South Asia Citizens Wire | 1-4 July, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2267
[1] Sri Lanka: Disaster capitalism, peace industry and a return to war (Darini Rajasingham Senanayake) [2] South Asia's Escape from Freedom (Hassan N. Gardezi) [3] Pakistan - India: Changing a Pavlovian response (Praful Bidwai) [4] India - Gujarat: A balancing act (Harsh Mander) [5] Letter to the Indian Prime Minister (Navaid Hamid) [6] India: NBA Demands Shunglu Committee Report Be Made Public [7] Upcoming Event: a cross-border seminar on the murders of women in the name of honour (Mumbai, October 2006) ___ [1] Himal July 2006 DISASTER CAPITALISM, NEO-LIBERAL PEACE AND A RETURN TO WAR With the end of peace in Sri Lanka, the time has come for a massive re-appraisal of the international community's successes, failures and outright incompetencies in the name of rehabilitation, reconstruction and peace-building. by Darini Rajasingham Senanayake Waiting for post-Tsunami aid, January 2005 Peace in Sri Lanka is increasingly an international legal fiction - an assumption contrary to ground realities. The ebb of peace in the palm-fringed, tourist-friendly island is indexed in the return of 'dirty war', a rising body count, trickle of refugees to South India, as well as suicide bombings and barricades in Colombo. For the first time, there have been coordinated attacks on international aid agencies. As the head of the Scandinavian peace Monitoring Mission noted recently, there is an ongoing low-scale, low-intensity war. Even though neither the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), nor the government has formally withdrawn from the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), the new war continues the spiral of the (para-) militarisation of civil society, with a 'war economy' sustained by terror, taxation and international post-conflict and post-Tsunami reconstruction assistance. These trends point to the possibility that the current conflict may also achieve a self-sustaining momentum beyond ethnic minority grievances as it has done in the past. In this context, it is important to analyse the role of the international community, which, though a set of apparently external observers, has become intrinsically embedded and intertwined in Sri Lanka's conflict and peace process over the past decade. Given the massive international aid industry and bureaucracy in the country, the return of war despite the best efforts of Norway raises fundamental questions about their relevance and impact on conflict transformation. A recent study of peace processes has noted that, of 38 internationally mediated peace efforts in the decade between 1989-1999, 31 had returned to conflict within the first few years. International assistance in low-intensity armed conflicts and peace processes may either ameliorate or become part of a renewed conflict cycle. As such, the attempt here is to develop a structural analysis of the three principal actors in Sri Lanka - the government of Sri Lanka, the LTTE and the international community - and their relationship, based on study of the political economy of the international aid industry and bureaucracy. The war, peace and reconstruction industry Not too far back, in 2003, Sri Lanka was projected in international reconstruction and development conference circles and media as a test case of 'liberal peace building and reconstruction'. After the Norwegian-brokered Ceasefire Agreement in 2002, three separate international pledging conferences for Sri Lanka were held in Oslo, Washington and Tokyo. The conferences ended with the promise of USD 4.5 billion for post-conflict reconstruction. Four co-chairs were appointed to Sri Lanka's peace process - Norway, Japan, the EU and US. The World Bank, having positioned itself to lead the expanding international reconstruction industry and bureaucracy in the island, was appointed custodian of the North East Reconstruction Fund (NERF). Given donor emphasis on the privatisation of development assistance, international consultants, private companies and I/NGOs competed for lucrative reconstruction contracts in Sri Lanka in the peace interregnum - from de-mining, to road building, to peace education and advertising. More recently, the December 2004 Asia Tsunami disaster drew a large number of volunteers and technical experts, unfamiliar with local languages, institutional structure and culture. Despite this, reconstruction has been painfully slow, primarily due to the fact that the international aid industry has snatched away local and regional ownership of the recovery operation. This is in stark contrast to India and Thailand, which refused most forms of international assistance after the Tsunami, but are far ahead in the task of reconstruction. Over the past half-century of war and natural disaster, Sri Lanka's politicians and policymakers have developed a culture of 'aid dependency', even though ground-level facts point to the necessity of a different approach - the country is no longer a least-developed county, has an almost 90 percent literacy rate, a number of under and unemployed graduates, and it exports technical skills overseas. There are several questions that need to be asked about the reconstruction effort: why is national expertise marginalised in reconstruction? Do aid pledges materialise? And how much of the assistance actually reaches the country or the communities affected by war, natural disaster and poverty? There have been few systematic reviews of donor assistance and its impact. There is the Strategic Conflict Assessment for Sri Lanka - commissioned and launched by the World Bank, the Department for International Development of the UK (DFID), the Asia Foundation and other donors - that was recently released. That report did not meet the need for a transparent analysis of the assistance coming into Sri Lanka. Arguably much of the aid pledged and disbursed for peace and reconstruction in the country is 'phantom aid', defined by the relief organisation ActionAid as "aid that never materialises to poor countries, but is instead diverted for other purposes within the aid system" (see box). In May 2006, the donor co-chairs estimated that of the USD 4.5 billion pledged to Sri Lanka, USD 3.4 billion "had been provided based on Tokyo pledges and Tsunami funds, and more than 20 percent of that allocated to the north and east, including LTTE-controlled areas". No disclosure is made of how much of this