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.

Why is Sonia Gandhi afraid of China? (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — During the period when the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition was in office, from 1998-2004, India launched several initiatives to enhance links with Taiwan. Air links were expanded and foundations laid for a flow of Indian brainpower to Taiwan and a ramping up of investment into India. Today trade between India and Taiwan is close to US$6 billion, heading for $10 billion within the next year.

However, mainly because of a lack of attention from the Sonia Gandhi-led United Progressive Alliance government, Taiwanese investment in India, at a little over US$1 billion, is just one-fifth of what it is in much smaller Cambodia and less than 5 percent of investment in Vietnam.

This official neglect of Taiwan is motivated by the hope that kowtowing to China will result in a more accommodating attitude from Beijing on issues such as the border dispute – a proposition that has so far proved false.

It would seem that with Taiwan under the leadership of the Kuomintang, China is unconcerned about links between New Delhi and Taipei, barring the ritual expressions of dismay at India’s rare recognition of Taiwan's potential as a major source of investment.

Taiwanese diplomats unfortunate enough to be posted to New Delhi are subject to restrictions that are absent in the United States, the European Union, and in most of Asia – excluding countries such as Syria, Iran or North Korea. For example, the military attaché at the Taiwan mission in India has been barred by the Sonia-led government from meeting any – repeat any – serving officer in the three armed forces. He can meet only retired personnel, the older the better.

Pakistan Army Seeks to Save Mullah Omar (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat 

Manipal, India — The Pakistan army, through its spokesperson Athar Abbas, has publicly confirmed that it is in touch with the senior Taliban leadership, including Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden's protector. Abbas has helpfully suggested that the army would be happy to serve as the conduit for negotiations designed to facilitate a cease-fire in Afghanistan.

This cease-fire would give the Taliban unchallenged control over at least one-fifth of Afghanistan, a wedge of territory from which the terror group could send out its agents in preparation for future active hostilities. Thus far, despite the seemingly boundless faith of the Obama administration in the Pakistan army, the U.S. side has not accepted its offer to be a middleman in talks with the Taliban.

Those dealing with Taliban-linked terror groups in South Asia should keep in mind the example of President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka. Aware that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam invariably called for a cease-fire and negotiations whenever it needed a respite, only to return to the battlefield after replenishing its oxygen, Rajapaksa ignored calls from Britain, India and Norway, among others, to declare an immediate cease-fire. Instead, he stopped the conflict only after the LTTE had been comprehensively defeated after two decades of war.

The Taliban is even more fanatic than the LTTE. Its cadres have zero intention of changing their chemistry to join the flock of Afghani and Pakistani politicians milling around the pickings of office. They seek the re-establishment of a medieval state, and regard terror as a suitable instrument of war.

A cease-fire with them – especially with the still-feared Mullah Omar – would demoralize the Afghan forces battling them alongside NATO forces, and scare more Afghans into acquiescence with their harsh primitivism. In particular, it would deal a blow to the hopes of women in Afghanistan, who dread the return of a misogynistic force that brutalized them at home and elsewhere.

Kayani: Arsonist Disguised as Firefighter (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat 

Manipal, India — Pakistan's chief of army staff, General Parvez Ashfaq Kayani, is a master at the strategy of starting a fire and then volunteering to put it out in exchange for concessions. Yet he was taken aback when President Asif Ali Zardari declined to enter the noose of imprisonment being prepared for him by the expected return to office of dismissed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.

Zardari has refused to reinstate Chaudhry, ousted by his predecessor Gen. Pervez Musharraf, despite urgings from Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani – who was functioning in tandem with Kayani in wanting a more pliant head of state than Zardari.

Since then, Kayani has been working at undermining his nominal superior, ensuring a steady diet of negative media reports about Zardari, and ensuring backroom backing for those champions of Punjabi supremacy in Pakistan, the Sharif brothers. The conspirators meet outside Pakistan, usually in locations in the Middle East, to fine-tune their plans to ensure the removal of Zardari and the return to center stage of Kayani ally Nawaz Sharif.

