Archive for the 'Conflict' Category

Is the Bible more violent than the Quran?

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on March 20, 2010
in Books, Conflict, Faith and Religion
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Barbara Bradley Hagerty at National Public Radio: [via 3quarksdaily]:

When Osama bin Laden declared war on the West in 1996, he cited the Quran’s command to “strike off” the heads of unbelievers. More recently, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan lectured his colleagues about jihad, or “holy war,” and the Quran’s exhortation to fight unbelievers and bring them low. Hasan is accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, last year.

Given this violent legacy, religion historian Philip Jenkins decided to compare the brutality quotient of the Quran and the Bible.

“Much to my surprise, the Islamic scriptures in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible,” Jenkins says.

Jenkins is a professor at Penn State University and author of two books dealing with the issue: the recently published Jesus Wars, and Dark Passages , which has not been published but is already drawing controversy.

Violence in the Quran, he and others say, is largely a defense against attack.

“By the standards of the time, which is the 7th century A.D., the laws of war that are laid down by the Quran are actually reasonably humane,” he says. “Then we turn to the Bible, and we actually find something that is for many people a real surprise. There is a specific kind of warfare laid down in the Bible which we can only call genocide.” More:

The bad Sufi

Published
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on February 2, 2010
in Af-Pak, Conflict, Faith, Music, Religion and Terrorism
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Modern Sufi leaders have become part of Pakistan’s corrupt ruling elite, favoured by the West not for their ‘moderation’ but for their compliance. Qalandar Bux Memon at Naked Punch:

I was sitting at the shrine of Shah Kamal in Lahore, with the dhol beats and whirling dervishes dancing to connect to the ‘centre of the universe in themselves’, when a friend turned and pointed to an old German fellow sitting a few meters from us. “He just delivered a lecture on Sufism. He is an expert on the subject, and talked about how it’s a religion of peace and love.”

I replied curtly: “Have you ever been in love? Have you had your heart broken? What peace is there in that state? What peace was there when Mansur had his head chopped off on the orders of the Baghdadi Emperor? What peace was there when Shah Inayat was fighting against the Mughal emperor for his life and that of his commune? What peace is there in Sassui’s peeling feet as she searches for her beloved through the desert of Sindh?”

My friend agreed and said: “But they pay me – I have to go along with them.” More:

Part two of Qalandar Bux Memon’s series on Sufism, focusing on the history of Sufism and the positive role it could play, will be published at The Samosa.

Waiting for the Jaffna train

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on February 2, 2010
in Conflict and Sri Lanka
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Ahilan Kadirgamar at Himal Southasian:

When I visited Jaffna recently, like all those returning home after years away I too sensed feelings of nostalgia welling up inside. This was my first visit in six years, and almost 25 since I had last lived in Jaffna, as an 11-year-old. The opening lines are by A E Manoharan, the Tamil pop star and baila singer who took Jaffna by storm in the 1970s – a time when, in my mind, Manoharan was more popular than the youthful leaders of the militant movements who would emerge soon enough. I have vague memories of going to an open-air Manoharan concert, sitting on the bicycle bar as one of my relatives rode us to where we could hear the loudspeakers. Incidentally, Manoharan composed “Ilangai enpathu”, with its reference to the palmyra fruit, two decades before rights activist Rajani Thiranagama and her colleagues would write The Broken Palmyra, for which she would be murdered.

By chance, a few weeks after my recent visit to Jaffna, I was sitting next to Manoharan himself on a flight from Madras to Colombo. The great singer was on his way to Jaffna for his first concert in the peninsula after the war, to celebrate Pongal. Manoharan, now 65 years old, like so many others returning home spoke of his anxiety at what Jaffna might look like – who would be left, who might have died, the suffering people have endured, what people might tell him, and what memories would return. During the flight, Manoharan spoke in eloquent, poetic language on a range of issues. He remembered how his first concert at the large Veerasingham Hall in Jaffna had been a flop, as only 60 people turned up. His manager cursed him, but, three months later he had the hall packed. As the plane jerked and landed, I asked him for a message that I could write about. In a sentimental tone, he replied, “Now I am going back to my land with happiness and peace of mind.” More:

Also at Himal Southasian: The Jaffna diaries by Ben Bavinck, a retired missionary who lived in Sri Lanka for more than 30 years and now lives in his native Netherlands:

17 August 1991, Jaffna. The next morning I went cycling to Vaddukoddai, Uduvil and Maruthanarmadam. Jaffna looked quiet. Everybody was cycling as usual. The Nallur Temple festival was just beginning.