aid was in the form of loans. Phantom aid in disaster situations, where the usual development project safeguards are waived due to an emergency situation, may be as high as 80-85 percent of donor assistance. In this context, the fact that Sri Lanka's aid absorption rate remains at around 17-20 percent while donors continue to pledge ever-larger sums for development assistance is not mysterious. The international peace and development bureaucracy in the past decade in Sri Lanka has clearly gained its own self-sustaining momentum. This has happened at a time when aid may become increasingly irrelevant in a world where 'trade not aid' is seen as the way forward, particularly for countries that are no longer in the least-developed category. The development bureaucracy requires and absorbs most of the aid targeted for development, conflict resolution and poverty reduction. Moreover, international humanitarian aid has become, as one academic termed it, "a means without end". It tends to lack an exit strategy until the money runs out, is often mistargeted, distorts the local economy, and aggravates inequality, poverty and the underlying structures of a conflict. In the long run, it develops aid dependency and aggravates conflict. The conflicting parties often blame each other for aid that never materialised. International aid may increasingly morph into the war dynamic in the conflict zones of the global South, even as it expands through processes of bureaucratisation. At the same time, it is important to note that that the Norwegian mediators, who have often been held responsible for peace and reconstruction policy failures that originate in the World Bank- and UN-centric international development bureaucracy, are but a miniscule part of the international peace and reconstruction aid industry. Moreover, the Norwegian government that came to power in 2005 decided not to partner with the Bank in cases where structural adjustment was required as part of a peace and reconstruction package. A bureaucratic peace Sri Lanka's peace process has been termed a 'no war, no peace' process. Arguably, the formalistic and 'legal-bureaucratic' approach of international peace building and reconstruction largely accounts for this phenomenon. Consider, for instance, the resources, energy and experts spent on legal drafts and re-drafts of an Interim Governing Authority for the North and East (ISGA), the World Bank's North East Reconstruction Fund (NERF), Post Tsunami Operational Mechanism (P-TOMS), three international donor pledging conferences, Multilateral Needs Assessments, and the hundreds of MoUs for large infrastructure reconstruction projects in the past four years for Sri Lanka. The internationalisation and bureaucratisation of the peace process resulted in too much time spent on international development agendas, conferences and timeframes that were often at odds with the needs and priorities of those affected by the conflict. Clinton and Bush, February 2005 This approach effectively eschews seeing track-one peace building as a social process. It has stemmed from, among other things, the large number of international players and the peace and reconstruction bureaucracy in the island, and the attendant coordination burden. Of course, all three actors in the conflict and peace dynamics in Sri Lanka - the LTTE (seduced by the legal fiction of 'equality or parity of the parties'), the Colombo government and the international community bent on implementing a 'neo-liberal' peace - have contributed to the legal bureaucratic approach of peace building. Arguably, the time spent on legalese would have been better spent in the creative implementation of actually existing possibilities for power and resource sharing, enshrined in the Constitution under the 13th Amendment, and proper targeting of aid to improving the livelihoods of communities from whom fighters are recruited. There has also been a tendency to overburden an already over-determined peace process by linking everything, including natural disasters like the Tsunami (aid), to power sharing. There appears to be a need to de-link these issues and have a more balanced approach to peace and development. The peace building approach of dialogue in various international capitals, rather than analysis of substantive issues and implementation at the ground level, seems to derive from Euro-American analytical frameworks that privilege state-centric theories of conflict resolution, developed out of Cold War inter-state conflict mediation experience. However, intrastate conflicts where resource and ethno-religious identity conflicts tend to be intertwined and are often the outcome of post-colonial state building, and require different approaches from peace builders. They require engagement with social realties within the country, and attention to internal complexities at the local and sub-national levels. Where the challenge of reconciliation is within countries, and between asymmetric parties (eg, state actors and non-state actors), peace building necessitates a less legal-bureaucratic approach. The emphasis on legal mechanisms and processes has also obscured another picture closer to the ground - the reality of the emergence and existence of a dirty war in northeast Sri Lanka. The morphing of the peace process into war is evident when we move away from formalistic frames and focus on non-verbal speech acts - in other words, when we 'read between the said, the meant and the done'. In this context, adding another layer of international bureaucracy in the form of Bill Clinton or some other UN Envoy to Sri Lanka will only deflect from the focus on substantive issues. Rather, a new peace process led perhaps by the Norwegians would need to thin the international aid bureaucracy and agencies, and focus on substantive issues, including improving poverty reduction among conflict and Tsunami-affected communities. In short, an exit strategy, rather than extended time frames, for aid is necessary for much of the international aid industry in Sri Lanka. This would enable a more locally owned and hence sustainable peace process. The economics of peace Though fisheries are arguably Sri Lanka's greatest natural resource, given the unpolluted ocean and rich breeding grounds that surround the country, international development assistance over the decades has not focused on the need to target and up-scale the fisheries sector for poverty alleviation and conflict