29 May 2004
The Times of India
Jamali speaks to Manmohan
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
NEW DELHI: Keeping up the momentum of congratulatory telephone calls to the new government here, Pakistani prime minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali spoke to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday.
The two leaders agreed that both countries will continue the commitment to sustain the momentum in bilateral relations.
Jamali and Singh also noted that the recent cricket matches and other exchanges have shown the desire of the people for friendly relations and stressed that "We should respond to this popular will", official sources said.
Manmohan Singh also got a congratulatory call from Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, who expressed satisfaction with the progress in bilateral relations particularly since his visit to India last January. Singh and Khatami reiterated their desire to move bilateral relations in the direction of a strategic partnership.
On Saturday, external affairs minister Natwar Singh said in Jaipur that Congress president Sonia Gandhi was prepared to accept Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf's invitation to visit Pakistan. He too had been invited by his counterpart, Khurshid Kasuri, and was willing to go, said Natwar.
However, Natwar also took a potshot at Musharraf for criticising some of his statements on the relevance of the Simla Agreement. "His foreign minister spoke to me on the telephone a few days ago", said Natwar. "From that, I felt that he agrees with the Simla agreement and other agreements signed later in Lahore and Islamabad. So, my polite submission to Pakistan's president is that he should take the advice of his foreign minister".
29 May 2004
20 May 2004
The new government's foreign policy: The world's bigger than the U.S.
20 May 2004
The Times of India
Foreign Policy Choices
Look beyond Doc, India's world bigger than U.S.
By Siddharth Varadarajan
Times News Network
NEW DELHI: Within days, PM-designate Manmohan Singh will be confronted with a number of urgent foreign policy issues demanding virtually immediate attention.
Apart from the composite dialogue with Pakistan - scheduled to kick-off with foreign secretary-level discussions on Kashmir and 'peace and security' in "May/June" - the deteriorating situation in Iraq is making it inevitable that the US will again approach India with a request for peacekeeping troops.
How the new government responds to the US over Iraq and its aggressive agenda on nonproliferation will be key litmus tests for the future of the 'strategic partnership' between New Delhi and Washington.
The Vajpayee government prided itself on its supposed proximity to the Bush administration and went out on a limb to endorse some of its more controversial policies like missile defence.
At a fundamental level, it saw the enormous growth and frequent use of US military power - under the garb of the 'war on terror' and 'counter-proliferation' - as factors for stability rather than as sources of instability in international affairs.
Even if it disapproved of certain actions - such as the Iraq invasion - the Vajpayee government felt India did not have a stake in making common cause with those European countries which were more vocal in their opposition.
As for the growing American military presence in the Eurasian heartland and even South Asia, the outgoing foreign policy team of Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha and Brajesh Mishra tended to take a benign view of this in the expectation that US would eventually take on Pakistan.
But even on that the government miscalculated: two years after Sinha called upon Washington to designate Pakistan a 'terrorist country', Islamabad was anointed with the title of 'Major Non-Nato Ally'.
If the underlying Indian foreign policy imperative is to extend the country's strategic autonomy even as it engages positively with all powers, including the US, then Manmohan Singh will find his first priority is to restore a sense of balance in our approach to the world.
In concrete terms, this will involve three ruptures with the thinking which dominated the Vajpayee government.
First, the new government must recognise that terrorism will not be eliminated by the kind of 'war on terror' the US has launched in which civilians have been killed in large numbers and prisoners tortured and humiliated.
Moreover, the US cannot claim it is fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and then encourage Ariel Sharon to intensify his attacks on defenceless Palestinians.
The Vajpayee government - key ministers within which shared the Islamophobia of the Sharon establishment - allowed relations with Israel to be driven by their ideological fixation.
The new government, therefore, will have to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the relationship in order to ensure that existing links, especially those in the military and intelligence field, are truly in the enlightened national interest of India.
Second, the danger posed by nuclear weapons worldwide is as much from their horizontal spread as from research and development of deadlier weapons and delivery systems by US, including missile defence.
The Bush administration is using the bogey of horizontal proliferation to justify a sweeping new regime of military intervention and wants India to sign on to its Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI).
Even as it studies the US proposals, the new government should not feel pressured to commit to the initiative, which would involve the Indian Navy, operating under US direction, interdicting 'suspicious' shipping on the high seas in contravention of international law.
