Showing posts with label Editorials. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Editorials. Show all posts
Trouble in Xinjiang
China’s minorities are signalling that they will not put up with policies that favour the Han majority.
China’s inability to offer its (non-Han) minorities an equal and fair stake has been revealed once again in the recent violence in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. If it was Tibet in 2008, it is Xinjiang in 2009. Neither event has shaken Chinese government and party control over the two provinces, but both have surely reminded the government and chinese Communist Party (CCP) that they cannot continue to stick their heads in the sand and pretend that there is no disaffection among the minorities. The conditions in Xinjiang were considered serious enough to compel President and CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao to embarrassingly cut short his participation in the G-8 meetings in Italy earlier this month.
Ethnic violence leading to the deaths of more than 190 people rocked Urumqi on 5 July, when rioters belonging to the predominantly Sunni Islamic Uyghur denomination attacked members
of the Han Chinese in the city. The immediate trigger for the incidents in Urumqi was the violent targeting of Uyghur migrants by Han workers in a factory in the southern Chinese province of
Guangdong on 26 June. Upset by what some Uyghurs felt as Chinese government inaction in bringing the guilty Han workers to justice, protests were staged in Urumqi. The public anger was
transformed into a bloody ethnic riot with Uyghurs attacking the migrant Han Chinese population.
The official reaction of the Chinese government was to blame external forces for these incidents, pointing fingers at a Uyghur separatist leader (of the World Uyghur Congress) based in the
United States. But just as in the Tibetan events last year, the riots in Urumqi must be attributed to resentment among the minority ethnic groups of China’s population against government policies. One such policy is the “Western development” initiative launched in the latter half of the 1990s, which involved the large-scale capital investment in utilisation and extraction of natural resources in an endeavour to economically develop the western regions of China. Simultaneously, there was also an influx of ethnic Han Chinese to partake in the economic benefits of the growth process in these regions, including Xinjiang, a process which the CCP has been silently pleased about since it alters the demographic composition and facilitates control over the minorities. The Han migrants have been able to garner a large share of the employment opportunities. This combined with measures such as teaching of Mandarin in schools in Xinjiang has not gone down well with the Uyghur-speaking people. Thus, despite certain concessions to minorities such as the relaxation of the One-Child policy or other social measures, resentment against Han inmigration, corruption among the ruling elite, lopsided development and perceptions of cultural suppression have seen Uyghurs increasingly turning antipathetic to the Chinese government. This resentment also resonates with the perception of rising inequality and government corruption elsewhere in China.
China’s constitution and its 1984 Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law on paper provide ethnic minorities the right to protect, preserve and promote their cultures. The provision for diversity in the constitution and in the autonomy law have not been translated into implementation in Xinjiang (and Tibet), giving rise to open expression of grievances. The Chinese government will be foolish if it persists with its policy of conflating all forms of Uyghur dissent and grievances within “separatism, extremism and terrorism” and if it refuses to adopt a far more commodative
approach basing itself on the stated aims of the constitution. Merely blaming the separatist elements in the Uyghur diaspora for “fomenting” the riots is not going to help resolve the situation.The danger of a Han chauvinist and nationalist reprisal and consequent repression of Xinjiang remains, but thus far the Chinese government, both at the national and at the local levels, has tried to restore normalcy by appealing for calm while bringing those engaged
in murder and violence to justice. The relative freedom and access given to the press (both local and foreign) in covering the events after the 5 July incidents suggests a marked change from the Chinese government response to the incidents in Tibet last year. Beyond the political measures, the CCP and the government have to revisit the capital-intensive growth paradigm which is yielding some benefits to the Han majority but seems to be yielding little to the Uyghurs.
