Today Times

How to write a masala bestseller? Ask Tony!

Times Of India
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Tony Blair has done the full monty…well, almost! Don’t we just love it! At last, a memoir that hits all the wrong notes and the right spots. Deliciously candid, outrageously readable and mercifully indiscreet! Thank God for Blair’s political incorrectness. This is the stuff good masala memoirs are made of. And, fortunately for hungry readers, there’s one brave man out there willing to let it all hang out…err… literally. Now that Britain’s ex-prime minister has informed the world about his boudoir conduct (“I was an animal in the bedroom”) perhaps it won’t be too much to ask his wife Cherie to write her version, titled “There’s a tiger in my bed.” He goes on to brag that women find politicians irresistible because power is an aphrodisiac. He merrily justifies what he calls a ‘free bird impulse’ to have affairs, adding, “There is a moment of encounter, so exciting, so naughty, so lacking in self control…” it provides a thrill that is like ‘‘an explosion of irresponsibility”. Is this a grown man blathering on about male sexual fantasies or a frisky schoolboy salivating and leching in a girl’s dorm? It hardly matters. The book, “A Journey”, is likely to sell millions of copies and find zillions of takers for the juvenile justifications it offers on matters sexual and political.

It should be read in the same spirit it has been written—come on, Tony is entitled to reveal all. It’s his book. “Statecraft” meets “Kamasutra” meets “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” — that adds up to a whopping, international bestseller. What’s the bet his publisher has also become an animal, in and out of the bedroom? By the time the numbers roll in, there may be a veritable zoo in Blair’s boudoir. His take on statecraft and bodycraft are both equally engaging, equally shallow. But it is refreshing to come across a 700-page tome that goes beyond affairs of state and jauntily jumps into risqué territory — sexual affairs. Blair’s own passionate ‘affair’ — no, not with Princess Diana — but the very unlikely George Bush, may rouse hoots of derision in political circles, but it’s pretty rare for a politician to stick his neck out and stand by an old ally when the rest of the world has discarded them. Going by the published excerpts, Blair and Bush were a little like Tom and Jerry or Laurel and Hardy playing war games. They rode into Iraq together and the world has never been the same.

Memoirs work best when the person writing them is confident (or foolish) enough to tell all. If Blair admits that there was a stage during his prime ministership when he was dealing with a G&T (gin and tonic) problem, often knocking back a stiff drink, along with half a bottle of wine over dinner, the revelation makes him far more human. If he confesses his attraction for the “People’s Princess”, but qualifies that her “emotional wildness” scared him off (even though he saw a bit of himself in her “manipulative nature”), one can completely get it. It is nuggets like these that are likely to make this a truly modern memoir, and therefore appeal to the aam janata across the world. Some of the anecdotes are amusing, like the time Britain’s Queenie herself got down to do the dishes at Balmoral, after slipping her royal hands into a pair of rubber gloves. It is a vivid and amazing image — can you imagine a single wealthy woman in India undertaking this humble, after-dinner chore? And here, Blair is talking about his Queen — one of the richest individuals in the world. He claims three years out of office have given him time to reflect on his government. It has also given him the opportunity to trash rivals and his successor, Gordon Brown, in particular. Bechara Brown is dismissed as a “strange guy”, someone low on “emotional intelligence”. There goes Brown’s female constituency! Blair watchers should see “The Ghost Writer”, a movie in which the former James Bond, Pierce Brosnan, plays a thinly disguised version of Tony Blair penning his controversial memoirs. It generated a lot of controversy when it was released…with good reason.  It was a pretty telling film that followed a ghost writer’s scary experiences when he stumbles on secrets that eventually cost the fictitious prime minister his life. The most shocking suggestion in the movie was that the British prime minister had become a stooge of the American president, going so far as to suggest that the PM’s ambitious wife was an American agent ready to sell the country down the drain. Sensibly, the Blairs ignored the film. Another movie titled “The Queen” projected Blair in an entirely unflattering light, showing him as a vain and self-serving prime minister who cared only about his own image and little else. Blair ignored this one too.

India emerges glowing in Blair’s racy book and he has given the country a generous pat on the back  (“a shining example of a large nation, still developing, that manages to be democratic.”). Oh well… just for giving us that rather naïve certificate for good conduct, let us invite Tony to launch his book here. We can treat the Blairs to a special screening of “Peepli [Live]” just to give them an idea of India’s experiments with democracy.

How Black is my Berry

Times Of India
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Ministry-BB razi toh kya karega kazi? BlackBerry has got a 60-day reprieve from its sentence of death by ‘decryptation’, though insiders say that it was the ministry of home affairs which had to scramble to save face. Who cares? All I know is that I am grateful.


The government’s allegations had blackened the Berry, and given it a clandestine new image. Simply by being plugged into it, I too could wallow in the exciting guilt by association. With the staying of the ban, for the time being at least, I can continue to enjoy this sinister status, red in claw and blue in tooth.

