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South Asia Citizens Wire | 5 August, 2005 [1] Hiroshima Day Reflections: The Time of the Bomb (Zia Mian and A.H. Nayyar) [2] Hiroshima Day Reflections: The World's Worst Terrorist Act (Praful Bidwai) [3] Pakistan: Activists complain of bar on women to contest NWFP polls [4] India: The struggle for the Hindu[tva] soul (The Economist) [5] India - Gujarat: Midnight's Children No More (Lamat Ayub) [6] UK and elsewhere: In the aftermath of the London Bombings - Reflections (i) The enemy of my enemy is not my friend! (Nadje Al-Ali) (ii) The Tavistock Square Gandhi and the War on Terror, War on Non-violence (Vinay Lal) (iii) I Am A Lawyer, Not A Bomber (Rabinder Singh) ______ [1] The News International August 06, 2005 THE TIME OF THE BOMB by Zia Mian and A.H. Nayyar When he was told on August 6, 1945, that America's new atom bomb had destroyed its first target, the Japanese city of Hiroshima, U.S. President Harry Truman declared "This is the greatest thing in history." Three days later, on August 9, another atom bomb destroyed the city of Nagasaki. The coming of the bomb brought pain and death. A 1946 survey by the Hiroshima City Council found that from a civilian population of about 320,000 on the day of the explosion: over 118,000 were killed, over 30,000 seriously injured, with almost 49,000 slightly injured, and nearly 4,000 people were missing. In December 1945, the Nagasaki City Commission determined that because of the bombing there, almost 74,000 people had been killed and 75,000 injured. The injured continued to die for months and years later, one of the reasons being radiation sickness. Pregnant women who were affected produced children who were severely physically and mentally retarded. The Japanese created a new word -- hibakusha, -- a survivor of the atom bomb. In the sixty years since the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we have been spared the horror of a nuclear weapon attack on another city. But nuclear weapons have grown in their destructive power; each can now be tens of times, or even hundreds of times, more powerful that those used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The number of nuclear weapons has grown; there are now tens of thousands. Where there was one country with the bomb, there are now perhaps nine (US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea). There are many more political and military leaders who, like Truman in 1945, see the bomb as "the greatest thing in history". >From the very beginning, there has also been opposition to the bomb. The French writer and activist Albert Camus wrote on August 6, 1945: "technological civilization has just reached its final degree of savagery... Faced with the terrifying perspectives which are opening up to humanity, we can perceive even better that peace is the only battle worth waging." The American sociologist and critic Lewis Mumford wrote: "We in America are living among madmen. Madmen govern our affairs in the name of order and security. The chief madmen claim the titles of general, admiral, senator, scientist, administrator, Secretary of State, even President." There are many more of these madmen now. They all mumble the same nonsense about "threats," and "national security," and "nuclear deterrence," and try to scare everyone around them. Protest and resistance against the madness of nuclear weapons has brought together some of the greatest figures of our times with millions of ordinary men and women around the world. Albert Einstein and the philosopher Bertrand Russell gave the reason most simply and clearly. They published a manifesto in 1955 in which they identified the stark challenge created by nuclear weapons: "Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?" The only way forward for humanity, Einstein and Russell said, was that "We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves, not what steps can be taken to give a military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all parties?" Their 1955 manifesto led to the formation of the Pugwash movement of scientists. It was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work against nuclear weapons in 1995. There are now Pugwash groups in 50 countries, including in India and Pakistan. Global protests eventually forced an end to nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere and under water. These explosions had been spewing radioactivity in the air, where it was blown around the world, poisoning land, water, food and people. But the "madmen" were blinded by the power of the ultimate weapon. They kept building more and bigger bombs and threatening to use them. They have been stopped from using them only by the determined efforts of peace movements and public pressure. The bomb and the madmen came to South Asia too. India tested a bomb in 1974 and Pakistan set about trying to make one. There was protest too. In 1985, a small group of people in Islamabad organised an event for Hiroshima Day, August 6, at the Rawalpindi Press Club. There was a slide show and talk about nuclear weapons and their terrible effects, with pictures of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Every picture brought gasps of horror and revulsion from the packed audience. The posters and placards and banners on the walls carried messages about the need to end war, to reduce military spending and increase spending on education and health, and to make peace between India and Pakistan. A small, short-lived peace group was born, the Movement for Nuclear Disarmament. That was twenty years ago. The Cold War is long over, the Soviet Union long gone, but there has been little relief. The United States still has five thousand weapons deployed, 2000 of which are ready to use within 15 minutes, and there are another five thousand in reserve. Russia has over 7000 weapons deployed and 9000 in reserve. The UK, France, and China are estimated each to have several hundred warheads, Israel may have almost as many, and India and Pakistan have a hundred or fewer. North Korea may have a handful. And, leaders are still mad; they send armies to attack and occupy other countries, and kill and maim tens of thousands. In America, they plan for newer and more useable nuclear weapons. In the meantime, India and Pakistan have also tested their nuclear weapons -- which are about as powerful as the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They have threatened to use their weapons in every crisis since then. They are making more weapons and missiles as fast as they can. A nuclear war between Pakistan and India, in which they each used only five of their nuclear weapons, would likely kill about three million people and severely injure