source : Economic and Political Weekly
India and Balochistan Insurgency
Why is Manmohan Singh under fire in India? Many Indians, including the Opposition, are not happy about the reference to Balochistan in the joint statement released at Sharm-El-Shaikh, Egypt, after the meeting between Dr. Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned summit. Some feel Dr. Singh stabbed them in the back by accepting the claim that India interferes in Balochistan. There are reports that Mr. Gilani pressured Dr. Si ngh at Sharm-El-Shaikh by handing over a dossier of evidence alleging Indian involvement in cross-border terrorism in Balochistan and that was how the Prime Minister was forced to accept the reference to Balochistan. I was present at Sharm-El-Shaikh. Many Indian journalists were shocked on reading the joint statement. They asked me why Balochistan was mentioned in the statement. In fact, many of them, like many common Indians, were not aware of what was going on in Balochistan. Within a few hours, I started receiving calls from many Indian television channels asking what evidence Pakistan showed Dr. Singh of the alleged Indian involvement in Balochistan.
While Mr. Gilani did mention Balochistan to Dr. Singh, he never handed over any dossier. The situation in the province came in for detailed discussion during the first meeting of the Foreign Secretaries at Sharm-El-Shaikh in the evening of July 14, two days before the meeting of Dr. Singh and Mr. Gilani. Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir told his Indian counterpart, Shiv Shankar Menon, that India must delink the composite dialogue process from action on terrorism, otherwise Pakistan would be forced to produce before the international media at least “three Indian Ajmal Kasabs” who were directly or indirectly part of the terrorist activities in Balochistan. He added that Pakistan would easily establish that the Indian Consulate in the Afghan city of Kandahar was actually a control room of terrorist activities organised by the separatist Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). The three Indian nationals were arrested in Pakistan in the last few weeks. According to Pakistani officials, they have undeniable evidence of the links of these Indians with Baloch militants.
Mr. Bashir told Mr. Menon that Pakistan and India could not afford a blame game. If Pakistan were to come out with evidence of India’s involvement in the attack on Chinese engineers in the Gwadar port city, not only would India’s credibility be damaged but also more anti-India feelings would spread in Pakistan. The extremist forces would be the ultimate beneficiaries, Mr. Bashir said.
One must understand why the Pakistani authorities are very careful in exposing the alleged Indian involvement in Balochistan. First, this new blame game will only help the extremist forces who successfully organised the attacks in Mumbai on November 26, 2008 to derail the India-Pakistan peace process. Secondly, it will harm Afghanistan-Pakistan relations. The U.S. does not want tensions between Islamabad and Kabul at this stage because the NATO forces are trying their best to conduct a presidential election in Afghanistan in a few weeks. Thirdly, the PPP-led coalition government is aware that Balochistan is not a serious dispute like Jammu and Kashmir; it is a problem of provincial rights. Instead of internationalising the issue, therefore, Islamabad should address the problem realistically. It cannot get away by blaming India alone for the unrest in the province. It has engaged many Baloch militants in talks behind-the scenes. Good news is expected soon.
Pakistan is making noises about the alleged Indian involvement in the Baloch insurgency in a careful, calculated and “limited manner.” The U.S. magazine, Foreign Affairs (March 2009) published the report of a roundtable discussion on the causes of instability in Pakistan. Christine Fair of RAND Corporation said, “having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity. Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Balochistan.”
Where is Zahedan? It is the capital of the Irani province Sistan-o-Balochistan bordering Pakistan. More than two million Balochis live on the Iranian side of Balochistan. Iran is building a big port of Chabahar in the same area with active help from India. Top Iranian leaders have repeatedly alleged that the Central Intelligence Agency is supporting the Iranian Balochis to destabilise the Islamic Republic. American journalist Seymour Hersh admitted in July 2008 that the Bush administration gave millions of dollars to the separatist Iranian group, Jandallah, which is responsible for violence in the Iranian part of Balochistan.
If Pakistan plays the India card in Balochistan, many anti-U.S. forces in Pakistan will demand to know why it is silent on the CIA’s role in Balochistan.
Keeping in view the sensitivity of the problem, it is difficult for India to openly support the Baloch insurgency because it may harm its relations with Iran. If Indians come out openly in support of the BLA, anti-Indian elements in Pakistan will quickly bracket New Delhi with the alleged great game of the U.S. against Iran.
