The Inconvenient Truth about Kashmir (gatewayhouse.in)

M.D. Nalapat

When floods hit the largely Buddhist enclave of Leh in Kashmir recently, the chief minister Omar Abdullah, representatives of state government and the Indian army were out providing relief. Absent, however, was the presence of Kashmiris from the rest of the state, notably the normally vocal Valley Kashmiris, in expressing support for their fellow co-habitants. They seemed unconcerned about the tragedy.

This went by unnoticed by the national and international media. But it was not lost on the majority of Kashmiris, confirming their views that those in charge of the state see themselves as being responsible only to one of the six major groups that form Kashmir: the Valley Sunnis, the Shia, the Buddhists, the Sikhs, the Hindus and the Gujjars. That single-pointed attention has kept wider Kashmiri interests unattended, but kept the Valley of Kashmir in the global spotlight.

Today, Kashmir is very much part of the cauldron that is "Af-Pak", the storm that is raging across the Pashtun belt in Pakistan and Afghanistan. As in Af-Pak, the base for the jihad that is being waged in Kashmir mainly comprises a small fringe of a single community – the Valley Wahabi Sunnis, who are 1 million of the total 6.7 million Kashmiri Muslim population.

In the case of Af-Pak, the indigenous Taliban fighters are almost entirely Pashtun, and from those human pools nurtured by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Saudi Secret Service during the 1980s to fight against the USSR. In the case of Kashmir, those involved in the current intifada are Sunnis - mostly Wahabis - from the Kashmir Valley who have financial and other links with the military in Pakistan and the numerous Wahabi religious trusts and foundations in Saudi Arabia that work at exporting their 300-year old faith across the world.

Will Turkey succumb to Wahabbism? (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Wahabbism, the radical Islam currently advancing around the globe, originated in the 18th century as a philosophy designed to counter the moderate, syncretic Islam that was the heart of Turkey's culture, and which the Ottoman Empire had disseminated among its principalities, including those in the Arabian Peninsula.

Quick to sense the potential of the new faith in weaning away regional loyalties from the Ottomans, Britain early on became a backer of the creed, thus ensuring its rise to dominance within the Arabian Peninsula by the dawn of the 20th century. Beginning in the 1980s it spread to much of the rest of the Muslim world.

Today, because of the unstinted financial support of its principal adherents, Wahabbism has become the fastest-growing faith on the planet. It has succeeded in taking over many of the institutions, as well as the physical infrastructure, of the Sunni branch of Islam. Even within the Shiite branch, it has found in the Khomeinists an ideological twin that since 1979 has controlled the largest country in the region, Iran.

Thus far, only Turkey has remained immune to its relentless advance, steeped as that country was in the Sufi traditions that underpin its culture.

Turkey is the only country in the Muslim-majority world – since the Mongol invasions of the continent nearly nine centuries ago – to have conquered territory in Europe. The memory of this still makes a majority of Europeans flinch from accepting this entirely deserving country into the European Union.

Two Responses to Terror (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat 

MANIPAL, India, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- Although both are democracies, Israel and India are polar opposites in their response to "asymmetrical" warfare -- also known as terrorism. While India until now has consistently adopted a soft -- some would say soggy -- policy toward the Pakistani army's tactics of using jihadis to weaken India socially, militarily and economically, Israel has almost invariably responded with force to similar tactics by Hamas, Hezbollah and other jihadist organizations that seek to attack the Jewish state.

In both Lebanon and Gaza, Hezbollah and Hamas, respectively, have not concealed the fact that they regard themselves as being at war with Israel. Those who voted for either certainly must have understood that the coming to office of these two military formations would mean war with Israel, a conflict in which both sides would be expected to deploy the forces available to them. The citizens of Lebanon are now discovering the likely consequences if they elect Hezbollah to power, the way Gazans did with Hamas in the last election.

While Shiite Hezbollah depends almost entirely on Iran for its resources and on Syria for infrastructural support, Sunni Hamas gets funding from well-wishers across the world, including a number in Europe and North America who route their contributions through safe channels. Although accurate estimates are difficult, an average of four informed guesstimates puts the Iranian contribution at 35 percent of the total funds made available to Hamas.

Will NATO surrender to the Taliban? (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — There are indeed parallels between the insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban. Both have brown complexions and prefer to avoid a shave. Both get excitable when challenged, and regard the United States and its military allies as the enemy. However, that is where the similarities stop.