Thanks to this controversy, I can now delude myself that that I am in the league of terrorists, tax evaders and sundry enemies of the state who allegedly operate under the cover of Enterprise and Messenger, the two BlackBerry services inaccessible to law enforcement agencies. Shukriya, Mr Pillai for giving me a persona so different from my usual mundane one. Not since Janaab Qureshi used you to sabotage the Indo-Pak foreign ministers talks have you served such a covert purpose. Now every time I press the speed dial number of my corner bania, I can conjure up a clandestine delivery of RDX instead of the usual detergent which can merely demolish dirt at the press of a programmed button.

Similarly, I can pretend that my pin-to-pin exchanges on Blackberry Messenger are not just innocuous time-pass. Indeed, Meenal, Anubha, Anisha are not really my friends but code names for a don in Dubai, a plotter in Pakistan, and pssst, Tere Bin Laden himself. Yes, my bada gupshup is actually Chhota Shakeel.

In terms of corporate sexiness, the little black slab was once the equivalent of the little black dress. But now it’s even more wicked. Earlier, the BlackBerry was the CEO’s Big O, and merely by owning the same instrument of access, I acquired his proxy power. But this pales before the cloak and dagger swagger which the ongoing controversy has bestowed on me via my BB. My adversary is no longer the lout who nightly shatters my sleep with a bellowing "Hell-oh, hell-oh. Kaun? Banwarilal?" Instead, I have clashed scimitars with the King of Saudi Arabia himself. Before a similar resolution, didn’t he too block BlackBerry because RIM did not provide him the encryption for mails that were in fact plots to blow up his petrozillions? These too could have been as disguised as my message to Kalachowkie Kirana Stores ordering a packet seedless dates.

All my connections to the worldwide web of global intrigue would have been lost if our MHA had had its way, and blocked BlackBerry’s disputed services like all the other governments who demand transparency while bundling their own operations in a burqa.

Mea culpa, I too have put my BB to surreptitious use. Slyly Googling on this little phone under the table may not be in the same class as an underworld exchange in the guise of Enterprise, which is supposed to be only for corporate emails. But it has served my purposes. They may not fall foul of the law, but, being as upright as the next stooped Parsi, I sometimes feel it is not entirely fair to have any information I want literally at my fingertips while my co-panelist has nothing more than an uncharged memory. Television appearances allow a furtive search if sleight of hand is as much your forte as shrill of lung. But, in a radio studio, you can do it khullam khulla, and project yourself as an authority on any subject that springs up. No wonder I’m a BB ka ghulam.

* * * Alec Smart said, "So many scams. Instead of banning cricketers, why notjust ban cricket?"

Let's not confuse entitlements with rights

Times Of India
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Politicians and activists constantly propose new rights — the right to work, to education, and now to food. The word "rights" is being twisted to mean entitlements, and there is a big difference.

Rights are freedoms from oppression by the state or by society (through ethnicity, religion and gender). These rights do not entail government handouts.  Entitlements, however, are welfare measures entailing government handouts. Rights are not limited by budget constraints, but entitlements are. So, rights are universal but entitlements are not.

Historically, India has provided only limited welfare.  It can certainly afford to provide more as it grows richer. Yet fiscal crises in the West warn us that entitlements can grow so rapidly as to threaten even rich governments with bankruptcy.  Because of budget constraints, entitlements must be limited. But rights should not be limited. So, don't confuse rights with entitlements.  

US economists calculate that three welfare measures — social security (for the aged), Medicare (for the aged) and Medicaid (for the poor)—will triple from 7% of GDP to 20% in the next decade, swallowing up virtually all federal tax revenue. Jagadeesh Gokhale of the Cato Institute calculates that, including social security, the US is headed for a national debt that's 500% of GDP, and Europe of 434%. Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University says welfare measures have become a Ponzi scheme, which work by constantly shifting burdens to future generations.

Greece, which prides itself on socialist entitlements, looks certain to default on its public debt despite a recent rescue by the European Union. Spain, Britain, Portugal and Ireland are seeking to cut entitlements to stave off a future debt crisis. Entitlements need to be narrower and better targeted.

Welfarism was once touted as the great Marxist vision, but is actually intrinsic to all democracies and capitalist systems.  Britain's Poor Laws dating from the 16th century provided workfare to the destitute through workhouses, at very low wages. This was not called a right to work or to doles. It was seen as Christian charity, and as a way of stopping desperate people from taking to crime.

The British Bill of Rights in 1689 created a constitutional monarchy. The rights included freedom from royal interference with the law, from taxation without parliamentary approval and from martial law in times of peace; and free elections and free speech. These were all rights, not entitlements.