The Balochis are Kurds of South Asia. The Kurd population is distributed in Iran, Turkey and Iraq, while the Balochis are spread over Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. Separatist groups in Pakistan and Iran want the Baloch areas unified. This is not acceptable to both countries. Balochistan has huge quantities of natural gas and unexplored oil reserves and is the largest Pakistani province in terms of area, covering almost 48 per cent of the country. But it accounts for only five per cent of the total population. A tribal society, it is the most underdeveloped province.
The first military operation in Balochistan was launched by General Ayub Khan in the late 1950s. The second was launched in 1974 when Iraq tried to destabilise Iranian Balochistan with the help of pro-Soviet Afghan ruler Sardar Daoud in collaboration with some Pakistani Baloch leaders. Daoud tried to exploit the slogan of independent Balochistan, on the one hand, and Pashtunistan, on the other. Afghanistan’s interference in Pakistan forced Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to use Ahmad Shah Massoud and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar against the Kabul regime. The two Afghan rebels became guests of the Pakistani security forces in 1975. Later, General Zia-ul-Haq used them against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
Pervez Musharraf gave Gwadar to the Chinese for development in 2003. Three Chinese engineers were killed and nine injured on May 3, 2004 in a remote-controlled car bomb attack. Two months later, Pakistan claimed for the first time that India was involved in the attack. Locals were not happy over the employment of non-Balochis in the main development projects of their province. They also wanted a fairer share of royalties generated by the production of natural gas. Instead of addressing their grievances, the Musharraf regime launched a third military operation against them in 2005, further aggravating the situation.
Why must India discuss Balochistan with Pakistan? For, it will be the transit route of at least two multinational gas pipelines — one from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan and the other from Iran to Pakistan. India could be a beneficiary of both pipelines, which could be extended from Multan to New Delhi. A stable Balochistan will, thus, ultimately benefit India.
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, China and India should join hands, and stop proxy wars in Kashmir and Balochistan. They can then change the fate of the whole region.
source: The Hindu
Who are the Taliban?
 The Taliban are now active in both Afghanistan and Pakistan Recent years have seen the re-emergence of the hardline Islamic Taliban movement as a fighting force in Afghanistan and a major threat to its government. They are also threatening to destabilise Pakistan, where they control areas in the north-west and are blamed for a wave of suicide bombings and other attacks. The Taliban emerged in the early 1990s in northern Pakistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. A predominantly Pashtun movement, the Taliban came to prominence in Afghanistan in the autumn of 1994. It is commonly believed that they first appeared in religious seminaries - mostly paid for by money from Saudi Arabia - which preached a hard line form of Sunni Islam. The Taliban's promise - in Pashtun areas straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan - was to restore peace and security and enforce their own austere version of Sharia, or Islamic law, once in power. In both countries they introduced or supported Islamic punishments - such as public executions of convicted murderers and adulterers and amputations of those found guilty of theft. Men were required to grow beards and women had to wear the all-covering burka. Madrassas The Taliban showed a similar disdain for television, music and cinema and disapproved of girls aged 10 and over from going to school.
Pakistan has repeatedly denied that it is the architect of the Taliban enterprise. But there is little doubt that many Afghans who initially joined the movement were educated in madrassas (religious schools) in Pakistan. Pakistan was also one of only three countries, along with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which recognised the Taliban when they were in power in Afghanistan from the mid-1990s until 2001. It was also the last country to break diplomatic ties with the Taliban. The attention of the world was drawn to the Taliban in Afghanistan following the attacks on the World Trade Centre in September 2001.
