Robert Jensen : There Are Marxists in India?

Prabhat Patnaik. Image from The Bruce Initiative on Rethinking Capitalism.
'There are Marxists in India?'
Economist Prabhat Patnaik on the global crisis

By Robert Jensen / The Rag Blog / April 25, 2012

After an engaging half-hour interview with India’s pre-eminent Marxist economist during a conference at New York University, I told a friend about my one-on-one time with Prabhat Patnaik.

“There are Marxists in India?” came the bemused response. “I thought India was the heart of the new capitalism.”

Indeed, we hear about India mostly as a rising economic power that is challenging the United States. While there certainly are no shortages of capitalists, there are still lots of Marxists in India, as well as communist parties that have won state elections.

Patnaik represents the best thinking and practice of those left traditions -- both the academic Marxism that provides a framework for critique of economics, and the political Marxism that proposes public policies -- which is why I was so excited to talk with him about lessons to be learned from the current economic crisis.

In the interview, conducted during a break in the NYU Institute for Public Knowledge’s “Futures of Finance” conference, I asked Patnaik two main questions: First, is there a “golden age” of capitalism to which we can return? Second, can we ever expect ethical practices from the financial sector of the global capitalist economy?

Before explaining why his answer to both questions is “no,” some background.

Prabhat Patnaik started his academic career in the UK, earning his doctoral degree at Oxford University and then teaching at the University of Cambridge. He returned to India in 1974 to teach at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi until his retirement in 2010.

He’s the author of several influential books, including The Value of Money, published in 2008. Patnaik-the-politician served as Vice-Chairman of the Planning Board of the state of Kerala from 2006-2011 and is a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He regularly writes on economic issues in the Party’s journal and addresses trade union meetings.

In the United States, where people believe Marxism was buried under the rubble of the Berlin Wall and communism can only mean Soviet-style totalitarianism, his political affiliations would guarantee a life on the margins. But India’s political spectrum is considerably wider, and left ideas have a place in the national political discourse there.

On the world stage, Patnaik brings an unusual perspective: An experienced economist with a history of political organizing; an Indian who is engaged in the political debates of the West; a leftist who is not afraid to critique the weaknesses of the left tradition.


The quixotic quest for a 'golden age'

Ever since the financial meltdown of 2008, there’s been more and more nostalgia in the United States -- especially among liberals -- for the immediate post-WWII period, the so-called “golden age” of capitalism during which profits and wages rose, and unemployment was low.

This was the achievement of Keynesianism, the philosophy that unwanted market outcomes can be corrected through monetary and fiscal policy designed to stabilize an otherwise unstable business cycle. Primarily through “military Keynesianism” -- massive spending on wars and a permanent warfare state -- the U.S. government helped stimulate the economy when it went into inevitable periods of stagnation.

That worked until about the mid-1970s, when growth started to slow.

Whether or not that system was good for everyone (lots of people in the Third World, for example, were not particularly happy with it), the question remains: Can we go back to that strategy? Patnaik says that golden age was necessarily short-lived, as the pressure for global investment pushed nations to give up the ability to impose controls on capital. This globalization of finance made national Keynesian policies less relevant. At about the same time, steep increases in the price of petroleum generated even more capital in the oil states, which went looking for investment opportunities around the world.

Globalization -- this concentration of capital moving freely around the world -- meant that no single nation-state could go up against international finance. And with the global flow of goods, the large “reserve army of labor” (the unemployed and under-employed) in places like China and India meant that workers in the advanced industrial countries had less leverage. So, productivity continued to rise, but wages stagnated.

Patnaik said it’s important to see the contemporary crisis in that historical context.

“The collapse of the housing bubble in the United States is certainly part of the problem but not the root cause of the problem today,” he said. “The immediate crisis it touched off helps make the underlying problem visible.”

If this financialization of the global economy, which has put so much power in so few hands, is at the heart of the problem, the question is clear: In the absence of a global state, who is going to control international finance capital?

If capital is going to be concentrated, can we at least make it behave?

If the power of finance capital can’t be diminished, is there a way to at least make it follow some sane rules to prevent the worst from happening again? Short answer: No.

“It’s important to understand that capitalism is a spontaneous system, not something that is always necessarily planned or controlled,” Patnaik said. Because the reward for ignoring, evading, or getting around rules is so powerful, the attempts to make capitalism follow ethical norms are bound to fail.

“Keynesianism worked in a specific time and place, but capitalism escaped Keynesianism,” he said. New rules will suffer a similar fate, absent a force as strong as international finance capital to enforce the rules.

Although Patnaik often talks in detail about the complex workings of the global economy, he also articulates simple truths when that kind of straightforward analysis is needed. In doing so, he often draws on aspects of Marx’s analysis that the world tends to forget.

To make the point about the futility of talking about ethical norms in capitalism, Patnaik pointed to Marx’s insight that a capitalist is “capital personified.” Here’s the relevant passage from the first volume of Marx’s Capital:

[T]he possessor of money becomes a capitalist. … [A]nd it is only in so far as the appropriation of ever more and more wealth in the abstract becomes the sole motive of his operations, that he functions as a capitalist, that is, as capital personified and endowed with consciousness and a will.

What Marx described as “the restless never-ending process of profit-making” and “boundless greed after riches” reminds us that as actors on the economic stage we are less moral agents and more “capital personified,” relentless in our restlessness and bound to believe in an illusory boundlessness.

Society might be able make some moral claims on people with wealth if they were merely working in capitalism, but it’s more difficult to find common moral ground with “capital personified.”


What should people fight for?

If we can’t go back to business as usual, and there’s no reason to expect that new rules will solve our problems, what kinds of solutions are possible? Patnaik said that neither of the two most obvious responses to the financial crisis -- creating a surrogate global state to impose controls on finance, or “delinking” a nation’s economy from the global finance system -- are in the cards now. Even though capitalism is in deep crisis, resistance to capitalism is not nearly strong enough to produce movements that could make that possible.

Given his intellectual roots and political affiliation, it may seem surprising that Patnaik argues for organizing to bring back the liberal welfare-state policies that developed in the advanced industrial countries during the postwar period when Keynesian economics ruled.

“That is not about going back, which is impossible,” Patnaik said. “We have to go forward with new ideas.” The call for a more robust social safety net (protecting workers’ rights, unemployment insurance, social security, health insurance, etc.) isn’t new, but such policies can be a step toward new ideas, a transitional measure, he explained.

Rather than making those policies the final goal, as part of a more-or-less permanent accommodation with capitalism, they should be seen as a stepping stone toward radical change.

“We can work toward a reassertion of welfare state policies, not as an end but as a vehicle toward greater justice, as a way of making visible the inherent limitations of capitalism,” he said.

In addition to the limitations of capitalism, there also are ecological limitations we can’t ignore, he said, which means the goal can’t be raising India and China to material standards of the United States. Patnaik recognizes the need to adjust older socialist goals to new realities.

“The world simply has to be refashioned,” both in the Third World and in advanced capitalist countries, and specifically in the United States, Patnaik said, which means experiments in alternative ways of living that are not based on material measures.

“This really is a spiritual/cultural question, about what it means to live a good life,” he said, which should not be seen as foreign to socialism. “Marxism shouldn’t be reduced to productionism. The goal of socialism has always been human freedom, which is about much more than material wealth.”

“Gandhi talked about the ethical demands of nature, but I don’t like that phrase, being a socialist and anthropocentric,” Patnaik said with the hint of a grin. “But we do have to live within the limits of nature.”


The role of Marxism

It is easy to misjudge Patnaik from first impressions. Unlike many intellectuals, Patnaik does not immediately thrust himself into a discussion, and he’s soft-spoken both in conversation and from the podium. But when he does speak, his passion for justice comes through loud and clear. And, while Patnaik identifies very much as a communist, he also is quick to poke at some of the tradition’s platitudes.

“I just came from the (Communist) Party Congress, and I keep reminding everyone that they have to give up notions of a one-party State, of democratic centralism (the Leninist notion that party members are free to debate policy but must support the final decision of the party),” Patnaik said. “Democratic centralism always leads to centralism.”

If leftists reject the current dominance of finance in the world, Patnaik said it’s important to reject any suggestion that a single perspective or party should dominate.

“The hegemony of finance throttles democracy. The hegemony of finance beats you into shape,” he said. If the goal is to resist that kind of hegemony, then the approach of the old communist movement simply isn’t relevant, Patnaik said, but socialist principles are more relevant than ever.