I went to talk with a friend, Daya, who looked back on the Tiger attack on the Elephant Pass army camp. At the time, he said, the community in Jaffna had been in a state of psychosis: “A struggle till the bitter end has started.” Very young boys and girls, many just 10 years old, had joined the Tigers, Daya continued, and parents were now in a state of panic because their children had disappeared. Even schools and other institutions had been persuaded to participate in propaganda meetings for the Tigers, with the result being that schoolchildren, Boy Scouts and Girl Guides had been keeping the roads to the front clear as the fighting was taking place.

Aman Ki Asha, an Indo-Pak Peace Project

Published
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on January 31, 2010
in Conflict, India, Media and Pakistan
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Aman Ki Asha is a brave peace initiative by the two leading media houses of India and Pakistan -- The Times of India and the Jang Group. Below, the TV ad:

Taliban — a risky ally in the war on polio

Published
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on January 10, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Conflict, Health and Terrorism
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From the Wall Street Journal:

Mehtar Lam, Afghanistan — Knocking on door after door, thousands of volunteers fan out every month across southern and eastern Afghanistan, vaccinating children against polio, a disease eradicated almost everywhere else in the world.

Usually, the volunteers — sent by the government and sponsored by United Nations agencies — bring a single-page letter requesting people to cooperate, “for the benefit of our next generations.” The letter’s signatory: Mullah Mohammad Omar, the one-eyed supreme leader of the Taliban.

“We always carry a copy,” says Dr. Attar Wafa, the chief of polio vaccinations in the insurgent-infested province of Laghman, much of which is a no-go area for government workers and foreigners.

The antipolio campaign brings together the Taliban, President Hamid Karzai’s central government, Unicef and the World Health Organization in an uneasy but functioning partnership — one that recognizes the reality of the insurgents’ stranglehold over large chunks of the country. More:

Waziristan: The last frontier

Published
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on January 8, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Conflict, Culture, Pakistan, Politics and Terrorism
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From The Economist:

“YOU should enjoy this,” said a Pushtun from Waziristan, the most remote and radicalised of the tribal areas in North-West Pakistan that border Afghanistan, as he proffered a bottle of Scottish whisky. It was an excellent Sutherland single-malt; but the man was referring to the bottle’s more recent provenance, not its pedigree.

He had been given it by a fellow Waziristani working for Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. This spy had received the illegal grog from an American CIA officer. Your correspondent’s friend returned homewards, Scotch in hand, driven by another Waziristani, who is also employed as a fixer by al-Qaeda.

Waziristan, home to 800,000 tribal Pushtuns, is a complicated place. It is the hinge that joins Pakistan and Afghanistan, geographically and strategically. Split into two administrative units, North and South Waziristan, it is largely run by the Taliban, with foreign jihadists among them. If Islamist terror has a headquarters, it is probably Waziristan.

For terrorists, its attraction is its fierce independence. More:

A merger of interests

Published
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on January 2, 2010
in Af-Pak, Conflict and Terrorism
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Rajmohan Gandhi in the Hindustan Times:

‘Of course, they will kill me,’ one of the subcontinent’s most-influential Muslim leaders told me the other day. “But first they will flog me.” He was speaking of what would await persons like him if violent extremists took over. But the need to survive is compelling many in Pakistan to fight the jihadists.

The stupid talk of an Indian hand behind suicide attacks is not the real story from Pakistan. That Pakistanis as a society are quietly redrawing their list of friends and enemies.

Violent extremists disgracing Pakistan and Islam are now seen as the nation’s enemy number one as well as danger number one. Certainly the United States is not liked, and there is resentment at the pressure on Pakistanis to do more. Pakistanis think that the US and India should understand what Dawn recently called “the limitations of a sub-optimal state fighting a hydra-headed enemy”.

But the violent extremists who blast women, children and the elderly into body pieces that land in mosques and bazaars have firmly displaced the US from its position as the entity Pakistanis most detest. More:

South Asian threat? Local nuclear war = Global suffering

Published
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on December 17, 2009
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A regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan could blot out the sun, starving much of the human race. Alan Robock and Owen Brian Toon in Scientific American:

nuclear_warIndia and Pakistan, which together have more than 100 nuclear weapons, may be the most worrisome adversaries capable of a regional nuclear conflict today. But other countries besides the U.S. and Russia (which have thousands) are well endowed: China, France and the U.K. have hundreds of nuclear warheads; Israel has more than 80, North Korea has about 10 and Iran may well be trying to make its own. In 2004 this situation prompted one of us (Toon) and later Rich Turco of the University of California, Los Angeles, both veterans of the 1980s investigations, to begin evaluating what the global environmental effects of a regional nuclear war would be and to take as our test case an engagement between India and Pakistan.