In 1776, the US Declaration of Independence said all men were equal with a fundamental right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The US Bill of Rights in 1789 provided for freedom of religion and speech; for the right to due process of law and peaceful assembly; for freedom against military confiscation in peacetime, unlawful seizure and arrest, excessive bail, torture, self-incrimination and excessive or cruel punishment; for the right to bear arms in a militia, to public trial by a jury, and to legal counsel.

The French Revolution produced its own Rights of Man. This declared that men are born free and equal, and have inalienable rights to liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression. It provided for equal civil participation by all, due process of law, freedom of speech and religion.  

These three countries spearheaded the concept of fundamental rights. In all three, rights were about freedoms, not entitlements.

In subsequent centuries, people said this was not enough, and proposed entitlements — which some called second-generation rights. Marxists declared that rights to free speech, elections and personal freedom were bourgeois illusions that did not empower the poor. So Lenin proposed a dictatorship of the proletariat that took away all basic freedoms, and instead offered the right to food, shelter and work. Mind you, nobody could sue Lenin for poor provision. Nobody could throw out Mao for the Great Leap Forward that killed 30 million people. Nobody could topple Stalin for murdering four to six million peasants in the Ukraine.

The communist experience shows that giving welfare rights priority over basic freedoms is the road to serfdom. And the capitalist welfare state now shows that entitlements, although desirable and inevitable in democracies, must be limited and targeted at the needy, so that they do not hog all spending or bankrupt governments.

What lessons follow for India's welfare reforms? Some changes — like the right to information — are true rights, requiring no budgetary outlays. Others, like the employment guarantee scheme or right to food, are entitlements. These must be restricted to the needy, not made universal, as some activists want. Mukesh Ambani must have the right to free speech, but why on earth should he be entitled to 35 kg of rice at Rs 3?

Baradar - Our vote goes to the ISI

Times Of India
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Back in March 2010, Indian officials were aware that Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar had been picked up by the ISI who conned the CIA into helping them locate the man in the crowded city of Karachi a few weeks earlier.

US officials at the time were effusive about Pakistan's "cooperation" , hoping to use Kayani's smooth assurances to chart their exit out of Afghanistan. In fact, the line coming out of Washington then was - guys, we told you the Pakistanis have stopped loving the Taliban and are turning them over to us.

Indian intel officials following Pakistan said, wait and see. In the past few months the US has had several epiphanic moments about Pakistan. The Wikileaks revelations in July removed the fig leaf the US was using all along. My view then was, and remains, that the ripples from WikiLeaks will make fundamental changes to the entire war outlook.

Anyway, seven months later, some people in Washington seem to have seen the light. Check out this New York Times story by Dexter Filkins. The most telling quote in the story is this: "We picked up Baradar and the others because they were trying to make a deal without us," said a Pakistani security official, who, like numerous people interviewed about the operation, spoke anonymously because of the delicacy of relations between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States. "We protect the Taliban. They are dependent on us. We are not going to allow them to make a deal with Karzai and the Indians."

It isn't that the US has just discovered they had been duped by the ISI for the nth time. Matt Waldman, who wrote a fantastic paper called The Sun in the Sky – the Relationship between Pakistan's ISI and Afghan Insurgents had a lot more on the subject.

"The ISI has apparently established parameters of Taliban conduct and strategy, reinforced by the threat of arrest. Independent contacts between the Taliban's former military commander, Mullah Baradar, and the Afghan government, possibly with a view to negotiations, apparently breached these boundaries, and so he and at least seven other Taliban leaders were arrested by the ISI in early February 2010. It appears that the arrests were intended to send a message to both the Taliban and the United States that negotiations could only take place if the ISI had a major role in, if not control over, the negotiating process."

This view, Waldman says, "was echoed by Taliban commanders, most of whom doubted Pakistan's support for negotiations. As a commander from a central province said: 'The ISI arrests [of Taliban leaders] were done for their own interests; they don't want peace in Afghanistan, and they don't want them to talk to the Afghan government. If there is peace, it is not to Pakistan's benefit.'"

"One of the southern commanders claimed: 'If any one rejects that the ISI backs or controls the Taliban, he has a mental problem … all our plans and strategy are made in Pakistan and step by step it is brought to us, for military operations or other activities.

"Pakistan [the ISI] does not have only one representative on the Quetta Shura, they have representatives everywhere. As for Mullah Baradar's arrest, do you think they didn't know where he and others were before that? … the ISI have more than two, three or four [representatives] on the [Quetta] Shura. … Some [other members of the Quetta Shura] know they work for the ISI, but it's not discussed. … The reality is that the ISI controls the leadership. Mullar Omar has strong support of Pakistan; he has to listen to them and do what they say.'

"Arguably, it is consistent with the arrest of Taliban leaders that showed an interest in talks with the Afghan government, and with the ISI sanctioning, perhaps even orchestrating, the replacement of Mullah Baradar with the more hard-line Qayyum Zakir.