“Any resistance has to be about opening up alternatives, opening up critical thinking to imagine those alternatives,” he said. “The only way to challenge that global regime is mass mobilization.”

Patnaik has no off-the-shelf solutions to offer, and it’s difficult to reduce his thinking to slogans. At the age of 66, when many people hold on tightly to what they believe will work, Patnaik doesn’t hesitate to say, “It’s time to invent.”

[Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches courses in media law, ethics, and politics -- and a board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. His books include All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, and Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. His writing is published extensively in mainstream and alternative media. Robert Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu. Read more articles by Robert Jensen on The Rag Blog.]

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James McEnteer : Proud Heritage of Indians in South Africa

Indians first came to South Africa 150 years ago. Photo from Hindi Blog.
Indian givers:
South Africa isn't all black and white

By James McEnteer / The Rag Blog / December 3, 2010

KWA-ZULU NATAL, South Africa -- South Africans of Indian descent are commemorating the arrival of the first indentured Indian workers here 150 years ago. In November 1860, two ships brought nearly 700 laborers from India to Durban. By 1911 more than 150,000 indentured Indian workers had landed in South Africa. Most came to what is now the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal, where more than half of them worked in the sugar cane fields.

Today about 1.5 million Indians live in South Africa, a small but influential minority comprising about three percent of the country's population. Indian South Africans have distinguished themselves in many professions, including medicine, academia, and commerce. Some have risen to Cabinet level government positions. Navanethem Pillay, a South African lawyer, university professor and judge of Indian descent has served since 2008 as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Before the British abolished slavery in 1833, some Indians had been sold into slavery along with Malays and Africans, primarily to work harvesting sugar cane in Britain's tropical colonies. The British had become addicted to the sugar that went so well with the tea from India they had adopted as a comfort ritual on their cold island, a bit of cultural colonial blowback.

Workers contracted to work for five years for whatever employer they were assigned. After five years they could re-indenture or look elsewhere for work. Workers who spent 10 years in the colony had the right to a free passage back to India, or to remain as citizens in the colony.

The British tried to regulate the conditions of indenture, but workers often lived and worked in primitive, brutal circumstances, like slaves. Isolated from legal oversight, employers abused their indentured laborers with impunity. Workers returning to India complained of the overwork, malnourishment, and squalid living conditions they had to endure. A Coolie Commission was appointed in 1872 to protect Indian immigrants, but failed to prevent abuses.

The overtly racist government and society of the time dictated where Indians could live and how they could travel within the country. Despite this discrimination and the limitations on their freedom, more than half of the indentured laborers elected to remain in South Africa. Besides the cane fields of Natal, Indians worked at the port of Durban, in hospitals, in the coal mines, or helping to build the railroads.

A momentous event for the future of Indians in South Africa, and for the future transformation of the entire nation, was the arrival in the country of a young, newly-minted Indian lawyer, Mohandas Gandhi, in 1893. Gandhi had come to represent an Indian firm on a one-year contract. Less than a week into his stay, on a train from Durban to Pretoria to attend court, Gandhi was ordered out of his first-class compartment. When he refused to leave he was ejected from the train at Pietermaritzberg and forced to spend a cold night on a station bench.

Mahatma Gandhi shortly after arriving in South Africa, in 1895. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
In his Autobiography Gandhi describes his conflicting emotions during that long night and his temptation to return immediately to India. Instead he elected to stay, despite being barred from hotels and suffering other acts of discrimination daily, including violence. Gandhi extended his stay to oppose a bill denying Indians the right to vote. He helped found the Natal Indian Congress in 1894 and survived the attack of a white mob in Durban in 1897. When the government passed a law requiring registration of the Indian population in 1906, Gandhi led a mass protest, adopting non-violent resistance for the first time.

That struggle continued for seven years. Thousands of Indians were jailed, including Gandhi. Others were flogged and even shot for striking, refusing to register, or burning their registration cards. The public outcry at the government's harsh methods of repressing the peaceful Indian protesters eventually forced South African officials to compromise with Gandhi.

Inspired by the success of this Indian movement, Black African leaders formed the African National Congress in 1912 to mount a similar resistance against racist oppression of their own kind. ANC efforts against apartheid, modeled on Gandhi's non-violent principle of satyagraha, or “the force of truth,” encouraged massive peaceful disobedience of repressive laws. Ultimately, South Africa's apartheid government yielded to ANC pressure and world sanctions without the massive bloodshed many feared was inevitable.

For these reasons and others, Indian descendants of indentured laborers have the right to be proud of their forebears. ANC political leaders owe Ghandi and other Indian activists thanks for being the catalysts of their own peaceful revolution. All South Africans, regardless of race, should be grateful for the Indian contributions to their current prosperity and cultural panache.

[James McEnteer is the author of Shooting the Truth: the Rise of American Political Documentaries. He lives in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa]

Top, Indians arriving for the first time in Durban, South Africa, exact date unknown. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. Below, indentured Indians, still on the boat. Photo from SAHO.
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Pakistan: Urgent Foreign Policy Matter for Obama

This matter becomes all the more urgent with Pakistan moving troops to the Indian border because of the threats coming from that nation over the Mumbai attack. Purohit has some fine suggestions for the incoming administration in order to establish a more realistic relationship with Pakistan and the entire region.

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

Protesters burn an Indian flag Friday during a demonstration in Karachi, Pakistan. Photo: Fareed Khan, AP.
Why Solving Pakistan is the Pivot for Obama’s South Asian Security Strategy
By Raj Purohit / December 26, 2008

In the space of 10 days, two terrorist actions in South Asia highlighted why President-elect Obama’s desire to adopt a regional approach to the interlinked crises of Afghanistan, India and Pakistan may ultimately rank among the most strategically significant decisions of his administration.

Last month, the world watched in horror as militants brought the thriving metropolis of Mumbai to a halt with a multi-faceted attack on its hotel, entertainment and transportation system. The attacks, dubbed India’s 9-11, saw 188 civilians killed and hundreds more injured. A few days later militants in Pakistan attacked a market place killing dozens of civilians.

Although the attack in Peshawar had a devastating impact on the local populace, it drew less media attention than those in Mumbai, in part due to the lack of international media in that city and also because the Peshawar bombing was one in a long line of attacks in Pakistan in recent months.

Despite the variation in media attention and the way in which they were reported as two distinct stories, it is important that the new U.S. administration looks at the two attacks and the related foreign policy questions holistically. A careful appraisal of the situation suggests that, once in office, President Obama’s administration must adopt a regional approach to the instability in South Asia and also recognize that Pakistan is at the heart of both the crisis and any resolution.

The fledgling democratic government of Pakistan is faced with three interrelated challenges. First, they must address the security situation on their border with Afghanistan where the Taliban is in the ascendancy despite a vigorous Pakistani military campaign. Second, the government must also deal internally with the open sore that is Kashmir. Despite the best efforts of both India and Pakistan to deemphasize Kashmir in public and seek to build confidence between the two countries through other measures, it is clear that Kashmir is a priority issue to a substantial number of Pakistanis, including those involved in the Mumbai killings. Third, the authorities must also battle the militancy within its own border that grew quickly during the reign of General Musharraf.

The Obama administration can assist their Pakistani counterparts in all three of these areas. On Afghanistan, it can bolster the Pakistani government in the eyes of its own people by acknowledging the sacrifice of its military fighting against the Taliban. It can also reduce U.S. drone activity, and by extension reduce civilian deaths, by increasing human intelligence cooperation. U.S. non-military aid can also be a valuable tool in the effort to win the battle for hearts and minds in the tribal border region.

Additionally, the Obama government can force Afghanistan to accept a fixed border between the two countries i.e. the internationally recognized Durand line. Many regional analysts and commentators have urged the U.S. to pressure Afghanistan to accept the line believing that it will increase domestic Pakistani support for vigorous policing of the border and make it harder for the Taliban and others to move freely between the two countries.

President Obama should assign an envoy to begin a dialogue between the two countries on Kashmir. The best efforts of both countries to deemphasize this issue were ended by the Mumbai attacks and it is time to begin a process that resolves the Kashmir question and removes a grievance that militant leaders use to recruit impressionable individuals to their ranks. It is important to note that by endorsing the Durand line and seeking a resolution to the Kashmir crisis, President Obama would also assuage the fears of Pakistani elites who have been nervously sharing a map drawn by U.S.neo-conservatives that sketches out a truncated Pakistan that had lost land to India and Afghanistan. As Jane Perlez noted in the International Herald Tribune:

"One of the biggest fears of the Pakistani military planners is the collaboration between India and Afghanistan to destroy Pakistan," said a senior Pakistani government official involved in strategic planning who insisted on anonymity in accordance with diplomatic rules. "Some people feel the United States is colluding in this."