The Iraqi insurgents are overwhelmingly nationalist, usually moderate in their religious views, and have taken to arms to end what they view as a humiliating occupation of their country. In contrast, the Taliban are Wahabbi extremists, who enforce a lifestyle that has nothing in common with the evolving needs of the past 1,000 years. While the Iraqi insurgents are more than 90 percent Sunni Muslims, the Taliban are nearly all Pashtuns, although they have abandoned the moderate ethos and customs of this admirable race in favor of an ultra-Wahabbist lifestyle that places a premium on personal cruelty.

Once General David Petraeus, as U.S. commanding general in Iraq, no longer tried to occupy territory and began a process of handing responsibility to local forces, the anger at the occupation began to dissipate, and so did the ferocity of the attacks on the United States and its allies.

As yet, despite the radicalization caused by the past five years, the insurgents in Iraq are not inclined to impose a Taliban-like state in Iraq. Should U.S. troops withdraw completely within an 18-month timeframe, Sunni Iraq can yet be prevented from going the way of Afghanistan and becoming extremist. Just as the Vietnamese ceased to be a threat to the United States once they got control of their country, so will the Iraqi insurgents, once U.S. and allied troops leave Iraqi territory.

Unloosing the Shiite Genie (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat 

Manipal, India — If protecting the homeland is among the primary responsibilities of a government, attempting to change the distribution of power within another country may not always be congruent with such an objective.

Given the state of conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1982, there was a compelling case for the Israel Defense Forces to enter Lebanon and take out Palestinian assets that were being deployed against the stability and survival of the state of Israel. However, there was none for attempting to bolster the position of the Maronite Christians vis-à-vis their Shiite opponents. In particular, the leading Maronite Gemayel family was known for the use of methods that could have been developed in a concentration camp.

Since 1982, the flow of covert and other support to the Gemayels from Israel grew to a level that infuriated the Shiites as well as the family's many Maronite critics. By 1987, an isolated -- indeed hated -- PLO was able to secure the backing of key elements among the Shiite factions in Lebanon, despite being overwhelmingly Sunni.

From that time to the present, Israel has enjoyed the distinction of being the only non-Muslim country targeted by militant Shiites -- a group far more virulent and effective, albeit as yet limited in strength and scope, than even Wahabbi extremists such as members of al-Qaida. Over the past two decades, Israel has concentrated its attention and resources on tackling a foe that went into action as a result of its own intervention policy in Lebanon.

Why India Will Sit out Iran (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat


Manipal, India — Iran's ongoing effort to master uranium enrichment technology, despite its denials, is likely to lead to a series of surgical U.S. air and missile strikes designed to cripple reprocessing capacity. The risks and rewards of such an action have been extensively detailed; hence the focus here is on a small part of the overall mosaic -- the response of India to such a strike.

Although Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is solicitous of perceived U.S. interests, and has been working to create an alliance between the world's two biggest democracies, geopolitical logic will dictate that New Delhi will sit out a future Iran conflict, rather than follow its instincts and back the United States.

In evidence that India-Iran strategic ties remain in good standing, the chief of the Iranian Navy, Rear Admiral S. Kouchaki, is on a March 4-9 visit to India, during which he will visit key installations and discuss joint exercises.

The reasons for India to avoid conflict with Iran are primarily four:

First is the Shiite factor. There have been a little over 17,000 Muslim-Hindu clashes since India became independent in 1947, of which less than two hundred involved Shiites and Hindus. Almost all such clashes have been Sunni versus Hindu, and 87 percent of these have been Wahabbi-Hindu, as the more moderate sections of Sunni Muslim society seldom adopt a confrontational posture with their Hindu neighbors.

Religious Supremacists (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat

MANIPAL, India, Nov. 25 (UPI) -- Thanks to the extraordinary burst of innovation and enterprise created in the countries of Western Europe during the previous five centuries, the world came under their tutelage. However, those from the region who lacked the characteristics of rationality, resourcefulness and drive that resulted in the west leading the world fell back on the absence of skin pigment to distinguish themselves as superior from the rest of humanity. In this, they were merely following an ancient precedent. For example, the very Sanskrit word for India's 4,000-year old tradition of caste is "varna," meaning: color. Indeed, the Slavic peoples used this characteristic to name the lands in which they resided. Thus, "Russia" means "Land of the Blonde" while "Belarus" goes even further, signifying the "Land of the White Blonds." Small wonder that notions of racial supremacy grew in Western Europe, sometimes even crossing the bounds of color, as for example in much of the European continent during the period when those belonging to the Jewish faith were discriminated against and finally, sought to be eliminated altogether. The Holocaust has been the vilest depth in human history of a deformed social consciousness that survived in the modern era in locations such as the segregated south of the U.S., and countries such as South Africa, where "racial supremacy" was the norm.

