The best “Muslim” policy for India (PO)

M D Nalapat

It used to be said that Joe Biden was the only US Senator who was not a millionaire. Now, he is the Vice-President. Unlike Dick Cheney, who was in the same office when huge contracts got awarded in Iraq to a company that he had been closely associated with, Biden stays clear of commerce. Had he been a politician in India, here too he would have been the exception. For there is no easier way to fabulous riches in India than through politics. In the present Manmohan Singh government, almost all the ministers are super-affluent. Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar (the President of the International Cricket Council) is even richer than former PM of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif or present President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari, as are several of his Cabinet colleagues (even though most conceal their wealth through “benami” entities). Unlike most other politicians, Pawar is open about his wealth and his lifestyle, perhaps the reason why he is still popular in his home state of Maharashtra - the state that has given the world Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar.

In a polity which has multiple parties, even a 3% margin can make the difference between electoral defeat and a landslide. This is the reason why parties other than the few “Hindutva” parties ( who may be compared to the “Islam Pasanda” parties in Pakistan) are so eager to win over the Muslims. Now comprising 16% of the population of the Union of India, the Muslim community has understood the power of the ballot, and participates in the electoral process far more effectively than many other communities. The problem facing the Congress Party is that the Muslim vote is divided between itself and other non-Hindutva parties, such as the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Janata Dal (United). Unless the Congress Party can convince the Muslim community that it can represent its interests better than any other, Rahul Gandhi’s dream of ensuring a majority in Parliament for his party will remain unattained.

President Karzai Gets Hit by "Friendly Fire" (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — If the Taliban are gaining ground in Afghanistan, the reason lies less in their prowess than the daily errors made by their presumed foes – like NATO, an organization that clearly swears on the altar of “rule by committee.”

From think-tankers and journalists to retired diplomats and serving military personnel, there is an abundant pool of "expertise" in NATO that gets together to form policy. Within each subset the most extreme views prevail, as do such views in the same individual at different points in time.

In times past, those conducting operations in the field would get to decide on tactics rather than be “remote-controlled.” But these days, NATO's field administrators as well as managers need to conform to the dictates of superiors who come to Afghanistan for less than a day at a time and spend most of it in a conference room. In the process, they pull out dozens of individuals from their work, and then most simply gaze out the window while the drone of talk continues.

What is NATO’s objective in Afghanistan? Judging by their tactics, the inference is inescapable that it is primarily to look good to their own people rather than working out an effective response to the Taliban.

The Danger of Pakistan's "Hidden Taliban"

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Attendees at the numerous parties held in Lahore, Islamabad or Karachi would find it difficult to accept that Pakistan is heading toward Talibanization. Alcohol and the attentions of the opposite sex are there in profusion, while the passports of those present would testify to their global footprint.

Unfortunately, the gilded individuals whose aftershave has so charmed legions of otherwise hardnosed U.S. officials – be they spies, military or civilian – have almost no influence over the base of that country's social pyramid.

At the base, two generations of indoctrination have created a perception that what is needed to bring progress, absent all their lives, is the practice of the "pure" version of their faith. Of course this is only possible once the "impure" have been driven from office through terror and intimidation.

This idea was fostered by General Pervez Musharraf in an agreement with the so-called “Pakistan Taliban” – a formulation that ignores the unity of command and operation between those functioning on either side of the Pakistan-Afghan border drawn by British colonial overlords in 1893 and dividing the Pashtun people.

Thank God (if) it's Obama (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — In 2004, this columnist annoyed some of his U.S. friends by rooting for George W. Bush for the U.S. presidency over his rival, John Kerry. The reason was simple: It was the first presidential poll since 9/11, and a Bush defeat would have given oxygen to the fanatics now hiding in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas. They would have ascribed a Bush defeat to no factor other than themselves, as would thousands of others of like mindset.

George W. Bush has his faults – including a blindness toward the deeds of his financial backers – but his pulverization of both the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Saddamites in Iraq ensured that al-Qaida must cross a very high bar to ensure its geographical preservation before taking on the U.S. homeland again. Unfortunately, the gains in Afghanistan are being reversed by a disastrous follow-up strategy.

Kerry would almost certainly have been tested early in his term with a determined probe, if not an actual attack – though the odds that this war veteran would respond less forcefully than Bush may have been close to zero.

By this logic, it may seem preferable for John McCain to become the next U.S. president, for even Barack Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, believes that Obama would be tested early in his term, the way Kerry would probably have been.

Sarkozy and Brown: We cheated, So Trust Us (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat


Manipal, India — It must be wonderful to believe that the rest of the world shares one's own self-perceptions of omniscience. Weeks after Western financial institutions and instruments cleaned out thousands of clients in the Middle East, China and Russia, French President Nicholas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, at last weekend’s Asia-Europe Meeting in Beijing, offered Asia a simple prescription: Trust us and follow our lead unquestioningly, so that the non-Western part of the world can earn the tag of being "responsible (to the West) stakeholders."