Finally, early in his administration, President Obama should underscore his support for a democratic Pakistan. Historically, democracy has been an antidote to militancy in Pakistan and it will require the engagement of its people to respond to the militants within its own borders.

[Raj Purohit is an independent consultant and associate professor at American University, Washington College of Law. He served as the Director and CEO for Citizens for Global Solutions until July 2008. Prior to joining CGS, Raj was Legislative Director for Human Rights First, where he was responsible for leading the organization's advocacy efforts in Congress, with a focus on international relations, judiciary and security issues. Raj helped develop and implement new legislative initiatives and lobbying strategies. He also represented Human Rights First in a range of coalitions, including the Washington Working Group on the International Criminal Court, and was a media spokesperson.

Before joining Human Rights First, Raj served as Legislative Director for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He has alsoserved as Director of Legal Services at the Center on Conscience and War. Raj received his Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) from Sussex University (1995) and his LL.M. in International Legal Studies from American University, Washington College of Law (1997).]

Source / Informed Comment

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Juan Cole: Obama's Greatest Foreign Policy Challenge: The Complexity of Pakistani Politics

President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan holds up a picture of his late wife, Benazir Bhutto, before addressing the 63rd United Nations General Assembly Sept. 25 in New York. Photo: Reuters/Eric Thayer.
Does Obama understand his biggest foreign-policy challenge?
By Juan Cole / December 12, 2008

The president-elect wants to work with the Pakistani government to "stamp out" terror. It's not nearly that simple.

A consensus is emerging among intelligence analysts and pundits that Pakistan may be President-elect Barack Obama's greatest policy challenge. A base for terrorist groups, the country has a fragile new civilian government and a long history of military coups. The dramatic attack on Mumbai by members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e Tayiba, the continued Taliban insurgency on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the frailty of the new civilian government, and the country's status as a nuclear-armed state have all put Islamabad on the incoming administration's front burner.

But does Obama understand what he's getting into? In his "Meet the Press" interview with Tom Brokaw on Sunday, Obama said, "We need a strategic partnership with all the parties in the region -- Pakistan and India and the Afghan government -- to stamp out the kind of militant, violent, terrorist extremists that have set up base camps and that are operating in ways that threaten the security of everybody in the international community." Obama's scenario assumes that the Pakistani government is a single, undifferentiated thing, and that all parts of the government would be willing to "stamp out" terrorists. Both of those assumptions are incorrect.

Pakistan's government has a profound internal division between the military and the civilian, which have alternated in power since the country was born from the partition of British India in 1947. It is this military insubordination that creates most of the country's serious political problems. Washington worries too much about other things in Pakistan and too little about the sheer power of the military. United States analysts often express fears about an internal fundamentalist challenge to the chiefs of staff. The main issue, however, is not that Pakistan's military is too weak, but that it is too strong. And that is complicated by the fact that elements within the military are at odds, not just with the civilian government, but also with each other.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf ruled the country with an iron fist from the fall of 1999 (when he staged his coup against an elected prime minister) until he resigned under threat of impeachment in August of this year. His civilian rival, Asaf Ali Zardari, was elected president in September. Zardari had become the de facto head of the left-of-center Pakistan People's Party after his wife, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated while campaigning for Parliament in late December 2007. In the parliamentary elections of February 2008, which were relatively free and fair, the PPP emerged as the largest party in Parliament.

Zardari and his prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, have vowed to crack down on terrorism. Zardari is said to be committed to vengeance against the Pakistani Taliban, since he blames them for his wife's assassination. The possibility that a Western-educated woman liberal might again become Pakistan's prime minister had been unbearable for the fundamentalist Taliban. Since Zardari became president, the Pakistani military has vigorously pursued a massive campaign against the Taliban in the tribal agency of Bajaur. The fierce fighting is said to have displaced some 300,000 persons. Of these operations against the Pakistani Taliban, Obama said on "Meet the Press" that "thus far, President Zardari has sent the right signals. He's indicated that he recognizes this is not just a threat to the United States but is a threat to Pakistan as well."

Likewise, after the attack on the Indian financial and cultural center of Mumbai on Nov. 26-29 of this year, Zardari argued that Pakistan as well as India has been targeted by terrorism, and that it is a legacy of the ways in which the U.S. used radical Islam to fight the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Zardari wrote: "The Mumbai attacks were directed not only at India but also at Pakistan's new democratic government and the peace process with India that we have initiated. Supporters of authoritarianism in Pakistan and non-state actors with a vested interest in perpetuating conflict do not want change in Pakistan to take root."

But Zardari will find it difficult to get control of the entire Pakistani government and the various "non-state actors" it has spawned to pursue Pakistani military interests in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Among his biggest challenges will be to gain the loyalty not only of the regular military but also of those officers detailed to the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, an organization of some 25,000 that was founded in 1948 to promote information-sharing among the army, navy and air force. In the 1960s, military dictator Ayoub Khan used the ISI to spy on domestic rivals, and over time it developed a unit focusing on manipulating civilian politics. Zardari tried to abolish that political unit in late November.

During periods of military dictatorship, the ISI has tended to be given a much-expanded role, both domestically and abroad. During the 1980s, Gen. Zia ul-Haq created an Afghanistan bureau in the ISI, through which the Reagan administration funneled billions to the mujahedin to fight the Soviet occupation. In the late 1980s, dictator Zia initiated an ISI-led covert operation, Operation Tupac, aimed at detaching the disputed Muslim-majority state of Kashmir from India.

Kashmir had been a princely state in British India, ruled by a Hindu raja who took it into Hindu-majority India during partition. The Pakistanis fought an inconclusive war but failed to annex it to Pakistan, and the United Nations called for a referendum to allow the Kashmiris to decide their fate. India, which viewed Jammu and Kashmir as an Indian state, never allowed such a plebiscite to be held. Obama has suggested that he might send former President Bill Clinton as a special envoy in a bid to resolve the Kashmir dispute once and for all.

From a Pakistani nationalist point of view, Indian rule over Kashmir differed only in longevity from the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and both involved the illegitimate occupation of a Muslim people by an infidel government. The ISI helped create six major guerrilla groups to operate against India in Kashmir, including the Lashkar-e Tayiba (Army of the Good), a paramilitary arm of the Center for Missionizing and Guidance (Da'wa wa Irshad) of former Islamic studies professor and mujahed in Afghanistan, Mohammad Hafiz Saeed.

From 1994, the ISI backed the Taliban in the quest to take over Afghanistan from the warlords who came to power after the fall of Soviet-installed Muhammad Najibullah in the early 1990s. Elements in the ISI favored a hard-line form of fundamentalist Islam and so were pleased to support the Taliban on ideological grounds. Others were simply being pragmatic, since the Taliban, from the Pushtun ethnic group, had been refugees who attended seminary or madrasah in Pakistan. They were pro-Pakistan, while many of the warlords had become clients of India, Iran or, ironically, Russia.

In 2001, immediately after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration gave Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf an ultimatum. He had championed the Taliban policy despite being a secularist himself, but was forced to turn against his former allies, who were then overthrown by the U.S.-backed warlords of the Northern Alliance.

Elements in the ISI and the military, however, continued to back the Taliban. They were deeply dismayed that the Karzai government in Kabul was independent of Islamabad and had strong ties to India. Under U.S. and Indian pressure, in 2004 the Musharraf government blocked the Pakistan-based guerrilla groups from further attacking Indian Kashmir from Pakistan, causing many of their members to go fight instead alongside the resurgent Taliban in northwestern Pakistan and southern Afghanistan. In response to the need to distance themselves from the terrorist groups, the Pakistani government and the ISI are alleged to have created cells made up of former officers who covertly give training, arms and other support to the Taliban and to the organizations fighting India in Kashmir.

To some extent, then, Pakistan's powerful national-security apparatus has been divided against itself for much of the past decade. The contradictory agendas of various parts of the Pakistani government and of its shadowy networks of retired or ex-officers have created policy chaos. Even while the army is engaged in intense fighting against the Pakistani Taliban of Bajaur, it appears to be backing other Taliban groups that have struck at targets inside Afghanistan from south Waziristan, another tribal agency on the border of the two countries. Last June, when U.S. forces engaged in hot pursuit of these Taliban staging cross-border raids, they came under fire from Pakistani troops who sided with the Taliban.