The latest estimates by David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security and by Robert S. Norris of the Natural Resources Defense Council are that India has 50 to 60 assembled weapons (with enough plutonium for 100) and that Pakistan has 60 weapons. Both countries continue to increase their arsenals. Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons tests indicate that the yield of the warheads would be similar to the 15-kiloton explosive yield (equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT) of the bomb the U.S. used on Hiroshima.

Toon and Turco, along with Charles Bardeen, now at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, modeled what would happen if 50 Hiroshima-size bombs were dropped across the highest population-density targets in Pakistan and if 50 similar bombs were also dropped across India. Some people maintain that nuclear weapons would be used in only a measured way. But in the wake of chaos, fear and broken communications that would occur once a nuclear war began, we doubt leaders would limit attacks in any rational manner. This likelihood is particularly true for Pakistan, which is small and could be quickly overrun in a conventional conflict. More:

High tensions

Published
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on December 8, 2009
in China, Conflict, India, Tibet and Travel
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Tawang Monastery. Photo: Arunachal Pradesh Tourism

Tawang Monastery. Photo: Arunachal Pradesh Tourism

Peter Savodnik travels to Arunachal Pradesh, India’s Himalayan state whose contested border marks the front lines of the increasingly combative rivalry between India and China. In the National:

Tawang sits about 3,000 metres above sea level and is enveloped by sharply etched mountains and crystalline skies. The centre of the village comprises a narrow artery riddled with two- and three-storey hotels offering “fooding and lodging”, souvenir stands, barber shops – the Fancy Hair Cut Salon, with room for just one stool, is a big draw – and 4×4s that ferry tourists from Tawang to Jang and Bomdilla, also in Arunachal Pradesh, and Tezpur and Guwahati, in Assam. The tourists who come to Tawang are mostly young, newly moneyed Indians, according to Bijoy Baruah, a tour guide from Guwahati-based Jungle Travels India, but they also include older people, many with backpacks and ponytails, from Scandinavia, Germany and the United States. Buddhist monks in red robes from the Tawang Monastery, the largest in India and the second-largest in Asia, are ubiquitous. Old men sit in front of rug shops and miniature cafes cupping honey-ginger tea. A eight-metre gate painted aqua blue, orange, green and yellow frames the frenetic, honking crush of cars and people.

Usually, Tawang hovers just above the cloud line, and the only thing that mars the horizon are Army helicopters shuttling troops and materiel to and from the bases that dot the mountains just south of the border with China. Since 1962, when China briefly invaded northern India, Delhi has maintained a sizeable military presence in these parts. The Indian Defence Ministry’s official history of the 1962 war, which was completed 30 years later, states that Indian forces suffered 2,616 casualties against some 700 on the Chinese side. (The exact numbers are difficult to tabulate because many soldiers went missing or died from the cold.) More importantly, the war revealed that India was helpless to defend itself, particularly in the mountains. Chinese troops had gained valuable, cold-weather experience fighting in Korea in the early 1950s and, more recently, in Tibet. (Tibetan guides, familiar with the intricate mountain passes, gave Chinese soldiers critical help during the 1962 conflict.) India, meanwhile, maintained a small and ineffective Army that, much like today, was focused on Pakistan at the expense of its border with China. More:


The Swiss minaret ban — Europe and Islam

Published
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on December 3, 2009
in Conflict, Faith and Religion
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Fifty-seven per cent of the Swiss population has voted in favour of blocking any new minarets being built attached to mosques. Does the vote reflect a rising tide against Islam across Europe? Watch this Al Jazeera video:

India & Pakistan: case for common defence

Published
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on November 28, 2009
in Conflict, India, Pakistan and Terrorism
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This article by Pervez Hoodbhoy was published simultaneously today in Pakistan (Dawn) and India (The Hindu):

So, how can India protect itself from invaders across its western border and grave injury? Just as importantly, how can we in Pakistan assure that the fight against fanatics is not lost?

Let me make an apparently outrageous proposition: in the coming years, India’s best protection is likely to come from its traditional enemy, the Pakistan Army. Therefore, India ought to help now, not fight against it.