For starters, the PM would do well to keep India away from the PSI meet planned for Krakow end-May.
Finally, the new government must realise the world is so much bigger than US. US is an important country for India and one with which we share much in common. But it is not the only game in town.
India must give as much priority to building a healthy relationship with the European Union, China, Russia, Japan, Korea and major African and Latin American countries like South Africa, Nigeria, Brazil and Mexico as it does to the US.
To a certain extent, Yashwant Sinha and Brajesh Mishra grasped this reality once Jaswant Singh left the MEA: the Vajpayee government's China and IBSA initiatives were bold and innovative, and need to be followed through to the end.
The Times of India
Foreign Policy Choices
Look beyond Doc, India's world bigger than U.S.
By Siddharth Varadarajan
Times News Network
NEW DELHI: Within days, PM-designate Manmohan Singh will be confronted with a number of urgent foreign policy issues demanding virtually immediate attention.
Apart from the composite dialogue with Pakistan - scheduled to kick-off with foreign secretary-level discussions on Kashmir and 'peace and security' in "May/June" - the deteriorating situation in Iraq is making it inevitable that the US will again approach India with a request for peacekeeping troops.
How the new government responds to the US over Iraq and its aggressive agenda on nonproliferation will be key litmus tests for the future of the 'strategic partnership' between New Delhi and Washington.
The Vajpayee government prided itself on its supposed proximity to the Bush administration and went out on a limb to endorse some of its more controversial policies like missile defence.
At a fundamental level, it saw the enormous growth and frequent use of US military power - under the garb of the 'war on terror' and 'counter-proliferation' - as factors for stability rather than as sources of instability in international affairs.
Even if it disapproved of certain actions - such as the Iraq invasion - the Vajpayee government felt India did not have a stake in making common cause with those European countries which were more vocal in their opposition.
As for the growing American military presence in the Eurasian heartland and even South Asia, the outgoing foreign policy team of Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha and Brajesh Mishra tended to take a benign view of this in the expectation that US would eventually take on Pakistan.
But even on that the government miscalculated: two years after Sinha called upon Washington to designate Pakistan a 'terrorist country', Islamabad was anointed with the title of 'Major Non-Nato Ally'.
If the underlying Indian foreign policy imperative is to extend the country's strategic autonomy even as it engages positively with all powers, including the US, then Manmohan Singh will find his first priority is to restore a sense of balance in our approach to the world.
In concrete terms, this will involve three ruptures with the thinking which dominated the Vajpayee government.
First, the new government must recognise that terrorism will not be eliminated by the kind of 'war on terror' the US has launched in which civilians have been killed in large numbers and prisoners tortured and humiliated.
Moreover, the US cannot claim it is fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and then encourage Ariel Sharon to intensify his attacks on defenceless Palestinians.
The Vajpayee government - key ministers within which shared the Islamophobia of the Sharon establishment - allowed relations with Israel to be driven by their ideological fixation.
The new government, therefore, will have to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the relationship in order to ensure that existing links, especially those in the military and intelligence field, are truly in the enlightened national interest of India.
Second, the danger posed by nuclear weapons worldwide is as much from their horizontal spread as from research and development of deadlier weapons and delivery systems by US, including missile defence.
The Bush administration is using the bogey of horizontal proliferation to justify a sweeping new regime of military intervention and wants India to sign on to its Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI).
Even as it studies the US proposals, the new government should not feel pressured to commit to the initiative, which would involve the Indian Navy, operating under US direction, interdicting 'suspicious' shipping on the high seas in contravention of international law.
For starters, the PM would do well to keep India away from the PSI meet planned for Krakow end-May.
Finally, the new government must realise the world is so much bigger than US. US is an important country for India and one with which we share much in common. But it is not the only game in town.
India must give as much priority to building a healthy relationship with the European Union, China, Russia, Japan, Korea and major African and Latin American countries like South Africa, Nigeria, Brazil and Mexico as it does to the US.
To a certain extent, Yashwant Sinha and Brajesh Mishra grasped this reality once Jaswant Singh left the MEA: the Vajpayee government's China and IBSA initiatives were bold and innovative, and need to be followed through to the end.