The complex layers of the ISI, a state within the state, make it questionable whether Musharraf ever really controlled it. Now Pakistan's new civilian president is even less well-placed to control it, or to discover how the militant cells work, both inside the ISI and among the retirees. It is not even clear whether the ISI is willing to take orders from Zardari and other officials in the new government. When Prime Minister Gilani announced that the ISI would have to report to the civilian Interior Ministry, the decree was overturned within a day under "immense pressure from defense circles." When the government pledged to send the head of the ISI to India for consultations on the Mumbai attacks in late November, it was apparently overruled by the military.

The captured terrorist in Mumbai, Amir Ajmal Qassab, appears to have told Indian interrogators that his group was trained in Pakistani Kashmir by retired Pakistani officers. It is certain that President Zardari, Prime Minister Gilani, and Army Chief of Staff Ashfaq Kiyani were uninvolved in the terrorist strike on Mumbai. But were there rogue cells inside the ISI or the army officer corps that were running the retirees who put the Lashkar-e Tayiba up to striking India? On Sunday, Zardari's forces raided the Lashkar-e Tayiba camps in Pakistani Kashmir and arrested a major LeT leader, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, whom Indian intelligence accused of masterminding the Mumbai attacks. The move was considered gutsy in Pakistan, where there is substantial popular support for the struggle to free Muslim Kashmir of India, a struggle in which the Lashkar has long been the leading organization.

This murky Chinese puzzle raises the question of how Obama can hope to cooperate with the Pakistani government to curb the groups mounting attacks in Afghanistan and Kashmir. The government itself is divided on such policies, and there appear to be cells both within the state and outside it that have their own, militant foreign policy. The United States, going back to the Cold War, has long viewed the Pakistani army as a geopolitical ally, and Washington tends to prefer that the military be in power. Since Gen. Musharraf was forced out, U.S. intelligence circles have been lamenting the country's "instability," as though it were less unstable under an unpopular dictatorship. If Pakistan -- and Pakistani-American relations -- are to have a chance, it will lie in the incoming Obama administration doing everything it can to strengthen the civilian political establishment and ensure that the military remains permanently in its barracks. The military needs to be excluded from political power, and it needs to learn to take orders from a civilian president. At the same time, Obama should follow through on his commitment to commit serious diplomatic resources to helping resolve the long-festering Kashmir issue.


Source / Salon

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Mumbai LeT Terrorists May Have Trained in Iraq

I want to explain my headline. It is now known that the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) are responsible for the Mumbai attacks. It is also know that the LeT have been active in the insurgency in Iraq since 2004. Although specific training is identified in this article, it remains a possibility that the Iraq violence has provided a training ground for LeT fighters, some of whom may have been part of the attacks on Mumbai. If even remotely connected, this provides further evidence that George Bush's war on terror is yielding even greater terrorism world-wide, which is strongly suggested for many other reasons.

Bottom line? It is time to end the War on of Terror and think outside the box for other, meaningful and constructive solutions to the terrorist violence in the world.

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

ATTACKS PLANNED MONTHS AGO -- One of the attackers captured by police said the terror group began their voyage to India on Nov. 12 or Nov. 13, and that they had earlier received trained in marine and urban warfare. The photo shows a policeman guarding the CST railway station in Mumbai on Dec. 1. Order at the railway station, a landmark building in Mumbai, has returned to normal after the terror attacks. (Xinhua/Photoshot via Newscom)
Spy Agencies Gather Intel on LeT After Mumbai Attacks
By Richard Sale / December 2, 2008

The extremist al-Qaida affiliate Lashkar-e-Taiba, or Let, has been named as the perpetrator of the recent horrific Mumbai attacks, according to U.S. officials. "This was definitely a LeT operation. There's no doubt about it," said a former senior CIA official with close knowledge of the dossier.

Last week's attacks on 10 sites in Mumbai killed 188 people in three days including six Americans in the heart of India's commercial capital, putting the government there in a state of shock. Indian forces killed nine assailants and wounded one, and the search is still going on for more.

"Indian security may not have gotten them all," a U.S. official said.

According to Indian press reports, names and phone numbers were found in the wallets and cell phones of the attackers. U.S. officials said they believe the data is credible.

A former U.S. intelligence official said that the CIA "had warned the government of India that LeT was planning a terrorist attack on Mumbai but the intelligence wasn't specific enough."

Although known mainly as a Kashmiri group, LeT was actively fighting U.S. forces on the ground in Iraq, beginning in late 2003-2004, U.S. officials said. They still had a presence through 2007 when their members began to shrink.

According to Indian press reports, confirmed as credible by U.S. and serving former intelligence officials, data obtained from a captured satellite phone found on a vessel seized in the Arabia Sea revealed that the assaults were planned at least six months ago.

Ajmai Amir Kamal, one of the attackers captured by police, has claimed that the group launched their voyage to India on Nov. 12 or Nov. 13, and that they had been trained in marine warfare along with a special course Daura-a-Shifa conducted by LeT, according to the Indian Research for Conflict Management that operates the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP).

According to the former senior U.S. intelligence official, Kamal acknowledged he was a resident of Faridot near Multan in the Punjab province of Pakistan.

SATP claimed that Kamal said they were not suicide bombers but had planned to escape on Nov. 27 using a route plotted for their return and stored in a Global Positioning System device.

U.S. officials said they believe Kamal's statements "plausible" and that they are still gathering evidence, while continuing to corroborate the facts "beyond doubt," as one U.S. official said.

U.S. officials were also investigating reports that the group's cell phone was used to call Yusuf Muzmail, the Lashkar commander in Muzaffarabad. The attacking group remained in Karachi for four days or so before launching the assault. A cell phone found on a dead fisherman at sea had been used to call Pakistan. The Indian Coast Guard warned of a possible sea infiltration on Nov. 18, but the Indian government was inert.

"The Indian response to this puts its antiterrorist groups in a very bad light. The response was disgracefully scattered," another former senior U.S. official said.

The SATP sources said that Kamal had named Pakistani citizens including Abu Ali, Fahad, Omar, Shoaib, Umer, Abu Akasha Ismail, Abdel Rahman, and Abdel Rahman as his accomplices.

Initial reports said that en route to Mumbai, the gunmen captured the trawler Kuber and killed five fishermen.

Other versions claim that two Pakistani ships, MV Al-Kabir and MV Alpaha were used as "mother ships" to transport the terrorists. Both have been detained in a joint operation by Border Security Guards and Navy Coast Guard ships.

The extremists used an inflatable boat and a speedboat to land near the Sasson dock, very near the Taj Continental Hotel, U.S. officials said. Once ashore they split up into five teams. Two batches went by taxi to the Victoria Terminus station. The three others headed for Nariman House, the Oberoi Hotel and Café Leopold. The last quartet went to the Taj Hotel.

They were heavily armed and spoiling for an offensive. According to U.S. officials there were seven incidents that involved explosive devices and the throwing of hand grenades, 13 incidents of intense exchanges of fire with Indian security troops, three incidents of infiltration into buildings that resulted in extensive fire-fights with Indian security forces.

U.S. officials have confirmed reports by Israeli intelligence that the jihadis released 17 Russian hostages after checking their passports, despite known and lingering animosities over the Chechen conflict. The motive is unclear, they said.

Most U.S. terrorism experts believe that LeT is an al-Qaida affiliate, a subcontractor to Osama bin Laden helping to run al-Qaida's infrastructure, fund-raising, recruiting and propaganda in South Asia.

In 1989, bin Laden had declared the liberation of Kashmir an al-Qaida objective and soon the radical Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) merged with LeT which was active in promoting the independence of Kashmir from India, a popular cause among Pakistani Muslims that provided a sure recipe for inaction on the part of the Pakistan government.

Although described by many as a Kashmiri group, LeT is in fact made up of Punjabis with a sprinkling of Afghanis, Arabs, Bangladeshis, Southeast Asians and the occasional Westerner.

In addition to wanting to annex Kashmir to Pakistan, the organization also sought to establish an extremist Islamic Caliphate. LeT had increasingly seen America as an obstacle on a par with India and Israel to the spread of jihadist or Salafist (Wahabi) Islam.

The parent of LeT is a Saudi jihadist group, Ahl-i-Hadith which supports jihad in Kashmir. U.S. State Department officials say the Saudis saturate their media with pleas for Kashmir's independence.

According to former CIA official and terrorism expert Marc Sagemen, LeT is only one of several regional jihadist organizations that operate to further al-Qaida objectives without close supervision from the core al-Qaida leadership, which has been severely weakened by losses and has shrunk to only 100 members.