This may sound preposterous. After all, the two countries have fought three-and-a-half wars over six decades. During periods of excessive tension, they have growled at each other while meaningfully pointing towards their respective nuclear arsenals. Most recently, after heightened tensions following the Mumbai massacre, Pakistani troops were moved out of North West Frontier Province towards the eastern border. Baitullah Mehsud’s offer to jointly fight India was welcomed by the Pakistan Army. More:


How the 1965 India-Pakistan war ended

Published
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on October 30, 2009
in Conflict, India and Pakistan
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Inder Malhotra in the Indian Express:

war_nytWhile Ayub, with a map on his lap, was gleefully telling his confidant, biographer and alter ego, Altaf Gauhar, that Pakistani Patton tanks would soon be reaching Delhi, his military secretary burst into the room agitatedly to announce that the counter-offensive had foundered because the Indians had cut a nearby canal and inundated the battlefield. The village of Asal Uttar in the Khem Karan sector had become the graveyard of Pakistani tanks. What tormented the field marshal even more was that India’s obsolete Sherman and Centurion tanks of World War II vintage had got the better of Pakistan’s US-supplied, state-of- the-art Pattons. Yet it took him another 12 days of senseless fighting and avoidable casualties to accept the UN-sponsored cease-fire on which the Security Council was insisting every afternoon. Why?

Not only were Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his hard-line cohorts totally opposed to a cease-fire (even though they knew that Pakistan was running out of ammunition as well as spare parts) but also Ayub’s loyalists – including Gauhar – were telling him that there could be no cease-fire unless it was accompanied by some mechanism to “solve” the Kashmir dispute. When the president testily asked his acolyte: “How do I achieve this”, Gauhar replied: “Sir, you have the China card. Please play it”.

Ayub promptly decided to do so. That night a plane carrying him flew to Beijing in even greater secrecy than that surrounding Henry Kissinger’s historic flight to China five years later. The pilot of Ayub’s aircraft was the recently retired first Pakistani air force chief, Air Marshal Asghar Khan. The journey to Beijing and back, after talks with Zhou Enlai, lasted only 24 hours but it was enough to bring home to the military ruler the limitations of the China card. More:

A jihadi village of white al-Qaeda fighters

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on September 26, 2009
in Afghanistan, Conflict, Pakistan and Terrorism
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Investigators have discovered a village of white German al-Qaeda insurgents, including Muslim converts, in Pakistan’s tribal areas close to the Afghan border. From the Telegraph:

The village, in Taliban-controlled Waziristan, is run by the notorious al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which plots raids on Nato forces in Afghanistan.

A recruitment video presents life in the village as a desirable lifestyle choice with schools, hospitals, pharmacies and day care centres, all at a safe distance from the front.

In the video, the presenter, “Abu Adam”, the public face of the group in Germany, points his finger and asks: “Doesn’t it appeal to you? We warmly invite you to join us!”
According to German foreign ministry officials a growing number of German families, many of North African descent, have taken up the offer and travelled to Waziristan where supporters say converts make up some of the insurgents’ most dedicated fighters. More:

India’s nuclear fizzle

Published
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on September 20, 2009
in Conflict, India, Pakistan and Politics
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Pervez Hoodbhoy at Chowk:

By generating a pro-test environment, India’s nuclear hawks hope to make life difficult for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s moderate government whenever India’s signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) comes up for discussion. Santanam’s revelation has been spurred by the fear that if President Obama succeeds in his initiative to revive the CTBT – which had essentially been shot dead by the US Senate in 1999 – the doors on nuclear testing could be shut world-wide. A race against the clock is on.

There are not the only ominous developments. India has begun sea trials of its 7000-ton nuclear-powered submarine with underwater ballistic missile launch capability, the first in a planned fleet of five. India became the world’s 10th-highest military spender in 2008 but now plans to head even further upwards. In July 2009, Indian defence minister, A.K. Antony announced that for 2009-2010 India plans to raise its military budget by 50% to a staggering $40 billion, about six times that of Pakistan.

On the Pakistani side, the desire to maintain nuclear parity with India has caused it to push down the pedal as hard as it can. Although the numbers of Pakistani warheads and delivery vehicles is a closely held secret, a former top official of the CIA recently noted in a report released this month that: “It took them roughly 10 years to double the number of nuclear weapons from roughly 50 to 100.”

This is bad news for those Pakistanis, like myself, who have long opposed Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. More:

Al-Qaida: Tales from Bin Laden’s volunteers

Published
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on September 11, 2009
in Afghanistan, Conflict, Pakistan and Terrorism
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Eight years after the attack on New York, intelligence reports from captured western recruits suggest the terror network is weakening. Jason Burke and Ian Black in the Guardian:

The meeting was tense. The six recruits, from immigrant communities in France and Belgium, had decided to confront their al-Qaida handler. Before leaving their homes, they had watched al-Qaida videos on the internet and seen massed battalions of mujahideen training on assault courses, exciting ambushes and inspiring speeches by Osama bin Laden.

Now they had spent months in Pakistan’s rugged frontier zones and had done nothing more than basic small arms training, some physical exercise and religious instruction.

They had been deceived, they complained to the Syrian militant looking after them. The videos had lied.