de-escalation in the north or south. Throughout the peace process, the north and east coastal fisheries communities continued a subsistence economy. Sri Lanka's two main donors, Japan and Norway, both have highly industrialised fisheries sectors. The most influential number of combatants in the LTTE hail from impoverished coastal fisheries and rural agricultural communities in the northeast. In fact, the LTTE sank a Chinese fishing trawler perceived to be poaching on local fishing grounds in 2003. To transform the conflict, it is crucial to develop the fisheries sector and industry to enable viable livelihoods for poor communities from which fighters are recruited. The impoverished fishing communities of the north and east and the socially marginalised caste groups on the coast have been the most radicalised in the years of conflict, and provide the foot soldiers. The Tamil elites and Vellala or high castes have tended to eschew the LTTE's brand of nationalism, and the LTTE in turn has fought to overthrow the caste hierarchy in Tamil society. However, the post-conflict and post-Tsunami aid industry experts have systematically overlooked the importance of enabling sustainable livelihoods for such impoverished communities. The Multilateral Needs Assessment for Tokyo and the Tsunami Needs Assessment study, conducted by the World Bank in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank and Japan's official aid agency, pegged the loss borne by the tourism industry at USD 300 million, versus only USD 90 million for the fishing industry, even though fisheries communities were far more affected. The researcher and human rights scholar Vasuki Nesiah points out that the ideological assumptions embedded in an assessment methodology that rates a hotel bed bringing in USD 200 a night as a greater loss than a fisherman bringing in USD 50 a month have far-reaching consequences. With reconstruction measures predicated on this kind of accounting, we are on a trajectory that empowers the tourism industry to be an even more dominant player than it was in the past, and, concomitantly, one that dis-empowers and further marginalises the coastal poor. Many have noted the bias towards big business and tourism in the needs assessments of the multilateral agencies and the government, where the up-scaling of fisheries infrastructure is ignored. The donor-people disconnect For the first time since the conflict erupted 25 years ago, coordinated grenade attacks were carried out on three international aid agencies in Sri Lanka recently. These attacks were in the wake of widespread rumours of sexual exploitation and harassment of local women by foreign staff of INGOs in the Tsunami- and conflict-affected areas. Local women were instructed not to work with international agencies, which, it was claimed, were violating Tamil and Muslim 'culture'. There is a sense among common people that the aid industry has not delivered, but rather consumed and lived off the funds. At the root of the critique of the aid industry is the fact and perception of gross inequality between those who came to help and the receivers of assistance, as well as the erosion of basic humanitarian ethics and values evident in the operational style of INGOs. What people see are extravagant lifestyles, lack of transparency and increased aid dependency, with a concomitant failure of donors to deliver on projects. The fact remains that the majority of large international aid agencies have not performed, and even at times blocked, local philanthropists and the business community, which did much of the work in the immediate aftermath of the Tsunami and have a far better 'delivery rate'. Exit strategies and deadlines for the large agencies also seem to have become anachronistic. The attacks on aid agencies must be contextualised in the broader setting. Militants who lack access to information, technical critique and evaluations respond to real and perceived corruption in the aid industry with violence. Such attacks are a matter of great concern to those who believe that competent international assistance is necessary for conflict de-escalation and reconstruction. Critics however fail to acknowledge and address the general disenchantment with international aid and INGOs that has become widespread in the country since the Tsunami. The International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) in Sri Lanka represents a case study of the manner in which these agencies generate high expectations but fail to deliver due to a host of reasons. Having raised almost USD 2 billion for post-Tsunami reconstruction, 183 expatriate 'volunteers' came to Sri Lanka, each worth over USD 120,000 but with little technical expertise, knowledge of society, politics or culture, local languages or institutional structures. Having pledged to reconstruct 15,000 houses, it had built a mere 64 one year after the Tsunami. The IFRC and the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society together make up the largest pledged housing donor, and have set the bar very low. The blame for this is placed on the government's buffer zone policy or alternatively on the condition of the land. The latest government estimates are that 21 percent of the required housing after the Tsunami is complete. That means that several hundred thousand Sri Lankans are still without permanent homes, by government estimates. Some 33,000 families, or at least 150,000 people, remain in transitional shelters. Others are living temporarily with relatives or friends. The Red Cross was given 67 plots of land, out of which about a third had problems. But several questions arise: why did it not build homes on the remaining land? Should a relief agency such as the Red Cross have taken up long-term housing construction given the absence of expertise and experience, simply because it had managed to raise the funds? The Reconstruction and Development Agency in Sri Lanka, unlike the government of Tamil Nadu in India, has failed to evaluate the INGOs and ask under-performing INGOs to leave the country, so that others may help. It is increasingly apparent that privatisation of post-disaster reconstruction, given information asymmetries and endemic market imperfections in the sector, is a mistake. As long as such a large, incompetent and costly international bureaucracy remains in the island, substantive and sustainable peace building and development will be elusive. There is by now extensive