another one and a half million. What more proof is needed that we are ruled by madmen? If South Asia is to survive its own nuclear age, we shall need to have strong peace movements in both Pakistan and India. A beginning has been made. The Pakistan Peace Coalition was founded in 1999; it is a national network of groups working for peace and justice. In 2000, Indian activists established the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace. These movements will need all the help and support they can get to keep the generals and Prime Ministers in both countries in check. The leaders in both countries must be taught, over and over again, that the people will not allow a nuclear war to be fought. There should never be a word in any other language for hibakusha. Zia Mian, peace activist, is a physicist at Princeton University. A.H. Nayyar is a physicist, co-convener of Pugwash Pakistan, and president of the Pakistan Peace Coalition. ______ [2] The News International August 06, 2005 THE WORLD'S WORST TERRORIST ACT by Praful Bidwai As the clock struck 8:15 a.m. in Japan this very day exactly 60 years ago, the world witnessed a wholly new kind and scale of brutality, leading to mass death. The entire city of Hiroshima was flattened by a single bomb, made with just 60 kg of uranium, and dropped from a B-29 United States Air Force warplane. Within seconds, temperatures in the city centre soared to 4,0000C, more than 2,5000 higher than the melting point of iron. Savage firestorms raged through Hiroshima as buildings were reduced to rubble. Giant shock-waves releasing blast energy ripped through the city, wreaking more destruction. Within seconds, 80,000 people were killed. Within hours, over 100,000 died, most of them crushed under the impact of blast-waves and falling buildings, or severely burnt by firestorms. Not just people, the body and soul of Hiroshima had died. Then came waves of radiation, invisible and intangible, but nevertheless lethal. These took their toll slowly, painfully and cruelly. Those who didn't die within days from radiation sickness produced by exposure to high doses of gamma-rays or poisonous radio-nuclides, perished over years from cancers and leukaemias. The suffering was excruciating and prolonged. Often, the living envied the dead. Hiroshima's death toll climbed to 140,000. This was a new kind of weapon, besides which even deadly chemical armaments like mustard gas pale into insignificance. You could defend yourself against conventional-explosive bombs by hiding in an air-raid shelter or sandbagging your home. To protect yourself from a chemical attack, you could wear a gas mask and a special plastic suit. But against the nuclear bombs, there could be no defence --military, civil or medical. Nuclear weapons are unique for yet another reason. They are, typically, not meant to be used against soldiers, but are earmarked for use against unarmed non-combatant civilians. But it is illegitimate and illegal to attack non-combatant civilians. Attacking them is commonly called terrorism. Hence, Hiroshima remains the world's worst terrorist act. Hiroshima's bombing was followed three days later by an atomic attack on Nagasaki, this time with a bomb using a different material, plutonium. The effects were equally devastating. More than 70,000 people perished in agonising ways. US President Harry S. Truman was jubilant. Six days later, Japan surrendered. The US cynically exploited this coincidence. It claimed that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had saved thousands of lives by bringing the war to an early end. This was a lie. Japan was preparing to surrender anyway and was only waiting to negotiate the details of the terms. That entire country has been reduced to a wasteland. Most of its soldiers had stopped fighting. Schoolgirls were being drafted to perform emergency services in Japanese cities. American leaders knew this. Historians Peter Kuznick and Mark Selden have just disclosed in the British New Scientist magazine that three days before Hiroshima, Truman agreed Japan was "looking for peace". General Dwight Eisenhower said in a 1963 Newsweek interview that "the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing". Truman's chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, also said that "the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender". The real function of the two bombs was not military, but political. It was to establish the US's superiority and pre-eminence within the Alliance that defeated the Axis powers, and thus to shift the terms of the ensuing new power struggle in Washington's favour. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings inaugurated another rivalry: the Cold War, which was to last for four decades. They also triggered fierce competition among the other victors of the World War to acquire nuclear weapons. The insane arms race this launched but hasn't ended yet. >From a few dozen bombs in the early 1950s, the world's nuclear arsenals swelled to several hundred warheads in a decade, and then several thousand by the 1970s. At the Cold War's peak, the world had amassed 70,000 nukes, with explosive power equivalent to one million Hiroshimas, enough to destroy Planet Earth 50 times over. One-and-a-half decades after the Cold War ended, the world still has 36,000 nuclear weapons. Nothing could be a greater disgrace! Nuclear weapons are uniquely destructive and have never ceased to horrify people and hurt the public conscience. The damage they cause is hard to limit in space --thanks to the wind-transporting radioactivity over thousands of miles --or in time. Radioactive poisons persist and remain dangerous for years, some for tens of thousands of years. For instance, the half-life of plutonium-239, which India uses in its bombs, is 24,400 years. And the half-life of uranium-235, which Pakistan uses in its bombs, is 710 million years! Nuclear weapons violate every rule of warfare and every convention governing the conduct of armed conflict, they target non-combatant civilians. They kill indiscriminately and massively. They cause death in cruel, inhumane and degrading ways. And the destruction gets transmitted to future generations through genetic defects. That's why nuclear weapons have been held to be incompatible with international law by the International Court of Justice. The world public overwhelmingly wants nuclear weapons to be abolished. The pro-abolition sentiment is strong and endorsed by 70 to 90 percent of the population even in the nuclear weapons-states (NWSs), according to opinion polls. More than 180 nations have forsworn nuclear weapons by signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But a handful of states remain addicted to their "nuclear