Their handler was unapologetic. The flashy videos were a “trick” that served a dual purpose, he told them, “to intimidate enemies and to attract new recruits – propaganda.”

The exchange, which took place a year ago, is revealed in interrogation documents obtained by the Guardian. The six would-be recruits are currently on trial in Europe after being arrested on their return home. But their experience is illuminating, amplifying suspicions about the current capability of the al-Qaida movement, and raising crucial questions: how strong is Bin Laden’s terrorist group? What control and influence does it exert beyond its safe havens in south-west Asia? As British troops fight and die to secure Afghanistan to make Britain safer, where does the main threat come from? How close is the image of al-Qaida to the reality? More:

Why did you kill my son?

Published
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on September 11, 2009
in Afghanistan, Conflict, Pakistan and Terrorism
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Stephen Farrell, a reporter for The New York Times, and Sultan M. Munadi, an Afghan journalist working with him, were kidnapped by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan on Saturday. In a British raid to free them early Wednesday, Munadi was killed. Now Sultan Munadi’s father has demanded to know why ongoing negotiations, which he believes could have led to a peaceful outcome, were abandoned in favour of a military strike. From the Independent:

Karban Mohammed told The Independent that his son had called him 90 minutes before he was shot to say he was confident that he and Mr Farrell would soon be freed by the Taliban fighters holding them.

In the 15-minute telephone call Mr Munadi reassured his family that talks were going well and the likely timing of the release would be when the mourning period was over for the 100 or so people killed in last week’s Nato air strikes on hijacked tankers.

“Sultan was sure of that. My son’s words brought me so much happiness I felt maybe I could sleep for the first time in many nights. He seemed so confident that things were working out,” recalled Mr Mohammed.

“We sat around and discussed how we would welcome Sultan back. That was never to be and now we are all very sad. Many terrible things have happened in this country, but when it happens to your own, it is not easy.

“Yes, I feel very angry about what happened. I feel sad and also angry. Sultan was killed for no reason at all.” More:

Previously on AW: The reporter’s account: 4 days with the Taliban

The art of terror

Published
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on September 11, 2009
in Art, Conflict and Terrorism
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“]Painting by Ramzan Shad Buzkashi. [Dawn]

Painting by Ramzan Shad Buzkashi.

From Dawn:

Since September 11, 2001, the war against terror has invaded the global imagination, inspiring novels, films, and art. Pakistani artists were among the first to artistically engage with the controversial war, and their paintings from the past eight years help document this country’s emotional and political confrontation with terrorism and the personal tragedy and public policy that it engenders. Here, Dawn.com presents examples of works that touch on war, terrorism, extremism, and Pakistan’s post-9/11 foreign policy.

Message to Muslim world gets a critique

Published
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on August 28, 2009
in Conflict and Terrorism
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From the New York Times:

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has written a searing critique of government efforts at “strategic communication” with the Muslim world, saying that no amount of public relations will establish credibility if American behavior overseas is perceived as arrogant, uncaring or insulting.

The critique by the chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, comes as the United States is widely believed to be losing ground in the war of ideas against extremist Islamist ideology. The issue is particularly relevant as the Obama administration orders fresh efforts to counter militant propaganda, part of its broader strategy to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. More:

The China-India rivalry: Watching the border

Published
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on August 25, 2009
in Conflict
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Ishaan Tharoor in Time:

It’s a sign of how delicate feelings are between Asia’s two rising powers that an obscure blog post can cause an international incident. Just recently, Indian newspapers circulated the incendiary comments of an essay published on a nationalist Chinese website. The essay – authored under the pen name Zhanlue, or “strategy” in Mandarin – suggested that it was in Beijing’s interest to support insurgencies on India’s borderlands that could eventually dismember the diverse Indian federal state. The uproar in India over this provocation forced officials in New Delhi to respond, saying that “the article in question … does not accord with the official state position of China on India-China relations.” That bland assertion, though, does little to stanch a lingering anxiety, particularly in India, that tensions between the two giants will inexorably come to a tipping point. “There cannot be two suns in the sky,” warns Zhanlue’s post.

The hubbub over the essay came at a moment when Indian and Chinese officials were engaged in a round of largely futile talks over long-standing disputes along their mountainous 1,060-mile (1,700 km) border. A war fought between the two countries in 1962 was brief, but its legacy remains rancorous, with both New Delhi and Beijing claiming chunks of land now patrolled by the other’s troops. Though sparsely populated, the contested territories, from a sliver of Kashmir to the entirety of Arunachal Pradesh, a northeastern state in India that China imagines is part of Tibet, are heavily militarized. More:

Could Afghanistan become Obama’s Vietnam?

