Pope Francis seeks Vatican reform (PO)

M D Nalapat
Friday, October 11, 2013 - Pope Francis has been hailed as the first “non-European” Pontiff of the Catholic Church the most majestic and powerful entity which commands the allegiance of hundreds of millions of the globe’s most productive citizens. However, the reality remains that he is of 100% Italian stock, the same ethnicity which gives forth more than eight out of ten Popes. It is only technically - in terms of the passport he carries - that he may be said to be “non-European”, although he has the legal right to claim Italian citizenship whenever he chooses. A millennium ago, the Catholic Church outstripped the world’s first Christian church, the Patriarchate of Antioch, in the number of its followers.

Indeed, since the days of the Roman emperor Constantine, it has never had to cede its primary position within the Christian pantheon to any other church. One of the reasons why Europe and North America are deaf to the travail being endured by Christians in Syria and indeed within West Asia in general may be because few believers in such regions accept the Pope in Rome as their spiritual leader. Many hail from the Orthodox churches of Greece and the Orient, with their different liturgies and modes of worship. Hence, there is hardly any public pressure on Barack Obama, David Cameron, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande to try and do something to prevent the armed groups in Syria and Libya from killing Christians and driving them out of their respective countries.

Because the Catholic Church is based in Rome, those of Italian origin have played a significant role in its leadership and evolution. Non-Europeans ( or those not of European ethnicity) figure hardly at all in the list of Saints of the Church. For example, almost all the saints are of European extraction, including the two former Popes who have been canonized by the Vatican recently. Certainly the people of Europe are civic-minded and have done immense good to the world. Certainly many have toiled a lifetime in the service of those less privileged than themselves. But it is difficult to believe that 99.5% of Saints come from a single ethnicity, leaving the immense bulk of humanity with only a negligible share in such an exalted list. Had Cardinal Ivan Deas of India or some of the great Cardinals of Asia and Africa - for example in Ghana or the Phillipines been made the Pope after the retirement of the previous incumbent, it could have been said not only technically but substantively that for the first time in its history, the majestic Catholic Church would be led by a non-European.

Pope Francis is as “non-European” as India’s all-powerful Congress President, Sonia Gandhi, who too is of Italian extraction, having been born in Orbassano, a picturesque town in the north of Italy, a beautiful country with a vibrant people Having said this, it must be admitted that Pope Francis has shown himself to be of an entirely different cut from his two immediate predecessors, both of whom sought to prevent the winds of change from blowing into the Vatican. The new Pontiff is a simple man who refuses to change his ways, and who has therefore declined to reside in the munificent style of his predecessors. Pope Francis has not forgotten that Jesus Christ chose for himself and his followers a life of poverty, and that it is said that “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Paradise”.

The gap between Pontiff and People has been significantly reduced by Pope Francis, who shows by his words and his deeds that he genuinely cares about the poor. More importantly, he has refused to follow the example of condemning those whose lifestyles are different from the strict codes recommended by the Church. Even in matters as grave as love between people of the same sex, the Pope has correctly said that such behaviour is not for him to judge. The reality is that the Day of Judgment falls only on a single occasion, and not every week or everyday. And that only the Almighty is empowered to judge, not mere human beings who boast that they too have the power to judge and to condemn their fellows.

Across the globe, those who follow the Catholic Church have, on average, a much higher level of education and economic empowerment than the overwhelming bulk of humanity. Hence it is with surprise that such a length of time has elapsed before the Vatican has had the good fortune to have as the Pontiff an individual whose sights are firmly set on the 21st century rather than the 19th or even earlier epochs. The gentle and commonsensical touch brought to bear on complex theological issues by Pope Francis is a refreshing change from the inflexible conservatism of some of his predecessors. Those who claim to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ need to internalize his forgiving nature, his acceptance of human frailties even within his closest followers, as for example his prediction that the Apostle Peter would deny him thrice “before the cock crows”. The world may not have forgiven Judas for betraying his master, but Jesus certainly did. The forgiving approach of Pope Francis is fully in sync with the teachings of Jesus Christ. Indeed, these teachings have been elucidated in the Holy Quran, where mercy, compassion and beneficence have been repeatedly mentioned as the qualities needed in a believer of the Word of God.