Indo-Pak Balle Balle? Over To Singh Now
20 May 2004
The Times of India
Indo-Pak Balle Balle? Over To Singh Now
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Prime Minister-designate Manmohan Singh’s promise — made at his first press conference Thursday — to make friction with Pakistan a thing of the past will be put to the test almost immediately with the composite dialogue process with Islamabad set to begin within weeks.
At the preparatory meeting of officials in Islamabad on February 18, the two sides agreed to a timetable of talks which will see India and Pakistan formally discussing the Kashmir issue and peace and security for the first time since 1998 sometime in “May/June 2004’’. This will be followed by discussions on the six other issues which form part of the composite dialogue.
In fact, the upcoming round will be kicked off even earlier: expert-level talks on nuclear confidence building measures are slated for May 25-26, with the Pakistani delegation arriving in Delhi on Monday.
Among the items on the agenda, according to news reports from Islamabad, is a Pakistani non-paper on a “strategic restraint regime’’ in South Asia.
Statements from the Pakistani side suggest that while they will not accept any attempt by India to “sideline’’ the Kashmir issue while moving rapidly ahead on other issues, they do not expect that a settlement can be reached in a short time.
The bottomline for Islamabad is what foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri told this reporter in Islamabad in February: “If there’s goodwill, a lot can happen but let’s remember its a composite dialogue. Lots of things are interlinked’’. For India, the key will lie in ensuring that by the time the two foreign ministers meet in August to review the status of the dialogue, enough progress has been made on some of the more important issues like
Siachen to keep the process ticking along. This means also that the two governments have to be prepared to start thinking beyond their stated positions on Kashmir. The composite dialogue need not be an unending one but as the main political interface between the two countries, it should not be allowed to collapse.
Dr Singh and his foreign policy team will also no doubt have learned a thing or two from the negative experiences of the Vajpayee government.
The 18 month-long severing of all transportation links did nothing to advance Indian interests and only inconvenienced those who are a natural constituency for peace in the two countries. The spontaneous outpouring of friendship witnessed during the Indo-Pak cricket series suggests that both countries havemuch to gain from people coming and going across the border.
The gradual expansion of people-to-people contact must be made irreversible. How successful Dr Singh will be will also depend in large measure on the support his government gets from the BJP now that it has been relegated to the opposition benches.
The Times of India
Indo-Pak Balle Balle? Over To Singh Now
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Prime Minister-designate Manmohan Singh’s promise — made at his first press conference Thursday — to make friction with Pakistan a thing of the past will be put to the test almost immediately with the composite dialogue process with Islamabad set to begin within weeks.
At the preparatory meeting of officials in Islamabad on February 18, the two sides agreed to a timetable of talks which will see India and Pakistan formally discussing the Kashmir issue and peace and security for the first time since 1998 sometime in “May/June 2004’’. This will be followed by discussions on the six other issues which form part of the composite dialogue.
In fact, the upcoming round will be kicked off even earlier: expert-level talks on nuclear confidence building measures are slated for May 25-26, with the Pakistani delegation arriving in Delhi on Monday.
Among the items on the agenda, according to news reports from Islamabad, is a Pakistani non-paper on a “strategic restraint regime’’ in South Asia.
Statements from the Pakistani side suggest that while they will not accept any attempt by India to “sideline’’ the Kashmir issue while moving rapidly ahead on other issues, they do not expect that a settlement can be reached in a short time.
The bottomline for Islamabad is what foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri told this reporter in Islamabad in February: “If there’s goodwill, a lot can happen but let’s remember its a composite dialogue. Lots of things are interlinked’’. For India, the key will lie in ensuring that by the time the two foreign ministers meet in August to review the status of the dialogue, enough progress has been made on some of the more important issues like
Siachen to keep the process ticking along. This means also that the two governments have to be prepared to start thinking beyond their stated positions on Kashmir. The composite dialogue need not be an unending one but as the main political interface between the two countries, it should not be allowed to collapse.
Dr Singh and his foreign policy team will also no doubt have learned a thing or two from the negative experiences of the Vajpayee government.
The 18 month-long severing of all transportation links did nothing to advance Indian interests and only inconvenienced those who are a natural constituency for peace in the two countries. The spontaneous outpouring of friendship witnessed during the Indo-Pak cricket series suggests that both countries havemuch to gain from people coming and going across the border.