It is unlikely that Asian governments will follow this advice and pour billions of dollars of their capital into two institutions controlled by North America and Europe – the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. After the recent banking meltdown in the United States and the European Union, it is not only small children in the rest of the world who can see that the emperor has no clothes.

What has astonished many in Asia is the way in which Western governments are acting as accomplices to what looks like the perfect crime: the stealing of trillions of dollars in value from pockets across the world. This was done not simply by getting the unwary to invest in assets known to be dubious, but by gerrymandering increases in the prices of commodities, notably petroleum, which has gouged economies such as China and India.

This columnist would like to repeat his advice to the oil economies to install gold statues of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in prominent locations, for it is the policy pushed by that distinguished international statesman that caused oil prices to rise far above what market fundamentals dictated.

Pakistan's moment of truth (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Founded as it was by a bacon-friendly, whiskey-drinking Muhammad Ali Jinnah, by the end of the 1950s – once almost all non-Muslims had been driven out of Pakistan – the country remained only loosely tethered to the lifestyle encouraged by the ulema, the body of Koranic scholars that has appeared as the indispensable intermediary between believers and God in the Islamic world.

Led by officers trained under the British, the Pakistan army in particular remained secular, although it had used religion in 1947-48 to try and pry loose Kashmir from India, the country to which its maharaja had acceded.

All this changed with Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s fateful appointment of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq as chief of army staff, superseding seven officers, all of whom were better qualified for the job. Bhutto chose Zia on the basis of the fawning missives he used to receive from the general, and the deferential – indeed cringing -- manner in which Zia introduced Bhutto to his men during a prime ministerial visit in 1975.

Such suppleness of spine convinced Bhutto that in Zia he would have a servile henchman. Instead, a year later, the general displaced Bhutto in a coup and executed him shortly thereafter.

Zia, at that time the only Wahabbi general in the Pakistan army, swiftly introduced changes in the institution to bring it in sync with the extreme philosophy of Ibn Wahhab, whose toxic creed had been backed by first the United Kingdom and subsequently the United States as a counter first to Turks, then Arab nationalists and finally, the Soviets. Zia aligned his country firmly with other Wahabbi states, and began to fill the officer ranks of the army with recruits from the numerous Islamic seminaries, or madrassas, that had begun to proliferate in Pakistan during the 1960s.

Will SOFA make Iraq another Gaza? (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Although the prime minister of Iraq Nuri al-Maliki has survived physically and politically in his job, he looks unlikely to withstand the blow being administered to his administration by U.S. president George Bush. Once the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) gets signed between the governments in Baghdad and Washington, not only al-Maliki but also other moderate politicians in Iraq could soon become history.

From then onwards, public opinion in Iraq will almost certainly turn in favor of those Shia and Sunni politicians opposed to the pact, creating more followers of Moctada al-Sadr and the former Baathists. Although as yet unity between these foes seems unlikely, the incomprehension of the ground situation in Iraq by Bush and his vice-president Dick Cheney may ensure an alliance, albeit tactical and temporary between the Sadirists and the Saddamites.

Just as the effort by the U.S. and the United Kingdom to ensure continued control of Iraq's oil assets will not survive an actual assertion of sovereignty in that country by a homegrown government, nor will the agreement now being foisted on al-Maliki.

Should SOFA be signed in its current form, within months the insurgency will test new levels even while the democratic political space gets evacuated by moderates, in view of public anger at the concessions they would have made to the occupying army.

Why Barack Obama (UPIASIA)

Manipal, India — U.S. policies often affect the globe, and hence the global interest in U.S. politics. Although Australian feminist Germaine Greer may disagree, few in Asia see the possible re-entry of Hillary Clinton into the White House as epochal. Sri Lanka had its two Bandaranaike ladies as prime ministers, India had Indira Gandhi, Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, Turkey Tansu Ciller, Bangladesh the feuding Khaleda-Hasina duo, Indonesia Megawati Sukarnoputri and the Philippines Corazon Aquino and now Gloria Arroyo.

If there has been any significant change in gender dynamics because of these individuals becoming heads of government, it has been too small to notice. While First Lady, Hillary Clinton did not give gender discrimination the priority that she gave issues such as healthcare, and to expect her to change U.S. society, economics and politics -- from a gender standpoint -- in a way that even the formidable British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher could not within her own Conservative Party, may be a trifle optimistic.

In contrast, the election to the U.S. presidency of Barack Obama would signal the true conclusion of the revolution begun by President Abraham Lincoln when he emancipated U.S. slaves in 1863 -- that human beings are one, no matter what their color.