Coming back to the Catholic Church, for long there has been a growing disconnect between the Clergy and the Laity. Pope Francis bids fair to reduce that gap, if not to close it altogether. He has shown that the spirit of reform is alive at the very pinnacle of the Catholic Church.
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=220676

Give Lalu more company, send more VVIPs to prison (Sunday Guardian)

ROOTS OF POWER MADHAV NALAPAT www.sunday-guardian.com/profile/madhav-nalapat

Lalu Prasad Yadav lmost before the departing British arrived back home, their "Gandhian" successors made a beeline for the mansions and other accoutrements of colonial power, seeing it as their due. If Mahatma Gandhi ever protested at this embrace of luxury by his flock, the same has not been recorded in the history books. Clearly, he would have wanted the successors to Empire to live in surroundings humbler than the Viceregal Palace, now Rashtrapati Bhawan, or York Road, now Teen Murti Bhawan. Given that the desire of Lord Louis Mountbatten (formerly Battenberg) to continue to reside in the same residence, which he occupied as the Viceroy fused with the determination of the Nehru Cabinet to ensure that Mountbatten remained behind to guide the new team in its first months in power, it was a foregone conclusion that the first Governor-General of India would not stay in an official residence more commensurate with Gandhian values. However, once Chakravarti Rajagopalachari succeeded Mountbatten, Government of India ought to have shifted the new G-G to less pretentious surroundings. However, neither Rajagopalachari nor any of his successors — including the Janata Rashtrapati Abdul Kalam — made any move to get themselves moved out of the building that ought to have housed not a single individual but the core of the Central government, the Prime Minister's Office as well as the Home, Defence and Finance Ministries, with the Ministry of External Affairs being handed over the Ashok Hotel in Delhi's diplomatic quarter. Will President Pranab Mukherjee create history by asking that the official residence of the President of India be shifted to Hyderabad House? It is not only the laws and practices of the British that are being followed in their entirety by the successors to Empire. The Mughal rulers of Delhi scattered gravesites across the city, most with grandiose structures atop. The same tradition has been followed by those who have taken over from the Mughals and the British, our political class. From Mahatma Gandhi's last accommodation to Jawaharlal Nehru's to Indira Gandhi's to Lal Bahadur Shastri's — the list continues — the capital of India is filled with mansions where the deceased occupants met their end, or would have were they not travelling to Tashkent. None of these qualifies as simple, even by the standards set by Mukesh Ambani or Bill Gates. These dwellings, as well as the other British-era palaces dotting Lutyens' Delhi reek of opulence, and once in them, our "public servants" usually take care to ensure that their wealth, declared or otherwise, rises to at least the same scale as their residences. Where is any Gandhigiri in such attitudes or lifestyles? Until our VVIPs endure the same cramped surroundings and lack of water and power as the rest of us, they will not care that 99.995% of the country is having a rough time because of the cupidity of the rest. Anna Hazare fasted to create a bureaucratic monstrosity termed the Jan Lokpal. Instead, he ought to have demanded that ministers, high officials and other Delhi-based VVIPs get turned out of their colonial bungalows, and stay in small flats. The British-era bungalows in Lutyens' Delhi ought to be auctioned off to the highest bidders and the money used to fund an expansion of the judiciary sufficient to ensure that the average case in India gets disposed of in six months rather than in 30 years. Finally, Anna Hazare or his successor needs to ensure that Manmohan Singh facilitates and not hinders the process whereby Lalu Yadav ends his loneliness in prison by being joined by the dozens of other top leaders who are even more venal than he has been. The Supreme Court judgement taking away their membership of legislators from convicted felons ranks along with the Keshavananda Bharati case as a high point in India's judicial history. Now is the time for followers of the Mahatma to come to the aid of that underprivileged and battered section of India's society, the honest. There has been much talk of minorities and majorities, of the forwards and the backwards, and how the taxes collected from one section of society ought to flow as largesse to other groups. However, thus far the Honest Citizen has been ignored, even as a web of policy gets created that facilitates the growing prosperity of his nemesis, the crook. Beginning with the reality that the actual cost of getting elected even to municipal office is higher than the money legally spent on a Lok Sabha seat, and moving on to the manner in which rules and regulations have been crafted so as to ensure that as many greedy, grasping palms get greased as possible, the "system" in India has evolved into a con game. The result has been a Gresham's Law that forces outwards the honest and upwards to higher office, those with sackfuls of currency to spend. Now that Manmohan Singh has been shamed into leaving alone Justice Patnaik's seminal judgement, the flow of the bent and the greasy towards legal accountability needs to get stepped up. Each pothole, each drop in international rankings of an Indian university, each indigent and every illiterate is testimony to the wilful neglect of their responsibilities by politicians in India, for whom "charity begins, and ends, at home". Until several dozen VVIPs follow Lalu Yadav into prison, one or two jailed politicians are unlikely to make much difference in the way this country is being governed. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/give-lalu-more-company-send-more-vvips-to-prison