The gradual expansion of people-to-people contact must be made irreversible. How successful Dr Singh will be will also depend in large measure on the support his government gets from the BJP now that it has been relegated to the opposition benches.
19 May 2004
Sonia soars in renunciation
19 May 2004
The Times of India
Sonia Soars In Renunciation
By Siddharth Varadarajan
New Delhi: Only in politics and the underworld can mortality be so swift and ruthless as to rob the deceased of the chance of appearing dignified in death. For better or worse, the NDA was slain by the electorate which opted for a Congress-led government knowing that it'd be led by Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, but the BJP refused to cremate the corpse. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who wanted to go down in history as a statesman, inexplicably flinched from completing the obsequies. L K Advani was busy mourning. In the absence of the two grandees, Sushma Swaraj decided to preside over the last rites of the NDA government, threatening to trade the sindoor of the Idealised Hindu Woman for the severe, Brahminically-ordained raiment of widowhood — complete with shaved head — if Sonia, the foreign-born Indian widow, were to become prime minister of India.
But it is the `Italian bahu' who has triumphed, demonstrating not just better understanding of politics than Sushma and the men standing behind her but also of Hindu scripture and sanskaras.
Indians love and respect no one more than a renunciate. Sonia Gandhi is not exactly giving up all the fruits of her actions during the election campaign but in a country and society which has come to valorise power more than anything else — more than business, more than journalism, more than acting — letting go of the PM's chair will inevitably be seen as an act of unparalleled sacrifice.
The entire concluding chapter of the Bhagavad Gita is devoted to the importance of renunciation. It is on receiving this wisdom from Krishna that Arjuna is mentally
prepared to go into the Mahabharata war, eventually to emerge victorious. It is dangerous to make predictions in politics but Sonia's decision to renounce the throne will almost certainly ensure that her children will inherit it.
BJP, which fought and lost an essentially racist campaign and then thumbed its nose at Indian democracy by starting a xenophobic offensive against Sonia becoming PM even though she had the constitutional, political and moral mandate, will find it hard to recover from this coup de grace. Even the most hardened BJP sympathiser would have found it difficult not to marvel at Sonia Gandhi as she announced her decision, not to feel a tinge of shame and regret for the personal attacks their leadership mounted on her these past few months.
Sushma the Shrill, who stooped to tonsure, can proclaim victory from the rooftops and claim — to the adulation of the extremists who inhabit the political fringe in this country — that it was her resolute stand which saved India from the “ignominy'' of having a foreign-born PM.
The BJP took a gamble that Sonia would not understand the quality of renunciation and shot its bolt even before they had a chance to target her actual performance as PM. The Congress leader should now go one step further: she must ensure that the person who becomes Prime Minister in her place is able to function with all the dignity and respect that the office commands. A remote control chief minister may work at the state level, but the PM cannot be answerable to any extra-constitutional authority. Sonia Gandhi has given up the PM's chair. She must also decide to set aside the remote. TNN
The Times of India
Sonia Soars In Renunciation
By Siddharth Varadarajan
New Delhi: Only in politics and the underworld can mortality be so swift and ruthless as to rob the deceased of the chance of appearing dignified in death. For better or worse, the NDA was slain by the electorate which opted for a Congress-led government knowing that it'd be led by Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, but the BJP refused to cremate the corpse. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who wanted to go down in history as a statesman, inexplicably flinched from completing the obsequies. L K Advani was busy mourning. In the absence of the two grandees, Sushma Swaraj decided to preside over the last rites of the NDA government, threatening to trade the sindoor of the Idealised Hindu Woman for the severe, Brahminically-ordained raiment of widowhood — complete with shaved head — if Sonia, the foreign-born Indian widow, were to become prime minister of India.
But it is the `Italian bahu' who has triumphed, demonstrating not just better understanding of politics than Sushma and the men standing behind her but also of Hindu scripture and sanskaras.
Indians love and respect no one more than a renunciate. Sonia Gandhi is not exactly giving up all the fruits of her actions during the election campaign but in a country and society which has come to valorise power more than anything else — more than business, more than journalism, more than acting — letting go of the PM's chair will inevitably be seen as an act of unparalleled sacrifice.