LeT became active in Iraq in 2004 and attracted notice when U.S. forces arrested a Pakistani national, Dilshad Ahmad, a long-time LeT operative from the province of Punjab who had led terror bombings against India for four years.

Through interrogations, U.S. officials have established that LeT had moved its operations to the theater of Iraq. LeT had been named a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department in 2001 following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Until then they had fought mainly in Kashmir, India, and Chechnya.

U.S. officials said that LeT was involved in the July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks against the London Underground.

The Mumbai attacks were unusual in that they specifically targeted foreigners such as British, Americans and Israelis, and for the first time, took hostages, U.S. officials said.

FBI officials at home and CIA and other intelligence agencies overseas are stepping up scrutiny of the activities of LeT, U.S. officials tell the Middle East Times.

Perhaps most startling is the fact that LeT executed a dry run of the operation in 2007 to test the reliability of the sea method of attacks, U.S. officials said.

The use of mother ships to transport terrorists had long been part of the method of operation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, U.S. officials said.

According to The Hindu Times, LeT had sent an eight-man squad to Mumbai by fishing boat in 2007 in a dry run of the attack to test the reliability of the sea route.

The paper also quoted Jammu and Kashmir police investigators as saying the men in groups of two traveled by road from Bait-ul-Mujahidee, LeT's headquarters in Muzaffarabad to Rawalpindi before heading south to Karachi by train. There they sat in separate compartments for the Rawalpindi to Karachi journey.

After waiting for a week, they were allowed to start their dry run for Mumbai.

Arriving late at night the raiders hid in a safe house near the Bahhabna Research Center. Many of India's nuclear installations are close to the sea.

Once disembarked the squad traveled north to Jammu and Kashmir, the newspaper said.

After four days at sea, their commercial fishing boat was intercepted by the Indian Coast Guard. After the Coast Guard captain was bribed, the LeT vessel was allowed to proceed but, unknown to the terrorists, the Coast Guard had planted a tracking device aboard, which led police to arrest them in Jammu.

One of the prisoners, Abul Majid Araiyan told interrogators that he had taken religious classes in a Pakistani madrassa, and in 2003, only days after Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf banned Let, had received an advanced 40-day advanced course in guerrilla warfare. Araiyan officially joined LeT in 2005.

Source / Middle East Times

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Rabbi Arthur Waskow : Barack Obama, Religious Dialogue and a Response to Mumbai

'He should be clear that the serious adherents of ALL religions should be condemning the use of violence in the name of their own as well as other religions, and that this should be true when Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists use violence in the name of their faith.'

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow / The Rag Blog / December 3, 2008

A new Presidential policy on religiously defined terrorism should act in three directions:

(1) Work to strengthen those in every religious community -- beginning with those in American mosques and Muslim organizations -- who oppose religious violence;

(2) Treat terrorism as a crime to be policed and punished, not through "war' that breeds more terrorists by destroying civilian life;

(3) heal the political canker-sores (such as conflict over Kashmir and over Israel-Palestine) that have festered into motivations and excuses for terrorism.

Right now —- not waiting till January 20 —- President-elect Obama should start visiting mosques, speaking in mosques. It is shameful that he did not do so even once during the entire election campaign. At these mosques, he should praise those Muslim organizations —- by name , including the Islamic Society of North America, CAIR, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council -— for their forthright and vigorous public statements denouncing the Mumbai attacks, and others in the past. He should make clear that of course they were doing no more than is their responsibility, but it is especially incumbent on the American media to let the public know about these statements, and that he is mentioning them to aid in that process.

He should be clear that the serious adherents of ALL religions should be condemning the use of violence in the name of their own as well as other religions, and that this should be true when Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists use violence in the name of their faith. He should praise the efforts at Jewish-Muslim inter-education by the Union for Reform Judaism and ISNA, and urge churches and mosques to pursue the same kind of efforts.

And he should urge the governments of India and Pakistan to undertake two joint projects:

(1) seeking out by means of criminal investigation and police work the perpetrators and planners of the Mumbai attack, explicitly refusing to criticize either government for the Mumbai attacks and refusing to define them as acts of “war” or responding to them through a “war” on terror: Mass murders they were, and should be prosecuted hat way, rather than creating more terrorists by bombing whole villages in retaliation.

(2) Agreeing to heal the poisonous canker of the Kashmir question by bringing the UN to negotiate toward and conduct a free and fair election by Kashmiris to decide their own future, including such choices as independence, demiitarized accession to Pakistan or India, and unconventional multinational status with representation in both national governments, etc.

No doubt some will complain that this is encouraging terrorism by responding to terrorist actions. In fact, it cuts the roots out of terrorism by providing a legitimate political process to achieve what the people want, not what the terrorists demand.

He should ask the leaders of American faith communities to convene a world conference on religious dialogue and action toward peacemaking and to put on the table the question of how each community separately and all together can address the bloody, violence–inciting streaks in their own texts and traditions.

Finally, Secretary of State-designate Clinton should announce that on January 20, the United States will begin work to convene a multinational conference to work out a comprehensive peace settlement in the broader Middle East that includes full peace agreements and security for Israel, a new and viable Palestinian state, all Arab states, Iran, and Afghanistan.

Shalom, salaam, peace —

[Rabbi Arthur Waskow is director of The Shalom Center. ]

The Rag Blog

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Was Criminal Mastermind Behind the Mumbai Attacks?

Fleeting glance of an elusive figure: criminal mastermind Ibrahim Dawood.
'The eerie silence that accompanied the blasts are the very signature of Ibrahim Dawood, now a multi-millionaire owner of a construction company in Karachi, Pakistan.'
By Yoichi Shimatsu / November 28, 2008

The coordinated nighttime assault against seven major targets in Mumbai is reminiscent of the 1993 bombings that devastated the Bombay Stock Exchange. The recent attack bears the fingerprints of the same criminal mastermind – meticulous preparation, ruthless execution and the absence of claims or demands.

The eerie silence that accompanied the blasts are the very signature of Ibrahim Dawood, now a multi-millionaire owner of a construction company in Karachi, Pakistan. His is hardly a household name around the world like Osama bin Laden. Across South Asia, however, Dawood is held in awe and, in a twist on morals, admired for his belated conversion from crime boss to self-styled avenger.

His rise to the highest rungs of India's underworld began from the most unlikely position as the diligent son of a police constable in the populous commercial capital then known as Bombay.

His childhood familiarity with police routine and inner workings of the justice system gave the ambitious teenager an unmatched ability to outwit the authorities with evermore clever criminal designs. Among the unschooled ranks of Bombay gangland, Ibrahim emerged as the coherent leader of a multi-religious mafia, not just due to his ability to organize extortion campaigns and meet payrolls, but also because of his merciless extermination of rivals.

Dawood, always the professional problem-solver, gained the friendship of aspiring officers in India's intelligence service known as Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). He soon attracted the attention of American secret agents, then supporting the Islamic mujahideen in their battle against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan. Dawood personally assisted many a U.S. deep-cover operation funneling money to Afghan rebels via American-operated casinos in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Eager to please all comers, Dawood occasionally got his wires crossed, providing travel documents and other amenities to Islamist airplane hijackers. In response, Washington spymasters tried to unofficially "impound" his investment in the Nepalese casinos. Dawood's fury is legendary among locals. An honorable businessman, he held to the strict belief that a deal is a deal and there can be no reneging for any reason.

As Bombay moved into the league of Asia's premier cities – hotel rates and apartment rentals are the highest in the region – Dawood could have led a comfortable life as top dog. Instead he suffered a spasm of conscience, a newfound moral outrage, when rightwing Hindu nationalists destroyed a mosque in northern India in 1992, slaying 2000 Muslim worshippers, mostly women and children.

One a day in the following May, his henchmen set off bombs across Bombay, killing more than 300 people. His personal convictions had – uncharacteristically - overcome his dispassionate business ethics. Reeling in shock, his top lieutenant, a Hindu, attempted to assassinate Dawood. A bloody intra-gang war followed, but as always Dawood triumphed, even while away in exile in Dubai and Karachi.

In the ensuing decade, at the height of violence in Kashmir, Dawood sent his heavily armed young trainees by boat from Karachi on covert landings onto Indian beaches. This same method was used in the Mumbai assault with more boats, seven craft according to initial navy reports.