Published
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on August 24, 2009
in Afghanistan, Conflict and Terrorism
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Peter Baker in the New York Times:

Washington: President Obama had not even taken office before supporters were etching his likeness onto Mount Rushmore as another Abraham Lincoln or the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Yet what if they got the wrong predecessor? What if Mr. Obama is fated to be another Lyndon B. Johnson instead?

To be sure, such historical analogies are overly simplistic and fatally flawed, if only because each presidency is distinct in its own way. But the L.B.J. model – a president who aspired to reshape America at home while fighting a losing war abroad – is one that haunts Mr. Obama’s White House as it seeks to salvage Afghanistan while enacting an expansive domestic program.

In this summer of discontent for Mr. Obama, as the heady early days give way to the grinding battle for elusive goals, he looks ahead to an uncertain future not only for his legislative agenda but for what has indisputably become his war. Last week’s elections in Afghanistan played out at the same time as the debate over health care heated up in Washington, producing one of those split-screen moments that could not help but remind some of Mr. Johnson’s struggles to build a Great Society while fighting in Vietnam. More:

Buddha’s savage peace

Published
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on August 20, 2009
in Conflict, Sri Lanka and Travel
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Robert D. Kaplan in The Atlantic:

A relic containing a tooth of Buddha, Kandy, Sri Lanka. Photo Travir / cc

A relic containing a tooth of Buddha, Kandy, Sri Lanka. Photo Travir / cc

I had always wanted to go to Kandy, for no other reason than that I was in love with the name: so airy, fanciful, and obviously suggestive of sweet things. I first found Kandy on a map of what was then called Ceylon, decades ago as a young man. Little did I know that it would one day have urgent revelations for me, more dark and poignant than sweet.

My journey began at Colombo’s crumbling train station, with its white facade like a cake about to melt. The first-class ticket cost a little more than $3 for the three-hour journey from Sri Lanka’s steamy Indian Ocean capital, through deep forest, to an altitude of 1,650 feet. The rusted railway car rattled and groaned its way uphill. Soon banana leaves were slapping against the train as we entered a relentless tangle of greenery.

The forest thickened with the crazy chaos of dark hardwood foliage. Vines choked every tree. The torrential rain of the southwest monsoon invigorated the pageant, shrieking and beating against the leaves as sheets of mist moved across the jungle. Then came swollen brown rivers, with water buffalo half sunk in mud near the pottery-red banks. Here and there the forest would break to reveal a shiny, rectilinear carpet of paddy fields, only to close in again, denser than before. I saw scrap-iron hutments and tiled rooftops the color of autumn leaves, and smoky blue hillsides creased by waterfalls and half-eaten by gray monsoon clouds. Other breaks in the forest revealed the occasional bell-shaped Buddhist dagoba, or stupa, with its soaring-to-heaven whiteness against the otherwise fungal-green tableau. As we drew near to Kandy, we passed through several narrow tunnels. In the pitch black, the creak of the train reverberated against the rock walls. More:

Who are the Taliban?

Published
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on August 18, 2009
in Afghanistan, Conflict, Pakistan and Terrorism
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Sabrina Tavernise at the New York Times blog, At War:

Gojra, Pakistan – “It was the Taliban,” stuttered the young Christian man, trying to explain who had killed seven family members. “The Taliban came and killed them.”

We were standing in his broken house in central Pakistan, next to a collapsed bird cage. The day before, an angry mob had swept through his neighborhood like a storm, pillaging and burning houses belonging to Christians.

Little was known about the attackers. They did look like members of the Taliban. Many had beards. Some had wrapped scarves around their faces. Others were brandishing weapons.

But as easy as it would have been to think of them that way, the fact was, they were not the Taliban. We were in central Pakistan, far from the western mountains where the Taliban hold sway. They were part of a local sectarian group, Sipah-e-Sohaba.

But the man’s assumption raised an interesting question, one that had been nagging at me. As a journalist writing about the war in Pakistan, I thought I should know: Who are the Taliban? More:

Pakistan and the perils within

Published
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on July 18, 2009
in Conflict and Pakistan
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Pervez Musharraf says the biggest threat to his country is extremism and terrorism by the Taliban, al-Qaeda and by the extremists in society. In The Hindu, an edited excerpt from Karan Thapar’s Devil’s Advocate (on CNN-IBN).

India-Pakistan relations have suffered in the wake of the terror attack in Mumbai. If you had been President, how would you have responded to Mumbai?  

Well, certainly we would have cooperated in the investigation, because we wouldn’t like Pakistan to be blamed for being an accomplice — the government, or the Army, or the ISI… We would’ve joined the investigation and brought whoever has done it to book.