After Nepal, Lanka is LeT’s new base (Sunday Guardian)

MADHAV NALAPAT  Colombo | 5th Oct 2013

ri Lanka is fast becoming a "safe area" for the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the terror organisation patronised by Shahbaz Sharif, the brother of Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, according to experts tracking the growth of international terror organisations. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, three of them gave details of the way in which the LeT has been "building a base of operations in Sri Lanka, especially in remote inland towns and parts of the east coast". Pakistan army personnel linked to the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) have been making frequent visits to both locations, "often in the guise of tourism". According to these analysts, "there is no doubt that the Pakistan army is assisting the LeT in its efforts at creating a safe zone" in parts of Sri Lanka. According to them, "at present these cells are not planning operations within the island. Rather, they are using Sri Lankan territory to rendezvous and to plan attacks against targets in India and Europe." Although the Sri Lankan diet contains pork, and alcohol is freely available in a country with liberal and westernised standards of dress, "there have recently been a flow of visitors who are clearly Wahhabi, both male and female". The suspicion is that such visitors are coming "not to holiday but to meet with others so as to plan attacks in other countries". The LeT funds much of its operations in India through counterfeit currency and by cash given by terror gangs active in cities such as Mumbai and Lucknow. Hence it comes as no surprise that Sri Lanka has joined Nepal to become a location from where efforts are being made to smuggle counterfeit currency into India. A senior official at the Indian mission confirmed that "deliveries of counterfeit currency from places in Sri Lanka have been intercepted". According to those tracking terror groups, especially the LeT, that organisation is seeking to "create a local support base on the lines of existing logistics hubs in India" and that "about two dozen Sri Lankan citizens seem to have been recruited by the LeT from countries within the GCC". There is a large Sri Lankan diaspora in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Arabic has become ubiquitous along the east coast, from Sittanikudi to Komari. Wahhabi preachers have proliferated, especially since the 2008 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai led to an intensification of intelligence and counter-terrorism activities in Nepal, the primary zone of LeT activities in the periphery of India. "There is a steady radicalising of elements of the local population, and the worry is that Wahhabi-Buddhist riots may erupt in Sri Lanka, as they have in Myanmar", a senior local official admitted, who added that the terror attack by Rohingya groups at Bodh Gaya "profoundly affected Sri Lanka", a nation where Theravada Buddhism is the dominant faith. Both Indian as well as Sri Lankan counter-terror operatives "are still focused on the last war against the LTTE and against remnants of that organisation, and are yet to register the new front that is opening up", which is Wahhabi terror in the form of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and its offshoots, a senior official pointed out. He, however, said that Lankan Defence Secretary Gotebaya Rajapaksa "is aware of the developing threat and has ordered countermeasures". Another official said that "Sri Lanka is watching the efforts of Wahhabis to target not only moderate Muslims and Hindus but also Buddhists". Interestingly, Tamil leaders active in Sri Lankan politics have also flagged this problem, worried that "there may be attacks on temples and churches by fanatic elements if the ongoing radicalisation remains unchecked". However, as yet the LeT and its local logistics hubs are concentrating on future operations in India and Europe. "The LeT has established links with some of the armed groups in Syria, and is helping them in training and in sabotage activities", an analyst claimed, adding that "the Libyan and Syrian rebellions have led to terror groups getting access to a flood of sophisticated weapons". He and a colleague were surprised that "the US and the UK appear to be in denial about the way in which weapons given via allies of the two countries to groups fighting the regime in Damascus end up in the inventories of terror groups including the LeT. It took the Kandahar hijack of an Indian Airlines aircraft 13 years ago to alert Indian authorities to the menace posed by extremist groups using Nepal as a base. Hopefully, Government of India will awaken to this latest extremist base in the Indian Ocean before an attack planned within LeT safe-houses in Sri Lanka occurs. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/after-nepal-lanka-is-lets-new-base