Why the timing of this raid, on the dawn of Thanksgiving in America? The leader of India's opposition and former deputy Prime Minister L. K. Advani had long sought Dawood's extradition from Pakistan, a move opposed by the then military government in Islamabad. With the restoration of civilian rule, the new Pakistani prime minister (Gillani) consented to New Delhi's deportation request.

Washington and London both agreed with the India's legal claim and removed the longstanding "official protection" accorded for his past services to Western intelligence agencies. U.S. diplomats, however, could never allow Dawood's return. He simply knows too much about America's darker secrets in South Asia and the Gulf, disclosure of which could scuttle U.S.-India relations. Dawood was whisked away in late June to a safe house in Quetta, near the tribal area of Waziristan, and then he disappeared, probably back to the Middle East.

As in the case of America's Afghan war protégé Osama bin Laden, the blowback to U.S. covert policy came suddenly, this time with spectacular effects in Mumbai. The assault on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel will probably go down as the first lethal blow to the incoming Obama administration. The assailants, who spoke Punjabi and not the Deccan dialect, went to a lot of trouble to torch the prestigious hotel, which is owned by the Tata Group. This industrial giant is the largest business supporter of the U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement, and Tata is now planning to become a nuclear power supplier. The Clintons, as emissaries of Enron, were the first to suggest the nuclear deal with New Delhi, so Obama inherits the Mumbai catastrophe even before he takes office.

Dawood, ranks fourth on Forbes' list of the world's 10 most wanted fugitives from the law. After the new round of attacks that killed more than 100 people and laid waste top five-star hotels, Dawood can now contend for the No.1 spot in the coming months and years. In contrast to the fanatic and often ineffective bin Laden, Dawood is professional on all counts and therefore a far more formidable adversary. Yet some in Pakistan's military intelligence agency say that Dawood is dead, killed in July. This version of events is much the same as a variation of the bin Laden story. If true, then his underlings are carrying on the mission of an outlaw transfigured into a legend.

[Yoichi Shimatsu. Former editor of The Japan Times in Tokyo and journalism lecturer at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Shimatsu has covered the Kashmir crisis and Afghan War.]

Source / New America Media

Thanks to Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog

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Cole: Six Mistakes After 9/11 That India Can Avoid

Targeted locations of the bombings across Mumbai. Photo: Daily Mail.
India: Please Don't Go Down the Bush-Cheney Road
By Juan Cole / November 30, 2008

Many Indians have called the attacks in Mumbai "India's 9/11." As an American who lived in India, I can feel that country's anguish over these horrific and indiscriminate acts of terror.

Most Indian observers, however, were critical in 2001 and after of how exactly the Bush administration (by which we apparently mainly mean Dick Cheney) responded to September 11. They were right, and they would do well to remember their own critique at this fateful moment.

What where the major mistakes of the United States government, and how might India avoid repeating them?

1) Remember Asymmetry

The Bush administration was convinced that 9/11 could not have been the work of a small, independent terrorist organization. They insisted that Iraq must somehow have been behind it. States are used to dealing with other states, and military and intelligence agencies are fixated on state rivals. But Bush and Cheney were wrong. We have entered an era of asymmetrical terrorism threats, in which relatively small groups can inflict substantial damage.

The Bush administration clung to its conviction of an Iraq-al-Qaeda operational cooperation despite the excellent evidence, which the FBI and CIA quickly uncovered, that the money had all come via the UAE from Pakistan and Afghanistan. There was never any money trail back to the Iraqi government.

Carnage at the Mumbai train station.

Many Indian officials and much of the Indian public is falling into the Cheney fallacy. It is being argued that the terrorists fought as trained guerrillas, and implied that only a state (i.e. Pakistan) could have given them that sort of training.

But to the extent that the terrorists were professional fighters, they could have come by their training in many ways. Some might have been ex-military in Britain or Pakistan. Or they might have interned in some training camp somewhere. Some could have fought as vigilantes in Afghanistan or Iraq. They needn't be state-backed.

2) Keep Your Eye on the Ball

The Bush administration took its eye off al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and instead put most of its resources into confronting Iraq. But Iraq had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Eventually this American fickleness allowed both al-Qaeda and the Taliban to regroup.

Likewise, India should not allow itself to be distracted by implausible conspiracy theories about high Pakistani officials wanting to destroy the Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai. (Does that even make any sense?) Focusing on a conventional state threat alone will leave the country unprepared to meet further asymmetrical, guerrilla-style attacks.

3) Avoid Easy Bigotry about National Character

Many Americans decided after 9/11 that since 13 of the hijackers were Saudi Wahhabis, there is something evil about Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia itself was attacked repeatedly by al-Qaeda in 2003-2006 and waged a major national struggle against it. You can't tar a whole people with the brush of a few nationals that turn to terrorism.

Worse, a whole industry of Islamphobia grew up, with dedicated television programs (0'Reilly, Glen Beck), specialized sermonizers, and political hatchetmen (Giuliani). Persons born in the Middle East or Pakistan were systematically harassed at airports. And the stigmatization of Muslim Americans and Arab Americans was used as a wedge to attack liberals and leftists, as well, however illogical the juxtaposition may seem.

There is a danger in India as we speak of mob action against Muslims, which will ineluctably drag the country into communal violence. The terrorists that attacked Mumbai were not Muslims in any meaningful sense of the word. They were cultists. Some of them brought stocks of alcohol for the siege they knew they would provoke. They were not pious.

They killed and wounded Muslims along with other kinds of Indians.

Muslims in general must not be punished for the actions of a handful of unbalanced fanatics. Down that road lies the end of civilization. It should be remembered that Hindu extremists have killed 100 Christians in eastern India in recent weeks. But that would be no excuse for a Christian crusade against Hindus or Hinduism.

Likewise, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as a Sikh, will remember the dark days when PM Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards after she had sent the Indian security forces into the Golden Temple, and the mob attacks on Sikhs in Delhi that took place in the aftermath. Blaming all Sikhs for the actions of a few was wrong then. It would be wrong now if applied to Muslims.

4) Address Security Flaws, but Keep Civil Liberties Strong

The 9/11 hijackings exploited three simple flaws in airline security of a procedural sort. Cockpit doors were not though to need strengthening. It was assumed that hijackers could not fly planes. And no one expected hijackers to kill themselves. Once those assumptions are no longer made, security is already much better. Likewise, the Mumbai terrorists exploited flaws in coastal, urban and hotel security, which need to be addressed.

But Bush and Cheney hardly contented themselves with counter-terrorism measures. They dropped a thousand-page "p.a.t.r.i.o.t. act" on Congress one night and insisted they vote on it the next day. They created outlaw spaces like Guantanamo and engaged in torture (or encouraged allies to torture for them). They railroaded innocent people. They deeply damaged American democracy.

India's own democracy has all along been fragile. I actually travelled in India in summer of 1976 when Indira Gandhi had declared "Emergency," i.e., had suspended civil liberties and democracy (the only such period in Indian history since 1947). India's leadership must not allow a handful of terrorists to push the country into another Emergency. It is not always possible for lapsed democracies to recover their liberties once they are undermined.

5) Avoid War

The Bush administration fought two major wars in the aftermath of 9/11 but was never able to kill or capture the top al-Qaeda leadership. Conventional warfare did not actually destroy the Taliban, who later experienced a resurgence. The attack on Iraq destabilized the eastern stretches of the Middle East, which will be fragile and will face the threat of further wars for some time to come.

War with Pakistan over the Mumbai attacks would be a huge error. President Asaf Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani certainly did not have anything to do with those attacks. Indeed, the bombing of the Islamabad Marriott, which was intended to kill them, was done by exactly the same sort of people as attacked Mumbai. Nor was Chief of Staff Ashfaq Kiyani involved. Is it possible that a military cell under Gen. Pervez Musharraf trained Lashkar-e Tayiba terrorists for attacks in Kashmir, and then some of the LET went rogue and decided to hit Mumbai instead? Yes. But to interpret such a thing as a Pakistan government operation would be incorrect.

With a new civilian government, headed by politicians who have themselves suffered from Muslim extremism and terrorism, Pakistan could be an increasingly important security partner for India. Allowing past enmities to derail these potentialities for detente would be most unwise.

6) Don't Swing to the Right

The American public, traumatized by 9/11 and misled by propaganda from corporate media, swung right. Instead of rebuking Bush and Cheney for their sins against the Republic, for their illegal war on Iraq, for their gutting of the Bill of Rights, for their Orwellian techniques of governance, the public gave them another 4 years in 2004. This Himalayan error of judgment allowed Bush and Cheney to go on, like giant termites, undermining the economic and legal foundations of American values and prosperity.