Why is Hafiz Saeed detained under the Maintenance of Public Order Act and not charged with terrorism?  

I don’t know these legalities, frankly. I won’t be able to answer that. more

Children of the Taliban

Published
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on July 10, 2009
in Art, Conflict and Terrorism
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From the Wall Street Journal:

In “Children of the Taliban,” documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy interviews two 15-year-old boys, Abdurrahman and Wasifullah, who are living in Kachegori Camp, a refugee settlement in Pakistan.

The boys, best friends since childhood, fled their hometown in northern Pakistan in October 2008, when it became a target of both a Pakistani army bombing campaign and a U.S. missile attack intended for Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.

In the film, Abdurrahman, who blames the Taliban for the October raid, says he wants to be a Pakistan army soldier when he grows up. Wasifullah, whose cousin was killed by a U.S. missile, wants to join the Taliban.

Later, Ms. Obaid-Chinoy asks the two boys separately: Are they willing to fight each other on the battlefield?

“Definitely, I will kill him,” says Abdurrahman.

“Yes,” says Wasifullah, “I will retaliate fiercely.” More:

The China-India border brawl

Published
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on June 24, 2009
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Jeff M. Smith in Wall Street Journal Asia:

The peaceful, side-by-side rise of China and India has been taken for granted in many quarters. But tensions between the two giants are mounting, and Washington would do well to take note. On June 8, New Delhi announced it would deploy two additional army divisions and two air force squadrons near its border with China. Beijing responded furiously to the Indian announcement, hardening its claim to some 90,000 square kilometers of Indian territory that China disputes.

To understand what the tussle is about, consider recent history: The defining moment in the Sino-Indian relationship is a short but traumatic war fought over the Sino-Indian border in 1962. The details of that conflict are in dispute, but the outcome is not: After a sweeping advance into Indian territory, China gained control over a chunk of contested Tibetan plateau in India’s northwest but recalled its advancing army in India’s northeast, leaving to New Delhi what is now the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Relations have been characterized by mistrust ever since, but neither nation has shown any inclination to return to armed conflict. More:

Cricket vs the Taliban

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on June 23, 2009
in Conflict, Cricket, Pakistan and Terrorism
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Will a glorious sport rescue Pakistan from the Islamists? Tunku Varadarajan in Forbes:

As Pakistan fights for its survival against the barbarian Taliban–who would turn that fragile quasi-democracy into an Islamist state so extreme as to obliterate all girls’ schools from the face of the land–its people find themselves possessed of a weapon with which to vanquish the forces of darkness. I speak here not of drones or tanks or helicopter gunships, but of the glorious game of cricket.

Pakistan’s national cricket team has just won the World Cup in a version of cricket called Twenty20, a dynamic, novel form of the game that might be compared–for the benefit of American readers–to a three-inning baseball game, short, eventful and innovative.

The cricket victory is the best news that Pakistanis have had since the departure from power of their military dictator, Pervez Musharraf; and unlike the latter event, which only ushered in a long period of uncertainty and violence, the former offers clarity, light and a shot at redemption from evil. More:

Battle Taliban with… Saffron?

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on June 14, 2009
in Afghanistan and Conflict
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From Wired news:

saffron

If you think the U.S. military isn’t serious about this soft power, hearts-and-minds stuff, it’s worth considering a recent report by an Army Human Terrain System research team on saffron.

That’s right: The U.S. Army commissioned a detailed, heavily footnoted 22-page report on saffron as a potential cash crop for Afghan farmers – and as a potential alternative to growing opium poppy. In a nice touch, the report even includes a recipe for sabzi pilau: a Persian rice dish with saffron, spinach and meat. Delicious!

Devising alternative livelihoods for Afghan farmers involved in the poppy trade is a serious business, and thus far no one has been able to come up with a viable and sustainable alternative. For Afghanistan’s impoverished farmers, opium is almost ideal: it is a high-value, low weight crop that requires minimal water; the paste collected during the harvest is easy to store and transport; and the buyers come to directly to you. More:

The Taliban will ‘never be defeated’

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on June 7, 2009
in Afghanistan, Conflict, Pakistan and Terrorism
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‘Colonel Imam’, the Pakistani agent who trained Mullah Omar and the warlords to fight the Soviets, tells Christina Lamb in Rawalpindi the US must negotiate with its enemies. From the Sunday Times:

“I have worked with these people since the 1970s and I tell you they will never be defeated. Anyone who has come here has got stuck. The more you kill, the more they will expand.”

A tall, bearded figure, whose real name is Amir Sultan Tarar, he trained at Fort Bragg, the US army base where America’s special forces are stationed.