Today, neither does segregation exist in the U.S. nor apartheid in South Africa. The notion of racial supremacy has become an international outcast, even though sporadic manifestations of old attitudes linger, as for example in the recent German political formulation, "Kinder statt Inder," which implied that people coming from India were less than human. However, in practically all of western societies, discrimination based on color has practically disappeared, even though there are occasional "glass ceilings" that limit the upward mobility of those with a higher level of cutaneous pigment. Once identified, these are pulled down. The result has been that in advanced western societies such as the U.S. and Israel, those whose ethnicity comes from India have frequently bested others from locations in Europe.While "Race Supremacists" have been under attack from the civilized world, and are either extinct or on the defensive, another brand of hate crime flourishes undisturbed, even in countries that are the allies of the West. This is "Religious Supremacy," the belief that those practicing a particular faith have the same "right" to discriminate against others that "White Supremacists" in the past saw as their God-given privilege to consign the rest to a permanently inferior status. In states governed by religious supremacists, those belonging to other faiths lack the freedoms enjoyed by the privileged. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, those who do not belong to the Wahabbi creed lack the elemental right to build their own houses of worship and to openly pray in them. There are mosques in Israel and the U.S. that have Wahabbist elements in them, but no trace of a synagogue or even a church in Saudi Arabia. In another such country, Pakistan, the legal and electoral system itself discriminates against minorities. While in the past color was the engine of injustice, these days it is creed. What is taking place in countries that discriminate against minorities is as vile as what was seen - and demolished - in the segregated U.S. south or in apartheid-era South Africa.

Indeed, while the United Nations General Assembly has several times discussed apartheid and racism in general, it has thus far been as silent as western and other chancelleries in identifying the discrimination and segregation that takes place in "religious supremacist" countries. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, those who are Shiite, non-Wahabbi Sunni, non-Muslim or women suffer severe discrimination, and are denied the rights that are given to adherents of the Wahabbi creed, who alone are permitted to set up houses of worship and who are given preferential treatment in several ways. This is a "hate crime" as noxious in its logic and effects as racial segregation. Indeed, in that particular country, even Wahabbis do not yet have the right to vote. The entire authority within the state adheres -- naturally -- to close relatives of the founder of the Saudi faith, Abdul Ibn Wahhab. While Khomeinism in Iran is a close cousin of Wahabbism in its world-view, there are Sunni houses of worship in Iran, and even a few synagogues, although in other respects the two countries are alike. In both, an unelected group controls the government, and bases this usurpation of power from the hands of the people on religious grounds. Indeed, Khomeinism is as much a perversion of Shiite Islam as Wahabbism is of Sunni Islam. 

Not Our Problem (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat

MANIPAL, India, March 1 (UPI) -- The Maldives is a tiny group of islands nestling in the Indian Ocean that got into the news only because of the Dec. 26 tsunami. For years it has been the focus of concerted NGO action designed to convert the regime into a genuine democracy, with political parties and a Westminster-style parliament where the two sides glower across the aisle at each other.

India has shown that multi-party democracy can work even in conditions of illiteracy and poverty. The country borrowed heavily from British political institutions, even while retaining most of the administrative and judicial infrastructure left behind in 1947.

Another country that could succeed in such a transformation is Iraq, which has a sizeable middle class and a national consciousness based on the centuries of civilization in the region, beginning with Mesopotamia. To interpolate from this that a similar graft would succeed in the very different scale of the Maldives may be a mistake.

A rough rule of thumb would be that it takes a minimum population of 5 million in order to create the diversity that is called for by a multi-party democratic system. A lesser number would not be able to sustain the spread of debate and contain it within bounds that do not result in widening fissures within the society.

To take the example of the Maldives again, it is a fact that the Maymoon Abdul Gayoom regime is paternalistic and lacks a significant machinery to monitor and respond to public opinion. It is equally a fact that the Maldives is a moderate state with an overwhelming Muslim majority, and that President Gayoom has thus far succeeded in keeping in check Islamists funded by Pakistani, Malaysian and Saudi Arabian religious charities. It is this visible secularism that has motivated such intervention, which has succeeded in creating a small but very vocal group of democracy activists that are calling for an Islamist state.