Of concern to democracies about this Pakistani soap opera is the backing that Kayani has given to the Taliban and its parasite, al-Qaida. It is no accident that NATO has failed to prevent this group of louts from retaking one-third of Afghanistan and moving into the rest.

U.S. backing for Kayani has ensured that the Pakistan military's double-faced policy of secretly helping the Taliban while publicly backing NATO continues. Now that the Clinton team is back in office, courtesy of President Barack Obama, the United States is returning to the 1994-96 policy of backing 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.

Strange Shiite Bedfellows (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat

MANIPAL, India, Feb. 13 (UPI) -- The Shiite branch of Islam is regarded as heresy by followers of Wahhabism, an Islamic school of thought founded in the 18th century by Abdul Wahhab. Extreme adherents of this faith routinely visit violence on Shiites, and every one of its preachers condemns the Shiites as un-Islamic.

However, the 1979 ascendance of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to absolute power in Iran meant the capture of one of the geopolitical pivots of the Shiite world -- the other being Iraq -- by a thinker whose teachings closely resembled the philosophy of Abdul Wahhab, at least in tone.

Wahhab's ideas originally had been designed to counter the influence of Turkish Sufi doctrine over the Arab Bedouin. The Wahhabis enjoyed the support of the British Empire and its successor in international reach, the United States, initially because this alienation from Turkish influence suited their interests.

This backing began to be withdrawn only after Sept. 11, 2001. Nearly nine years after that event, the prying away of Wahhabis from the state structures of key Muslim-majority states has been at best partial, and usually no more than cosmetic. Wahhabism continues to dominate the world of Muslim religious schools and sites by the marginalization of clerics and scholars who subscribe to a moderate -- if not Sufi -- worldview.

Nowhere has this process secured deeper roots than in Pakistan.

Khomeinist Iran Turns to Pakistan (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat 

Manipal, India — The Shiite branch of Islam is regarded as heresy by followers of the founder of Wahabbism, Abdel Wahab (1703-1792). Extreme adherents of this faith routinely visit violence on the Shiites, and every one of its preachers condemns the Shiites as un-Islamic.

However, the 1979 ascendance of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to absolute power in Iran meant the capture of one of the geopolitical pivots of the Shiite world – the other being Iraq – by a thinker whose teachings closely resembled the philosophy of Abdel Wahab.

These ideas had originally been designed to counter the control exercised by Turkish Sufi doctrine over the Arab Bedouin. The Wahabbis enjoyed the support of the British Empire and its successor in international reach, the United States, initially because this alienation from Turkish influence suited their interests.

This backing began to be withdrawn only after 9/11. Nearly nine years after that event, the prising away of Wahabbis from the state structures of key Muslim-majority states has been at best partial, and usually no more than cosmetic. Wahabbism continues to dominate the world of Muslim religious schools and sites by ensuring the elimination of clerics and scholars who subscribe to a moderate – if not Sufi – worldview.

Nowhere has this process secured deeper roots than in Pakistan. Apart from some locations in the Middle East and North Africa, Pakistan has become the most significant jihadi factory, turning out thousands each year. Education in the religious schools, or madrassas, is based on vilification of those not subservient to a Wahabbi mindset. Even regular school education in Pakistan has aped models in the "moderate" Middle East by including heavy doses of religion in what ought to be secular curricula.

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.

The Road to Terror Runs Through Pakistan (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — The 1989 defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan was a tactical victory, but a strategic defeat for the Western alliance. The induced success of the jihadis gave them a boost of vainglory, leading to the expansion of their jihad to the West.

Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and their al-Qaida organization are the unintended consequences of the 1979-87 strategy by former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency William Casey of funding, training and equipping jihadists to fight a conventional force.

Those lessons are now coming in handy for terrorists operating in the Afghan countryside, where NATO is floundering in a manner similar to the 1983-84 travails of the Soviet battalions.

If it can be said that the economic and other costs of the Afghan war helped push the Soviet Union to collapse, it can also be argued by those determined to undermine the West that the immense financial costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – along with the concomitant speculative rise in commodity prices sparked by the conflicts – are responsible for the apparent meltdown in Western economies witnessed in the latter half of 2008.