literature on how international peace building, humanitarian and reconstruction assistance may contribute to sustain low-intensity wars in Africa, Asia and other parts of the global South, because such aid constitutes a large and complex industry and bureaucracy in itself and for itself. There is a clear need for reform of the international aid architecture and practices in the context of what writer Naomi Klein has termed 'disaster capitalism', to enable accountability to beneficiaries and affected communities. Neo-liberal aid Even as the government and the LTTE are the principal actors in the conflict, it would be naïve to downplay the role of the international community in the peace process in Sri Lanka. The extent of international investment in Sri Lanka's 'peace and reconstruction' has made official acknowledgement of the return to war difficult. But the peace process, in the best of times, enabled merely a repressive tolerance. This was by no means only due to the inability of the two main armed actors to engage on difficult issues - principally the need to democratise the LTTE and Colombo government, and to professionalise and humanise the military. The international peace builders colluded with the main actors in deferring the core social, political and economic issues that structure the dynamics of the conflict, in order to promote a neo-liberal economic reconstruction agenda that is integral to the (phantom) aid industry. With the wisdom of hindsight, this approach undermined the Norwegian-brokered CFA. The promise of USD 4.5 billion for reconstruction came with a policy requirement of structural adjustments (SAPs), and liberalisation favoured by the World Bank. Very little of this reached the communities affected by the disasters, and from which the majority of combatants are recruited. A recent Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission Report notes on the subject of child recruitment: "some underage children freely volunteer to leave their families due to economic reasons to join the LTTE." Mis-targeted aid translated into an economic bubble, a dramatic rise in the cost of living, increased inequality and poverty in the communities from which soldiers are recruited, and further erosion of the welfare state. In a very short time, the government that signed the peace agreement with the LTTE was voted out of power - and the rest is history. The tide in the affairs of men that may have led to fortune, even to peace in Sri Lanka, had turned. Since Sri Lanka is not considered a least-developed country, the county's donor dependence is directly related to the armed conflict and the need for external mediation. International development agencies have recently recognised the profitability of working with rather than around social conflict in the post-9/11 world, increasingly focusing on projects "for democratisation, governance and conflict resolution", as the Strategic Conflict Assessment notes. Sri Lanka's strategic location and the over-capitalisation of its post-Tsunami reconstruction means that the country remains creditworthy and an attractive place for the international lending institutions and the aid industry, despite stories of donor fatigue. Given the aid bureaucracy's embeddedness in the political economy of peace and conflict in Sri Lanka, it cannot be seen as a neutral actor or set of actors. This fact has particular relevance for much of the technical assistance and development 'knowledge' produced and sub-contracted by development agencies. There is ample evidence that the macro-polices of the Washington Consensus exacerbates intra-group and inter-group inequality and poverty that fuels (identity) conflicts in fragile states in the global South. There is a fundamental problem with a peace and reconstruction policy approach that claims to link 'conflict-sensitivity to development' without assessing the dominant neo-liberal development paradigm, and policy that tends to generate inequality and conflict within and between countries. The Strategic Conflict Assessment does precisely this, though it hints at the need for such a critique. Ironically, the international aid industry and bureaucracy and technical experts may be a key impediment to the production of knowledge frames that could lead to more sustainable peace building in Sri Lanka and other conflict-affected parts of the global South. Looking ahead For the sake of peace and development in Sri Lanka, it is important that policy-makers and others draw lessons from the past experience of international involvement. What is needed immediately is an evaluation of the performance of the various aid agencies in the country. This could then form the basis for retaining only the efficient ones, which have contributed to the task of post-conflict and -Tsunami reconstruction at the ground level. This would in turn reduce the coordination burden, and help streamline and effectively target development assistance. The Indian authorities' approach to international aid and experts, especially in the wake of the Tsunami, is a good example in this regard. It is also important to reduce phantom aid and debt burden; and to demand greater transparency, disclosure and accountability from the international financial institutions, the UN agencies and the various donor countries regarding aid programs (loans or grants), the extent to which the aid is aid, and technical assistance. INGOs should be required to disclose budgets, qualifications of staff, and in-country spending on projects, operation and transaction cost. The connection between resource and identity conflicts is often not adequately acknowledged in peace processes. A new peace process will need to grasp the connection between resource and identity conflicts, as well as the intra-group dynamics of the inter-ethnic conflict. This requires deepened social analysis that is not to be confused with the notion of 'social capital' that post-conflict advisors and specialists promote at the knowledge bank. Peace mediators and international development actors will need to be attentive to the discourse on inequality and poverty, and link track-one discussions to deeper social conflicts and intra-group inequalities. The need for deeper analysis, however, should not to be confused with or used as a legitimacy clause for extending project delivery timeframes. Extended aid timeframes make for even less accountability among aid agencies, who tend to delay on