Manmohan should go to Colombo (PO)

MD Nalapat
Friday, October 04, 2013 - Gotebaya Rajapaksa is in charge of both the military as well as urban development. During the 2008-09 final battle against the LTTE, it was he (as Secretary Defense) who orchestrated the campaign against Velupillai Prabhakaran, a devout Christian who headed the Tamil Tigers. Although then army chief Sarath Fonseka attempted to grab the credit for the victory of the Sri Lankan Army against the LTTE, the fact remains that until political and administrative cover was provided to the military by President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, Secretary Defense Gotebaya Rajapaksa,the Sri Lankan Army could not succeed in overcoming the Tamil Tigers.

It was the efficient and determined prosecution of hostilities by the political leadership that made the difference, not Sarath Fonseka, who suffered from fear that he would be held to account for human rights violations by the troops under his command and began to attack the behaviour of the very men and women whom he had commanded in the final battle against Prabhakaran’s forces. Throughout 2008 and until the LTTE was finally eliminated by the middle of the next year, there was ceaseless pressure from countries big and small on President Rajapaksa to declare yet another cease fire with the LTTE. In the past, whenever the organisation got on the backfoot, it used to use its international contacts to get the Sri Lankan government to agree to a ceasefire which would give time and space for the LTTE to regroup itself and afterwards,enter the field of battle once again. This time around, President Rajapaksa made it clear that there would be no ceasefire, only war until final victory Conditioned by six centuries of European knowledge dominance over the rest of the globe and by three centuries when that small continent was the master of the earth, NATO members look askance on non-western countries acting the way they themselves do. Thus, while the hundreds of thousands of casualties caused by NATO sanctions and military action gets excused as “collateral damage”, the much lower civilian death toll from the Sri Lankan military’s operations against the Tamil Tigers has been used to seek to begin the trial of some Sri Lankan leaders and army officers for “war crimes”.

The NATO bloc dislikes strong leaders in countries which their members once ruled. They prefer mild, unassertive leaders who always listen to the advice meted out by Paris, London and Washington. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India is a particular favourite. During his recent meeting with US President Barack Obama, he forgot both Obama’s inattention to India as well as the perilous state of US finances to beg Obama for assistance to alleviate poverty in India. The body language between the two leaders was a contrast between a submissive,almost cringing, Manmohan Singh and a confident Barack Obama,aware that in the Singh-Sonia duo, India had a leadership that could be expected to obey Washington without question.

Months ago, while on a visit to London, this columnist had come to know from influential sources of a plan by “white” Commonwealth countries to have their Heads of Government boycott the mid-November Colombo conclave of the Commonweakth Heads of Government. Once this fact was brought to public notice via a report in the Sunday Guarsian, there was a strong reaction within the Commonwealth bloc about the manner in which the racist spirit of Winston Churchill was threatening to divide the Commonwealth - still a noble institituion, thanks significantly to the gracious leadership of Queen Elizabeth - into “white” and “non-white” through a CHOGM boycott.