The Taliban in Afghanistan was accused of providing a sanctuary to Osama Bin Laden and the al-Qaeda movement who were blamed for the attacks. Soon after 9/11 the Taliban were driven from power in Afghanistan by a US-led coalition, although their leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was not captured - and neither was Osama Bin Laden. In recent years the Taliban have re-emerged in Afghanistan and grown far stronger in Pakistan, where observers say there is loose co-ordination between different Taliban factions and militant groups. The main Pakistani faction is led by Baitullah Mehsud, whose Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is blamed for dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks. Observers warn against over-stating the existence of one unified insurgency against the Pakistani state, however. The Taliban in Afghanistan are still believed to be led by Mullah Omar, a village clergyman who lost his right eye fighting the occupying forces of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Afghans, weary of the mujahideen's excesses and infighting after the Soviets were driven out, generally welcomed the Taliban when they first appeared on the scene.
Their early popularity was largely due to their success in stamping out corruption, curbing lawlessness and making the roads and the areas under their control safe for commerce to flourish. From south-western Afghanistan, the Taliban quickly extended their influence. They captured the province of Herat, bordering Iran, in September 1995. Exactly one year later, they captured the Afghan capital, Kabul, after overthrowing the regime of President Burhanuddin Rabbani and his defence minister, Ahmed Shah Masood. By 1998, they were in control of almost 90% of Afghanistan. They were accused of various human rights and cultural abuses. One example was in 2001, when the Taliban went ahead with the destruction of the famous Bamiyan Buddha statues in central Afghanistan, despite international outrage. US onslaught On October 7, 2001, a US-led military coalition invaded Afghanistan and by the first week of December the Taliban regime had collapsed.
Mullah Omar and most of the other senior Taliban leaders, along with Bin Laden and some of his senior al-Qaeda associates, survived the American onslaught. Mullah Omar and most of his comrades have evaded capture despite one of the largest manhunts in the world and are believed to be guiding the resurgent Taliban. Since then they have re-grouped in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, but are now under pressure in both countries, from the Pakistani army and Nato respectively. Despite ever higher numbers of foreign troops, the Taliban have steadily extended their influence, rendering vast tracts of Afghanistan insecure, and violence in the country has returned to levels not seen since 2001. Their retreat earlier this decade enabled them to limit their human and material losses and return with a vengeance. | ||||||
Mullah Omar and his comrades have evaded capture despite one of the largest manhunts in the world 
source: BBC
Imagining a Nation : Great Article from The Hindu
Rethinking the nation: A cohesive and just space for all...
July 18, 2009 marked the world’s first Mandela Day. Mandela Day is celebrated to honour the life and legacy of the 91-year-old veteran freedom fighter, Nelson Mandela. Mandela spent 67 years of his life, 27 of these in prison, in South Africa's struggle against apartheid. Mandela Day marks the moral authority of this great statesman and is a global call to action to each and every individual to devote their time and effort to the service of their communities.
The history of the struggles of many nations across the world has shaped each country’s basic beliefs and core national values. This evolves into a nationally upheld value system which is usually institutionalised in that country’s constitution.
The United States of America has laid out its core democratic values in its Declaration of Independence and its Constitution. These core values of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, justice, truth and common good are taught to every elementary school student in America.
Members of the European Union have been working on a consortium for European values and in 2005, the Atlas of European Values was published. This atlas presents the values, norms, and beliefs of Europeans at the turn of the millennium. The results of this study have turned out surprisingly conservative. An overwhelming majority of folks has chosen “married-with-children” as their preferred lifestyle, dispelling influences from the liberating 1960s, with its messages of emancipation and individualisation.
Our Indian heritage is awash with values that have been emphasised and passed down from generation to generation. The Indian national pledge calls for treating parents, teachers and all elders with respect. The Indian interpretation of respect differs slightly from those of Western nations. As a mark of respect for elders, we rise to offer them a seat, we refrain from calling them by their first names and are taught not to backchat to them.