project delivery and extend costly contracts, while generating a culture of aid dependency. This was clearly evident with the Tsunami recovery operation. It is important to devise exit strategies for aid agencies and to stick to the schedule. Finally, it is to be hoped that the lessons from the peace process in Sri Lanka may serve as a turning point for a 'structural adjustment' of the international peace and development industry, and ensure accountability to communities and countries affected by conflicts. This requires getting beyond the toolkit approach to post-conflict reconstruction, with its predictably damaging macro-economic policies of structural adjustments that undo the work of peace mediators. These steps, coupled with local ownership of the peace process, may provide the way out of Sri Lanka's present quagmire. Phantom aid The international peace and development industry that is by now entrenched in most parts of the global South is believed to be the fifth-largest industry in the world. Conflict situations present significant 'opportunities for growth' to international aid experts and bureaucracy, exported from the Euro-American world to these regions. However, the utility of this ever-growing donor assistance to conflict-affected countries and communities is an open question. At odds with local development priorities, the international aid bureaucracy is seen to have its own self-sustaining logic that is increasingly irrelevant to either the poverty or the conflict on the ground. A June 2005 report on aid effectiveness by the relief organisation ActionAid, titled "Real Aid: Making Aid More Effective", estimated that 61 percent of all international donor assistance is 'Phantom aid'. As opposed to 'real aid', phantom aid includes funds that are: a) tied to goods and services from the donor country; b) overpriced and ineffective technical assistance - by far the largest category of phantom aid, accounting for USD 13.8 billion; c) spent on excess administration; d) poorly coordinated and high transaction costs; e) aid double-counted as debt relief; f) assistance not targeted for poverty reduction; g) amounts spent on immigration-related costs in donor countries, etc. The report further notes that, "eighty cents of every dollar of American aid is phantom aid, largely because it is so heavily tied to the purchase of US goods and services, and because it is so badly targeted at poor countries Just 11 percent of French aid is real aid. France spends USD 2 billion of its aid budget each year on Technical Assistance In real terms, the Norwegians are nearly 40 times more generous per person than the Americans, and 4 times more generous than the average Briton." _____ [2] SOUTH ASIA'S ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM by Hassan N. Gardezi (Keynote address at World Peace Forum 2006, Asia Regional Conference) June 25, 2006, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. http://sacw.net/free/july06Gardezi.html _____ [3] The News July 1, 2006 CHANGING A PAVLOVIAN RESPONSE by Praful Bidwai The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and peace and human-rights activist based in Delhi What is it about us Indians and Pakistanis that compels us to respond spontaneously to each other as if we were destined to be mortal enemies -- even at a time when we are meant to be talking peace? Last fortnight threw up at least three instances of such entrenched hostility, which has been imbibed through an almost 60 year-long history of a continuous hot-cold war between our two countries, punctuated by many unpleasant incidents. First, Pakistan's immediate response to India's announcement that it would back Shashi Tharoor for the post of secretary-general of the United Nations was to look for a Pakistani rival candidate. The second response was to note, with some glee, that an Indian's bid for the job suggests that India is no longer interested in becoming a permanent member of the Security Council. By convention, only small or mid-sized countries put up candidates for the secretary general's job; none of the P-5 has ever done so. It's far from clear if a Pakistani candidate would have a half-way respectable chance of winning what has become a complex, multi-cornered context for a supposedly 'Asian seat'. (Ideally, a majority of Asian countries should have put up a joint candidate to claim the position after a 34-year hiatus.) The Americans are known to favour -- from a Cold War hangover -- an Eastern European candidate -- in violation of the regional-representation convention. Their second choice may be former Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, whom the Chinese too may back. However, logical reasoning about such possibilities becomes irrelevant when one is fired by an urge to outmanoeuvre and punish 'the enemy'. In this case, the enemy's 'edge' maybe exaggerated, even non-existent. Thus, a rational calculation would show that India stands to gain very little from having an Indian as the secretary general. Even if he wins, Tharoor won't be able to do much for India -- unless the P-5, in particular the Americans, want to do so. The secretary general is not exactly an independent actor. And barring Dag Hammarskjold, no secretary general has really attempted to play such a role, especially in the teeth of Big Power opposition. Besides, India should know that the pursuit of prestige (usually, false or flimsy prestige) could be costly. In 1996, India made a bid for a non-permanent Security Council seat against Japan. Despite mounting a full-throttle campaign, India lost miserably by 40:142 -- and eroded its own global standing. Consider the second instance: denial of a visa to Indian poet-lyricist Javed Akhtar to attend a PTV programme featuring Bollywood stars to raise funds for Pakistan's earthquake victims. This was again a case of cussedness and bloody mindedness so evident in the subcontinent's bureaucrats. The Pakistani authorities unconvincingly denied that they refused Akhtar a visa. It now emerges that a visa was issued, but cancelled. It couldn't have been reissued in time for the event. The event was cancelled. The third instance pertains to India's nuclear deal with the United States and her energetic effort to have it cleared quickly in Congress. The inking of the deal provoked a knee-jerk reaction from Pakistan: it suddenly discovered the virtues of nuclear electricity and demanded a similar agreement from Washington (or, failing