During the late 1970s and 1980s he controlled CIA-funded training camps for 95,000 Afghans and often accompanied his students on missions.

After the Soviet defeat and the collapse of communism, he was invited to the White House by the first President George Bush and was given a piece of the Berlin Wall with a brass plaque inscribed: “To the one who dealt the first blow.” More:

Zardari’s new zeal

David Pilling and Farhan Bokhari interview the Pakistan President. In the Financial Times:

zardariA visit to Asif Ali Zardari, president of Pakistan, is not to be undertaken lightly. Four rings of security surround Islamabad, the leafy capital now scarred with sandbags and clogged with concrete roadblocks designed to deter suicide bombers. Then come six more checkpoints at which guards search vehicles, frisk the occupants and confiscate electronic devices.

Even inside the presidential palace, now 10 concentric circles of security from the violent world beyond, soldiers mill around with automatic weapons. Mr Zardari would be like a general in his labyrinth were he not a civilian president in a nation where military rule has been the norm.

The chamber where he receives his guests is more mausoleum than meeting room. Prominently displayed are photographs of Benazir Bhutto, his wife, whose assassination in December 2007 led to his appointment as president eight months later. Now, Mr Zardari has taken on the anti-jihadi battle that was to have been his wife’s. More than once during an interview with the Financial Times, he raises his eyes skywards and – dressed in a silver-grey suit rather more sparkling than his lowly, though improving, approval ratings – invokes the spirit of Benazir. More:

Click here to read the transcript of the FT interview:

Jemima Khan’s broken country

Published
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on June 7, 2009
in Conflict, Culture, Pakistan, Society and Terrorism
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Jemima Khan. former wife of Pakistani cricketer Imran Khan with whom she had two sons, in the Sunday Times:

The day I’m leaving for Pakistan a round-robin e-mail pings into my inbox from an address I don’t recognise, Wise Pakistan. The message reads: “It is important you watch this to see what’s coming.”

Ten men are lined up and each one is filmed talking inaudibly to camera. The first man is pinned to the ground by four others. His throat is slit like a goat at Eid and his head held aloft by his hair. The Urdu subtitle reads: “This is what happens to spies.” It’s a Taliban home video – to jaunty music – of serial beheadings. There are plenty of these doing the rounds nowadays.

I’m off to Pakistan for the children’s half-term. They visit their father there every holiday. I lived in Pakistan throughout my twenties. Now it’s a different place – the most dangerous country on Earth, some say – and my friends and family are worried.

For my last four years in Pakistan we lived at the quaintly named House 10, Street 1, E7. Two months ago a bomb exploded 100 yards from the house, killing four people; about 1,500 have been killed this year in terrorist attacks. More:

Mahinda Rajapaksa: ‘The war is over’

Published
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on June 1, 2009
in Conflict and Sri Lanka
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Shekhar Gupta walks the talk on Prabhakaran, the war with the LTTE and the way forward with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in The Indian Express:

rajapakseSG: Hello and welcome to Walk the Talk. I am Shekhar Gupta in Colombo’s Presidential Palace and my guest once again President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

MR: My pleasure

Welcome to Walk the Talk and very different circumstances from our last conversation.

MR: Quite. Yes, because when you came last time, I think it was about two years…two years ago.

SG: Less than, Less than one-and-a-half years ago.

MR: Less than one-and-a-half years ago.

SG: and I will tell you why I say one-and-a-half years.

MR: Yes, then of course we were not a, I would say a, united…unitary country now it its because earlier, when you came last time, North was…North and East I think was controlled by the LTTE terrorist. Now, we are free of terrorism.

SG: You said you are a unitary country, but a federal unitary country I hope.Because last time in fact, when we had a conversation you said that in one-and-a-half years you said there will be peace and there will be no LTTE.

MR: Yes.

SG: I said in one-and-a-half years, I reminded you, because it is still two months to one-and-a-half years.

MR: Yes

SG: That situation has come about even faster than you had…even you had imagined.

MR: That’s right. Yes, because of our…armed forces were so committed for the fight.

SG: Tell us a little bit about the final phases of the battle.

MR: Yes.

SG: How did it progress? What happened? When did the breakthrough come?

MR: No, from the time after we walked into Madhu , that is the, North-West of the…

SG: Right…island.

MR: Island. We were stuck there for about eight to nine months. Then we… it was a, just a, walk-over, I would say. But we knew after we went to Killinochi, I mean, we were, you know, through.

SG: what is the biggest mistake that Prabhakaran made in this.

MR: Well, to kill Rajiv Gandhi.

SG: To kill Rajiv Gandhi.

MR: That was…

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