The entire concluding chapter of the Bhagavad Gita is devoted to the importance of renunciation. It is on receiving this wisdom from Krishna that Arjuna is mentally
prepared to go into the Mahabharata war, eventually to emerge victorious. It is dangerous to make predictions in politics but Sonia's decision to renounce the throne will almost certainly ensure that her children will inherit it.
BJP, which fought and lost an essentially racist campaign and then thumbed its nose at Indian democracy by starting a xenophobic offensive against Sonia becoming PM even though she had the constitutional, political and moral mandate, will find it hard to recover from this coup de grace. Even the most hardened BJP sympathiser would have found it difficult not to marvel at Sonia Gandhi as she announced her decision, not to feel a tinge of shame and regret for the personal attacks their leadership mounted on her these past few months.
Sushma the Shrill, who stooped to tonsure, can proclaim victory from the rooftops and claim — to the adulation of the extremists who inhabit the political fringe in this country — that it was her resolute stand which saved India from the “ignominy'' of having a foreign-born PM.
The BJP took a gamble that Sonia would not understand the quality of renunciation and shot its bolt even before they had a chance to target her actual performance as PM. The Congress leader should now go one step further: she must ensure that the person who becomes Prime Minister in her place is able to function with all the dignity and respect that the office commands. A remote control chief minister may work at the state level, but the PM cannot be answerable to any extra-constitutional authority. Sonia Gandhi has given up the PM's chair. She must also decide to set aside the remote. TNN
18 May 2004
Brajesh Mishra's successor as NSA can't wait
18 May 2004
The Times of India
Brajesh's successor can't wait
By Siddharth Varadarajan
Times News Network
New Delhi: While Sonia Gandhi can afford to take a few days deciding whom to appoint as ministers of external affairs, finance and defence, there is one high-level appointment that has to be made as soon as she is sworn in as Prime Minister: that of the national security advisor (NSA).
This is because NSA is central to the continuity of the existing command structure on nuclear arsenal.
On January 4, 2003 , the Vajpayee government announced the formation of a two-tiered Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) consisting of a Political Council and an Executive Council.
The Political Council, which is headed by the PM, "is the sole body which can authorise the use of nuclear weapons", an official communique at the time stated.
The NSA heads the Executive Council, which "provides inputs for decision-making by the NCA and executes the directives given to it by the Political Council".
Simply put, the NSA is the interface between the PM and military's Strategic Forces Command, under whose charge all nuclear assets are placed.
Says noted strategic affairs analyst K Subrahmanyam, "This will be the first transfer which will be effected since India became a nuclear weapons state". Under these circumstances, the transition has to demonstrate a "continuity of command".
Since the NSA is a political appointee, Subrahmanyam in fact favours him being named as soon as possible, even before the PM takes oath.
The present incumbent is Brajesh Mishra, who also doubles up as the PM's principal secretary. Former foreign secretary J N Dixit is considered a front-runner for the incoming government's NSA.
Though the Congress manifesto does not commit to separating the NSA's post from that of the PM's principal secretary, the party has in the past endorsed the Kargil Review Committee's suggestion that the two jobs be split.
The Times of India
Brajesh's successor can't wait
By Siddharth Varadarajan
Times News Network
New Delhi: While Sonia Gandhi can afford to take a few days deciding whom to appoint as ministers of external affairs, finance and defence, there is one high-level appointment that has to be made as soon as she is sworn in as Prime Minister: that of the national security advisor (NSA).
This is because NSA is central to the continuity of the existing command structure on nuclear arsenal.
On January 4, 2003 , the Vajpayee government announced the formation of a two-tiered Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) consisting of a Political Council and an Executive Council.
The Political Council, which is headed by the PM, "is the sole body which can authorise the use of nuclear weapons", an official communique at the time stated.
The NSA heads the Executive Council, which "provides inputs for decision-making by the NCA and executes the directives given to it by the Political Council".
Simply put, the NSA is the interface between the PM and military's Strategic Forces Command, under whose charge all nuclear assets are placed.
Says noted strategic affairs analyst K Subrahmanyam, "This will be the first transfer which will be effected since India became a nuclear weapons state". Under these circumstances, the transition has to demonstrate a "continuity of command".
Since the NSA is a political appointee, Subrahmanyam in fact favours him being named as soon as possible, even before the PM takes oath.
