since World War II.

“Now, Iraq is not a perfect place,” Mr. Obama conceded in a speech delivered as his troops withdrew from the country, in December 2011. “But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.”

Few people will be willing to believe that a man as smart as the United States President could possibly have believed his own words.

The prospects of nemesis
From 1999, when former Defence Minister George Fernandes first raised the idea of globally-deployable forces, India has known it may face nemesis in West Asia, and tentatively prepared itself. In 2007, the Indian Navy acquired the amphibious transport dock ‘Jalashwa,’ mobile landing pads and combat assets. The Air Force has enhanced its mid-air refuelling capabilities, allowing combat jets to execute missions over distant targets. In a 2010 book, Lieutenant General Satish Nambiar spoke of the need to ensure Indian forces could take a “lead role in the immediate and extended neighbourhood” — in essence, intervene militarily in conflicts which threatened citizens’ lives or economic interests.

The major lesson to be drawn from Mr. Bush’s wars, though, is that the capability to wage war isn’t nearly enough. In a thoughtful essay on the U.S.’ war in Iraq, scholar Toby Dodge has noted that the neoconservatives grouped around Mr. Bush believed that, left to themselves, people would make rational choices, paving the way for a free market economy.

Mr. Rumsfeld successfully argued that a long-term presence in Afghanistan would be “unnatural,” even “counterproductive”; in the neoconservative imagination, there was no room for the reconstruction of polities and political systems.

Paul Bremer thus set about dismantling the Iraqi Army and bureaucracy; in Afghanistan, administration and security were subcontracted to warlords and criminals. Like war, peace could be won cheap.

Back in 1985, social scientist Charles Tilly had explained why warlordism would lead to perpetual chaos. European warlords, he argued, laid the foundations of the modern state system in the centuries after 1400, using the growing revenues from the territories they controlled to build evermore sophisticated militaries. Economic imperatives restrained states from waging total wars.

In countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, though, these constraints did not apply: external support allowed warlords and insurgents to develop their military capabilities independently of their ability to mobilise resources. Mr. Bush’s hegemonic aspirations, moreover, led potential allies — in Afghanistan, Iran, Russia and China — to act as spoilers, fearing that they might be future targets.

The inheritors of this dysfunction have been the Islamist armies we see sweeping across western Asia: adroit in their ability to manipulate communal Shi’a-Sunni strains that political systems have been unable to mediate; enriched by support from state sponsors, extortion and drugs; safe from great-power adversaries without any equity in fighting protracted wars.

For India to succeed in protecting its vital energy interests in western Asia, it will need the focussed application of all elements of its national power: military, yes, but also diplomatic and economic. Hard as it may be, New Delhi will have to find ways to work with China and Japan, the two other Asian states powered by West Asian oil. Powers across the region will have to find cooperative mechanisms to finance future interventions that may become necessary.

The time to start thinking about these, and building the appropriate instruments, is today.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/war-in-iraq-hurts-every-home-in-india/article6123752.ece?homepage=true

Ceaseless conflict in West Asia

July 14, 2014

Updated: July 14, 2014 02:49 IST

Anew dance of death has started in Gaza after Israel began ceaseless rounds of air strikes, following rocket attacks by the Palestinian Hamas. The complete disproportionality of force in response to Hamas’ strikes can be measured in numbers. Over 500 missile strikes by Hamas have not resulted in a single Israeli death. But in sharp contrast, an estimated 165 Palestinians have perished in Israeli air raids. Strikingly, civilian casualties have surged. While the Israelis term the death of non-combatants as “collateral damage”, the unintentional consequence of the focussed targeting of Palestinian “terrorist nests”, many Israeli commentators are energetically countering the official Israeli narrative. Writing in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Gideon Levy illuminatingly observed that the targeting of civilians may be deliberate — the culmination of a perverse military logic of bringing about calm by causing maximum societal pain. The Israeli establishment may well point to the tactic pursued by Hamas of embedding its rockets within civilian population clusters, which can then come under attack. However deplorable some of Hamas’ warfare techniques may be, there is a counter-view that in the overcrowded, narrow environs of the Gaza strip the Palestinian militant group has no operational option but to enmesh with the people.