fix". Led by the US, five NWSs refuse to honour their obligation under the NPT to disarm their nuclear weapons. And three of them, India, Pakistan and Israel, haven't even signed the treaty. India and Pakistan occupy a special position within the group of NWSs. They are its most recent members. They are regional rivals too, with a half-century-long hot-cold war, which has made South Asia the world's "most dangerous place". There is an imperative need for India and Pakistan, rooted in self-preservation, to negotiate nuclear restraint and abolition of nuclear weapons. But the chances of this seem rather dim. Even dimmer is the possibility of the five major NWSs embracing nuclear disarmament. Their reluctance to do so largely springs from their faith in nuclear deterrence. This is a dangerously flawed doctrine. It makes hopelessly unrealistic assumptions about unfailingly rational and perfect behaviour on the part of governments and military leaders and rules out strategic miscalculation as well as accidents. The real world is far messier, and full of follies, misperceptions and mishaps. Yet, the deterrence juggernaut rolls on. Today, the system of restraint in the global nuclear order is on the verge of being weakened. The US-India nuclear deal (discussed here last week) is a bad precedent. But even worse are US plans to develop nukes both downwards (deep-earth penetrators or bunker-busters) and upwards ("Star Wars"-style space-based Ballistic Missile Defence). If the US conducts nuclear tests in pursuit of this, that will impel others to follow suit, and encourage some non-nuclear states to go overtly nuclear, raising the spectre of another Hiroshima. Sixty years on, that would be a disgrace without parallel. Humankind surely deserves better. The writer is a Delhi-based researcher, peace and human rights activist,and former newspaper editor. ______ [3] Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) PAKISTAN: ACTIVISTS COMPLAIN OF BAR ON WOMEN TO CONTEST NWFP POLLS 03 Aug 2005 07:56:12 GMT Source: IRIN ISLAMABAD, 3 August (IRIN) - Rights activists have accused the authorities of failing to act on reports of women being barred from contesting upcoming local elections in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP), a staunchly conservative area governed by a religious parties' alliance. "Verbal statements alone by officials at the Election Commission cannot do away with decrees or agreements issued by regional tribal leaders and office-bearers of major political parties aimed at stopping women from contesting polls," Rakhshanda Naz, head of the women rights' body, Aurat (Women) Foundation, said from the provincial capital Peshawar on Wednesday. Under the supervision of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), the three-phase local government polls are scheduled to start on 18 August in 110 districts across the country's four provinces. The ECP became aware of reports from northern NWFP of agreements made earlier this month to stop women from participating in elections and warned of legal action against those involved. However, according to rights' activists, to date female participation in filing nomination papers has been extremely low following announcements by local tribal and politically influential leaders of possible consequences if they were to do so, including fines of over US $800. In the second week of July, the Peshawar-based Aurat Foundation launched a nationwide campaign to facilitate and assist women's participation in the local government elections. "The campaign is all about educating women candidates and helping them through the course of filing nomination papers, running voter campaigns and mobilisation meetings," Aasim Malik of the Aurat Foundation told IRIN from Lower Dir district, some 260 km from Peshawar. Since the ECP announced the election schedule in the last week of June, efforts to stop women from participating have been continuing in the area, according to rights' campaigners in NWFP. Malik pointed out that an agreement by office-bearers of major political parties was only one of a number of means being used to harass potential female candidates, citing the murder of a devoted councilor from Upper Dir, Zubeida Begum, as another example. During the last four-year term, as of 31 August 2004, about 1,270 union council seats meant for women councillors laid vacant across 24 districts of NWFP, with an even more depressing record in the province's northern districts. In Lower Dir district, only six seats were filled out of a total 204 allocated for women, however, the Batagram district had only one female representative against an available 122 positions. While in Kohistan district not a single seat of the 228 reserved for woman was filled, Malik said. Pronouncements on gender equality, emancipation of women and female participation in social and political development are part of the manifestos of every political party, but "with no resolve to implement them in a democratic way," Naz claimed. The ECP could have dispatched special teams or made some kind of higher level administrative intervention to give a sense of security to female contestants and so encourage their participation, activists believe. In its latest move, the ECP has extended the nomination paper filing date for women candidates in four districts of NWFP: Lower Dir, Upper Dir, Batagram and Kohistan. ______ [4] The Economist August 4th 2005 India THE STRUGGLE FOR THE HINDU SOUL Aug 4th 2005 | DELHI A family squabble, or the beginning of the end for Hindu nationalism? THE idea that India's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) might be in terminal decline seems little short of ludicrous. It is the second-largest party in Parliament and the main opposition to the ruling coalition led by the Congress party. Its election defeat last year was a shock, and it still rules five of India's 28 states. In Atal Behari Vajpayee, prime minister until last year, it has one of the country's most admired politicians. Yet an Indian news magazine last month splashed across its cover the question: "Is the party over?" It is not alone in asking. The BJP is going through more than a bad patch. Its continuing quarrel with its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or National Association of Volunteers, calls into question the party's purpose. Is its main aim to win elections or to promote the RSS's ideology of Hindutva, (Hindu-ness)? Adherents of the organisation portray Hindutva as a demand for equality, in that it would end the special arrangements, such as their own family-law system, enjoyed by India's 150m Muslims. The Muslims fear that Hindutva's aim is to promote Hinduism over Islam. The RSS is a huge, amorphous organisation, claiming 