After the report came out, wiser counsdel prevailed, and it is now clear that the UK, Australia and New Zealand will be represented not (as earlier thought) by their Foreign Ministers but by their Prime Ministers themselves. The only Churchillian left in the ring is Canada’s PM, Stephen Harper,who believes that his absence from the CHOGM conclave would create anything but a yawn. However, there is another Commonwealth leader who has been consistent in hewing to the Churchill doctrine that the “lesser orders” should listen to the “higher orders”.

Neither Manmohan Singh nor his country (India) would have been regarded by Winston Churchill as deserving of respect. The wartime PM of Britain was openly and continously contemptous of India and its people, which is why it is a surprise that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seems to be following the Churchillian rulebook in using criteria that NATO adopts not for itself but for others, to continue to snub Sri Lanka. Thus far, of all the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth, only Canada’s Harper and India’s Singh have yet to confirm their attendance at the Colombo summit. Clearly,Manmohan Singh is under pressure from Congress President Sonia Gandhi to please her coalition partner in Tamil Naxu,the DMK,by skipping the Colombo summit.

Less than six weeks from its inauguration, the absence of any confirmation that Manmohan Singh will join Prince Charles of the UK, Prime Minister Cameron, Prime Minister Abbot, Prime Minister Hasina, Prime Minister Sharif and other Heads of Government at Colombo will further damage relations between Sri Lanka and India, already not in the best state of repair. The Manmohan Singh government has allowed the West Bengal CM to ductate the pace of engagement with Bangla Desh and the DMK to affect India’s engagement with Sri Lanka. Unless the Prime Minister takes a stand which is in the overall national interest, rather than get swayed by sectional considerations, he will be doing India ill. It was not expected of Manmohan Singh that he would join in the attempted “white Commonwealth” boycott of the Colombo mid-November CHOGM when all these countries (barring Canada) have returned to the path of commonsense.

Hopefully, the lack of confirmation from the Ministry of External Affairs of Manmohan Singh’s participation at the 2013 CHOGM is due not to the “Follow Churchill” streak in the PM but because of the bureaucratic lethargy common within his government. Manmohan Singh needs to come to Colombo, and not just because Sri Lanka is a proud civilisation where two great traditions, the Tamil and the Sinhala, have flowered for millenia. The Indian Ocan is key to a considerable part of India’s strategic goals, and the location of Sri Lanka makes that country indispensable as a partner if India is to evolve and implement a workable Indian Ocean strategy. Manmohan Singh ought to have been the first to officially confirm that he would be attending the Colombo Summit. Now he will be the last, assuming of course that sane counsel prevails over those arguing for a boycott by India’s PM of the Colombo Summit.
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=220071

India needs the Right to Recall a truant MP or MLA (Sunday Guardian)