The response of the United Nations to the unfolding tragedy in Gaza has been heartening. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, turned the spotlight on “deeply disturbing reports” about civilian casualties, which included children. She added: “Such reports raise serious doubt about whether the Israeli strikes have been in accordance with international humanitarian law and international human rights law.” In sharp contrast, the Indian position on the Gaza crisis has been muted, consistent with its ambivalent approach in recent years of maintaining passive equidistance between the Israelis and Palestinians. The studied avoidance of taking clear moral positions on the Palestinian issue hardly augurs well for a country with global aspirations, as evidenced by New Delhi’s advocacy for membership in the United Nations Security Council. Pragmatism also demands that India weighs in strongly on the unresolved Israel-Palestinian issue, which is the core of instability in West Asia — a region that is vital for India’s economy and energy security. Fears of a blowback from Israel, which would undermine national security, in case India takes a more forthright position on the Israel-Palestinian track, may be exaggerated, given the relationship of deep interdependence that New Delhi and Tel Aviv have developed over the years.

 

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/ceaseless-conflict-in-west-asia/article6206810.ece?utm_source=Most%20Popular&utm_medium=Opinion&utm_campaign=Widget%20Promo

Contradictions to the fore

April 29, 2014

Updated: April 29, 2014 00:12 IST

 

The April 23 decision by Hamas and Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, to unite with a view to forming a government in five weeks has rightly refocussed attention on the Israel-Palestine issue. The two parties have in effect governed, respectively, Gaza and parts of the West Bank since 2006; each has its own security forces, and tensions have been severe. For example, in the West Bank the Palestinian Authority has cooperated with Israel to arrest and jail members of Hamas and its associate group, the Islamic Jihad. Secondly, the new pact would involve the recognition of Israel within the 1967 borders, the renunciation of violence, and the acceptance of previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements as well as Fatah-Hamas agreements such as those reached in Cairo in 2011 and Doha in 2012. Elections are to be held at least six months after the forthcoming talks, to form a new government. The context, however, remains volatile. Hamas has consistently refused to recognise Israel, and both Fatah and Hamas face internal problems. Mahmoud Abbas, whose status as Fatah leader is at best questionable, may feel he needs a mandate from all Palestinians; for his part, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh faces an economic and political crisis following the Egyptian military junta’s crackdown on Hamas’s ally, the Muslim Brotherhood; Cairo has also blocked off vital supply tunnels into Gaza, and Mr. Haniyeh has little control over militant factions.

The key international reaction, that of the United States, has been predictably one-sided. President Barack Obama, currently brokering talks which have lasted eight months and were due to conclude this week, says the pact is “unhelpful” and calls for a “pause” in the talks. Mr. Obama echoes, less aggressively, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who accuses Fatah of allying with a “murderous terrorist organisation” that wants to destroy Israel. Tel Aviv, however, also says it cannot deal with a divided Palestinian movement. Hamas is the elected ruling party of the Palestinian people, having won the 2006 election, but Israel has suspended the talks. It also continues construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Hamas’s incapacity to control sub-groups will enable Tel Aviv to continue with collective punishment against Gazans for largely ineffective rocket attacks. Furthermore, Mr. Netanyahu insists Israel be recognised as a Jewish state; nothing short of that. The Fatah-Hamas pact may show desperation, but Israel seems to get everything it wants, irrespective of the contradictions therein. The continuing tragedy is that of four million Palestinians, for whom the only country which could make a difference, the U.S., does nothing.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/contradictions-to-the-fore/article5956980.ece?ref=relatedNews

Wars without winners

July 15, 2014

Updated: July 15, 2014 04:21 IST

 

Suhasini Haidar                                                                            

 

Contrary to the view that extremism thrives when America is absent, empirical facts indicate that the opposite is truer. And each of the countries at the centre of global concerns over extremism is in fact one that has seen direct or indirect western intervention, not western absence

In her autobiographical work, based on her tenure as U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton makes a startling statement while explaining the need for U.S. intervention around the world, despite the “dangers” to American lives. “While we can and must work to reduce the danger,” writes Ms. Clinton, “the only way to eliminate risk entirely is to retreat entirely and to accept the consequences of the void we leave behind. When America is absent, extremism takes root, our interests suffer, and our security at home is threatened” (Hard Choices, p.387, Simon & Schuster, 2014).