"Both Haqqani commanders echoed the comments of Taliban commanders about the presence of ISI on the Quetta Shura. According to the senior commander: 'Yes the ISI control the Quetta Shura. When Mullah Baradar and Mullah Omar talked directly to the Afghan government – peace talks – the ISI arrested Baradar … because they want peace talks to fail. I don't know how many ISI are on the Quetta Shura … Honest Afghans who want jihad and are honest to their country, were disarmed, detained and became powerless ... I know many good high-ranking [former] Taliban who are not supporting the fight in Afghanistan ... the rest are listening to the ISI, [and] still have the control. I don't like this. Without the support of the ISI, Afghans cannot do anything, can't even have meetings. Both former and current ISI are on the Quetta Shura. New ISI members are not so reliable and do not have such a strong role in it; the former ISI have more credibility and influence. All the Taliban interested in the peace process are detained.' -- from The Sun in the Sky.

Pakistan's ISI has over the past few months made it clear to all stakeholders in Af-Pak that all "peace" negotiations will have to be made through them, to emphasise the centrality of the Pakistani role in the resolution in Afghanistan. These stakeholders range from Taliban leaders, US officials and generals and all countries around them.

Aid flooded Pak by withdrawing Army

Times Of India
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Pakistan is suffering its greatest human tragedy since Partition. The floodwaters of the Indus are an incredible 20 miles wide, sweeping away entire towns, villages and farms. Over 20 million people have been displaced, far more than the nine million displaced by Partition in 1947.  The immediate death count of 1,500 will soon increase hugely through disease and deprivation. Rehabilitation could cost $100 billion.

Some Indians might be perverse enough to rejoice that an enemy has been hit by a natural disaster — an act of God, as it were — and will be crippled economically for years. But most Indians will surely want to help their neighbours. In these traumatic times, we need to think of Pakistanis as humans in distress, not foes. 

Even those who cannot think beyond realpolitik should see that the floods are potentially a strategic disaster for India too. Flood damage will create a fertile breeding ground for Islamist militancy. Islamist NGOs with links to terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are at the very forefront of flood relief efforts and hence are gaining popularity. Meanwhile, the civil administration is seen as corrupt and ineffective. President Asif Zardari has further ruined his low reputation by going on foreign junkets.

The Pakistani army has in the last year battled some, though by no means all, militant groups in Swat and FATA (federally administered tribal areas). But much of the infrastructure built to reach the remote tribal areas has been destroyed by the floods. Besides, the Pakistani army is redirecting its efforts in the region, from combating militants to combating flood damage. The militants are re-occupying the resultant political vacuum.

The ISI recently came out with a study suggesting that Islamist militants had become a greater threat to the country than India. Flood damage can only deepen that perception. True, the army wants to back the Afghan Taliban even while battling the Pakistani Taliban, and this results in muddled thinking and sabotage of peace initiatives. The resolution of these contradictions is not in sight.

One day, the Pakistani army and the ISI will have no choice but to confront the reality that Islamist militants are Frankensteins that threaten their own creator. The ISI’s assessment should bring that day somewhat closer.

In the light of both human and strategic considerations, how can India help Pakistan? Individual contributions from Indian citizens must be encouraged, and red tape thwarting contributions in cash and kind must be cut. But the Indian government should not offer more than a modest amount of food and financial aid. Pakistan requires billions of dollars for relief and rehabilitation, so anything India offers will be a drop in the ocean.

Besides, recipients are rarely grateful for alms: they resent being supplicants, and suspect the motives of the donors. The US saved India from mass starvation after the twin droughts of 1965 and 1966 by giving record food aid. But this won the US very few friends and stoked resentment from many who felt India’s independence was being compromised. The US will once again be the chief donor to Pakistan, but will gain virtually no popularity or gratitude.

If food and financial aid will not help much, how can India best help Pakistan? The best way will be for the Indian Army to unilaterally withdraw from the border in Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat. This will pose no military risk whatsoever: flood-stricken Pakistan cannot possibly embark on military adventures against India. But the withdrawal of Indian troops will mean that the Pakistan army loses all excuses to avoid diverting manpower and financial resources from the border to flood relief and rehabilitation. This will cost India nothing, yet will release very large resources within Pakistan. Its impact on the Pakistani psyche will be significant. Even analysts who distrust Pakistan agree widely that India has no alternative to diplomatic engagement: cutting off ties will not win any minds and hearts there. Unilateral withdrawal will itself be a form of engagement, and will encourage other forms.   

The wrong strategy will be to try to negotiate a mutual withdrawal of troops. Withdrawal must be unilateral and immediate. Defence hawks will express dismay that India is so soft on an enemy that encourages terrorism. But unilateral withdrawal will be a flood relief measure, not a military surrender. In the bargain, it will oblige Pakistan to withdraw its own troops and redeploy them for flood relief: its public opinion will be outraged otherwise.