7m-8m activists. About 4m attend daily shakhas-early morning gatherings where, in khaki uniforms, they engage in physical jerks, sports and "ideological discourse". It runs 22,000 schools, has 45,000 units working in slums and is active in 11,000 of the villages where India's tribal minorities live. Besides the BJP, its "family" includes the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council. The VHP's Giriraj Kishore quite unabashedly defines its aim as establishing "a Hindu state and Hindu glory". The RSS's row with the BJP centres on Lal Krishna Advani, president of the party and leader of the opposition. Mr Advani upset "family" members on a visit to Pakistan in June. He praised Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Islamic country's founder, and said he was sad about the destruction, in 1992, of a mosque built on the alleged site of a Hindu temple in Ayodhya. BJP colleagues insist that this was nothing new. They blame the RSS's furious reaction on its leaders' envy of the popularity of Mr Advani and Mr Vajpayee, who are both RSS graduates. But the RSS accuses the BJP leader of heresy. It believes the partition of India in 1947 on religious lines was a terrible mistake, and that the tragedy is not the demolition of the mosque but the failure, so far, to build a Hindu temple on top of the rubble. The oddity is that Mr Advani had always been seen as a Hindutva hardliner. He led the campaign that culminated in the sacking of the Ayodhya mosque and ultimately propelled the BJP to power. Its climb was meteoric-from two seats in the 545-member Parliament in 1984, to 182-and a dominant role in the ruling coalition-in 1998. Last year, the number fell to 138. Might the party's crash be as precipitous as its rise? Mr Advani's remarks in Pakistan seemed part of an effort to prevent a crash by softening the party's image. Although the RSS was outraged, and wanted him to quit at least one of his two posts, he has so far clung on. At 77, he says that he will stay only as long as it takes to groom younger leaders-not that there are many obvious contenders. The BJP's Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi promises a "smooth change of leadership" soon. But Mr Advani's departure will not resolve the underlying tension. Many in the BJP believe that "with a narrow Hindu-only approach, [the BJP] will never occupy the dominant position in Indian politics that the Congress once enjoyed." Those words come from a paper written in March by Sudheendra Kulkarni, then an aide to Mr Advani. Most observers outside the Hindu "family" agree with his analysis. They blame the BJP's poor electoral performance last year in part on the bloody anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002 in Gujarat, a BJP-ruled state, and its failure to take action against Narendra Modi, Gujarat's chief minister, whose government was accused of complicity in the violence. The BJP's identification with hardline Hindutva, it is argued, cost votes. However, other party members and RSS leaders argue the exact opposite: that the problem was that, in office, the BJP was not Hindu enough. To forge a governing coalition, it had agreed not to pursue the three big Hindutva demands: the building of the Ayodhya temple, a matter it left to the courts; the adoption of a uniform civil law to supplant Muslim family law; and the revocation of the special constitutional status of Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state. The Hindu right argues that it was the failure to deliver results on these demands that alienated the BJP's core voters and demoralised its activists. Prafull Goradia, a former member of Parliament for the Jan Sangh, the BJP's forerunner, calls the notion that moderation is the only way of coming to power "absolute hogwash". He argues that the RSS should end its reliance on the BJP alone and "license" more Hindu parties. This, he insists, would increase the total Hindu vote. The RSS has no plans to open up the field. But nor will it allow the BJP a free hand. The BJP's Mr Naqvi says that the party has 30m members, of whom only 4.5m have an RSS background. But this overstates its independence of the RSS. The 4.5m are the ones who do the work. As Ram Madhav, an RSS spokesman, puts it, the BJP is the opposite of a traditional communist party, which might spawn many ideological "front" organisations: in the case of the BJP, it is the political party itself that is the front. The ideological "parent" is making clear who calls the shots. ______ [5] Tehelka.com August 13 , 2005 MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN NO MORE Shabnam Hashmi's Anhad, which gave a new life to 25 children of the Gujarat genocide, recently got a fillip with a hostel in the heart of Delhi and a brand new school car. Lamat Ayub reports Good evening. This is Ismail," says the 16-year-old, confident in his school. Seven months ago, when Ismail came to Delhi he looked quite lost - just like the 24 other children who experienced the horrors of the Gujarat genocide. They have all now been rehabilitated in Delhi by Shabnam Hashmi's Anhad. Ismail, a student of Class VI, had to give up studies midway because the locals did not want any Muslims at the MJS Government Co-Ed School in Kalol. Today, Ismail is back to school, but in Delhi. And like the other children, there has been a marked difference in his comprehension skills, his personality, and health. Much to their relief, his parents noticed this positive shift when he went home for the summer vacation. For them, this means hope. The mood is upbeat at Apna Ghar in Jaitpur on the outskirts of Delhi where Anhad has housed the children. Last week Shabnam auntie brought them real good news. The children are buoyant because they are moving to a new hostel - Bal Sahyog - in Connaught Place (CP) on August 1. Not only will they save time travelling to and fro, they also have a brand new vehicle to ferry them to the Balwant Rai Mehta School in Greater Kailash II. Shabnam Hashmi is pleased that the hard work has finally paid off. "We worked hard on these children. We hired tutors to teach them English, Science and Maths. We are thrilled that they have been accepted by a mainstream and reputed English-medium school. But we still have a long way to go," she says. "We are very lucky that we got a new accommodation for the children in cp which is closer to the Anhad office near Janpath," she says. "The children can spend more time on their studies. Earlier, we had to hire a place in Jaitpur because we couldn't afford a hostel in Delhi. We were very low on resources. We still are. Our calculations also went awry. We forgot to add the overhead expenditures and ended up spending much more on the kids. We still need to