It is curious that Ms. Clinton thinks that extremism thrives when America is absent, as empirical facts and the patterns one can glean from them indicate that the opposite is truer. While Iraq and ISIS’ brutal advance on Baghdad is at the top of the news now, it must be remembered that each of the countries today at the centre of the world’s concerns over extremism is in fact a country that has seen direct or indirect western intervention, not western absence — Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Iraq.

Authoritarian yet secular regimes

There are other patterns to these interventions. In each of these countries, what the United States, along with allies sought to oust were authoritarian regimes that were secular. The Soviet-backed regimes of President Najibullah in Afghanistan, President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Qadhafi in Libya. The movements these leaders set up were dictatorial; they controlled their people through stifling intelligence agencies, and crushed all political Islamic movements where they could. But a by-product of the secularism was that women and minorities had a more secure status under these regimes than under their Islamist and monarchist neighbours like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain. Unlike them, Mr. Assad, Qadhafi, Saddam and Najibullah had women and minorities in their cabinets, and a sense of Arab/Afghan nationalism overshadowed the sectarian divide in their countries.

When the West has tried to intervene to oust them, it has always strengthened the opposition to these leaders, which by definition includes groups that are anti-secular, jihadi extremists. Whether it is by design or otherwise, it is these groups that have eventually taken control of the entire opposition. Finally, this intervention has led to a carving up of the country on sectarian lines; along bitter, historic, ethnic and communal lines.

A pattern

Take a look at how the pattern played out in each of the countries mentioned. In Afghanistan, the U.S. quite purposefully developed Islamic jihad as a counterpoint to Soviet communism, with American arms and Pakistani training. As Ms. Clinton admitted in interviews and testimonies after being confirmed the Secretary of State, the U.S. “was fighting a problem it had helped create.”

“It seemed like a great idea,” she said in an interview to U.S. channel CBS (October 6, 2009), “Back in the ‘80s to — embolden — and train and equip — Taliban, mujahidin, jihadists against the Soviet Union, which had invaded Afghanistan. With our help, and with the Pakistani support — this group — including, at that time, Bin Laden, defeated the Soviet Union … And we left the problems of a well-equipped, fundamentalist, ideological and religious group that had been battle hardened to the Afghans and the Pakistanis.”

Such candour was clearly not possible toward the end of Ms. Clinton’s term and the possible beginning of her campaign for U.S. President in 2016, and hence was not repeated in her book, Hard Choices, but the point is understood. Extremism takes root, not when America is absent, but indeed when America is present, and then goes absent, leaving “battle hardened,” “fundamentalist groups” in its wake with each intervention.

Ms. Clinton is not alone in her faulty logic however, and is joined by other western leaders. In New Delhi this month for bilateral meetings, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who had pushed the Security Council for direct intervention to oust Mr. Assad, including counselling air strikes, made a baffling statement in response to a question on ISIS terrorists. “The groups now attacking Iraq,” he said, “are exactly the groups that France has been fighting in Syria. France has always spoken of opposing terrorist groups everywhere.”

Again, this is not quite accurate. During the Libyan crisis, the French government was at the forefront of backing the Libyan rebels who eventually stormed Tripoli after six months of air raids by NATO aircraft. During that time the French military admitted to airdropping weapons and ammunitions for the rebels, and the local media reported that about 40 tonnes of weapons and tanks were sent in over the western Tunisian border. None of this was in line with the U.N. mandate of the “responsibility to protect” citizens. When the rebels finally entered Tripoli, NATO forces on the ground were led in by the “Tripoli Brigade,” with three commanders — Abdel Hakim Belhadj, a former al-Qaeda terrorist, arrested by the U.K. several years earlier, Abu Oweiss, a Qatari-trained commander, and Mahdi Al-Harati, an Irish Libyan who quit the revolution later that year to set up the Islamist militant group “Liwa Al-Umma” that went to fight against Mr. Assad’s army in Syria.