that, Beijing). Never mind the possibility that such agreements, which legitimise nuclear weapons and block progress towards disarmament, might not be in either country's interests! India's insistence on being treated as a singular, one-time exception to the global nuclear order translated into intense lobbying on Capitol Hill to have certain clauses written into, or deleted from, the draft legislation before the House International Relations Committee. This past Tuesday, the Committee 'marked up' the Bill for the full House in such a way that the legislation cannot be extended to Pakistan. The conditions stipulated by the 'sense of Congress' part of the resolution say that the cooperating country must be a democracy and have an unblemished non-proliferation record. As a commentator who has been unabashedly rooting for the India-US deal put it, New Delhi should be 'pleased' by this -- a consolation for various non-operative clauses in the Bill that 'might irritate' it. Another reported 'quite satisfaction' in the South Block. Such examples of competitive rivalry, sometimes self-destructive rivalry driven by irrational suspicion and blind hatred, can be multiplied. The rivalry's persistence amidst the dialogue process -- which has considerably slowed down -- speaks of a distressing fact: namely, state-level hostility cannot be cured or greatly mitigated by expanding people-to-people contacts. People-to-people contacts have risen impressively -- to a level unimaginable only three years ago. The Indian government estimates that in 2005, about 100,000 Indians travelled to Pakistan while its high commission in Islamabad issued some 92,000 visas to Pakistanis. In the past six months alone, about 1.7 lakh Indians and Pakistanis travelled across the border. About 84,000, or half the total, travelled by air, and nearly 50,000 by train. Visas issued for cricket matches and religious festivals/pilgrimages are only one factor that explains this heartening trend. In general, there is greater exchange and interaction across the border in countless fields, including the mass-entertainment industry, the performing arts, software development, etc. This calls for a celebration. Yet, this is not enough to alter ossified mindsets. The disconnect between multiple closures at the official level and greater openness at the citizen level has never been more complete. This is a terrible comment on the failure of our bureaucracies and even our political leaders to promote normalisation of India-Pakistan relations, to which they are committed by official agreements. Their role is largely negative, obstructive and reactionary. The burden it imposes on the development of the common interests of the two peoples could not have been greater. However, there are a few silver linings to the dark official cloud. Although there has been no breakthrough on issues like Siachen, Wular/Tulbul and the Sir Creek boundary, there has been no regression either. Officials have refused to term the talks a failure. For the first time in three years, Pakistan has granted land transit rights for 35 trucks of Indian make to drive across the Wagah border to Kabul as part of India's humanitarian assistance programme, which includes the donation of 240 trucks to Afghanistan. The last time Pakistan granted such transit facilities to India was in 2003, when 400 buses gifted by India to Afghanistan were allowed to cross the border. One can only hope this will eventually lead to regular transit rights, not just clearance on a case-by-case basis. Perhaps the most important positive development is that the two establishments do want to make a go of the peace process. Two senior government representatives, Satinder K. Lambah and Tariq Aziz, are reportedly holding 'back-channel' talks in Abu Dhabi to 'save' the composite dialogue. They have received helpful 'fresh briefs' from their leaders. They are also discussing the possibility of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visiting Pakistan in October or November. One can only wish Lambah and Aziz well. If they achieve a breakthrough in their backroom talks, they will help defuse at least some, perhaps the worst, of the hostility that attends our official exchanges, and thus pave the way for more productive talks. That will surely win them our publics' gratitude. _____ [4] Hindustan Times July 2, 2006 A BALANCING ACT by Harsh Mander Like the sites of all great catastrophes and suffering, Gujarat abounds with thousands of untold stories. But not all these are tales of massacres, of hate, fear, despair and mass graves, of blood congealed on streets and poison in hearts. The stories even less told are those of most extraordinary human compassion and courage surviving intense assaults. For every narrative of cruelty and oppression that people recount of those tempestuous days of 2002, there are at least two or three untold stories of the generosity and kindness of ordinary people, risking their lives and homes to save innocent lives and helping betrayed and shattered people heal and rebuild. In Koha, a village not far from Ahmedabad, more than 110 women, men and children cowered many hours in fields of standing crops. They were all of Muslim faith, all of working class families -- landless workers, lorry drivers, tailors in readymade shirt factories -- and all mortally terrified. In the wake of rumours that people of their faith had burnt a train compartment of Hindu pilgrims in neighbouring Godhra, armed mobs, including their neighbours, had looted and torched their homes. As darkness fell, they made their way to the thatch and earth home of Dhuraji and Babuben Thakur at the edge of their small seven-acre farmland. With lowered eyes, they begged for shelter for just one night. Neither Dhuraji nor Babuben hesitated even for a moment and opened their doors and hearts for all 110 of their traumatised, wearied, now homeless neighbours. The next morning they offered to leave for the relief camp, but their hosts would not hear of it. "This is your home," they assured them. "As long as God has given to us, we will share whatever we have with you." Their entire stores of rice and bajra for the whole year were opened, and they ensured that all were fed for the full 10 days that they lived in the sanctuary of their home. The women of the family brought out all their clothes, and would form a human wall around their well as the women bathed each day. Dhuraji gathered his extended