Iraq and Afghanistan are theaters separated by conditions on the ground. In Iraq, the policy of occupation has led to an essentially nationalist rebellion against the United States and the United Kingdom – giving the religious Shiite parties an opportunity to secure the political space left empty by the secular nationalists’ recourse to insurgency.

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.

The China Factor in India's Nuclear Debate (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat 

Manipal, India — On July 22, should India's ruling alliance win its trust vote in Parliament, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will go ahead and work out an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group. His partners for the past 51 months, the two communist parties, will use their 61 members of Parliament to oppose him – despite Singh having kowtowed continuously to them on economic policy, at the cost of economic reform.

Today, the Indian economy is in far worse shape than it was when he took office in 2004, with government spending out of control, a doubling of the tax burden and a raft of restrictions on private initiative and enterprise.

Why, despite Singh having implemented a "communist lite" program as prime minister, are the two communist parties so anxious to defeat his government and thereby block further progress on the nuclear negotiations begun with the George W. Bush- Manmohan Singh statement on U.S.-India nuclear cooperation on July 18, 2005? After all, the two parties are openly pacifist, having opposed the country's nuclear weapons program since its inception in 1985, and the agreements now being discussed would significantly limit India's freedom of action to build an arsenal capable of responding against a nuclear attack.

Contrary to the reports and commentaries now appearing in the Indian media, the change in stand of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India has little to do with nuclear weapons or energy. It is based on what is perceived – despite ritual denials by the United States and India – to be the principal reason behind the July 18, 2005 accord: the integration of India into the defense architecture of the United States, in the manner of Japan.

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.

Why Benazir Bhutto Posed a Threat (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — On Nov. 7 this columnist wrote that Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto's election plans were likely to fail "if she survives." The skepticism over her longevity was because of the threat she represented to both the Punjabi component in the Pakistan army and to the continuation of the military's monopoly over state power.

While President Pervez Musharraf avoided challenging the latter, since 9/11 he has quietly but systematically sought to reduce the suffocating grip of the Punjabis over the army, giving better representation to Mohajirs, Balochis, Pashtuns and even a few Sindhis in the higher reaches of both the military as well as the civil administration. Had there been a teaming up between the wily Musharraf and the mercurial Bhutto, especially after he was made to quit as army chief, the two may have succeeded in leveraging anti-army sentiment in Pakistan enough to send the soldiers back to their barracks.

Since the 1950s, those in uniform have controlled Pakistan's civilian institutions, ensuring that these were melded with the military into a seamless system of preference and privilege to a military that has made jihad a lucrative industry. Especially since anti-U.S. passions rose after the Iraq war in 2003, but dating back to the earlier attempt by Musharraf to put the Taliban out to dry in Afghanistan , the Baloch and Pashtun components of the Pakistan army turned against their chief, to be joined by the Punjabi component shortly thereafter.

Will the USS Kitty Hawk cement U.S.-India military ties? (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Thanks largely to India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who shared with his leftwing British friends a dislike of the Yanks, the geopolitically senseless alienation between the United States and India continued for five decades after India's independence in 1947.

What seems finally to have convinced the British to leave India was the seepage of loyalty from the Indian component of the armed forces. More than 2 million Indians saw action on the Allied side during World War II. Yet during the war, their loyalty to the Crown was tested by the discriminatory treatment meted out to Indians in the services. British personnel dominated the higher reaches of the military and were given perquisites and privileges far beyond those enjoyed by Indians.

Several thousands of soldiers joined the pro-Axis Indian National Army during the war. Within the ranks of those who remained on the Allied side, there was visible sympathy for those Indian officers and men who switched sides and refused to fight for the British monarchy that denied them the privileges enjoyed by soldiers from the Australian, New Zealand, U.S. and Canadian complements. The possibility of widespread revolts within the armed forces concentrated minds in London and speeded up the withdrawal from India.