get more donations to keep the show running. But some people who have helped have been very kind." Like Aamir Khan, who turned out to be a role model for these children. The actor quietly donated Rs 5 lakh with which Anhad purchased a Tata Sumo to ferry the children to school. Aamir has also adopted a child. Khan and several others have been intensely responsive to this dream project of giving the kids a different life after what they have gone through. Fourteen-year-old Sohail is excited that he is moving to a new hostel. Ask him if he misses home, he says, "Sometimes I do. I went home and met my family during the summer vacation. They are happy for me. But I need to be in Delhi to study. I have to become a doctor." Once the kids move to a more central location, it will be easier for Anhad to offer better facilities. "We were so cut off in Jaitpur, it was difficult to convince people to go there. Some committed people did come and spend time with the kids, like this boy who did therapy through theatre. The lessons really helped. But we should be better off now. The new place is more accessible," she adds. It's not just work and no play for these kids (aged between 7 and 17). They also get to play cricket, volleyball, kabaddi and go for movies at the weekend. "I play cricket. Most of the time I fall asleep while watching a movie," 12-year-old Sameer, who introduces himself as 'Chhota Sameer', chuckles. But the trauma of the past keeps coming back. Though the children feel secure and warm in Delhi, the nightmares of the tola (mob) attacking their village still haunt them. Even the youngest, who was about four then, remembers every detail of the post-Godhra carnage - images of half-burnt bodies hanging from trees, their near and dear ones being hacked to death, and the murderous mobs chasing them on the streets. Their wounds are deep, and it will take long to heal; but they know Anhad has been a miracle, and Shabnam auntie is their fairy godmother who waves her magic wand to keep them smiling. To contact Anhad, mail at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ______ [6] [In the aftermath of the London Bombings: Reflections ] (i) www.wluml.org UK: The enemy of my enemy is not my friend! 22/07/2005: For those of us living in London, the recent bombings in the British capital brought home the daily violence, the horror and fear of millions of people living in many places around the world. (Dr Nadje Al-Ali) For the first time, it was our relatives in Iraq who anxiously called to inquire about our health and well-being, not the other way around as it has been the case for so long. Right now, Iraq must be the most acutely dangerous place in terms of both occupation forces as well as militant resistance. Yet people in many other cities around the world have to live with that daily fear: Whether in Baghdad, Ramallah, Jerusalem or Kabul, violence is a daily burden on everyone's mind if not an actual occurrence. Although many friends I have been politically involved with in the context of anti-sanctions and anti-war activism agree that the so-called "war on terror" can not be fought with bombs, only few seem to acknowledge that neither can we fight US imperialism with violence. This is particularly the case where most of the victims of this violence are innocent civilians. In Iraq, for example, thousands of men, women and children have been killed just because they happen to be passing by, or waiting at a petrol station, a market, a mosque, in front of a police station or a street at the wrong time. Can we call the killing of Iraqi civilians, foreign humanitarian workers (and, I would also add, diplomats) resistance? For me, the idea of these killings being a necessary if regrettable 'by-product' of the fight against imperialism is as twisted and perverse as the infamous statement by Madeline Albright about "a price worth paying" when speaking about the thousands of Iraqi children dying in the context of economic sanctions and the attempt to contain Saddam Hussein. To make it very clear: in my activism and writings, I have been anti-sanctions, anti-war and anti-occupation. But being against, never meant automatically being for someone or something. That held true for the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in the past as well as for those fighters terrorizing the Iraqi population today. What I have found so disheartening and frustrating when participating in anti-war and anti-occupation events during the past months is the black and white depiction of the world and the lack of clarity where the Iraqi resistance is concerned. At the recent World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul, for example, almost every speaker either began or finished his or her talk with a similar statement: "We have to support the Iraqi resistance!" Many speakers added that this was not just a matter of fighting the occupation inside Iraq but part of a wider struggle against encroaching neo-colonialism, neo-liberalism and imperialism. But none of the speakers explained to the jury of conscience, the audience and their fellow speakers what they actually meant by 'the resistance'. No one felt it was necessary to differentiate between, on the one hand, the right of self-defence and the patriotic attempt to resist foreign occupation and, on the other, the unlawful indiscriminate killings of non-combatants. Neither did anyone question the motivations and goals of many of the numerous groups, networks, individuals and gangs grouped all too casually under 'the resistance' - a term that through lack of clear definition has been used to encompass various forms of non-violent political oppositions, armed resistance, terrorism and mafia-type criminality. Again by failing to explicitly define and differentiate, proponents of the unconditional support slogan end up grouping together the large part of the Iraqi population opposing US occupation and engaging in every-day forms of resistance, with remnants of the previous regime, Iraqi-based Islamist militias, foreign jihadis, mercenaries and criminals. Views about armed resistance vary amongst the Iraqi population reflecting the diversity of Iraqi society, not simply in terms of religious and ethnic backgrounds as many commentators would like us to believe, but diversity in terms of social class, place of residence, specific experiences with the previous regime and the ongoing occupation as well as political orientation. However, based on talks with friends and family inside as well as various opinion polls, I would argue that the majority of Iraqis do not translate their opposition to the occupation into support for militant insurgents killing Iraqis. I also find it hard to believe that the majority of Iraqis