As secretaries of state, neither Colin Powell nor Condoleezza Rice has broken the mould of international opinion, which still regards the United States as being of the same persuasion as Europe, where policies that are racial in substance are the norm. Even in Britain it is far tougher for a nonwhite to reach the higher echelons of the medical and other professions than is the case in the United States. On the continent, Germany has been leading the cry of "Europe for Europeans," aware that ethnicity and not nationality is the core principle at work in fashioning policies related to migration and employment.

Tibet's challenge to Bush-Cheney (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Just as any CEO would, George W. Bush and his CFO Dick Cheney have focused on ensuring as high a monetary return as possible to those who invested in their campaigns. Whether it is the oil companies based out of Houston, Texas, or corporations like Halliburton, those who put their dollars behind the Bush-Cheney ticket have been rewarded beyond their most optimistic calculations.

The downside has been a recession caused by the financial cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined with the higher oil prices generated by the geopolitical experiments of the current U.S. administration and the get-rich-anyhow outlook of financial institutions. Had the U.S. economy not been faced with these multiple shocks, stock and housing prices would most likely have continued to rise, thereby bailing out those institutions that advanced funds to subprime borrowers.

However, while individual corporations have benefitted exponentially from 2001 to 2008, the bulk of U.S. consumers have had to be content with modest or negative gains, thereby leading to the present loss of confidence in the future of what will, for another generation at least, be the primary economic engine of the globe.

After witnessing the colonial-style scramble for profits from the oil sector in Iraq -- which in its transparent rapacity most resembles Belgian policy in the Congo during much of the past century -- as well as the manner in which some corporate and other entities have leveraged their political connections to secure monopolies in Iraq and Afghanistan, savers in East and South Asia as well as Russia have steadily lost confidence in the integrity of the U.S. dollar and shifted to the euro. This has contributed to a slide in the greenback's value that may wipe away any gains in the anemic anti-inflation measures taken by the U.S. Federal Reserve thus far, and exacerbate the decline in both business as well as consumer confidence.

The Hypocrisy of the Wahabbis (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Although the U.S. State Department considers the Wahabbi sect to be engaged in "purifying" the Muslim faith, in fact what Mohammad ibn Abdul Wahab created three centuries ago was an entirely new faith, used thereafter to uproot the Sufi-suffused Islam that had gifted scholarship and success to the Muslims. Neither of his two biographies is credible, both being the work of admirers of the al-Sauds, the family later installed as the titular masters of the Arabian Peninsula.

Abdul Wahab developed his teachings to protect the absolutist rule of the al-Sauds, wrapping them in a cloak of piety that concealed personal conduct the opposite of the example set by the Prophet Mohammed. The founder of Wahabbism was an individual who sought to uproot traditional Islam from the land where it was revealed.

Early in his career as a preacher, Abdul Wahab formed a partnership with Muhammad ibn Saud, whereby the desert chieftain's dynasty was declared by the preacher to be the legitimate rulers of the lands where Islam first took root. A grateful ruler promptly anointed Abdul Wahab as the only correct teacher of the tenets of Islam. That the Muslim faith, democratic in its chemistry, explicitly rejects kingship, or that the Prophet Mohammed is the only transmitter of the Word of Allah, were seen as inconsequential.

Almost from the start of their sojourn into fortune, the al-Sauds fastened themselves to the flanks of the British, thereby gaining assistance in their battles with other chieftains, until their presumed loyalty finally earned them installation in 1932 as masters of the land they called "Saudi Arabia." But for British and later U.S. help, the al-Sauds would have remained just another of several tribal families, very possibly made extinct by those angered at their incessant aggression.

Oil Conspiracy Theory (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat

MANIPUR, India, May 31 (UPI) -- Nature and the "street" both abhor a vacuum, and even after Sept. 11, 2001, it is those active in the "War of Revenge Against the Crusades" who are more adept at crafting tales designed to link the United States with the unemployment, rage and perception of helplessness that provides recruits to the jihad.

While conspiracy theories that seek to "prove" that the United States -- together with those familiar villains, the "Zionists" -- is engaged in a war against Islam, thus far such street gossip has permeated only the Muslim countries, principally Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan. The rest of the world has not been infected with this virus.

Indeed, a case can be made that the United States is more popular today in the poorer parts of the globe than it is in Europe. Unlike the period from the 1950s to the 1980s, when the United States was the target of the resentments and insecurities felt by those recently freed from colonization, from the time cable television spread in the mid-1980s,"street" perceptions of the United States outside the Muslim world have improved steadily. In the words of Jairam Ramesh, an Indian economist, while the cry may still be "Yankee, go home!", to this is added, "but take me with you."

For a superpower, the United States has been demonstrably inept in factoring in psychological attitudes and reflexes in countries visited by U.S. "experts" only in the safety of air-conditioned hotel and conference rooms. Thus, in Iraq the United States appointed an American "administrator" and Iraqi "advisers," when common sense would have indicated that it ought to have been the other way around.