Punjabis Re-Assert Supremacy in Pakistan (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Since the 1980s, about six years after Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq took control from Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, the Pakistan army has been less a symbol of national unity than an instrument to ensure the supremacy of the Punjabi element in all reaches of Pakistan society.

Today, the army is replicating in the northwestern frontier what has always been the case in Baluchistan and Sindh -- frank control over local government through the use of bullets. Although the Pashtun and Baloch elements have been allowed some representation within the officer corps, ultimately it is the Punjabi element that decides policy.

Since2003, when they turned against Pervez Musharraf because of the Pakistan coup master's proclivity to cling to his post as Chief of Army Staff, the Punjabi element has moved closer to China, countering moves by Musharraf to align his country firmly with the United States in the ongoing War on Terror. From 2003 onwards, under cover of the need to confront Indian control in Kashmir, they have continued to give assistance to the jihadis. They have blocked U.S. moves to get the Pakistan army to mount an effective defense against the Taliban sheltering in almost every city in Pakistan, including Islamabad, where a cluster has set up base about five miles from the U.S. Embassy complex.

The Arranged Marriage Between India and the United States (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Unlike in the West, where couples meet, mate and then decide on marriage, in India it is parents, family and friends that substitute for Cupid. Not accidentally, few such pairings are driven by romantic considerations. Instead, an assessment is made of how the two families can benefit from the match, rather than simply the individuals on whose behalf a decision on pairing is being taken.

Unsurprisingly, the choice of Mom, Dad, Uncle and Family Friend is seldom that which either the groom or the bride would have selected, had they the right to do so. Interestingly, most such marriages work, usually much better than in societies where personal choice is given precedence over family needs.

Over the past five years the United States and Indian militaries have been discovering each other, much like a couple brought together under family pressure. Fresh from their interaction with counterparts in Pakistan -- whose military goes ape at the prospect of a U.S.-India alliance -- and loaded with tales originating from the time of the Indian-phobic Winston Churchill about the " unreliable" Indians, those within the U.S. military that began dealing with the Indian army, navy and air force came prepared to dislike their new contacts.

If the Americans were distant, the Indians were paranoid, and several promising careers within the three services were blighted on the charge of "fraternization" with a U.S. officer, usually female. Not merely more private actions, but even an exchange of "inappropriate" emails was cause for retribution. Only very recently has the Indian establishment come to accept that a consensual relationship between two adults, each of whom may wear the uniform of what is today an allied country, need not be treated as a security disaster.

The Battlefield is the Mind (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat

MANIPAL, India, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- After World War I, the consequences of the Versailles "peace" were the rise of the National Socialists and World War II. That conflict was followed by the Marshall Plan, the democratization of Germany, Italy and Japan and their bonding with the United States and the United Kingdom into both a security alliance as well as an economic partnership. Both British values and American culture permeated the three former Axis powers, vacuuming away the hostility in the minds of their populations to the victors.

Today, some Germans (as indeed many Britons and more than a few French) may be against what George Bush did to Saddamite Iraq. Almost none are anti-American except in a narrow political sense -- in other words, except in the same way as many Britons are "anti"-Blair and several U.S. citizens "hostile" to Bush.

Why did the Peace imposed after World War II create a benign backlash while that which followed World War I create the Hitler-Tojo-Mussolini monster? The reason was that conquest was achieved in the 1914-1919 conflict only on the ground, over physical territory. In the second, it won over the mind of the "enemy" population pool as well. It can be argued that the extremely liberal treatment given to the Germans after they had backed the most loathsome dictatorship in history, a policy of forgiveness that took within its fold more than 95 percent of those who had been active in the NSDAP, helped avoid a second Hitler.

It is now clear that the formal respect paid to the Emperor of Japan and to the non-militaristic aspects of the culture of that civilization, together with an efficient MacArthurite democratization and integration into the modern economy of Japan, transformed a power that had been first suspicious of and then hostile to the West (at least for the previous two centuries) into a reliable ally, despite the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima

Operation Enduring Freedom ought to have been conducted by giving the same billing to a "Free Iraq" leadership as was given to its U.S.-U..K participants. A Free Iraqi general conducting press briefings jointly with the non-telegenic Tommy Franks, four stars glistening on his lapel, would have had an effect similar to that created by projecting Charles De Gaulle as the heroic leader of a multitude of "Free French," when the reality in German-occupied France was that the level of resistance was far lower than that found in the eastern theatres, while active collaboration was high. The "Free French" were, however, wonderful in cinema newsreels and on the BBC and VOA, which was enough to preserve French pride in the postwar period, avoiding the kind of backlash that made Paris the prime mover behind the Versailles Treaty.