family from the village, to mount constant guard for their guests, for 10 nights and days, armed only with their peasant sickles. The women and children were persuaded to sleep inside the home, while the Thakur women slept in the open fields and the Thakur men kept vigil through the long cold nights. They were unshaken by threats from their Hindu neighbours, who sent them bangles to taunt them, set fire to their haystacks, and one night even stole in through the darkness to set aflame their house, a conflagration they all doused just in time. Still, Dhuraji and his wife Babuben were perfect hosts, as though these were just normal times. They tried to meet every need of their guests, to make them feel constantly welcome. Dhuraji's grown sons would set out in their tractors and bring back large stocks of bidis for the men, tea for the women and milk for the children. Years later, those whose lives they saved remembered fondly that seeing them in gloom, Dhuraji even hired a VCR and showed them Hindi films to buoy their spirits! At the end of 10 days, it was they who insisted that they must finally shift to the relief camp. Their hosts tried to persuade them to stay as long as they could not return to rebuild their own homes. Dhuraji finally organised tractors and a police escort. He safely took them to the camp. He used to visit them regularly at the camp as well, and the women recall that his eyes would often well over with tears when he saw their children lose weight in the austere rigours of the camp and stand in lines for watery tea. Four years later, when I met Dhuraji and Babuben, they were embarrassed that I thought what they had done was magnificent. When I pressed them about why they did what they did, Dhuraji thought a long time before he replied simply, "How could I bear it that people of my village are treated this way?" He added firmly, "This village belongs to the Muslims as much as it belongs to me." I asked if they regretted that they lost their entire year's stock of grain in 10 days. Dhuraji replied, "God ensured that we get a good harvest after our guests left, and since that day, our grain stocks have never fallen empty." Babuben added, "Their good wishes and prayers have strengthened us. Don't you see greenery everywhere?" I did. A few hundred kilometres away, in a remote village Nanaposhina in Sabarkantha district, white-haired Walibhai, a stubborn and ageing agricultural worker, was helplessly enraged when his house was looted and burnt by his young neighbours, boys who had grown before his eyes. He fiercely insisted on remaining in the village to guard the shell of scorched walls which was all that was left of his home, although he forced his grown sons, who drive jeep taxis, and his wife Mariam to the safety of a relief camp. He sat awake weeping the whole night in the shadow of his collapsed home. The next morning, it hit him afresh that overnight he was reduced to a pauper: he owned nothing, not even a lota or water pitcher to go to the fields. A Thakur boy who walked past felt sorry for the old man and quietly gave him his lota and left without a word. Walibhai recalls that it was with this small act of kindness that he was able to begin his life again. His neighbour, a Patel, called him shortly after to say that there was a phone call for him. His daughter-in-law informed him that she had had a son the night before. "We have lost everything," he cried to her. She contradicted him firmly, "You are saved. This means we have everything." He found a broken piece of an earthen pot on which to make himself some rotis, refusing to hide any more, glowering at people as they threatened him. But the wife of his Patel neighbour insisted that she would feed him, and for eight days she defied the angry opposition of many in her village to openly bring him food and tea as he stood guard at his home. "What has happened is wrong," she said simply to everyone who protested. Four years later, when we visited him, the walls of his home were still burnt, but there were shining corrugated sheets screwed on to the roof. "See my good fortune," he said to me. "Rambhai Adivasi was not even a close friend. We only used to sit and talk together sometimes. But when he saw my burnt house some months later, he cried. Without a word, he went home, bought these sheets for Rs 6,000, hired workers and a tractor to transport these here. The workers told me they had instructions to not heed my objections, and to fix the iron sheets. That is how I have a roof over my head today! Look at my good fortune, my friend." _____ [5] SOUTH ASIAN COUNCIL FOR MINORITIES (SACM) Letter to the Indian Prime Minister Respected Prime Minister Saheb, I take this privilege to write about an important, crucial and sensitive issue which has started appearing in section of the print media. Since last month or so there are speculations and discussions in the political circles about the possibility of Indian forces being sent by the Indian Government to Afghanistan to help and aid the American led forces, fighting the Taliban on the one hand and facing the resistance from smaller Afghan nationalist groups, on the other, on the request of the American-led alliance and the European Union. The hawks favoring the deployment of Indian forces may have numerous arguments but as an ordinary citizen of this great nation, which has a long history of championing and supporting resistance to foreign occupations and non-alignment, the undersigned strongly feels that the move would be disastrous, politically and historically, to align with the forces which are messed up in the situation created by their misadventures in the troubled nation. In last 25 years or so, India's approach to the Afghan crisis has not only created ill will amongst even ordinary Afghans but also has given a clear wedge to Pakistan, India's traditional foe in the region. Having advantage of being a next-door neighbour to the troubled nation, Pakistan has exploited the Afghan crisis to fulfil its political ambitions to the maximum and nobody can deny the hard fact that Pakistan, being the mentor of the Taliban, has greater influence over the majority of its leadership and also over a large section of other small groups resisting the American-led forces being regarded there as occupation forces, even today. I strongly fear that even the slightest reflection of being with the American led forces in Afghanistan would have severe consequences and would