Dr Manmohan Singh, you say we must be proactive in the peace process with Pakistan. The tragic floods there have given you an opportunity to be proactive in a way that will not come again. Go for it.

Pak must rise above the flood of prejudice

Times Of India
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More than 15 million people hang precariously between life and death in the face of the biggest natural calamity to strike Pakistan in decades. As the flood waters recede, hunger and disease now stalk the survivors. The United Nations estimates that it will take more than $500 million in aid to put the country back on its feet. As of now the UN claims it has received only 40 per cent of the required amount from member states. Apparently the international community is reluctant to part with the money because ‘of a trust deficit arising from Pakistan’s deep ties to terrorism.’ In other words there is suspicion that the money will be siphoned off by Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI and diverted to bank roll the Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Taliban that are battling U.S forces and exporting terror. Aware of the implications, Pakistan has launched a massive damage control exercise. An intelligence report was recently leaked to the press that revealed the ISI had concluded that terrorist groups (including those it has nurtured) are the gravest threat to Pakistan's national security. But in sharp contrast to the suspicious global community, New Delhi has been far more trusting. At least the Manmohan Singh government has not linked its response to Islamabad’s insincerity in addressing New Delhi’s concerns about inaction against anti-India terrorists on Pakistan’s soil. Unfortunately Islamabad’s response has been prejudiced. It has allowed 25 truckloads of Indian potatoes into its markets but is sitting on New Delhi’s $5 million aid offer for political reasons.

Many experts in Pakistan now claim that the 'flood waters of prejudice' that are threatening to drown out reason both at home and the West pose a bigger danger to the State than the natural disaster. With the resource deficit Zardari government having virtually capitulated to the will of nature abandoning its citizenry to the mercy of God and with the international community playing craven ‘aid’ politics a worrying power vacuum threatens to destabilize the country. Into this ever widening void have stepped the Army (always the savior of Pakistan) and the self-styled foot soldiers of Allah - the several banned ‘Lashkars’. In Pakistan today the hand that is being extended to pull out grateful citizens from the murderous waters belongs to the ‘conscientious’ army man or the ‘selfless’ terrorist. No points for guessing who’s winning the war for the hearts and minds of the Pakistani people. The growing alienation and anger against the bumbling Zardari government can have far reaching consequences for Pakistan’s polity. Historically, it is civil society that constitutes the first line of defence against those that look to undermine the democratic state and its institutions. The international community must loosen its purse strings, if for no other reason than to empower the government of Pakistan to act and edge out adventurists who are eyeing a big opportunity in tragedy. If suspicion and prejudice continue to dictate the actions of the international community and the Zardari government, Pakistan could find itself slipping back into the clutches of the military or worse succumbing to terrorists and their agents.

A valley riven by anger & history

Times Of India
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General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief, was commissioned in August 1971. The other four-star general in the Pakistan army, Tariq Majeed, is due to retire on October 7, which makes him an exact contemporary. Lt Gen Khalid Shameem Wyne, chief of general staff, will lay down his baton on March 8 next year and is consequently just a few months junior. Lt Gen Syed Absar Hussain, who is in charge of Army Strategic Forces, was at the Command and Staff College in Quetta in 1971. He got his artillery commission in April 1972. Lt Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha, director-general of the ISI, is already on extension, so is of Kayani's age. Lt Gen Javed Zia, head of Southern Command, Quetta, Lt Gen Muhammad Mustafa Khan, commanding 1 Corps, and Lt Gen Shahid Iqbal of V Corps are retiring either this year or next.

What do the men at the top of Pakistan's army have in common? They are officers of the "traumatized generation". Each joined an army that had been humiliated in the 1971 war, which ended not only in the gut-wrenching surrender of more than 90,000 troops to an Indian general, but the partition of Pakistan and the reinvention of the East as Bangladesh. The only war that Kayani has fought, barring recent civil wars of course, is the game-changing 1971 conflict.

His generation, still burning with an adolescent heartache that can never quite heal, has had a silent, consuming mission: revenge for Bangladesh through Kashmir, preferably within its career span or at least in its lifetime. The tortured angst of zealots is even more acute because in their fevered imagination, a "Muslim" army on jihad had been disgraced by a "Hindu" force. If the status of Kashmir changes in the next five years, this generation will have realized its religio-nationalist fantasy.

The Indian analysis of Bangladesh differs from the Pakistan narrative: we believe that the Indian Army's intervention in 1971, formalized by an infructuous Pakistan air strike on the night of December 5, was only the last paragraph of a long suicide note written by an incompetent president, Yahya Khan, and a brilliant megalomaniac, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. We believe a series of racist political mistakes was topped by denying Sheikh Mujibur Rahman a chance to form the government after he had won a majority in a general election.