Helping the ‘extremist’ militants

Meanwhile in Libya, Qadhafi’s ouster and brutal killing ushered in an era of jihadist control Libya had never seen before. Cities like Benghazi came under the control of groups like Ansar-al-Sharia, while the newly elected assembly voted in full Shar’ia law in 2013. AQSL or Al-Qaeda Senior Leadership and AQIM or Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib have strengthened their presence and use parts of the country to train cadres operating in other parts of Africa including Kenya and Mali. Inside Libya, those who protested, like the secular army commanders and human rights activists who had originally rebelled against Qadhafi, were either sidelined or murdered. Last month, famous human rights activist Salwa Bugaighis, a firebrand who rejected the hijab, and criticised Belhadj openly, was shot dead in Benghazi. Speaking to the New Yorker magazine, her best friend said, “Sometimes I think that we just ****** up by removing Qadhafi — that I would rather live under a dictator and not worry about the safety of my family.” It’s a “mistake” Libyans are paying for every day, even as the West turned its interest and attention away from them, and to Syria.

In Syria, the West averted a full-blown intervention in September 2013 by only a few days, when British Parliament voted against strikes on Syria, and U.S. President Barack Obama decided to take the decision to the U.S. Congress. But its support to the Free Syrian Army (FSA), like the support to the Mujahideen has wound up helping the “extremist” rather than the so-called “moderate” militants there. In each part of Syria where terrorists of ISIL or the Jabhat Al Nasrah have won control, it has killed or co-opted these very rebels of the FSA and acquired the weapons smuggled to them via Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Last month, Mr. Obama asked the U.S. Congress for another $500 million “to train and equip” these soldiers. Britain committed to providing more than £20 million in equipment in 2013, according to the BBC, and while France denies it, rebels in Syria say they have received French anti-aircraft missiles, assault rifles, pistols and ammunition.

Turning on the West

Unfortunately, for the West, there is also another pattern to its form of intervention — that the groups it enables, invariably take its weapons, and then turn their jihadi guns on it (the West). From the Taliban and Osama, to the rebels in Benghazi, the U.S. has been the hardest hit by these very groups it once saw as the means to its interventional ends. Yet, U.S. Senator John McCain, who was in New Delhi recently to meet the Indian leadership, seems to ignore the evidence repeatedly. In 2011, he visited rebels in Libya and demanded that they be armed by the U.S. “I think we could do the same thing that we did in the Afghan struggle against the Russians,” he said in a speech at that time. Two years later, he was in Syria, being photographed with militant leaders, and demanding that the U.S. arm them, the way it had in Afghanistan.

Following that lead, the U.S. and its European allies will be guilty eventually, of having helped the same terrorists in Syria, whom they want to attack in Iraq, much like when the West helped the Taliban in Afghanistan, only to end up sending drones after them in Pakistan. All of which will certainly disprove the case made by Ms. Clinton on the absence of America and the rise of extremism. Churchill once said, history is written by the victors. In the jihadi wars of Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan however, the narrative is conflicted, because there really are no winners, and everybody loses.

suhasini.h@thehindu.co.in

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/wars-without-winners/article6210228.ece?ref=sliderNews

Five things Hindutva historians are obsessed with

REWRITING HISTORY

The new head of the Indian Council for Historical Research wants to re-examine established notions about the country's history.

Shoaib Daniyal · Monday, July 7th 2014

Last week, Yellapragada Sudershan Rao was appointed head of the Indian Council of Historical Research. He is also president of the Sangh Parivar-affiliated Bharateeya Itihaasa Sankalana Samithi, an organisation that seeks to write history from an Indian nationalist perspective from “the beginning of kaliyuga onwards”.

Rao, though, goes further back than the kaliyuga: one of his current projects involves affixing a definitive date to the Mahabharata war. His other interests include Vedic literature, bharateeya sanskriti (Indian culture) and Indian mythology (the use of the word “mythology”, given his literalist interpretation of the Mahabharata, is an interesting choice).