send disastrous signals not only to common Afghans but also to domestic population in India, apart from putting minute Hindu and Sikh population in Afghanistan at great risk. Political activists in India shivers to recall the events that followed with the Sri Lanka's mess up and the backlash by our Tamil brethren to India's intervention in Sri Lanka's affairs. As an ardent admirer of your visionary leadership, I am quite confident that all aspects would be in your mind. I earnestly request you to kindly over rule the hawks that are favoring the Indian forces deployment in troubled Afghanistan. with warm respectful regards Navaid Hamid Secretary, SACM _____ [6] Narmada Bachao Andolan - 62 Gandhi Marg, Badwani, Madhya Pradesh, 451551. Telefax: 07290-222464 - c/o B-13 Shivam Flats, Ellora Park, Vadodara, 390023. Ph: 0265-2282232 - Maitri Niwas, Tembewadi, Dhadgaon, dist Nandurbar, Maharashtra. Ph: 02595-220620 SHUNGLU COMMITTEE SUBMITS REPORT TO PRIME MINISTER; NBA DEMANDS THE REPORT BE MADE PUBLIC IMMEDIATELY TEST FOR THE UPA GOVERNMENT: ARE THEY AS TRANSPARENT AS THEY CLAIM? Press Release The Narmada Bachao Andolan got news that teh Shunglu Committee has submitted its report on rehabilitation of affected families in Madhya Pradesh to the Prime Minister. Earlier today, Medha Patkar and the NBA sent a letter to the Prime Minister by fax, requesting him to make public the report of the Shunglu Committee whenever it was submitted, and also for him to give a chance to affected people and their organisation to comment on the report. The full text of the letter is below. July 2, 2006 To, Shri Manmohan Singh ji, Prime Minister of India, New Delhi Respected Shri Manmohan Singh Ji, You surely remember that the construction work at Sardar Sarovar Dam is on and reaching its target of 122 mts. The people from the valley numbering not less than 1.5 lakhs (35,000 families) continue to reside in the affected area if the rainfall is 1:100 years scale. But this rainfall can occur in any year as in 1994 (1:70 years) and in 1970 (1:100 years), when thousands of houses were affected without this, which is a further barrier, causing huge pondage. How tragic would be the monsoon and flooding remains to be watched by all and fought by the living human communities of farmers and laborers who haven't yet begin committing suicides. Meanwhile the Oversight Group led by Mr. Shunglu must have submitted to you the Report that was due yesterday, June 30th which was also the deadline for the both- completing the R&R of all 122 mts affected families (obviously not achieved at the time of the approval for the same nor one year before submergence the deadline stipulated by NWD Tribunal Award). We hope the Committee would also submit to you the report of NSS organization and the Over view reports of their individual surveyors, as well as the report of the private company, IDC, commissioned by the OSG to do verification of survey data. All of these documents are supposed to bring forth the ground reality in the Valley even if as a post facto exercise, to help you access the situation of legal compliance and justice ensured or denied to the oustees. You will agree that this exercise initiated by your office is one related to the Constitutional rights of the oustee as individual citizen and generation old communities, the Gram Sabha and hence the above mentioned reports should be the documents in the public domain. With the oft-stated commitment of your government to transparency, it would be a sorry affair, if these reports affecting their rights are not made available to the people and the movement. We would surely be able to give our rejoinder to the reports as we have made a number of submissions to the oversight group and made certain* considered *comments on the research methodology- tools, processes, interpretations and correlations- submitted to OG and NSSO both. We therefore request you to make the above-mentioned reports (the final OG Report, the NSSO report and the Surveyors reports) available to us and consider our comments *before you make any decision based on the same* and before GoIs viewpoint is submitted to the Supreme Court. We trust that you would respond positively and promptly We are also happy to submit to you a short report on Survey and factual data as gathered by 4 of the Gram Sabhas in the Valley, some educated volunteers as supporters for recording, reporting and translating assisted the community representatives. We have such data on many more villages and the same can be used by anyone who feels concerned for the truth amidst so much of politics and paraphernalia. We hope you would benefit of the same in your decision making, which needs to be utmost impartial and of your own as the authorized arbitrator as per the Supreme Court judgments (2000 to 2006). This is our appeal to you, at this critical time, when you have to decide finally on the Narmada issue and take a firm position on displacement, rehabilitation and its linkage to development plans. May, I also take this opportunity to convey to you a need for a final consultation with the people's organizations on the newly drafted National Rehabilitation policy, before it goes to the Parliament or is approved at the Cabinet level. We who had contributed to the drafting process feel this very strongly. Thanking you and with regards, Yours Sincerely, Sd/- Medha Patkar _____ UPCOMING EVENT: The Pakistan India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy will be holding a cross-border seminar on the murders of women in the name of honour in Mumbai, India in October 2006. Campaigners and activists in South Asia are invited to get in touch with PIPFPD; you can pass on your messages and requests through this website and we will forward them on your behalf. <http://www.stophonourkillings.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=253>http://www.stophonourkillings.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=253 _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on matters of peace and democratisation in South Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit citizens wire service run since 1998 by South Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/ SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/ DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers. _______________________________________________ Sacw mailing list [email protected] http://insaf.net/mailman/listinfo/sacw_insaf.net