To Win in Iraq, Change Tack (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat 

MANIPAL, India, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- Foreign troops arrive as liberators, receiving a rapturous welcome from the local population. Soon after, small forces of armed men begin to emerge occasionally from the shadows, shooting at the occupiers -- who must respond indiscriminantly if at all because they cannot distinguish between friend and foe.

Civilian casualties mount. The welcome evolves into suspicion. The resistance grows bolder, thanks in no small part to increased support from within the population. The minor attacks multiply until the occupation force is goaded into carrying out major military operations that cause countless civilian casualties.

Post-war Iraq? No. It is Sri Lanka, circa August 1987, the year an Indian military force landed on the island to enforce a peace between Sinhalese and Tamils.

Within weeks irregulars from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam launched an offensive against the IPKF, using civilian areas as cover. Liberation movement guerillas would pop up from within a crowd, spray a passing IPKF convoy with bullets and disappear -- while the soldiers fire back on a crowd of non-combatants.

After more than a year of this, the Indians changed their tactics.

They began to emphasize medical and other services to win the hearts of the civilian population, and they used used radio and print to disseminate information about the ruthlessness of the LTTE towards any individual who opposed it.

Why not an Asian NATO? (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat 


MANIPUR, India, April 26 (UPI) -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other war planners in the Pentagon may bridle at the comparison, but the reality is that the U.S. military establishment follows the example set by the State Department in at least one crucially wrong assumption: the belief that European traditions and analytical models can suffice to analyze Asia.

After all, since Asia was carved up among different European countries until a few decades back, clearly that meant the Europeans knew their way around.

However, times have changed, and today's Asia is a fusion of local with Western mindstreams that paradoxically make the peoples of the world's biggest continent more difficult to understand by Western scholarship.

An example is Iraq. Several Asian scholars -- including the writer, in these columns -- had warned that the absence of involvement of local anti-Saddam Hussein militias and the prominence given to the British -- the former colonizers of Iraq and therefore a people the locals are understandably sensitive about -- by U.S. war planners was likely to lead to a bulge in support for the Saddam regime, fighting what is perceived as a new Western war of conquest.

Mind Wars and Iraq (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat

MANIPAL, India, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- After World War I, the great powers imposed a peace on Germany that led to a fresh conflagration just two decades later, one far more virulent in its scope and effects. The coming military campaign against Iraq promises to be a duck shoot, given that country's eviscerated war machine. However, unless equal attention is paid to the "chemistry" of the campaign -- its "mind" factor -- as well as its "mechanics" -- the straightforward military aspects -- the very victory over Iraq may create the conditions for an intensification of the terror war against secular democracies.

This would affect the strategic interests of the democracies worldwide. To paraphrase a phrase from the 1992 Clinton campaign," It's the Mind, Stupid!" Defeating the Iraqi armed forces and toppling Saddam Hussein needs to be complemented by the creation of an atmosphere within the Muslim world that accepts such a success to be in their interests as well.

In other words, the strategy against Saddam needs to be a fusion of mechanics and chemistry .While the first deals with field mechanics and hardware, the second concentrates on the atmospherics and the psychological effects of such actions.

Islamic radicals have attempted to overcome their deficiencies in the "mechanical" with emphasis on the "chemical" in their war against modern civilization. This strategy has thus far been neglected by Western military planners.

In Afghanistan, it was not the air-dropping of peanut butter but the entry of fellow-Afghans into the battle against the Taliban that dried up support for that regime. In a similar way, there needs to be very visible -- and voluble -- Iraqi faces in the campaign against Saddam alongside President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.