ROOTS OF POWER MADHAV NALAPAT www.sunday-guardian.com/profile/madhav-nalapat

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with Finance Minister P. Chidambaram at the 16th meeting of the National Integration Council in New Delhi on Monday. PTI t is scarcely a secret that existing laws and the manner of their enforcement have failed to eradicate corruption among politicians in office. Where, once those at the starting rungs of the political ladder used to travel long distances by bus and train, these days, even commercial flights are regarded by many netas as an inferior and hence avoidable method of transport. Corporate houses are increasingly purchasing and maintaining small aircraft as well as helicopters, less for their senior staff to flit about than to loan — free of cost — to select politicians for trips within India and abroad. Where once schoolrooms or dilapidated guesthouses were the usual places of overnight stay, these days even a 4-star hotel is considered a letdown. Visitors to The Oberoi, the Taj Mansingh, or other 5-star hotels in Delhi cannot fail to notice politicians crowding the rooms and restaurants, running up bills at a meal which would feed a village for weeks. While the dress may still be kurtas and pyjamas, these are often tailored to perfection from the finest linen or wool, depending on the season. Clearly, it is a hugely expensive task to maintain for even a week a "representative of the people". Of course, the only people that such elements represent are the Nandan Nilekanis and the Bill Gates. The frenetic zest with which politicians in India make money gives rise to the suspicion that this country's politicians have — in secret — discovered a method whereby they can take their hoard of wealth with them when they finally depart for the hereafter, or at least that portion not already spent in the fleshpots of Miami, Paris and London. Recently, the Supreme Court of India made a welcome contribution towards the objective of cleansing the political system of the crooks, who have clogged it almost from the time India became Independent. The court ruled that those lawmakers found guilty of major crimes will be disbarred from Parliament. After all, those who make the law need to be subjected to a much higher standard of compliance than the rest of the population, rather than — as now — escape the law altogether. Following Rahul Gandhi's completely accurate characterisation of the ordinance designed to enable tainted netas to escape from the fate, Justice A.K. Patnaik would consign them to, there has been a chorus of voices that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ought to quit. Such an outcome is unlikely. It needs to be remembered that after the Chandra Shekhar government fell, then economic advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went to the outgoing PM and asked for a new sinecure when faced with the unendurable prospect of being without an official title for the first time in his life. { The skill exhibited by Manmohan Singh in hopping from one important position to the other is only matched by that other saintly member of the Union Cabinet, A.K. Antony. Dr Singh lamented to the outgoing PM the fact that he had no house in Delhi to retire to, a sad state of affairs which so moved Chandra Shekhar that he (reportedly through pre-dating the relevant order) ensured that Dr Singh was given a perch in the University Grants Commission, from where of course he once again moved on to the Ministry of Finance, this time as its minister. The skill exhibited by Manmohan Singh in hopping from one important position to the other is only matched by that other saintly member of the Union Cabinet, A.K. Antony. The Defence Minister has seldom been outside the "cool shade" of high office, and should Dr Singh do the unexpected and quit, is likely to take his place. It was Manmohan Singh who announced recently that he would deem it an honour "to serve under Rahul Gandhi". This being the case, there ought to be no problem in swallowing the barbs tossed his way by the Congress vice-president and consigning the Tainted Neta ordinance to the rubbish heap. Following on its stellar performance in the case of tainted netas, the Supreme Court has now ordered that voters be given the "None of the Above" option at the ballot box. Should the percentage of this cross that secured by the winning candidate, the election ought to be countermanded. And in order to ensure that our lawmakers avoid acting irresponsibly after getting elected, a law needs to get passed giving voters the right to recall a truant MP or MLA. Accountability ought to be continuous, and not just at five-year intervals. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/india-needs-the-right-to-recall-a-truant-mp-or-mla

‘Army’s secret Division would have prevented Samba-like encounters’ (Sunday Guardian)