The present incumbent is Brajesh Mishra, who also doubles up as the PM's principal secretary. Former foreign secretary J N Dixit is considered a front-runner for the incoming government's NSA.
Though the Congress manifesto does not commit to separating the NSA's post from that of the PM's principal secretary, the party has in the past endorsed the Kargil Review Committee's suggestion that the two jobs be split.
06 May 2004
Iraq abuse cases are no aberration
May 6 2004
The Times of India
Iraq abuse cases are no aberration
By Siddharth Varadarajan
Times News Network
New Delhi: President George W. Bush declared on Wednesday that the evidence of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in US-occupied Iraq is "abhorrent" and "does not represent the America that I know".
The reality, say US-based human rights groups and legal scholars, is that the Bush administration's `war on terror' has spawned a set of aggressive detention and interrogation practices that have broken down the time-honoured taboo against torture and exposed prisoners to the depredations of interrogators and guards who know the usual rules no longer apply.
From the notorious black hole of Guantanamo to the numerous detention centres run offshore by the CIA so as to exclude the oversight of US courts, it is routine for prisoners to be humiliated or subjected to physical abuse and violence. "Many of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay and the US mainland have also been victims of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by the US government," says Marjorie Cohn, professor of international law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego.
One of cornerstones of the Bush administration's new approach towards suspects is the policy of "rendition", where the US outsources the job of interrogating individuals believed to have terrorist links to countries where torture is routine -- like Syria, Egypt or Morocco. "We don't kick the %&@# out of them," an unnamed US official told the Washington Post in December 2002. "We send them to other countries so they can kick the %$@# out of them."
Asked what exactly was meant by "operational flexibility" in the interrogation of terrorist suspects, J Cofer Black, then head of the CIA Counterterrorist Center, told a Senate intelligence committee in 2002: "This is a very highly classified area but I have to say that all you need to know: There was a before 9/11, and there was an after 9/11.
After 9/11 the gloves come off." Black is now the Bush administration's ambassador-at-large on counter-terrorism.
In Iraq, the general remit to use force while interrogating anti-American captives has fused with the violent logic of military occupation to produce a deadly cocktail of humiliating prison rituals, sexual sadism and torture. Far from being aberrations, the US soldiers shown smiling next to their stripped trophies are the logical product of the "gloves" coming off.
A review of the changing US policy towards torture and other forms of unlawful interrogation by the Center for Cooperative Research has produced literally scores of documented examples of violence against US-held prisoners -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo -- as well as against those the US `rendered' over to its allies.
One of the most notorious case of US-sponsored torture to have emerged yet is that of Maher Arar, a Syrian-Canadian dual national who was taken off a plane at JFK airport in New York in September 2002, questioned for a few days, and then handed over to Syria for the full treatment. After 10 months of brutal torture, he was eventually released.
Today, he is reportedly considering suing the US for $400 million in damages.
The internal US army report into the Abu Ghraib abuses makes it clear that much of the torture was linked to interrogations and was therefore the product of an official writ rather than individual perversity.
The Times of India
Iraq abuse cases are no aberration
By Siddharth Varadarajan
Times News Network
New Delhi: President George W. Bush declared on Wednesday that the evidence of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in US-occupied Iraq is "abhorrent" and "does not represent the America that I know".
The reality, say US-based human rights groups and legal scholars, is that the Bush administration's `war on terror' has spawned a set of aggressive detention and interrogation practices that have broken down the time-honoured taboo against torture and exposed prisoners to the depredations of interrogators and guards who know the usual rules no longer apply.
From the notorious black hole of Guantanamo to the numerous detention centres run offshore by the CIA so as to exclude the oversight of US courts, it is routine for prisoners to be humiliated or subjected to physical abuse and violence. "Many of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay and the US mainland have also been victims of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by the US government," says Marjorie Cohn, professor of international law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego.
One of cornerstones of the Bush administration's new approach towards suspects is the policy of "rendition", where the US outsources the job of interrogating individuals believed to have terrorist links to countries where torture is routine -- like Syria, Egypt or Morocco. "We don't kick the %&@# out of them," an unnamed US official told the Washington Post in December 2002. "We send them to other countries so they can kick the %$@# out of them."