The fundamentalist, right-wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party, which has extensive links with Hindu extremist groups, is already attacking the secular, left-of-center Congress Party for allegedly being soft on Muslim terrorism. The BJP almost dragged India into a nuclear war with Pakistan in 2002, and it seeded RSS extremists in the civil bureaucracy, and for the Indian public to return it to power now would risk further geopolitical and domestic tensions.

India may well become a global superpower during the coming century. The choices it makes now on how it will deal with this threat of terrorism will help determine what kind of country it will be, and what kind of global impact it will have. While it may be hypocritical of an American to hope that New Delhi deals with its crisis better than we did, it bespeaks my confidence in the country that I believe it can.

Source / Informed Comment

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Deepak Chopra to Obama : Mumbai an Opportunity

Deepak Chopra. Graphic from Salon.

Deepak Chopra argues for a cool-headed response, saying that this is "Obama's opportunity to actually harness the help of the Muslims."

Mumbai Attacks: 'If You Go After the Wrong People, You Convert Moderates into Extremists'
November 28, 2008

See Video, Below.

The Indian city of Mumbai exploded into chaos early Thursday morning as gunmen launched a series of attacks across the country's commercial capital, killing scores of people and taking hostages in two luxury hotels frequented by Westerners.

CNN's Larry King spoke with author Deepak Chopra about the situation.

Larry King: Where were you born in India, Deepak?

Deepak Chopra: I was born in Delhi, but I have been in these hotels many, many times. I have stayed there, so I know the scene; I know the restaurants. I have been trying to get in touch with my friends and relatives, some of whom I have spoken to, some of whom I can't speak to. The lines are jammed. We're texting each other.

A friend of mine from Egypt was in the restaurant at the Taj hotel when the firing started, and somehow she managed to avoid the fray, hid in a basement and is now holed up in a room which is right next to the Taj hotel and is waiting to be told what to do.

The situation is complex, Larry, because it could inflame to proportions that we cannot even imagine. It has to be contained. We now recognize that this is a global problem, with only a global effort can solve this.

And you know, one of the things that I think is happening is that these militant terrorist groups are actually terrified that [President-elect Barack] Obama's gestures to the rest of the Muslim world may actually overturn the tables on them by alienating them from the rest of the Muslim world, so they're reacting to this.

You know, this is Obama's opportunity to actually harness the help of the Muslims.

You know, there's 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. That's 25 percent of the population of the world. It's the fastest-growing religion in the world. We cannot, if we do not appease and actually recruit the help of this Muslim world, we're going to have a problem on our hands.

And we cannot go after the wrong people, as we did after 9/11, because then the whole collateral damage that occurs actually aggravates the situation.

In India, this is particularly inflammatory, because there's a rise of Hindu fundamentalism. We saw what that did in Gujarat, where, you know, Muslims were scorched and they were killed, and there was almost a genocide of the Muslims.

India has 150 million Muslims. That's more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. So this is an opportunity right now for India and Pakistan to recognize this is their common problem. It's not a Muslim problem right now; it's a global problem.

King: Do you think that this is just the beginning, that there's a potential impact, or more?

Chopra: There is a potential impact of a lot more carnage. But it can be contained. And right now, one of the questions [is, given] that there are militant groups that cross international boundaries, is who is financing this? Where is the money coming from? We have to ask very serious, honest questions. What role do we have in this? Are our petrodollars funding both sides of this war on terrorism? Why are we not asking the Saudis where that money is going that we give them? Is it going through this supply chain to Pakistan?

It's not enough for Pakistan to condemn it. Pakistan should cooperate with India in uprooting this. They should be part of the surgery that is going to happen.

It's not enough for Indians to blame Pakistanis. Indians should actually ask the Pakistanis to help them.

And it's not enough for us to worry about Westerners being killed and Americans being killed. Every life is precious over there. We have got to get rid of this idea that this is an American problem or a Western problem. It's a global problem, and we need a global solution, and we need the help of all the Muslims, 25 percent of the world's population, to help us uproot this problem.

King: What does India immediately do?

Chopra: India at this moment has to contain any reactive violence from the fundamentalist Hindus, which is very likely and possible. So India has to condemn that by not blaming local Muslims. They have to identify the exact groups.

And the world has to be very careful that they don't go after the wrong people. Because if you go after the wrong people, you convert moderates into extremists. It happens every time, and retribution against innocent people just because they have the same religion actually aggravates and perpetuates the problem.

King: Are you pessimistic?

Chopra: I think Mr. Obama has a real opportunity here, but a challenging opportunity, a creative opportunity.

Get rid of the phrase "war on terrorism." Ask for a creative solution in which we all participate.

King: Is it because the war on terrorism really can never be won...?

Chopra: Because it's an oxymoron. It's an oxymoron, Larry, a war on war, a war on terrorism.

You know, terrorists call mechanized death from 35,000 feet above sea level with a press of a button also terror. We don't call it that, because our soldiers are wearing uniforms. They don't see what is happening, and innocent people are being killed. So, you know, terror is a term that you apply to the other.

Source / CNN / AlterNet



Here is a transcript of remarks by Deepak Chopra in an additional CNN interview.

Chopra: What we have seen in Mumbai has been brewing for a long time, and the war on terrorism and the attack on Iraq compounded the situation. What we call "collateral damage" and going after the wrong people actually turns moderates into extremists, and that inflammation then gets organized and appears as this disaster in Bombay. Now the worst thing that could happen is there's a backlash on the Muslims from the fundamental Hindus in India, which then will perpetuate the problem. Inflammation will create more inflammation.

CNN: Let me jump in on that because you're presuming something very important, which is that it's Muslims who have carried out these attacks and, in some cases, with Washington in their sights.

Chopra: Ultimately the message is always toward Washington because it's also the perception that Washington, in their way, directly or indirectly funds both sides of the war on terror. They fund our side, then our petrol dollars going to Saudi Arabia through Pakistan and ultimately these terrorist groups, which are very organized. You know Jonathan, it takes a lot of money to do this. It takes a lot of organization to do this. Where's the money coming from, you know? The money is coming from the vested interests. I'm not talking about conspiracy theories, but what happens is, our policies, our foreign policies, actually perpetuate this problem. Because, you know, 25% of the world's population is Muslim and they're the fastest growing segment of the population of the world. The more we alienate the Muslim population, the more the moderates are likely to become extremists.

Source / Information Clearing House

Thanks to Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog

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India/US Nuclear Deal Bad for the NPT

U.S.-India nuclear deal a non-proliferation disaster
By Anthony Salloum / August 21, 2008

Countries like Canada must stand up to Bush and say this is a bad deal with dire consequences

This week a select group of countries, Canada among them, will vote on a proposed nuclear deal between the U.S. and India that could lead to the further spread of nuclear weapons. With limited attention paid to this issue at home, indications are that Canada may be on the verge of making a grave mistake by supporting this deal. But this doesn't have to be the case.

If Canada were to courageously stand against this deal, it wouldn't be alone. Austria, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland all expressed concern last month.

Today and tomorrow, the 45 members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group – the alliance of countries that seeks to control trade in "dual-use" nuclear fuel, materials and technology – will be asked to consider the Bush administration's proposal to exempt India from having to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a condition of receiving nuclear technology and fuel.

The NPT is signed by 189 countries and has three key pillars: non-proliferation, disarmament and peaceful uses of nuclear energy. To be implemented, the U.S.-India nuclear deal requires approval by the Indian parliament, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the U.S. Congress.

So far, India and the IAEA have approved it.

If the U.S. wins exemption for India, the deal would be a non-proliferation disaster. It would be a Bush legacy the world could do without. The deal will lead to greater nuclear proliferation.

Treaties like the NPT, meant to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, have been unravelling. There are four nuclear weapons states that do not belong to the NPT: India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea – the first state to actually quit the NPT while announcing its intention to develop nuclear weapons. Negotiations are still ongoing on compensating North Korea for agreeing to relinquish its nuclear weapons program.

Supporters of the U.S.-India nuclear deal argue that this bilateral agreement will help thwart the spread of nuclear weapons because it places 14 of India's 22 reactors under IAEA monitoring. However, this deal allows India to continue thumbing its nose at the only legal, multilateral non-proliferation treaty the globe has, since it will not require India to join the NPT.

Additionally, unlike 178 other countries, India has not signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty prohibiting the testing of nuclear weapons, and continues to produce reactor grade material and expand its nuclear arsenal via the remaining reactors not available to the IAEA for inspection. In fact, the deal guarantees India an uninterrupted supply of fuel without obligating it to sign the test ban treaty.