Refreshingly different
United States President Barack Obama demonstrates an understanding of and is at ease with different world cultures. After being sworn in as President, when Obama personally saw off his outgoing counterpart George W. Bush onto his helicopter Marine One and off to his home in Texas, the President was practising a value that is well understood in the Eastern world. Another unprecedented act in the realm of Western campaign politics was the dinner that President Obama hosted for his defeated opponent, John McCain. Many people of Eastern descent would recognise the act of seeing off an elder statesman to be a mark of respect for his age, for his stature and for the services rendered to his country. President Obama has had global life experience — having spent four of his formative teenage years in Indonesia.
The Indian constitution embodies many of the core values that have been part of the Indian ethos. It has resolved to secure to all its citizens justice, equality, liberty and fraternity.
The Preamble to the Constitution of India seeks to establish what Mahatma Gandhi described as “The India of my Dreams”:
“I shall work for an India in which the poorest shall feel that it is their country, in whose making they have an effective voice, an India in which there shall be no high class or low class of people; an India in which all communities shall live in perfect harmony. There can be no room in such an India for the curse of untouchability or the curse of intoxicating drinks and drugs. Women will enjoy as the same rights as men. We shall be at peace with all the rest of the world. This is the India of my dreams.”
We have other core values handed down to us over the generations — values such as respect for women, caring for the old and the sick and empathy for the poor and downtrodden.
If morality is the answer to the question “how ought we to live”, group morality develops from shared beliefs and helps regulate behaviour within a community. The reality of today’s society is that many countries are faced with endangered values.
In answer to the question, “What is the world’s greatest challenge in the new millennium?”, Jimmy Carter has stated in his book Our Endangered Values America’s Moral Crisis: “The greatest challenge we face is the growing chasm between the rich and the poor on earth”. He goes on to explain that the gap is steadily widening. At the beginning of the last century, the 10 richest countries were nine times wealthier than the 10 poorest ones. Today that ratio is 131:1.
Many independent studies are being conducted on the factors affecting changes to the moral fabric of our society. There is a need to put into perspective the values that are changing as a result of globalisation. George Matafonov in his book Fire and Water: Market Morality and Civil Society states that the root causes of global social unrest are not primarily the result of the rise of terrorism, but should be attributed to the new model of society whose core has become economic theory rather than traditional human values. He argues that in a span of less than 50 years, economic theory has turned the world upside down by insisting that our chief value should be competitive self interest. The challenge therefore for modern societies is to bring back the sense of traditional morality without negating the advantages of economic theory.
Our choices
India is a country of many cultures and ethnicities. Our common binding force doesn’t have to be drawn from Western influences, food, language or dress. Our history can be taught as a proud acceptance of our diversity or can be spun into a grim reminder of assault and plunder. Our attitude can be forward looking as an all-inclusive and tolerant community or can be backward looking, exclusionist, reactionary and violent. Our behaviour can be marked by belligerence and suspicion or we can be cosmopolitan and yet preserve our individual cultures.
Every so often, the moral fabric of our nation must be whetted and reaffirmed. Refreshment of our core values has to be an ongoing process. While attempts have been made in different communities to define a benchmark set of moral standards — enforcing these standards is quite another issue. Coersion is not the best form of adherence. If we perceive an individual or group of individuals to be violating a core value, the appropriate response is one which is within the framework of justice and equality.
Our most steadfast and enduring values are those that were introduced in our early years. Character education shows best results when introduced early in life. This makes schools a vitally important instrument in the character education agenda. Also, cohesive nationalism is a concept that needs broader definition and support. We need to champion this cause — something that we can practise everyday until it resonates in our lives. To teach our children to be divisive is a very dangerous game to play. They grow up looking at all relationships from this lens. The dangers of stoking the embers of hatred for this or that ethnic group are that the ensuing fire sometimes turns around to ultimately consume one of our own loved ones.
True progress has no room for mutual suspicion or divisiveness and can be achieved collectively, not individually. Our greatest moral challenge today is our poor. As a country with about 25 per cent people in poverty, this should be our primary focus. Our second biggest challenge is finding a way to live peacefully and amicably with all of our cultures and to preserve and promote our diversity.
source: The Hindu