Four decades later, Pakistan is waiting for Omar Abdullah to become the Yahya Khan of Kashmir, and tweaking events with just enough intervention to help a mistake gravitate towards a crisis. This may sound far-fetched in Delhi, but there is optimism in Islamabad. The Jamaat e-Islami, which advocates accession to Pakistan, is, at long last, in the vanguard of an upsurge; the slogan on the streets is that Omar may be in government but the Jamaat's Syed Ali Shah Geelani is in power. From across the LoC, Syed Salahuddin, leader of the Pakistan-sponsored Hizbul Mujahideen, urges Kashmiris, in a speech widely believed to have been delivered through a mobile phone and broadcast over microphones, to flood the streets as victory is imminent.

There was little premonition of this summer's conflagration. Last year's elections passed off so peacefully that there were self-congratulatory smiles all around. Calm bred complacency, and its principal side-effect, arrogance. A death on June 11 was shrugged off as an incident. It took eight weeks for Delhi to rise from slumber, and then only to offer boring clichés as balm. Shoot-at-sight orders have had no effect: you can't shoot a whole city.

Estimates differ but the death toll in Kashmir between June and the first week of August is around 40. Rampaging Muhajirs, outraged at the murder of their Shia leader, Syed Raza Haider on Monday, have killed more than 80 and injured hundreds of Pashtuns in Karachi. This was not a Hindu-Muslim riot; this was Muslim-Muslim carnage. Muhajirs are UP-Bihar migrants who left their land in 1947 for the Promised Land. Six decades later, they need private militias to defend themselves because they offend Pathans in a "pure" country that has virtually eliminated "infidels" from its demography.

It is an evil moment in history when a corpse-count becomes the comparative difference between two nations. A fact is staring at us: 1947 unhinged Muslims of the subcontinent, and a once-cogent community is split politically and psychologically, inflamed by passions that veer between unhealthy fear, violent anger and dysfunctional dreams. If Kashmiri Muslims believe they can achieve independence, then they understand neither India nor Pakistan.

Generals are transient. Pakistan's generals do not count corpses because they believe that death is a mere statistic in a larger war. Democracy transcends the prejudice of generations, and demands a ruling culture far beyond the ambitions of any coterie. India cannot diet on such cold calculations. A daily drip of blood has corroded the credibility of Srinagar's government. If the mood of the people does not change, the government must. 

The significance of Wikileaks

Times Of India
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The contents of about 91,000 classified US documents relating to the Afghan war for the period January 2004-December 2009 posted by WikiLeaks at its website confirms Pakistan's  duplicitous policy towards the Taliban and ISI's role in organizing attacks on Indians in Afghanistan.
 
In essence, the leaked documents provide information on the following dimensions of the Pakistani game plan:
 
"ISI's role in training and arming the Taliban:  The reports clearly bring out that a member of the directorate of ISI is in charge of suicide bombing operations in Kabul. Details of his profile as also the process of preparing suicide attacks are also given in the documents. These reports also reveal that two madrassas in NWFP are the main centres of training of suicide bombers. The classified intelligence reports point out that Hamid Gul, the former DG, ISI, is working against US interests. An important report mentions that Gul was present at a meeting of the Taliban in Wana, the capitol of South Wazristan, on January 5, 2009, in which the plan to deploy a suicide bomber to avenge the death of Osama al Kini, an al-Qaida commander, was finalized. Hamid Gul is also reported to be regularly visiting the training centres of the suicide bombers in the NWFP.
 
"Pak Establishment's efforts to use Taliban to destabilize the Karzai Government in Afghanistan: The reports indicate the use of Haqqani and Hikmatyar networks by ISI for the elimination of Afghan leaders and attacks in Afghanistan. The documents clearly bring out the fact that the ISI provided necessary facilities as well as strategic guidance to the Taliban to achieve the above objective.
 
"The directions given by the ISI to the Taliban and others to target Indians, Indian diplomatic missions and the road construction officials and workers: In this context, reports suggest that ISI paid huge amounts of money to specially target Indian development efforts. While major incidents have been mentioned, the minor ones with no casualties have not been reported. However, one fact emerges clearly that Indian targets came under attack after the ISI gave directions and paid money to the Taliban.
 
The above facts were known to India for quite sometime. Soon after the US attacks began in Afghanistan in the post 9/11 period, the Pak ISI prepared a comprehensive assessment of the changed situation and came to the conclusion that if the Taliban were removed from the power in Afghanistan, then it would be denied all the advantages it was  enjoying under their rule. The ISI was particularly concerned about the loss of strategic depth against India. Hence, it decided to covertly support the Taliban, while overtly supporting the US in its war on terror. Soon after this, the Taliban and al-Qaida leaders were brought to Pakistan and kept in safe areas in Quetta and other places. The Pak based Lashker e Toiba (LeT) began to provide training to the new recruits of Taliban and al-Qaida. The entire new leadership of these organizations has been brought up in Pakistan and with the assistance of ISI and this explains Pakistan's increased hold on these outfits.
 