would actually support the kidnapping, torturing and killing of foreign workers whatever their occupation. Ironically it is the lack of security on the streets of Iraqi cities today that persuades many people, who in principle want US and British forces out of their country, not to ask for an immediate withdrawal. Obviously the lack of security is an effect of the recent war and the ongoing occupation. The latter is without doubt a brutal continuation of an illegal war, having already killed and maimed thousands of civilians through numerous conventional and unconventional weapons. US and UK troops have been involved in the systematic torture of prisoners as well as other violations of international human rights conventions and humanitarian law. But the fact is that when an Iraqi leaves his or her house in the morning wondering whether he or she will see their loved ones again, it could either be a sniper or bomb from the occupation forces or a suicide bomb that could kill them. To abuse an old cliché, Iraqis are caught between many rocks and many hard places. The culture of violence and the underlying fascist ideology of many of the groups operating on Iraqi soil today is not a viable alternative to US imperialism. While we all know that Bush is not about freedom and democracy, please let's stop calling local and foreign suicide bombers "freedom fighters". I am not sure how long most of those unconditionally supporting the resistance today would last inside Iraq if the militant insurgents responsible for killing and kidnapping Iraqi civilians and foreigners would actually prevail. There is no doubt that the previous Coalition Provisional Authority and the various transitional governments have lacked credibility amongst the majority of the Iraqi population. Reconstruction has been incredibly slow and fraught with corruption and ill-management. Yet, the seeds for genuine political transformation, the rebuilding of physical and political spaces and a non-violent opposition to foreign occupation have been made more and more impossible by the increasing violence and instability caused by the insurgence. And there are non-violent ways of resisting: continuous images of hundred-thousands even millions of Iraqis - men, women and children of all ages and backgrounds - demonstrating peacefully on the streets of Iraq would send a very forceful message across the world: a message that could not be ignored by Washington and London, especially if Iraqis are joined by people all over the world taking to the streets in solidarity. At the same time Iraqis, lobbying their own government - as flawed as the process of election was - through civil society associations, city councils and various other institutions, can resist foreign encroachment and the imposition of outside political actors, values and economic systems. Iraqis at the grassroots level did start to group together, mobilize and resist non-violently, and they continue to do so. Women activists have been at the forefront of these actions and initiatives. Yet, the political spaces have been shrinking not simply as a function of ongoing occupation and the type of government in place, but also, and crucially, because of the lack of security caused by violent insurgents. For those of us concerned about the erosion of women's rights inside Iraq, Islamist militants pose a particular danger. Many women's organisations and activists inside Iraq have documented the increasing attacks on women, the pressure to conform to certain dress codes, the restrictions in movement and behaviour, incidents of acid thrown into women's faces. and even killings. It is extremely short-sighted for anyone not to condemn these types of attacks, but for women this becomes existential. Women and 'women's issues' have, of course, been instrumentalized - in Afghanistan, but also in Iraq. We know that both Bush and Blair have tried to co-opt the language of democracy and human rights, especially women's rights. But them instrumentalizing women does not mean that we should condone or accept the way Islamist militants are, for their part, using women symbolically and attacking them physically to express their resistance. It is high time to be much clearer about what we should support and what not. It is high time to abandon the unconditional support for terrorists and criminals responsible for the killing of Iraqi civilians. It is high time to acknowledge that Iraqis inside are divided along many different lines and that glossing over these differences does not help national unity in the long run. It is high time to seriously look for non-violent means of resistance to the occupation in Iraq and wider US imperialism. It is high time to recognize that the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Dr Nadje Al-Ali is senior lecturer in social anthropology at the Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, UK. She is a founding member of Act Together: Women's Action on Iraq, and a member of Women in Black, London. o o o o (ii) The Economic and Political Weekly July 23, 2005 Commentary THE TAVISTOCK SQUARE GANDHI AND THE WAR ON TERROR, WAR ON NON-VIOLENCE Gandhi's statue at Tavistock Square dates back to the 1960s but in the wake of the recent bomb attacks in London, its presence has a somewhat ironical significance. That a proponent of non-violence could provide an answer to violence seems ominously fitting, but what Gandhi divined about colonialism - that it is a 'pact' between the coloniser and the colonised - is something that can shed light on the modern culture of violence, which in some perverse way has come to link perpetrator and victim alike. Vinay Lal In the midst of the horrific carnage and mayhem created by coordinated bomb attacks in London, it is doubtful that very many people are thinking of the fate of a statue. On my very first visit to London in 1989, once I had checked into my lodgings on Upper Woburn Place, I hastened to make my way to Tavistock Square - and it is here that one of the bombs blew apart a bus, taking 13 lives and perhaps more. Central London has many beautiful squares, oases of rest, reflection and rumination. Nearly every square has historical associations, but Tavistock Square is uniquely significant. In the centre of the square is installed one of the most moving statues of Mohandas Gandhi anywhere in the world. Gifted to London by the Indian high commissioner for Great Britain in 1966, the statue, by the British sculptor Fredda Brilliant, was unveiled by prime minister Harold Wilson. Tavistock Square soon thereafter became the site for various peace memorials. The victims of the Hiroshima bombings are remembered at the square by a cherry tree, and in 1986 the League of Jewish Women planted a