This was inevitable. Politics has always used history as a tool and agent. The move is reminiscent of the appointment of Murli Manohar Joshi as human resources development minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party government. Joshi made a number of appointments in crucial academic positions that were criticised by academic historians at the time as attempts to saffronise the curriculum and position Hindu scriptural dicta as academic thought.
Yet, the contest between these narratives of Indian history is not new. A look at five areas where Hindutva historians have sought to rewrite accepted histories.

1. The Medieval Period as India’s Dark Ages
The medieval period saw a succession of Muslim rulers establish empires, especially in north India. When prime minister Narendra Modi mentioned India’s “slave mentality of 1,200 years” in the Lok Sabha, he was asserting that it was not only during the 200 years of British dominion that Indians were enslaved, but in the preceding 1,000 years of Muslim-rule as well. The 1,000-year number is incorrect in any case; Muslim monarchs of various dynasties controlled Delhi for about 600 years, and even less in other parts of the subcontinent.

Indian historiography does not consider the medieval period foreign rule, primarily because the Muslim kings engaged with Indian culture meaningfully as they ruled, and were not economically extractionary like the British colonists. Historians associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have long sought to challenge this, painting the years of Muslim rule as foreign.
In January, Hindutva adherents on Twitter created a furore over Tipu Sultan being featured on Karnataka’s Republic Day float. A number of Indian historians have championed Sultan as one of the few kings who refused to submit to England’s military advantage.

An extreme version of the efforts to delegitimise rulers of this age is found in the works of historian PN Oak (quoted often by a member of the BJP, Subramanian Swamy). Oak claims that the Taj Mahal was once a Shiva temple named “Tejo Mahalaya” that the Mughals simply took over, changing the name slightly.

2. The Golden Hindu Age
Looking past the many advances India made in the medieval period, Hindutva historians often look to ancient India for a sense of historical sustenance. Ironically, the preferred morality of the RSS is modeled more on 19th-century European sensibilities than the mores prevalent in ancient India. Historians such as DN Jha, who have showed that some people in ancient India ate beef, are therefore attacked.

In an interview with TheTelegraph, Rao bluntly confirms that his aim is to “rewrite ancient history”.

It is worth noting that the Hindutva imagining of history resembles many other fundamentalist movements. As one satirical tweet on Iraq's ISIS read: “The ISIS have no idea what restoring the Caliphate actually means. In Baghdad, it’d involve booze, odes to wine, science… and a gay court poet.”

3. Scholarship around Hinduism
Religious history, in itself, is a useful field given how society is shaped by faith. Archaeologists like BB Lal and SR Rao have even sought to determine the truth of events related in the Mahabharata through their research.

Unfortunately, much of this work has been literalist in approach, reminiscent of the Biblical archaeology movement. This perception is reinforced by the treatment that Wendy Doniger’s work on Hinduism has received. Dinanath Batra, the senior RSS member who ensured Doniger’s publishers pulped her book, advised the previous BJP government on education policy.

4. Out-of-India Theory
Hindutva historians such as the Belgian Indologist Koenraad Elst explain the linguistic links between India and Europe through a theory in which Europeans are the modern descendants of people who migrated out of India, spreading their language in the process. This is crucial given how Hinduism is defined as completely indigenous to India by the RSS.

But this theory has little credibility in linguistics and historical research. The Kurgan Hypothesis (or the Aryan Migration Theory) is the mostly widely-accepted model.

5. Re-interpreting the Freedom Movement
Though each period of Indian history has become a source of contest, the freedom movement is possibly the most politicised segment of Indian history. The Congress has its own band of historians who have interpreted the period as per its needs. Surprisingly, the BJP agenda here is the least contentious and comprises what are basically petty turf wars involving individuals.
When the BJP was last in power, bitter squabbles arose over whether Hindutva ideologue Veer Savarkar’s picture should go up in Parliament or not. Nehru – a fond target of the Hindutva right – will probably come under more attack, and his more conservative contemporary Vallabhbhai Patel will be championed.