Asked what exactly was meant by "operational flexibility" in the interrogation of terrorist suspects, J Cofer Black, then head of the CIA Counterterrorist Center, told a Senate intelligence committee in 2002: "This is a very highly classified area but I have to say that all you need to know: There was a before 9/11, and there was an after 9/11.
After 9/11 the gloves come off." Black is now the Bush administration's ambassador-at-large on counter-terrorism.
In Iraq, the general remit to use force while interrogating anti-American captives has fused with the violent logic of military occupation to produce a deadly cocktail of humiliating prison rituals, sexual sadism and torture. Far from being aberrations, the US soldiers shown smiling next to their stripped trophies are the logical product of the "gloves" coming off.
A review of the changing US policy towards torture and other forms of unlawful interrogation by the Center for Cooperative Research has produced literally scores of documented examples of violence against US-held prisoners -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo -- as well as against those the US `rendered' over to its allies.
One of the most notorious case of US-sponsored torture to have emerged yet is that of Maher Arar, a Syrian-Canadian dual national who was taken off a plane at JFK airport in New York in September 2002, questioned for a few days, and then handed over to Syria for the full treatment. After 10 months of brutal torture, he was eventually released.
Today, he is reportedly considering suing the US for $400 million in damages.
The internal US army report into the Abu Ghraib abuses makes it clear that much of the torture was linked to interrogations and was therefore the product of an official writ rather than individual perversity.
04 May 2004
Indian migrant worker killed in Macedonian fake encounter
4 May 2004
The Times of India
Indian migrant worker killed in Macedonian fake encounter
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN
NEW DELHI: An unlucky Indian was in all probability among the seven illegal immigrants from South Asia who were shot dead by the Macedonian police two years ago in a fake encounter staged to impress the United States.
Last week, the authorities in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia came clean about the terrible incident which occurred outside the capital city of Skopje on March 4, 2002 and accused former interior minister Ljube Boskovski of personally masterminding the cold-blooded killing to demonstrate that his government was also in the frontline of the so-called international `war against terror'.
The seven were officially described at the time as "mujahideen" who had once fought in Bosnia and had entered Macedonia from Kosovo on a mission to attack the US embassy in Skopje.
In reality, they were illegal migrants who had sold land and property back home to find employment in Europe. Each had made his own way to Turkey and had then teamed up, presumably with the help of an agent in Istanbul, for the final journey westward.
They crossed Bulgaria and had barely entered Macedonia when the police who had been told to find an itinerant group that could be passed off as “jihadi terrorists” abducted and killed them.
But while six of the seven victims have been positively identified as Pakistani on the basis of documents found on their person, the identity of the seventh is unknown. Nevertheless, the authorities there are working on the assumption that he was from India.
"The seventh man was not carrying any papers at all", Mirjana Kontevska, spokesperson of the Macedonian interior ministry, told The Times of India on the telephone from Skopje.
"But a Pakistani diplomat from their embassy in Turkey, who identified the six Pakistanis, said the seventh was an Indian on the basis of some signs or aspects of his body".
Asked whether this was a reference to a tattoo or long hair or the absence of circumcision, Kontevska said she was not aware of the details. "But we are probing the matter very closely and we should have some more news very shortly".
The families of the six Pakistanis have announced that they will sue the Macedonian government for the wrongful killing of their relatives. Lawyers say they will seek as much as $15 million in compensation.
A Macedonian journalist familiar with the case said it was possible the police killed the seven on the presumption that the entire group was Pakistani. But when it turned out that one was an Indian and presumably not even a Muslim they decided to get rid of his papers lest the "mujahideen" theory fall apart.
Though Pakistan has been quick to condemn the Macedonian authorities for the illegal killing of six of its citizens, the Indian government has not yet taken a view. "We have received no information yet to suggest the seventh person was indeed an Indian", said an external affairs ministry official.
The official said it was extremely difficult to establish the identity of illegal immigrants at the best of times. "They almost always travel without documents, so that they can't be deported back home quickly if they are caught". The official also said it was unlikely that an Indian migrant would be moving around with a group of Pakistanis.
However, those familiar with the modus operandi of illegal immigration from South Asia say that identity papers are not usually destroyed until the individual is about to enter a Western (i.e. European Union) country. And that agents running the "underground railroad" out of Turkey or Bulgaria do often move Indians and Pakistanis together.