field maple in the square to mark the United Nations International Year of Peace. More recently, a granite memorial was installed at the square to honour conscientious objectors, always a minuscule number and now, one fears, a dying breed. One can understand why, among Londoners, Tavistock Square has been dubbed 'the peace park'. Gandhi's Way One might say that the statue lent the square a certain serenity: the Gandhi represented here is a seated figure, ponderous and meditative, not the Gandhi with the walking stick, a searing image made popular by Gandhi's famous march to the sea, which is more commonly encountered in statues of the chief architect of the Indian independence movement. It is the image of this seated Gandhi with which, for a long period through the 1970s and 1980s, the state-owned television channel, Doordarshan, commenced its news. Tavistock Square is a short walk from University College, London, whose web site claims Gandhi as one of its graduates. Gandhi arrived in London in 1888 shortly after his 19th birthday to study law. What better subject to master than law if one aimed to unseat an empire that, above all, claimed it had brought the rule of law to unruly natives? In those days, however, disassociating from the empire, or bringing the empire to its knees, was the furthest thing from Gandhi's mind. Gandhi's foreign sojourns started in London, and ended there; but where he had first come to London to, in his own words, "play the English gentleman" and render the homage that the subjugated customarily accord to their oppressors, on his last trip, after parleying with the Viceroy on equal terms, he came to negotiate India's independence. On the way, Gandhi shed a great deal: a top hat, coat-tails, the native's awe for the white man, and western civilisation's addiction to violence. The unflinching advocate of non-violence that Gandhi was, he knew many a thing about violence. It is not necessary to be schooled in violence to embrace non-violence, but one would have had to sleep-walk through life not to be touched by violence. Gandhi would come face-to-face with the sheer ugliness of racial violence in South Africa on numerous occasions. He raised an ambulance corps to assist the British when the Boer War broke out in 1898, and he did so again a few years later at the commencement of the Zulu rebellion. Most commentators have, rightly, seen these as expressions of Gandhi's ardent belief that Indians could only claim their rights within the British empire if they were prepared to defend the empire against its opponents. In an era when the language of rights was already becoming part of the vocabulary of political conduct and discussion, Gandhi still insisted on the importance of retaining a conception of one's duties. But it is characteristic of Gandhi that, rather than running away from violence, or becoming paralysed by its brutalities, or claiming a pacifist sensibility, he entered the battlefield of violence in the capacity of a healer, bearing truth (as he then saw it) on the stretcher of non-violence. He would henceforth have a dialectical, dialogic, and hermeneutic awareness of non-violence. The advocates of violence seldom if ever speak to the votaries of non-violence, and one of the many reasons why Gandhi held non-violence to be superior to violence is that its proponents extend an invitation to those who swear by violence to enter into a dialogue. The advocates of non-violence are always in a conversation with the adherents of violence. This relationship brought Gandhi to an awareness of the fact that some forms of non-violence are tantamount to violence, that avoidance of violence is not necessarily a form of non-violent action, and that there may be occasions when the practice of violence is the only way of honouring the spirit of non-violence. Non-violence vs Terror It would be wishful thinking to suppose that the London bomber who chose to explode a bomb in London's peace park, outside the statue of Gandhi, was seeking in his own macabre way to enter into a dialogue with Gandhi and the advocates of non-violence. In Gandhi's own time, he was nearly alone among the principal theorists and practitioners of revolutionary change in arguing for the primacy of non-violence, and he stands ranged against a whole galaxy of figures - Lenin, Trotsky, Fanon, Mao, Castro, Che Guevara - who did not only glorify violence but dismissed non-violence as a chimera. Gandhi had held up the later Tolstoy as a figure worthy of emulation, but Lenin spoke with open contempt of his countryman's "imbecile preaching about not resisting evil with force". One hears even less of non-violence these days. It may be argued, of course, that Trotsky, Fanon, and Che are just as much foreign figures to jihadists or suicide bombers as Gandhi, and that the schooling terrorists receive is of a different order. One will hear, no doubt, of the 'sleeper cells' that Al Qaida is said to have formed in Britain, of the madrasas at which Muslim men are believed to be indoctrinated to hate the west and (in Bush's language) its freedoms, and of the experts in terrorist warfare who are one species, altogether unintended, of the iconic transnational figure of the 21st century. Whatever the precise training required to strap explosives together into a bomb, plan and orchestrate an attack in heavily monitored areas, and eventually to steel oneself to explode devices along with oneself in a busy public space, the perpetrators of the Tavistock Square and tube bombings required no schooling in madrasas or radical mosques. They are more likely (as has been established in the case of the London attacks) to have attended secular institutions of higher learning in the west than universities in the Islamic world. They received their training, one might say, in streets - not as street urchins or as deprived children of the third world, but as careful observers of America's prosecution of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. They have taken their cues from history books, from the culture of violence to which they are deeply inured, and from the architects of the war on terror. The perpetrators of terrorism have also understood that there are numerous ways in which one can enlist oneself as a member of that profession. The culture of terror is all-pervasive. It remains to be seen whether Tavistock Square will continue to be known as London's 'Peace Park'. Quite likely it will be, if only because the legend of the grit, resilience, and resolve of Londoners, about which we have heard so much, will need to be preserved. Such consolations are soothing but they disguise more than they reveal about the culture of violence which stitches together modern society. Gandhi, as we