Yet, even as the RSS makes strenuous efforts to refashion history to suit its own needs, it must be pointed out to anybody excessively alarmed (or pleased) by this, that official histories have a pretty small role to play in today’s world. For example, the current set of history textbooks published by the National Council for Educational Research and Training are truly well-written, with little political interference and featuring the latest research. Most politically aware Indians, though, simply ignore them and pick such history off the Internet, that best fits their preconceived notions.
Moreover, most of the primary research is now done outside India. More academics in India seem to be keeping away from the hard grind of primary-source research, an attitude that American Sanskrit scholar Sheldon Pollock has described as “cultural genocide”. That, perhaps, is something we should be worrying about more.

http://scroll.in/article/669435/Five-things-Hindutva-historians-are-obsessed-with

1,200 years of servitude: PM Modi offers food for thought

 

by Debobrat Ghose  Jun 13, 2014 09:07 IST

New Delhi: "Barah sau saal ki gulami ki maansikta humein pareshan kar rahi hai. Bahut baar humse thoda ooncha vyakti mile, to sar ooncha karke baat karne ki humari taaqat nahin hoti hai (The slave mentality of 1,200 years is troubling us. Often, when we meet a person of high stature, we fail to muster strength to speak up).

Those were some seminal words in the speech of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Lok Sabha on Wednesday. He was speaking as part of the Motion of Thanks to the President’s address to the joint session of the Parliament on 9 June. The key phrase was – "1,200 years of slave mentality".

Prime Minister Narendra Modi. PTI

For years, India has grown up on the hard fact of "slavery of 200 years", that refers to the period that the country was under the British rule. By expanding it to 1,200 years—by including the millennium in which major rulers of the country were Muslims—is PM Modi trying to bring about a paradigm change in the way we perceive our history?

However, this is not the first time he has used this phrase in his speech – he has referred to "1,200 years of slavery" in quite a few of his addresses in previous years. The phrase assumes significance now as he is the prime minister of the country.

Scholars are divided on their assessment of this new usage in the context of Indian history. Makkhan Lal, historian and former ICHR Council member, says, "The prime minister has stated historical facts. He was not asserting to political correctness. Whether Ghoris, Ghaznavis, or the rulers of the Sultanate or the Mughal period, they were all foreigners originally. They didn't belong to the culture of the land then. They came from outside, waged wars against the local rulers, took them captive and in many cases, plundered the resources and ruled the land by enslaving the locals."

The question, it seems, is not about foreign rule or local rule, but about 'slavery' or subservience to a foreign power that gave birth to slave mentality. Lal elaborates, "Had the British not left India in 1947, and stayed on and become one among the Indians, they too would have begun to be considered as non-foreign."

Social scientist Shiv Visvanathan throws more light on the subject when he says, "The PM has clearly gone beyond the colonial rule but it is not about British rule or Muslim rule. He is probably referring to the perception a particular rule left on the minds of the people, periods that gave birth to a certain kind of dependency, slavery, sycophancy, whether during the Muslim period or the British rule."

After all, it was not just Hindu rulers that the invading Muslims fought against. In later period, often, the locals challenging the invading Muslim armies were Muslim themselves. Says Rajeev Kumar Srivastav of Banaras Hindu University, "Most of the foreign Muslim rulers of India between 1206-1256 paid obeisance to the Khalifa and not to an Indian authority, which clearly points to their foreign character. Even local Muslims were at loggerheads with the Muslim rulers, which is clearly referred to in the book Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi, by Zia-ud-din Barni and Shams-i-Siraj Afifi written during Muhammad bin Tughlaq and Firuz Shah's reign.”

As expected, the repositioning of the period of 'slavery' in Indian history is bound to incite academic attack. Mushirul Hasan, historian and former vice chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, says, "It is complete falsification of history. Several historians have refuted this fact but if the government wants to revisit it, they are free to do so, just as we are free to contest. The British didn't make India their home, whereas Muslims who came here, settled in India and contributed to the country’s culture. That gave birth to the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb (syncretic culture)."

Lal, currently a senior fellow at Vivekananda International Foundation appeals to not lend communal colour to the phrase. He reiterates, "History should be based on straight facts and not to appease as has been the case in the past. The phrase "1,200 years of slavery" is neither saffronisation nor colourisation of history but only a reference to the deep conditioning of slave mentality that Indians have undergone over the centuries".

http://www.firstpost.com/politics/1200-years-of-servitude-pm-modi-offers-food-for-thought-1567805.html