The ISI had also assessed that any involvement of India in the development activities in Afghanistan would significantly increase the Indian influence in that country, which the Pak army did not want and therefore it decided to extend the Pak proxy war to Afghanistan. Since 2004 onwards, the ISI began to hatch plans of attacks along with Taliban and LeT on the Border Roads Organization and Indian consulates/embassy as well as other Indians. The leaked documents reveal that Pak ISI paid the Taliban large amount of money ranging between $15,000 and $30,000 to specially target Indian targets. Several meetings between the ISI officials and Taliban as well as LeT operatives were organized for this purpose.
 
Crucially, the reports expose how the Pak army and ISI work with the Taliban to kill American soldiers while continue to obtain aid from the US. Pakistan has obtained $12.5 billion of military aid and $6 billion of civil aid between 2002 and 2010. In addition, last year it secured $7.5 billion non-military package. Ostensibly this aid is given to strengthen the country against the spread of extremism as well as to reimburse Pakistan for its efforts to combat the Taliban. How this aid is used is not known to US as orchestrated reactions in Pakistan including a public protest by the Pak army had prevented the monitoring end use provisions from being incorporated in the Bill. However it does not require any deep analysis. The huge expenditure on the maintenance terrorist infrastructure and on their operations explains this. The Pak army and ISI have been successfully playing the game of deception for years against the US, which include support to the Taliban, who had been inflicting casualties on the Americans.
 
The contents of the leaked documents have also been substantiated by Chris Alexander, a former Canadian envoy to Afghanistan and Deputy Special Representative of UN Secretary General in Kabul from 2005 to 2009. In his write up entitled "The Huge Scale of Pakistan's Complicity", he has brought out that the Pak army under Gen Ashfaq Parvez   Kayani is pursuing a three pronged strategy in Afghanistan. At one level, it is working to keep India out of Afghan affairs both through covert operations as well as through diplomatic maneuverings. At the second level, it is sponsoring a large scale covert guerrilla operation through Afghan proxies to assist the Taliban against the NATO forces. And at the third level, it is making assiduous efforts to keep the Karzai Government weak to ensure a deal with Islamic Emirate leaders, whom Kayani considers a strategic asset. The ultimate objective of Gen Kayani is to replace the democratically elected Karzai Govt by the Taliban rule.
 
Of course, the leaked documents are putting some pressure on Pakistan to change its duplicitous policy. The comments in US media have raised serious concerns about the US policy towards Islamabad. This has forced the Obama Administration to warn Pakistan. White House spokesman Robert Biggs stated that the status quo was not acceptable.  Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, during her recent visit to Pakistan had clearly stated that elements in Pak Establishment knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. US President Obama in a pointed reference to Pakistan asserted that his Administration would not tolerate sanctuaries for terrorist outfits in that country. After the leakage of documents, other countries have also severely criticized the Pak policy of supporting the Taliban against the democratically elected Karzai Govt. British PM David Cameron demanded that Pakistan stops the export of terrorism. Afghan National Security Advisor and Foreign Minister Rangeen Dafdar Spanta urged the US to review its policy of giving financial aid to Pakistan to strengthen its armed forces which are training terrorists.
 
However, given the mind-set and policy of the Pak army of using terrorism as an instrument to deal with its neighbours, a change in the Pak policy appears unlikely. The Pakistan army has also realized the US compulsions to have Pakistan on its side to deal with the problem in Afghanistan and therefore it is exploiting the situation. Hence, India, Afghanistan and the US will have to deal with the continued Pak support to Taliban at least till the Pak army is forced to change its policy. These nations have to formulate a common strategy to deal with the current situation. An effective intelligence sharing to undertake timely preventive operations against terrorists and also hardening of targets are essential to protect our interests. Alongside, the US would have to be convinced that if it can not persuade Islamabad (read Rawalpindi) to snap its ties with the Taliban, then it has to aggressively fight the terrorists in Pakistan.
 
In the long run, we all have to encourage establishment of real democracy in Pakistan that would bring an end to the ongoing domination of army in the Pak polity and would convert Pakistan from the present nature of 'an army with a country' to 'a country with an army'. A democratic and stable Pakistan is essential for peace in the region.  

Stockholm syndrome

Times Of India
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(This is a travel piece)

When I got to Stockholm, all of Sweden seemed closed. It was June 23, the day when Sweden goes on holiday to celebrate the summer solstice, when the sun is at its zenith and daylight lingers like a persistent lover all through the night. From this day on the sun will begin its decline into the long, bleak months of winter melancholy which has inspired both the austere minimalism of Ingmar Bergman's films and one of the highest suicide rates in the world.