might recall, was felled by an assassin's bullet - as was, two decades later, Martin Luther King, Jr. It is supremely if ominously fitting that the reply to non-violence should always be given by a proponent of violence. One of the most disturbing aspects of violence is that it is irreversible, just as its perpetrators, through their very act, claim to be in possession of a superior version or account of truth. What Gandhi divined about colonialism, namely, that it is a pact - and pacts are not without their element of deception, coercion, and attraction - between the colonised and the coloniser, is something that can be brought to our awareness of the pact that drives the modern culture of violence. The colonised were, to be sure, exploited and beaten; but they were also lured by the glitter of the modern west. The leaders and good samaritans of the west are, to be sure, repulsed by savage and brute acts of violence; but they also breathlessly await such acts, as it is the only language that they themselves understand. How else can one explain that stupefyingly idiotic, obscene, and terror-laden phrase - indeed ambition, 'the war on terror'? Terrorism is manna to the prosecutors of the 'war on terror'. We have entered into a phase of brutal and unending violence. Terrorists and advocates of the war on terror are bound together in a horrifying pact. Violence has a ravenous maw. It countenances no opposition. The assassin of Gandhi and his numerous patrons, having done away with the old man, have been determined ever since to install violence as the supreme monarch. One wonders whether, once the assassins of non-violence are finished with their work, any statues of Gandhi will remain. o o o o (iii) The Guardian August 6, 2005 I AM A LAWYER, NOT A BOMBER Asians should not be prejudged because of the way we look Rabinder Singh An open letter to the person I sat opposite on the train yesterday. Yesterday I sat on my commuter train and you were already sitting there in the seat opposite. Your eyes were closed. You must have been tired. Then you opened your eyes and you saw me. You got up and moved to the next carriage. Perhaps you wanted some privacy or did not want to disturb me with a mobile phone call. Or perhaps you were afraid of me ... That would not surprise me. Some people say that the police should stop and search people who look "Asian" or "Muslim" at underground stations. In fact I am not a Muslim, I am a Sikh, but it does not matter - I still look suspicious to some. They say that only young men are like the suspects, but I have heard of women being stopped. I share your fears. I do not want to die a horrible death any more than you do. I have a family to look after - perhaps you do too. You know so little about me - I wish we could have chatted and perhaps we might have realised what we have in common. All I ask is that you do not prejudge me. That is what "prejudice" means: to prejudge someone simply because of what they look like. What can I say? On the television everyone is talking about what it means to be "British" and the end of multiculturalism. You may not think I look British but I feel British - I am a British Asian, or British Sikh if you like. If I go to India they know I am not one of them - they can see me coming a mile off. I like Indian food but so, I think, do you. And I also like Italian food, and Chinese, and bagels ... I don't particularly like Bollywood, but apparently enough people in the area where I live do like it because they show Hindi films at the local cinema. By the way, in case you were wondering, it is not in Southall - in fact most of our neighbours are white, although one is from Norway and another American. I don't think people ask them: "What are you doing here? Are you British?" I do not go to the gurdwara very often but I do believe in God and I am proud of my heritage - I respect my parents and the tradition they came from. I do not think God would want us to hate each other because of the way we look. And I certainly cannot accept that God wants us to kill innocent people. But we have to care about innocent people everywhere - in Iraq and Chechnya as well as in New York and Madrid and London. I am not a pacifist, but I do believe in the principle of nonviolence. Only in the last resort could it ever be justified to use violence, when there is no other way open to defend ourselves or to protect others. You may have heard of Mahatma Gandhi. He was not British. In fact he used the principle of nonviolence to help push the British out of India. I think he was an inspiration to everyone; I think you might agree. I am a lawyer, by the way. What do you do? In my work I sometimes represent the government. Not just the present government; I used to represent the last Conservative government in court too. But I also sometimes defend the rights of individuals who are pretty unpopular. That's my job. They may be asylum claimants or gay people. They may even be suspected of terrorism. I don't think suspending the Human Rights Act is the answer to the terrorist threat. The act is not part of the problem. It is part of the answer. It represents what we stand for - democracy and the rule of law. Some people say we should not let the terrorists win; we should carry on as normal. But they seem to be the first people to say that we should get rid of these laws that "get in the way". In the way of what? Do we want people locked up in prison for years without ever being charged, let alone convicted? If it happened somewhere else, I think you might write a letter for Amnesty International demanding their release. But it happened here - until the law lords said it was incompatible with human rights. These are not some foreign laws. British lawyers helped to draft the European convention on human rights, which was "brought home" by the Human Rights Act. And it is based on British notions of fair play going back to Magna Carta. Yes, I do know about these things and I do care about them. Shakespeare, John Locke and Tom Paine. They have made me who I am. They were as British as I am. Maybe I am not what you think I am. Remember, we are all individual human beings, with our hopes and dreams; we all have our faults but are basically good, I think, and try to do the right thing. It's what is inside us that really matters, not the colour of our skin or what we wear. I do not ask you to agree with me about everything. But I do ask: please do not prejudge me because of the way I look. · Rabinder Singh QC is a barrister at Matrix Chambers and a visiting professor of law at the LSE _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on matters of peace and democratisation in South Asia. 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