In John Le Carre's The Tailor of Panama , a seedy MI6 agent, Andrew Osnard, concocts a yarn about an impending uprising to impress his bosses. But the yarn sets in motion a chain of events that soon spins out of control. Something similar happened after the March 2002 fake encounter.
In December that year, unidentified terrorists bombed the offices of the honorary Macedonian consulate in Karachi, killing three. "We are al-Qaeda for Pakistan and we will kill the unbelievers as they kill us," the attackers wrote on the walls of the consulate an apparent reference to the killing of the seven so-called "mujahideen" in Macedonia a few months earlier.
The Pakistani authorities said last month the Macedonian consulate was bombed by terrorists from the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Alami.
The Times of India
Indian migrant worker killed in Macedonian fake encounter
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN
NEW DELHI: An unlucky Indian was in all probability among the seven illegal immigrants from South Asia who were shot dead by the Macedonian police two years ago in a fake encounter staged to impress the United States.
Last week, the authorities in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia came clean about the terrible incident which occurred outside the capital city of Skopje on March 4, 2002 and accused former interior minister Ljube Boskovski of personally masterminding the cold-blooded killing to demonstrate that his government was also in the frontline of the so-called international `war against terror'.
The seven were officially described at the time as "mujahideen" who had once fought in Bosnia and had entered Macedonia from Kosovo on a mission to attack the US embassy in Skopje.
In reality, they were illegal migrants who had sold land and property back home to find employment in Europe. Each had made his own way to Turkey and had then teamed up, presumably with the help of an agent in Istanbul, for the final journey westward.
They crossed Bulgaria and had barely entered Macedonia when the police who had been told to find an itinerant group that could be passed off as “jihadi terrorists” abducted and killed them.
But while six of the seven victims have been positively identified as Pakistani on the basis of documents found on their person, the identity of the seventh is unknown. Nevertheless, the authorities there are working on the assumption that he was from India.
"The seventh man was not carrying any papers at all", Mirjana Kontevska, spokesperson of the Macedonian interior ministry, told The Times of India on the telephone from Skopje.
"But a Pakistani diplomat from their embassy in Turkey, who identified the six Pakistanis, said the seventh was an Indian on the basis of some signs or aspects of his body".
Asked whether this was a reference to a tattoo or long hair or the absence of circumcision, Kontevska said she was not aware of the details. "But we are probing the matter very closely and we should have some more news very shortly".
The families of the six Pakistanis have announced that they will sue the Macedonian government for the wrongful killing of their relatives. Lawyers say they will seek as much as $15 million in compensation.
A Macedonian journalist familiar with the case said it was possible the police killed the seven on the presumption that the entire group was Pakistani. But when it turned out that one was an Indian and presumably not even a Muslim they decided to get rid of his papers lest the "mujahideen" theory fall apart.
Though Pakistan has been quick to condemn the Macedonian authorities for the illegal killing of six of its citizens, the Indian government has not yet taken a view. "We have received no information yet to suggest the seventh person was indeed an Indian", said an external affairs ministry official.
The official said it was extremely difficult to establish the identity of illegal immigrants at the best of times. "They almost always travel without documents, so that they can't be deported back home quickly if they are caught". The official also said it was unlikely that an Indian migrant would be moving around with a group of Pakistanis.
However, those familiar with the modus operandi of illegal immigration from South Asia say that identity papers are not usually destroyed until the individual is about to enter a Western (i.e. European Union) country. And that agents running the "underground railroad" out of Turkey or Bulgaria do often move Indians and Pakistanis together.
In John Le Carre's The Tailor of Panama , a seedy MI6 agent, Andrew Osnard, concocts a yarn about an impending uprising to impress his bosses. But the yarn sets in motion a chain of events that soon spins out of control. Something similar happened after the March 2002 fake encounter.
In December that year, unidentified terrorists bombed the offices of the honorary Macedonian consulate in Karachi, killing three. "We are al-Qaeda for Pakistan and we will kill the unbelievers as they kill us," the attackers wrote on the walls of the consulate an apparent reference to the killing of the seven so-called "mujahideen" in Macedonia a few months earlier.
The Pakistani authorities said last month the Macedonian consulate was bombed by terrorists from the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Alami.
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