Organizations and experts, including the Rideau Institute, are raising the alarm. An Aug. 15 letter sent to all 45 foreign ministers of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, including David Emerson, by more than 150 NGOs and experts from 24 countries, noted that, "this deal, if approved, would give India rights and privileges of civil nuclear trade that have been reserved only for members in good standing under the NPT. It creates a dangerous distinction between `good' proliferators and `bad' proliferators and sends out misleading signals to the international community with regard to NPT norms."

This special deal for India has not gone unnoticed by its rivals, Pakistan and China.

Adding fuel to the fire, Iran, which is a member of the NPT – unlike India – points to the deal as an example of the dangerous "good-bad" double standard. It is livid at the hypocrisy, pointing out that Israel is probably quietly lobbying for its own special deal. Iran has a right to have a civil nuclear program, but there are ample reasons to distrust its intentions. The U.S.-India nuclear deal does make a diplomatic solution even more difficult to achieve.

Iran's ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, cautioned that, "There is serious concern that the United States has taken this step with the intention to create a precedent and pave the way for Israel to continue its clandestine [nuclear] weapons activities." In other words, the U.S.-India deal will embolden other countries to undermine the NPT as well. And with the 2010 review conference of the NPT looming, there is much at skate.

Canada has options. This week at the Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting, Canada could coalesce with Austria, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland, and demand that India signs two treaties – the Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty, which stipulates that India halt production of reactor grade material, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty – as a precondition for their support of the U.S.-India deal. Who knows, other countries may also be emboldened to stand up and say this is a bad deal with awful consequences. No one country has to be alone in standing up to George Bush.

Alternatively, these countries could ask for more time to study the proposed exemption. Such a delay would spell the end of the deal because the U.S. Congress cannot consider and vote on the deal until the Nuclear Suppliers Group approves it. If this agreement doesn't land back in Washington by late September, it could not be approved during the remaining lifespan of Bush's administration, effectively killing the deal.

However, if Canada were to support the U.S. on this deal, it would be abandoning its long-standing position as a strong supporter of nuclear non-proliferation, and instead, be supporting Bush's legacy of undermining the most effective mechanism we have to avoid the spread of nuclear weapons in the world.

Here's hoping this Bush legacy doesn't come to fruition.

Anthony Salloum is the program director of the Rideau Institute, which serves as the global secretariat to Abolition 2000, a network of more than 2,000 organizations working for a global treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons.

Source / The Toronto Star

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India : On the Front Lines of the Global Food Crisis

The courtyard of the home where I stayed.
Things that go bump in the night
By Mira Kamdar / August 4, 2008

JAITU, FARIDKOT DISTRICT, India—Wrapped in a musky blanket under a fan that was frantically trying to beat the air free of mosquitoes, exhaustion was finally overtaking me when I vaguely felt something nuzzle my left hand. In theory, I was alone, deadbolted away from the family of six, who were sleeping outside on string cots so I could have the only bed in the only room of their home. At the second nudge, definitely mammalian, adrenaline flooded my body, sending me shrieking into an upright position. A rat scurried away.

I had traveled to this remote part of Punjab to try to understand India's agricultural dilemma. Squeezed between the relentless pressure to increase production and an environment stressed to the breaking point, the agricultural miracle brought to Punjab by the Green Revolution back in the 1960s was failing, the terrible costs of its success tearing at the fabric of Punjabi society. If Punjab couldn't find a way out of the current impasse, I didn't see how India, or the world as a whole, was going to feed a growing population in the face of environmental collapse and growing political instability fueled by scarcity.

The next morning, after tea with milk from the cow tethered out front, my host family's son Jitinder gave me a ride into town on the back of his motorcycle so I could attend a workshop on natural farming organized by Umendra Dutt, an agricultural activist who runs an organization called Kheti Virasat. Kheti Virasat's work focuses on raising awareness about the damaging effects of chemical pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and overwatering, as well as the mass dislocation of people away from their land and communities into an urban-oriented economy that can't absorb them.

I braced myself as lightly as I could against Jitinder's body, conscious of being a woman perched behind an unrelated man in a strongly patriarchal culture, as we wove our way out of the dirt lanes of the village and onto a narrow asphalt road that cut through an endless sea of ripening wheat, passing bullock carts piled high with fodder, tractors clanking toward the fields. I hadn't ridden on the back of a motorcycle in a long time. It was exhilarating to feel the air whipping around my face, the throb and bob of the machine gripped between my legs. I could smell the green scent of the plants and hear the morning bustle of the birds. Farmers and laborers were already wading through the waist-high wheat, spraying pesticide by hand from backpack reservoirs.

When the Green Revolution arrived in Punjab, the "land of five rivers," India faced chronic food shortages. A combination of massive irrigation infrastructure mandated by the Indian state, new hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides boosted yields to record levels over the following decades, saving India from the specter of mass famine. With just 1.5 percent of India's land area, Punjab produces 20 percent of the country's wheat and 12 percent of its rice. It provides 60 percent of the government's reserve stocks of wheat and 40 percent of its reserves of rice, the country's buffer against starvation.

A farmer on the road.
Punjab's amazing productivity made it possible for India to feed most of a growing population that tripled from 350 million when the country became independent in 1947 to more than 1.2 billion people today. In 2001, India even began to export grain, though critics claim this impressive achievement was gained at the expense of India's poor.

Only two years later, in 2003, India had to reverse the funnel and import grain, something it had not done in decades. Every year since then, India has imported more and more of its food. Panic-buying by India is credited with helping to raise the price of wheat on global markets by more than 100 percent last year, causing prices to spike around the world, from pasta in Italy to bread in Russia.

In an era of global food scarcity, economic growth does not guarantee India the ability to buy as much food as it needs on the world market. And steps India has taken to liberalize its domestic grain market, a move hailed by some as a necessary corrective to a system riddled with inefficiencies and disincentives to production, may have contributed to the current food crisis by allowing agribusiness giants to siphon off huge quantities of grain.

Meanwhile, the tragic social and environmental costs of the Green Revolution are escalating, threatening a return of the political violence that took the lives of more than 25,000 Punjabis during the 1980s and '90s when a violent secessionist movement—fueled by profound social disruption caused by the Green Revolution, which dislocated small farmers—militated for an independent Punjab, which would be called Khalistan. The movement had religious overtones derived from Punjab's majority religion, Sikhism. The Indian state came down on the movement as hard as it could, culminating in June 1984 with an attack by the Indian army on Sikhism's most sacred site, the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was subsequently assassinated by her Punjabi Sikh bodyguards, after which thousands of Sikhs were massacred in retribution. The government, at the least, looked the other way.

The nasty side effects of the Green Revolution have gotten only worse in the years since. The irrigation canals are drying up. Water tables are sinking. According to a new report from Punjabi University in Patiala, pesticide levels, among the most elevated in the world, are being blamed for actually altering the DNA of Punjabis exposed to them.

Meanwhile, there aren't enough jobs or slots at the better schools and universities. Unemployment is high. The children of farmers, who've grown up with the tantalizing images of the new urban India paraded before them on television, have no desire to farm but no skills to do much else. Drug addiction, fueled by heroin transited from Afghanistan via Pakistan through Indian Punjab on its way to Europe and North America, is rampant, claiming an astonishing 40 percent of the state's youth and 48 percent of its farmers and laborers, according to one recent report.

Before my encounter with the rat, as I sat with my host family around the bed that would become mine for the night, Jitinder's father, Prem Kumar, proudly showed me a photograph of his father, a Communist rebel who eluded Indian government forces for years. "He was never caught," he exulted. "He fought in the tradition of Bhagat Singh," Prem Kumar added proudly, citing a local boy turned national hero who didn't hesitate to take up arms against the British in the early 20th century.

Prem Kumar explained to me that most of the land around the village was mortgaged to banks or private moneylenders. The water table keeps sinking, and the villagers are having trouble getting enough water to irrigate their fields. Prices for everything have gone up. Many people in the village are sick with cancer.

His 8-year-old granddaughter's playmate came over to visit with her grandmother.

"She lost her mother just two months ago," Prem Kumar explained.

"That's horrible," I replied. "What happened to her?"

"She had brain cancer," he replied. Looking at the girl cradled in her grandmother's lap, he sighed: "Such a beautiful child, like her mother."

It was true, she was a beautiful child. I looked into her big brown eyes and wondered what her future held.

Source / Slate

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