MADHAV NALAPAT  New Delhi | 28th Sep 2013

Indian army soldiers gather behind a small wall during an attack by militants on an army camp at Mesar in Samba District, some 20km south-east of Jammu on Thursday, Sept 26, 2013. he Samba attack by Pakistan-based elements could have been avoided if the Technical Services Division (TSD) had not been shut down a year ago, claim senior military officers who wish to remain unnamed. Speaking to them, it becomes clear that the decision by incoming Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Bikram Singh to shut down the TSD of the Army immediately upon taking charge from General V.K. Singh a year ago has been greeted with dismay by his own officers, especially those on the frontline of Pakistan terror. These officers say that the scrapping of the TSD is a major reason why there has been a spurt in cross-border intrusions over the past year, and warn that unless the organisation gets re-established, counter-insurgency operations will suffer. "The decision to finish off TSD was political and not military. It was done to show (former COAS) General V.K. Singh in a bad light," a senior officer commented, while another claimed that "the TSD enabled our boys to get prior information on the movements of terror groups, so that these were caught before sneaking into India". He claimed that "despite the effort by the ISI to create a Kashmir Intifada by motivating youngsters to pelt stones at security forces, the situation was quickly brought under control." An officer claimed that the TSD was able to use technical means to operate deep within Pakistan and find out the trajectories of terror plots against targets in India. "At a cost of just Rs 20-30 crore annually, the Army was able to finally reach the actual sources of terror operations and not just tackle the symptoms," a former officer claimed. The 26/11 Mumbai terror attack of 2008 showed the need for the army to go beyond its focus on the Line of Control and run sources deep inside Pakistan. In March 2009, a meeting took place to discuss this need, and then COAS General Deepak Kapoor asked Military Intelligence to work on a position paper, which was approved by Defence Minister A.K. Antony soon after its submission in October. The proposed TSD was to function under the Director-General of Military Intelligence, who would audit its funds and give operational directives. However, although the proposal had been cleared, it was not implemented until General V.K. Singh took over as COAS in April 2010. Among the tasks of the new unit were to keep a watch on separatists and other pro-Pakistan elements, as well as identify and record the groups and individuals seeking to destabilise the Kashmir valley. The getting of sources from within Pakistan was a high priority. The 2010 Intifada, which was countered less by standard police procedure than by an "information war" (Infowar) pointing out the harm the movement was doing to the physical and financial well-being of residents of the valley. A senior officer then in J&K admitted that "some NGOs which promoted peace and conciliation were funded by the TSD, but such expenditure was nothing compared to ISI cash pouring into the valley". Among the examples of Infowar carried out by the TSD were the securing of numerous videos showing the maltreatment of locals in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir by Pakistan army personnel, and the humiliation that locals had to daily endure, besides their economic hardship. "We showed the valley that life was hell on the other side, and this hurt the pro-Pakistan groups who painted a rosy picture of the other side," an officer claimed. His colleague claimed that "at least three dozen terror plots against targets in India were discovered because of the TSD, and foiled". He added that the (26 September 2013) Samba attack "showed the problem created by removing the TSD 'eye' from the armoury of the army". He added that the attack showed that "military intelligence needed to operate not only just across the LoC but deep within Pakistan to be effective". He warned that the "peace group (now running policy) had taken away from the army the right to a robust response to provocations after first draining it of Infowar capability". Another claimed that "these days, only officers who are more adept in cultivating superiors rather than in fighting get ahead" and warned that this would "affect the success of war operations, where courage and improvisation are key to victory". The officers claimed to have no knowledge of any TSD connection with an NGO that filed a complaint against the present COAS, General Bikram Singh, over the 2001 Janglath Mandi encounter, in which a 70-year-old local resident (who seems to have been indigent) has been identified by the army as a dangerous militant, who shot and killed the commanding officer of a unit as well as injuring then Lt Gen Bikram Singh. The NGO claimed that the alleged militant was only a bystander and that he was killed in the crossfire between two units of the army, one of which mistook the other to be terrorists. A source close to the present COAS says that Gen Bikram Singh "is a very bold officer and just because a man is 70 years old, does not mean he cannot be a threat". The military has consistently taken Gen Bikram Singh's side of the story, even while Gen V.K. Singh was COAS, and has refused to conduct any fresh investigations into the encounter that left both the alleged terrorist as well as an army officer dead and the present COAS injured. About news reports that Gen V.K. Singh snooped on officials and politicians using off-air interceptors ordered by Military Intelligence, a source pointed out that only one of the interceptors was in army use, "and that on the LoC and not Delhi". He said that the other vehicles were in the possession of the NTRO. When then Defence Secretary (and now Comptroller and Auditor General) Sashikant Sharma ordered an inquiry into all such matters in July 2012, the Board of Officers concluded that there was no evidence of any wrongdoing. Interestingly, the role of the officer who actually ordered the purchase of the off-air interceptors has never been probed. This has, however, not prevented a spate of reports from coming out about the TSD, thereby obscuring its utility as a low-budget instrument both for collection of information about hostile elements and for the conduct of Infowar in sensitive theatres. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/armys-secret-division-would-have-prevented-samba-like-encounters