But right then, the sun was shining in its full glory and all the Swedes had gone off to their summer cabins in the deep pine forests that cloak the countryside or to their sail boats moored in marinas which dot the blue-green coastline of the Baltic. The only people to be seen were the tourists, wandering around with cameras and street maps like extras in an art movie of which both the scriptwriter and the director have suddenly gone missing. Yet, curiously enough, this absence of Swedes seemed to make Sweden more accessible to discovery, in a textbook case of less being more.

Even when it's not on national holiday, Sweden's underpopulation helps to show the country, and individual Swedes, to advantage. The fifth biggest country in Europe, Sweden has a population of just 10 million, of which Stockholm accounts for 1.8 million, which is less than that of Gurgaon. In India, with its teeming 1.2 billion people, it's often difficult to see India, as a cohesive design or purpose, for us Indians.

In Sweden it's the other way round. The comparative lack of Swedes seems to make Sweden, and individual Swedes, more visible in the eyes of the world. And Sweden, and its capital city of Stockholm, have quite a lot worthy of visibility. Fronting the Baltic, Stockholm is built on 14 of the islands, interconnected by bridges and ferries, of the 24,000 islands that make up the Swedish archipelago. While the original settlement of what was to become Stockholm was founded in the 13th century in what is now called Gamla Stan, or Old Town, the Baltic itself was created some 300 million years ago when a three-km-thick ice cap melted, creating a body of water out of which thousands of islands erupted like an outbreak of granite pimples.

Though in a misguided access of 'functionalism' in the 1950s and 1960s the authorities tore down the old buildings in downtown Stockholm and replaced them with featureless high rises which have all the charm of concrete matchboxes, the city has much to offer the footloose sightseer. Unabashedly touristy though it's become its souvenir shops selling plastic Viking helmets and moose antler skullcaps and its boutique restaurants serving the Scandinavian speciality of roast reindeer meat with its winding, narrow alleyways (one of which is just 36 inches wide) Gamla Stan invites exploration. As does the Royal Palace, which is six times the size of London's Buckingham Palace, its grand size belying the purely ceremonial role the monarchy plays in a society where the communists demanded that all working-class citizens be entitled to a second, summer home.

Despite its minimal population — or because of it? — individual Swedes have often gained world fame: Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite and the international prizes named after him; Greta Garbo; Ingrid Bergman; August Strindberg; Gunnar Myrdal; Dag Hammarskjold; Abba; Bjorn Borg; and Steig Larsson, author of the posthumously best-selling Millennium trilogy. Perhaps nothing exemplifies the Stockholm syndrome of less is more than the Vasa museum, which the Swedes take pride in. The Vasa was a wooden warship built in 1628 and launched with great fanfare. It sailed for precisely 1,300 metres before sinking into the Baltic. It was salvaged in 1961 and is now housed in a special museum which is billed as the biggest single tourist attraction in the country. Take a monumental failure and turn it into a huge success? How cool is that. How Swedish. Will we be able to do that with our Commonwealth Games? Go figure.

Read Cameron's lips

Times Of India
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What is it about Manmohan Singh and summits with the Anglo-Saxon world? Why are they always overshadowed by extraneous circumstances that invariably make the other leader cringe in his domestic constituency?

His first state dinner with Barack Obama in November 2009 was wiped off the pages and networks after it turned out that celebrity-seeking celebrity couple Salahis had gatecrashed the party. Bad enough Obama was greeted in India with a good deal of scepticism. And the week before he had told the Chinese he thought they should check out for the status of South Asia and generally keep an eye on this region.

And then, the Salahis and their bleached golden hair happened.

Last week, the fresh faced David Cameron on his maiden voyage to India thought he was putting a new complexion on an old relationship. He tried, poor fellow. He brought a planeload of cabinet ministers, business leaders, you name it - worked hard and partied hard here.

And then his summit got overtaken by his comments on Pakistan - all of them true. But in their mortification at having offended the Pakistanis, Cameron got hammered by hid domestic press for speaking the way he did - in India, for god's sake.

Underneath it all, what are the British actually saying? Well yes, Pakistan exports terror, we know it. But hush, don't talk about it so loudly, or the ISI will stop giving Scotland Yard a heads-up on where to find the next lot radicalised British Pakistanis before the next terror attack. So yes, to that extent, the British are right to be petrified - you anger the monster and he will send more terrorists at you.

Instead, as they think it, it would have been better to balance that talk with Kashmir, or that Pakistanis like Indians are the same victims of terrorism. It speaks of a profound - and maybe deliberate, misunderstanding of whence Pakistani terrorism grows.

David Cameron knows what he is talking about. And showed the courage to say it. Perhaps if he had said it in his own country he would'nt be accused of merely pleasing the Indians.

He is probably guilty of messing up his settings. But nothing else.